The Bernadette Fan Theory That Makes The Big Bang Theory Into A Sci-Fi Thriller

There are plenty of wild theories about "The Big Bang Theory" out there (which feels particularly bonkers when you consider that we're talking about a laugh-tracked multi-camera sitcom created by Chuck Lorre), but this one about Bernadette Rostenkowski-Wolowitz, the waitress turned microbiologist with a crazy high voice who marries Howard Wolowitz (Simon Helberg) during the series, is especially out of left field.

Over on the r/FanTheories subreddit, the appropriately named Redditor u/ConspirOC posited something pretty extreme about Bernadette. Titling the post "Bernadette is a clone," they were then careful to clarify, "Now the title mighty be slightly misleading [--] rather a series of clones and not just a single clone." The gist of the argument goes like this: Bernadette changes a lot over the course of the show, and thanks to her dangerous experiments at work — which she often talks about in passing for laughs — her employers might "do unethical things to keep an asset working for them." Also, the "kicker" here is that, as the show progresses, Bernadette is "mean" to Howard. (If you ask me, Howard deserves it all, but I digress.)

According to this theory, there are two possibilities at play here. "Over the years of repeated cloning, her DNA has become slightly corrupted and she is losing parts of herself in each regeneration" is their first guess, and their second is as follows: "Every time she is regenerated, she remembers that she is a clone and is spliced with the memories of the old Bernadette, but part of her remembers and resents Howard for entrapping her in a marriage she didn't want and knowing she won't live long enough to grow to love him before she is killed despite him being kind of an a**. She always remembers that she loves him but can't remember or feel it. Or [similarly] she loves him and she distances from herself knowing one day they might not clone her again."

With all due respect to this person posting fan theories on Reddit, this is nuts, and not in a good way. Yes, Bernadette changes throughout "The Big Bang Theory," and yes, she got sharper and pricklier, but that's part of how character development works. In Jessica Radloff's 2022 book "The Big Bang Theory: The Definitive, Inside Story of the Epic Hit Series," creator and showrunner Chuck Lorre actually addressed this exact thing, and writer and executive producer Steve Holland basically said that Melissa Rauch helped make the character that much better.

"Over time we made Bernadette somewhat nefarious," Lorre told Radloff. "She was a cutthroat corporate character. You didn't mess with her. Part of the joy of that was her voice is a wonderful instrument. It's like a piccolo on acid. And then, she's tiny. So those two things juxtaposed with this balls-to-the-wall killer woman who doesn't even think twice about cutting some moral corners to get things done ... it was joyful to watch. The character became so much more than what was originally created."

Holland, for his part, agreed, saying Rauch's performance really ended up elevating the entire character. "We hadn't quite figured out that character in early episodes. Melissa worked more than the character worked early on, so we had to figure out how to make the character work," he said. "Bernadette didn't really understand jokes at first, but that's definitely not who she became. Melissa just popped."

In fact, Rauch's portrayal of Bernadette became so well known that, when fans approached her on the street, they almost seemed cowed by her. "There was a lot of joking from fans, like, 'Are you going to yell at me?' Or 'You seem so nice, but we know how Bernadette is,'" Rauch said in the book before going on to express her gratitude for the way her character evolved. "I was so excited to play that edge with Bernadette because it wasn't there in her first couple of episodes. The layers they gave to her, in the same way that they gave layers to all the characters, was so rewarding to play."

Not only did Bernadette naturally and successfully evolve during "The Big Bang Theory," but through her, the writers were able to tell extremely real and human stories — like Bernadette's struggles with her first on-screen pregnancy. In the season 10 episode "The Military Miniaturization," Bernadette worries about telling her coworkers that she's pregnant, afraid that she'll be removed from the main cast ... and to say that a development like this comes down to "Bernadette being a clone" feels absurd and, honestly, even a little insulting.

"Two of our remarkable writers, Maria Ferrari and Tara Hernandez, brought the element of a woman whose passion was work, and the conflict between work, motherhood, and cultural expectations of what [that's like]," Chuck Lorre mused in Jessica Radloff's book about Bernadette's groundbreaking pregnancy storyline (she also later worries that she lacks a "maternal instinct," giving voice to real-life moms who might have felt the same way). "Those are stories that we never anticipated in the creation of the show, but they were real. People responded to them because they resonated. [Writer] Maria [Ferrari] was very determined to make the 'mom' stories something we hadn't seen before. She was a new mom while we were doing the show, so those things were very much in her purview, and I think helped steer Bernadette into a much richer area, instead of, Oh, here's a funny situation. She was conflicted over where her priorities should be and what she was supposed to be because of certain cultural expectations, as opposed to I'm simply who I am. Somehow we managed to stumble into making much better stories and the supporting players became lead players, and every bit as critical as the original cast."

Bernadette's non-clone journey is a huge part of "The Big Bang Theory," which is streaming on Max now.