< V for Vendetta

V for Vendetta/WMG


V is Valerie.

  • Does this make sense or not?
    • No. Delia Surridge's diary consistently refers to V as the *man* in Room 5.
      • Well, Valerie was a lesbian. It's possible that she got a sex change. Not sure if that medical procedure had been invented at the time of V For Vendetta, but after all, this is an alternate history we're talking about.
        • You are assuming that Lesbian = Transsexual. It doesn't. It's actually more likely that Delia might have referred to her as a "man" because someone like her would consider lesbians unfeminine.
        • Transgender Troper here, Gender Reassignment Surgeries have existed since 1935, so they certainly were in existence during V for Vendetta. However as noted above, you are incorrect to assume that just because she's a lesbian that it would indicate that she would want the surgeries.
      • V's wearing a mask at all times. It is possible that V is actually several people amongst whom the man from room 5, Valerie from room 4, and maybe others. It would explain how he is able to do so much.
    • If you've read all the notes about it, it becomes obvious that V is some sort of transsexual. Why? It was based on a different short story, by the same two people, that was meant to be this graphic novel. The main character was a Transsexual. This character is also black. Considering how easily Evey disguises her feminine figure, it's pretty easy to guess that V is probably not male.
    • This troper is a little perplexed by this whole debate. V could be Valerie and the man in Room 5, in the sense that Valerie is actually a transgender man, but it's hard enough to get well-intentioned medical professionals not to call trans* people by the wrong pronouns and gender, let alone their malevolent captors. The notion that V is several different people is an appealing one, but I think having V be Valerie robs at least that particular V's devotion to Rita (if there ever was a Rita, and thus a Valerie) of its poignance.
  • At least in a meta-sense, Valeries was the original V. Wasn't V supposed to be a doll like transgendered hero in the early stages? That fell through due to executive meddling. V as we know him was passed on the legacy from V. Evey took up the mantel by V putting her through what he did, i.e. recreating Valerie handing off the mantel to her in a way. There is a parallel universe where V is Valerie where the executives did not meddle.

V is Ozymandias/Adrian Veidt

  • Both are charismatic, have superhuman reflexes, are very intelligent. Adrian even signs his letters with a "V—" in Watchmen.
  • After the events of Watchmen, Veidt leaves his Antarctic base and goes to England. He abandons his role as Ozy and takes on the role of V in order to take action again. V never actually was in a concentration camp, he was Adrian Veidt. He is hiding his identity behind the mask, not physical scars.
    • my theory: the world which Veidt created comes apart at the seams when Rorshach's book makes headlines and he is forced to go into hiding. Relations between the countries deteriorate even farther than they were before the massacre. Nuclear war erupts and a fascist government takes control of England. Veidt, who was hiding out there under an assumed name, was imprisoned due to his (suspected) homosexuality. While there, he is driven insane but at the same time, his genius intellect and powerful body enable him to escape. He then spends his life trying to save the world he helped destroy.
  • V also created a story about a fictonal prisoner to give to Evie, who believed it. This makes it plausible that he could have been able to fabricate his own history as well.
    • I'm pretty sure that story about Valerie was real.
  • This is oddly supported in V's dialogue as well... "I killed you ten minutes ago" ring any bells?

V is Alan Moore himself

  • It is mentioned that artists and other such individuals were placed in the concentration camps, Since Alan is a fairly controversial writer, it would make sense that the government of the comic would see him as a danger.
  • That's impossible. V has no magical powers, Alan Moore has several.
    • Doesn't he? V destroys his cell using only gardening utensils and decoration. Even MacGyver would have trouble pulling that off. Using piles of dirt and strategically placed candles for it seems just like the kind of thing a mage could pull off...
      • Dirt? No. Fertilizer, though, is very flammable, and has ingredients in it that can make it a potent explosive.
      • US Tropers might recall that Timothy Mcveigh used a truck full of fertilizer to blow up the Oklahoma City Federal Building, prompting regulatory changes in the types and amounts of fertilizers sold to the public. And the requiem played before Mcveigh's execution was titled 'Ave Atque Vale', which were, coincidentally (?), V's last words.
  • How does he hide his beard?
    • The experiments performed on him in the camp destroyed his beard and made him unable to regrow it. The trauma of this was part of what made him become V, and his choice of a mask which carried a small beard itself was an attempt to, in some small measure, replaced his loved lost facial hair.
      • Impossible! That beard is pure chaos seeping through Alan Moore's pores. Nothing conceivable by man nor God could destroy it.
      • Alan Moore does not wish his beard to be visible, as that would undermine his anonymity. Ergo, his beard is not visible.

The nuclear war responsible for wiping out much of the world was partly due to the Russians realizing that the aliens from Watchmen weren't really coming.

  • Furthermore, the British super soldier program that gave us V (and Miracleman, perhaps?) was an attempt to play catch up with Dr. Manhattan.
    • The lack of the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen or the Swamp Thing dooms this.
      • Not necessarily. The League exist in the Real World of Miracleman, alongside V and the Watchmen. Swamp Thing is fictional, however, and thus belongs in the Comic Book/Dream World of Miracleman.
  • The Miracleman program also produced the British character Zenith. Which would mean that given his power level, Dr. Manhattan is already well on his way to becoming a Lloigor...
  • According to an interview in Warrior Magazine when V for Vendetta came out, V for Vendetta is an alternate timeline where Mike Moran never remembered his special word. During Kid Miracleman's rampage across London, the man who would have become V is killed.
  • To elaborate on a theory from the Watchmen WMG, Dr. Manhattan didn't kill Rorschach at the end, he merely teleported him to rural Britain, where he was eventually sent to Larkhill. This being WMG, you can guess where this one is headed.
    • So, they're both Time Lords, then, and working for NERV?
      • I don't Rorschach would have anything against Norsefire. If anything he would work with them.
        • That depends on how much he knows about the corruption of the Norsefire leadership. Rorschach is right-wing, but he seems more concerned with delivering his brand of retributive justice than stringing up people for Living While Black/Gay/Jewish/Whatever
      • Rorscach, as screwed up as he is, hated the Nazis and was pleased when the bomb was dropped on Japan helping bring about an end to World War 2. I can't see him siding with a group who persecute and mass genocide people just for being different. Yes, Rorschach has prejudices and some deeply unpleaseant neuroses but he's not, for all of that, a complete monster. He would never support concentration camps of any kind.
      • In order to support this theory, we shall have to suppose that Doc Manhattan also changed Rorschach's physique in the process of teleporting him. On the other hand, how Rorschach managed to change his way of thought (Remember "Never compromise"?) is a complete mystery.

V didn't die, he just went back in time and opened a sandwich shop franchise.

V was born Alex, and was the main character in A Clockwork Orange.

  • A Clockwork Orange was England of the 70's, imagined from the 60's. V for Vendetta was 1990's England imagined from the 80's. The latter is simply the future of the former. By the time Alex is an adult, Norsefire has arisen, replacing the British government of Alex's youth (the 1970's, as imagined from 1962). Alex develops a political conscience. After being sent to the Larkhill Resettlement Camp by the Party, Alex's old files from the Staja are discovered, his captors learn of his treatment by the old government, and decide to subject him to Delia Surridge's experiments. After Larkhill, Alex dons a Guy Fawkes mask and becomes the professional anarchist with his reservoir of horrorshow ultraviolence. Like Alex, the V persona is extremely violent, with a penchant for sophisticated tastes in music and culture. He loses the nadsat, but compensates by taking up the mannerisms of a literature professor while fighting corruption.

V is one of Wammy's children

He made up the story about Larkhill, or used the name "V" prior to going there. Wammy's House is located in England, and it is known from L's contact list in "L: Change The World" that there was a child at the House who used "V" as his/her letter.

V is not anyone, he was the hallucination of the female lead

Our heroine blanks out on putting the mask as she cannot just justify killing in the name of the revolution. Yet. Her denial is strong. Then the events of the book happen as they do.

  • Was just thinking about this, myself in that V could be a means to justify movie!Evey's apparent rebellious streak, so she "creates" him.
  • Alternatively, V is really EFG...
  • Explains how in the otherwise-Crowning-Moment rooftop speech, nobody realizes that Codename V's voice suddenly gets approximately ten years younger and a genderflip.
    • It's implied that the mask heavily distorts the voice.
    • Three things: 1) I'm a female tenor, 2) the things he underwent might have changed his voice, 3) How many people have heard him speak?

V is queer and/or Jewish.

Okay, I sort of fail at WMG here - this guess isn't wild by any definition. Because he was sent to Larkhill, he must be either nonwhite, a political dissident, queer, Jewish, or fall into some miscellaneous category which I can't think of, so screw that. We know he's white, at least in the comics, because we see a sort of 1/4 profile of him. If he was a political dissident, that would just be boring, wouldn't it? He'd be a much less dynamic character. And, moreover, he just has to be gay and/or Jewish, because how likely is it that a straight gentile would write and perform a musical-theatre-type song, complete with references to Broadway, just for his own entertainment? Not very.

  • This is more or less a completely logical guess.
  • This troper didn't realise until after reading that she probably wasn't supposed to see V as a sociopathic Wicked Cultured gay guy.
  • There were a lot of Jews on Broadway (Google "jews broadway" and you'll see what I mean). V loved theatre and drama. I really don't think that it is too much of a stretch to say that he was Jewish, even though the whole Jews and Broadway thing was more in the early days of Broadway.
    • There's a trope for that!: You Have to Have Jews. (Also, I've got to say, I've gotten so used to people using the historical present when talking about fiction—ie., everything is put in the present tense—I get all wibbly when I see someone using the past tense in an otherwise-appropriate context.)
    • If the comic version of V was Jewish, then the film version of V was Muslim.
  • But this troper is straight and Wicked Cultured to a degree, what makes V necessarily gay?
    • The fact that he was effectively in a concentration camp shown to be mostly made up of people of color and GLBT people.

V was a political prisoner.

He was just an ordinary heterosexual man who was completely unhappy with his life and appalled by the government. His life taken a new direction when he was inspired by Evey's father's anti-government protests. (At least in the film, it would explain how he seems to know Evey's father.) He starts joining them, and eventually got arrested as a political prisoner and ends up in Larkhill. During his time there, he has witness what the government was capable of. When he learns that Adam Susan/Sutler ordered it, his anger at life, at the government, at Susan/Sutler is what kept him alive and given him the adrenaline (combined with his altered body) to have his vengeance.

  • It's considered official canon.
  • Also, to answer the question above of how "a straight gentile would write and perform a musical-theatre-type song", he was an aspiring artist who dreams of Broadway, but wants to do more to support the anti-government protest. Or because of his polticial views he was blacklisted by the goverment, thus destroying his chances at Broadway. This led him to join the protests. Everything in his hideout are sentimentals (of his old life) and other stuff he saved from being destroyed or taken away by the government.

V is an Alternate Universe Joker

Pallid perpetual grin, unclear backstory, bags and bags of style, completely insane (or, if you believe some theories, knurd), has the soul of an entertainer. Batman never surfaced in this world, and without him, Mr. Finch/Commissioner Gordon could only barely track him down. If Batman had been around, V would never have been killed. On another track, I haven't decided whether Evey is Harley Quinn or a potential Batman(girl?) whose development was arrested.

  • Adam Susan decided to impose his own brand of "justice" in the world after a mugger killed his parents before him when he was a child. He dedicated himself to stop criminals, and he went just a little nuts... after the nuclear war, he used his inherited money and power to build a new totalitarian government. Then he got fat.

Concerning the name 'Evey'

  • 'E' (Epsilon) is the fifth letter of the Greek (and English) alphabet; 'V' is the Roman numeral for '5' (yes, that's a major point in the story, anyway).... so the name "Evey" is actually "E-V".
    • This troper noticed this odd little thing, and hasn't heard it anywhere else. Probably just me seeing things, huh?
      • What's special about "E-V"?
      • Fifth letter plus Roman numeral for 5. Also the numeral for 4 (IV) was pronounced "ee-vee", so there's a link made with Valerie, the woman an Room 4, who seems to represent all the victims of Norsefire.
    • This troper thought that would have been obvious to anyone who read the graphic novel or watched the film, especially as V mentions it at the very beginning.

Evey: I'm Evey.
V: Evey? E-V. Of course you are.


V is Epic Fail Guy

Oh yeah....

  • But he did fail in an epic way (destroying the establishment)....
    • Sean Fausz is so fat he can't do half the stuff V can so Epic Fail Guy is not V.

V didn't die, he was assimilated by the Real-World Internet and became Anonymous

That would explain Anonymous' rebellious acts.

In a strange sense of irony, V was summoned here in Real Life and invented Four Chan

...while labeling its members as "Anonymous". Four Chan was invented to rebel against the real, obviously orderly Norsefire, Wikipedia.

  • Encyclopedia Britannica would also be an appropriate Norsefire, since it is British....
  • Fools, We all know Norsefire is Scientology!
    • It's obvious that Norsefire is The Ministry of Truth aka Fox News
      • Peh. A least FNC's pundits encourage debate on their shows. Now MSNBC, on the other hand...
  • So, V is moot?

The series happened in the alternate continuity of Code Geass

Nazi-esque england taking over the world..... Charismatic Magnificent Bastard who is only known to the world as Anonymous...

V is the Gene Wilder version of Willy Wonka

Nearly every line from both characters is a quote, and they're both insane and manipulative.

  • And both live in eccentric places surrounded by odd items and allow very few visitors.

V is still in that concentration camp, and the events of the entire series are his revenge-fantasy hallucination.

  • uh... is there any evidence at all to support this?

V is the reincarnation of Guy Fawkes

Yes, and Norsefire was actually advanced enough to bring dead souls to living subjects. One of the prisoners in Larkhill had a past life as Guy Fawkes, and the experiments awakened the monster.....

V was deliberately created by Diana Stanton

At some point, Stanton fully realized what they were doing at Larkhill, and decided to strike back at the government. However, to openly resist would simply get her killed. Instead, she pulled a Mad Scientist and made V into a Super Soldier.

The revolution that V inspired will leave Britain just as bad as before, if not worse.

In a lot of cases when revolutions occur, the revolutionaries have at least some idea of what kind of government they want to replace the current one with. Sometimes different members of the revolution have different ideas, and they continue to fight each other after the old government is deposed, but still, someone has an idea of what to do.

The force that V unleashed, on the other hand, is based around no such principles or hopes for the future, just hate for the Norsefire regime. While Evey plans to help the people build a new order, of course, but that has problems of its own. She has no solid authority over anyone, and V thus doesn't stand for anything; it's only a symbol of dissatisfaction, of standing against Norsefire. Even if she did have some authority or idea for the new order, she's unwilling to try and press it upon the people. What exactly does that leave for her to do? She might try to keep a new fascist order from arising, but how can she do that without killing, or simply becoming a continuation of the exact same practices as the old V?

At this point, the best-case scenario would be years or decades of chaos, followed by a forced unification under a new regime. Worst-case would be that Britain couldn't be reunified, and instead pulling its way back out of partisan chaos, only managing to eventually coalesce into a bunch of quarrelling, bickering city-states after decades of chaotic infighting, then suffering intermittent wars for perhaps centuries afterward.

  • It's my understanding that the movie plays on this a little more. But V's plan was never to SAVE England. They would either save themselves, or die. And consider that the revolution occurs about a year after his broadcast/blackout. He said they have two years. V would push them away from Fascism, but they would have to push themselves from Anarchy.

At the end of the movie, V enacted a magic ritual.

Through the dual human sacrifice of himself and Chancellor Suttler he summoned the spirits of everyone who died at the hands of the Norsefire regime, having them bolster the numbers of the protestors and paralyze the soldiers with fear, allowing his spectacle and revolution to take place without a hitch, and perhaps providing moral support to the survivors in the years to come. This is why all those seen dying during the movie can be seen in the crowd.

The overthrowing of the goverment and the revolution will lead to Big Brother.

We cannot be sure that 1984 even takes place in 1984. Years after the revolution Britain would be left in chaos, and the new goverment impose an even more conformist measures on the people. V and the revoultion will never have been in the public eye, to stop any thought of any rebellion. Ever.

  • Alternatively, since The Revolution Of Anonymous People Will Not Be Vilified, the anonymous V's in the film or Evey in the graphic novel become Big Brother (it is also possible that the Proles also remained in anarchy or merged with V and the Revolution, since in 1984 proles and animals are free). The people who opted for a totalitarian state were just given what they wanted: a totalitarian state turned Up to Eleven. Oh, and Winston Smith is supposed to be a replacement Evey.

V is the last of an order created by Zorro in the 1800s.

Hey, Z and V looked similar to me.

It doesn't matter who V is.

His face would most likely be unrecognizable, not just because Word of God says we've never met the actual character before, but because in his escape from Larkhill he WALKED THROUGH FIRE. Odds are that V has some pretty serious burns from the incident that the drugs he was given largely prevented him from feeling.

  • The film shows us his face straight after he walks through fire. It's all black and cindery. This troper actually thought it was a mistake to show us what remained of his face so clearly...

V was Evey all along.

She was V from start to finish, she was merely being schizophrenic and the end of the graphic novel was her finally realising this.

V was a Time Lord...

Since we need one of these. And that's why he was a prisoner, Norsefire didn't want Time Lords and all their superior knowledge messing with the government. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that V was the Master—driven insane by his own people, incredibly charismatic, and fairly destructive. And he holds grudges. If V was indeed the Master, then he was already quite insane when he went in to Larkhill—he just made up the driven insane by testing so Evey wouldn't get suspicious of him and his Time Lord-y nature. Yeah.

V was The Stig

V is not the original V who was imprisoned at Larkhill

V is just an idea printed on a costume and a mask. Anyone, as long as they uphold the ideals and V's persona, can become V. Hence, the Larkhill V died of his mutations soon after breaking out, and passed on his mantle to another V, who could have passed it on to a third or even a fourth V before the main storyline begins. Even Evey can do it - and in the end, she takes an apprentice of her own.

  • It's a possibility, but unlikely. In the book at least, the moral conflict of whether or not V's actions are justified is central to the plot. His actions are so morally outrageous and extreme because of his time at Larkhill - and when Evey takes over she becomes a calmer, more rational V - someone no longer marked by a lust for vengeance.
  • Sub-guess: Different parts of V's story were added by different Vs. Valerie's story, for example, was added in by Valerie in a way that explained how the Larkhill prisoner knew her story or a prisoner from one of the concentration camps or a different prison. The V who trained Evey has his/her own reasons for hating Sutler/Susan personally (and perhaps was the only V to be Wicked Cultured; maybe he was imprisoned for being a stereotypical gay, but transferred to a low-security facility or banished when it was discovered that he really did like ladies and not gentlemen).


After the destruction of Norsefire, Britain succumbs to Rule 34 and other phenomena resembling Internet phenomena and Image Boards. In other words, Britain ends up as Four Chan.

Well because people will be inspired by V's anonymity and with that anonymity, will do what Anonymous does. After all, Norsefire or No Norsefire, Humans Are the Real Monsters.

  • How do they cope with the normal handling of resources (which require governments), then, since Imageboards are obviously no government?
    • Let's just say British government ended up being SPARTA!!!!
      • Don't forget modern Japan DESU....
    • The Corporations took over. After all, there's this thing called anarcho-capitalism....

V is a former Norsefire supporter, or at least someone who believed in a strong government and the supremacy of law.

This is a theory that I've been kicking around for some time now. Based upon what I've read in the novel, I think I detect subtle hints of V's past. The most interesting part is in chapter 5 of Book 1, "Versions", where V is seen talking to the statue of Justitia above the courthouse. Here he describes himself as someone who admired and loved Justitia, the symbol of justice and law, since his childhood and saw her as an ideal to strive for, but who later grew disillusioned with her due to her "weakness for men in uniform" and that he instead devoted himself to a new "lover", Anarchy, who taught him that justice is meaningless without freedom. Now this seem to imply that V was once someone who firmly believed in governments, the state and its duty to protect the people, but later gave up that belief in favor of anarchism. It's also possible that V was some sort of government official himself, such as a policeman, judge or politician.

Furthermore, not only might V have believed in government, he might have been a member of the Norsefire party during its early reign. Then, he either grew disillusioned with fascism and so was thrown into the Larkhill concentration camp, or was sent there due to some other offense and during his time in the camp lost his belief in government and was reborn as V. The reason for this theory is because it would explain how V is so effective and dangerous in his fight against the government; he is intimately familiar with its workings and structure because he was previously a member of it. And it also means that he was propably someone high up in the party's hierarchy, or someone who was essential to its takeover of Britain, and who later fell and was stricken from all records as a traitor. This would be the reason for how he manages to blow up important government structures, how he manages to wrest control from all surveillance equipment from the party and how he is able to hack into and control the Fate computer (perhaps he was one of its designers). It might also be from them that he learned the necessity of using ruthless methods to establish his ideal society.

The timeline of the film version of Norsefire's rise is revealed in the film

We know that Adam Sutler had initially been a member of the Conservative Party (accoring to V disguised as Rookwood). This seems logical because, according to Valerie's flashback, he was responsible for closing the Tube when he was Undersecretary for Defence (ie. a minor member of the government). Clearly this can't be a Norsefire government because he founded that party.

At some point (probably when the public mood seems receptive) he leaves and founds Norsefire (which must be an entirely different party to the Conservatives because the newspaper seen during V's account lists the Tories as a losing party). This happened before the St Mary's outbreak, beause Ruth and Valerie watch one of his marches on television. Nevertheless, he must have been in power by then to launch the project. So why do this when he was already in control? Presumably because he only had a small majority and there was opposition muttering about his policies. So he does the biological weapon thing to create fear (much like the Reichstag Fire), finds the 'perpetrators' and then calls an election. This results in a huge majority (as seen in the newspaper election results) and Parliament makes him High Chancellor instead of just Prime Minister.

V is several people

It is quite possible, since we never see his face, that several people assume this identity.

  • Jossed since the film doesn't explore this seriously. In the sense that there's not even evidence to support it. Even in the comics.

Winston Smith never died and became Chancellor of Britain 20 years later.

So maybe this is only based on the fact that they're played by the same actor (which I found more amusing than necessary when I watched this movie). The movie draws a lot from 1984 though, so, it could work if he had, I don't know, tried to take power to prevent another Big Brother situation. And it backfired.

  • I don't think that Orwell's book leaves this possibility, but I was likewise amused by the casting, as well as the way Sutler (in my opinion) looked similar to Emmanuel Goldstein.

Evey has Stockholm Syndrome

Evey forgives V awfully quickly (4 pages) after he tortures her to the edge of death. It's feasible to assume that Evey suffers from Stockholm Syndrome based on how quickly she resumes her admiration of him.

  • She had Stockholm Syndrome for V. Notice how she was falling for him and even assisted him. The whole scheme with the torture was either to break it so she would make the choice of her own free will than blinded by love, or to transfer the S.S. love to the ideal instead of him.

V didn't die, he went to an alternate universe and became a purple haired elf

It's Obvious!

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