Grease movie
Could Sandy and Danny actually have been dead in Grease? These fan theories suggest it's possible... Paramount Pictures

With Grease Live airing on both US and UK TV earlier this year, nostalgia for the 1978 original was already running high. But with all the buzz about the movie right now, an old fan theory from 2013 has resurfaced (all thanks to actress Sarah Michelle Gellar who posted it on her Facebook page) and it might very well dampen your spirits when it comes to the preppy, feel-good musical.

Originally sourced from Reddit, lovers of the film have put forward [surprisingly convincing] evidence to support the idea that Danny Zuko (John Travolta) and love interest Sandy Olsson (Olivia Newton John) were actually dead in the movie and that all that happened following the day they first met was imagined by each of them before they ascended into heaven (in Zuko's flying car in the film's final scene).

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"Danny and Sandy both died on that day at the beach," user Doug Stillman explained on the post. "Danny tried to save a beautiful stranger from drowning but lost his own life as well in the process. As he loses consciousness he imagines what it would have been like to have gotten to know Sandy."

The speculator even went on to suggest that Danny subconsciously gave the girl the name Sandy, because of the location where they met. Because he couldn't rescue her, he may have just been envisioning what their relationship could have been had they got it together. "Maybe he would end his relationship with Rizzo when this wholesome girl shows up in his home town. He could build his dream car, out race his rival, and complete high school," Stillman added.

"He realises that he would have fallen in love for this girl that he gave his life to try and save and at the graduation festival he envisions her just as he would have wanted her to be. As they both ascend in the car the rest of his friends sing: 'We will always be together'."

Grease movie
'Everything that happens in the last scene is just a little TOO perfect', one speculator argues, using it as evidence that it's all being imagined by Olivia Newton John's Sandy Paramount Pictures

Others have alternatively suggested that all that takes place in the film could be in Sandy's mind after she "drowned" at the beach the day she met Danny. Their main "evidence" being that in the reprised version of the song Look At Me, I'm Sandra Dee, the character sings: "Sandy, you must start anew, don't you know what you must do? Hold your head high, take a deep breath and sigh. Goodbye to Sandra Dee."

Another theorist also wrote: "Everything that happens in the last scene is just a little TOO perfect. Danny and Sandy are back together despite everything, Rizzo SUDDENLY isn't pregnant and Kenickie suddenly decides that he actually loves her, the geeky kid gets on to the sports team, EVERYTHING is suddenly ok, just the way that sweet, innocent Sandy would have wanted it to be."