The Blacklist Refugees » Evidence for the Imposter Theory

Honey West · 4/06/2017 10:39 pm

lara1 wrote:
Interesting thoughts, Honey West. I think we discussed this too - what if Red's own memories were tampered with? Had false memories implanted - so he could even think that he saw Liz's father die, or maybe the part about Liz's father surviving, being rescued, resuscitated, whatever, he has no memory of.

And maybe he knows that he and Liz are connected, deeply bonded, or whatever, but may not know why and part of his quest is to find out. Maybe. LOL

Perfect emoji for this discussion. LOL! Well, it could very well be that his memory was altered at some point, too. Maybe it was done to make him a better whatever-he-is? Take away his conscience. He's a very efficient killer, we've seen that. Maybe that was part of his cryptic comment to the parking lot dude, that with each life he takes another part of him dies. Maybe with each killing, he regains a bit more of that conscience? Maybe that's also why he is more interested in not dying, as time goes on?

lara1 · 4/06/2017 11:03 pm

Honey West - interesting thought! Kind of perversely, the more he kills, the more human he becomes as a part of his old Killer self dies.....

Eastcoast · 4/06/2017 11:56 pm

Tuxie #88,

Tuxie, I know I am a bit realistic, but I do not know of a way to make that medically fit.

Tatiana, you actually finished what I was to tired to go into the other night.
I actually started to write about hormones and erased it because
I was too tired.
I was thinking of all the times he mentioned he has been in a hole or in jail
let alone the fact there are the burns to recover from and the problems there would be with that all factored in. Burn victims have to go through stretching several hours a day so their skin does not stay contracted, they are on antibiotics because infection is such a threat and most of those cancel out hormones
and I could go on and on... There is just too much for me to make it work.

He disappeared but was not totally off the grid.
He produced a play in 1991 with his German friend Greta and
In 1993 he met with Fitch.

I realize anything is possible in TV land, but it seams a bit unreasonable to me. I actually feel the other way around, it would be a very big disappointment to me to end that way because it seams to unrealistic.

Eastcoast · 4/07/2017 12:01 am

Other thoughts I had,

If he is a double sent in to take his place then he would not break his
character and he would become her father. Just like SH is or tries to act like Toms mother if that is what she is.

The one things that struck me when we first got a glimpse of the burn scars was that there was no mention of them when he turned himself in.
They mentioned his prints and tattoos matched but not burns. It seams to me that Donald would have mentioned 'the scars on his back' since they were so horrific but he did not. The only reason I could think of for that is they knew they were there and why he got them. and saw not need.

They took his clothes and gave him other stuff to wear at one point when he turned himself in so they had to have seen them.

Or He could have been burned the night of the fire and Naomi said it
was from something else and while he was being treated for the burns there was a switch as
SH was from her car accident and possibly replaced at that time.

I could only think that something like that could have been classified/removed from the records or been told not to mention as the fact his family was killed but not mentioned.

Eastcoast · 4/07/2017 12:02 am

where is the preview button?

Honey West · 4/07/2017 12:15 am

Hi eastcoast, the preview button only shows when you hit "post reply" button on the lower right corner of the previous post. If you use "quick post" it doesn't give you a preview button. You wouldn't believe how long it took me to figure that one out!

Eastcoast · 4/07/2017 12:21 am

HW, thank you!! I could not figure out why sometimes it is there and sometimes not? I thought its because I post so late at night and I am tired!

Honey West · 4/07/2017 2:27 am

Trust me, EC, it took me far too many posts to figure it out!

As far as the whole question as to whether Red is an imposter, I think Raymond Reddington is Raymond Reddington. The real question is WHO is Raymond Reddington?

Tatiana · 4/07/2017 1:00 pm

Honey West wrote:
Well, it could very well be that his memory was altered at some point, too. Maybe it was done to make him a better whatever-he-is? Take away his conscience. He's a very efficient killer, we've seen that. Maybe that was part of his cryptic comment to the parking lot dude, that with each life he takes another part of him dies. Maybe with each killing, he regains a bit more of that conscience? Maybe that's also why he is more interested in not dying, as time goes on?

Just before you wrote this, Honey West, I had started a long post about Fire night, memories, and what Red is to Liz.

On the other board we talk about mind-control. What if fire night has something to do with that?

I mean, this is really crazy out there stuff, but what if Liz (warrior gene/street thief/pick a lock/killer and Red were part of a mind-control plan even as she was a young child? And it was through that mind control that was Red or Liz were triggered and shot his family? And just like with Manchurian Candidate-style mind control, he does not have memory of what actually took place? They've been replaced. Hers have been replaced. They both know they need each other to find their truth. Remember the doctor told Liz that this was not the first time her memory had been tampered with and the people she sees in her memories may be mixed up. This is what me think about mind-control because as Lara had pointed out, in mind-control, the subject can come to think of their interrogator as being a parent.

We also have a Blacklist Exposed podcast where Bokenkamp is asked about the warrior gene. It takes him a while to get his bearings, but eventually he says something to the effect that Liz is turning more and more into Red: she fled the FBI, she went undercover with Red. Agnes' birth comes after the interview, but I would say that her faked death and escape, plus her run from Kirk, indicates that she is getting to be more and more like Red as well.

So, because of elements from other episodes, it makes me wonder even more if there wasn't governmental mind-control, sleeper agents, if they weren't experimenting on whole families? If Red or Liz weren't triggered, just like in Manchurian Candidate, to kill someone on 'fire night' if for nothing else, just to show that they could be controlled and triggered?

Honestly, this break could not go any longer, I'm going to think myself into even more theories! LOL!

lara1 · 4/07/2017 4:51 pm

eastcoast #103 and 104 - .you make some valid points. The prisons and the play - although we only have Red's word on those - i dont think they've been corroborated by anyone else. I think the blacklisters and associates he's run into are known from his criminal activities but not from prison. Still, he seems to know his way around the prison system and so i take his prison stories as perhaps embellished, but true, stories.

What I've not be able to reconcile though is how he could have been framed for the 1991 kursk bombing as part of counterintelligence plot when he supposedly disappeared or was off the grid at the time. It makes me think he was not off the grid at all but on some kind of undercover mission. But i digress!

On the scars, and the lack of mention when he turned himself in, that puzled me also ( he must have had a medical exam) but i have come to think that Ressler's comment was about identifying marks - ie what matched as compared to what they knew about Reddington before he "disappeared". And the burns on his back were not identifying marks because he did not have them the last time the Navy or the FBI or whomever, had knowledge of or custody of him; ie he acquired them at some point after that.

lara1 · 4/07/2017 4:57 pm

Honey West #108 - i'll tell you this - he's not who you think he is. Lol!

lara1 · 4/07/2017 5:18 pm

Tatiana #109 - one thought Ive had from time to time is that Liz shooting whomever she shot was an experiment gone awry. It was a "trigger" "switched" at the wrong time and place, somehow, by accident. And that shooting Connolly was another result of an unintended trigger somehow. Ive thought that Connolly's movements in that moment were similar to those of the man she shot as a child. And the fact that she seemed almost hyponitized and related the two events kind of tie it together.

Red said Lz should never have had a gun that night and maybe that had more than one meaning.

On liz becoming more like Red it makes me think of what Linus Creel said to her, something like, it was genetcis (nature vs nurture) and we become more and more like our parents. (just relaying what he said). And then the camera cut to a scene with Red

On the memories, im starting to think more and more that the reason why the story doesn't add up is that part of what we rely on for the facts of the story comes from Red. and he may not remember, or mis-remembers, crucial elements of the story. Or may have had certain competely false memories implanted. Like he thought he knew what happened to Katarina at one point, now he's not so sure. But he was sure at one point. So was that a false memory? And are recent events or facts making him question it? And maybe thats why he doesnt remember what happened to his family Just food for thought.

Well Im travelling so rambng a bit!

Last edited by lara1 (4/07/2017 5:22 pm)

Tatiana · 4/08/2017 9:35 am

lara1 wrote:
On liz becoming more like Red it makes me think of what Linus Creel said to her, something like, it was genetcis (nature vs nurture) and we become more and more like our parents. (just relaying what he said). And then the camera cut to a scene with Red

On the memories, im starting to think more and more that the reason why the story doesn't add up is that part of what we rely on for the facts of the story comes from Red. and he may not remember, or mis-remembers, crucial elements of the story. Or may have had certain competely false memories implanted. Like he thought he knew what happened to Katarina at one point, now he's not so sure. But he was sure at one point. So was that a false memory? And are recent events or facts making him question it? And maybe thats why he doesnt remember what happened to his family Just food for thought.!

Good points Lara. And it corroborates with Bokenkamp's statements - Red truly believes Liz's father is dead even though the writers may know something else, and that Liz is becoming progressively more like Red. Can it be that The Apothecary foreshadows Red's unclear memory from Fire night?

Honey West · 4/08/2017 10:38 am

Yes, Tatiana and lara1, and all, I am also thinking more along the lines of it's not so much a question of whether Red is lying to Liz as it is that is what he believes to be true. We've wondered before whether his memories had been tampered with at some point, too. And I seriously wonder if that was the answers he was seeking when he allowed the interrogation under drugs with Dr. orchard to continue. He did ask if she would be okay before continuing. At the time we were all thinking he was hoping to find out where the Fulcrum was and not even considering that he might not know or remember the details of the fire night himself. Then if you tie that in with his final conversation with Diane Fowler about what happened to his family, where he obviously doesn't know, or maybe he does know but can't remember it...

There ya go - Liz is probably the key to his own missing memories. We've thought she was a key to something, maybe that,s what it is. I wonder now, too, if that might have been what Kate was telling him, that maybe she knows those missing pieces. She knows all about him, I wonder if she knows that, too? Maybe he's got something built in that won,t allow him to retrieve those memories, so whenever someone who knows gets too close to revealing them to him, he is forced to kill them? Hmmm, that would sure put into question what happens if Liz learns the truth and confronts him with (or tries to) it - would he be forced to kill her, too? Maybe that's why he protects her from the truth or why he can't tell her himself. But maybe Liz will realize that might be the outcome and so she drops the subject with him, as she seems to have done?

lara1 · 4/08/2017 7:34 pm

Its still a mystery who put the fulcrum in the bunny. It may have been Red, if Liz was with him. One of my thoughts is that Red knew where it was at the time, but could no longer remember. And maybe he wasn't bluffing when he originally said he had it but then something happened and he could no longer remember but kept on acting like he did have it.

To me, there was something about how he picked up the bunny from Liz's box of things after she "died", and was kind of carefully turning it over.

Maybe it was more than just trying to connect with Liz, maybe on some sort of subconscious level he was knowingly drawn to it, but his conscious level does not remember it.

Of course all of fire night might be totally different from what we think. Then again, some of Red's memories matched Liz's - we just haven't seen enough of "his version".

lara1 · 4/24/2017 11:01 pm

Here is an interesting theory I came across on eaglechica's site, which addresses yet another person's theory. I was actually looking more closely into the "red in the rear view mirror" photos and theories, and I found this.

In essence, the theory proposes that there is an imposter - but it is not current Red. Rather, another person took his identity way back when and all the "bad" things that were done or happened by "Reddington" were actually done by the imposter - and Red and his family suffered as a result.

I haven't really thought it through, but it sparked my thought process, its interesting. It may be possible, maybe not, but I'm thinking about it. It may ultimately spur some other, further thoughts. So i thought I would provide a link to it here.

https://eaglechica19.tumblr.com/post/159952476575/a-feint-within-a-feint-within-a-feint

lara1 · 5/12/2017 8:31 pm

So I looked again at the FBI fingerprint report requested in 1989 in Red's FBI file, while trying to research the DOJ card that is in the ep 21/22 promo.

And I found two interesting things I hadn't seen before: the criminal record report on the 1989 fingerprint report, and the full hand fingerprint sections of the report

1. The criminal record question has a checkmark next to "no" and then there is a note saying that the criminal activity report has been provided by the NYPD and relates to the NY city area only; its signed by what looks like an NYPD sergeant (strikes me as odd, why would you rely just on NYC records, and indeed, what is the reason for NYC records at all?)

2. the technology noted for the left and the right hands doesn't match. The left hand full set fingerprints are noted by Sagem L Scan Guardian which seems to be fingerprint scanning technology but maybe more recently developed. The company, Sagem Securite, was founded only in 2007 and most of what I could figure out is that the technology seems recent. But that is not conclusive, as I haven't been able to find a lot on the history of it, only the current technology (like if you wanted to buy the machine, its available!). Last note is that the Sagem has a reference at the end, B2010. I don't know whether that is a model year or not. There is no way to know as I haven't been able to find anything.

Anyway the right hand full hand fingerprint says lexmark T640 which is a laser printer. It is currently discontinued on the lexmark site, but you can find companies selling it online. I have no idea whether a laser printer model that was just discontinued would have had the same model number in 1989, I just don't know enough about the industry and the technology.

At minimum I think the left and right hand fingerprints being reproduced by different named technology is odd.

It doesn't mean that Red is an imposter and it doesn't mean its a sign that the records were faked. But it might.

Of course I found nothing useful to shed light on the DOJ card in the promo!!

Last edited by lara1 (5/12/2017 8:34 pm)

Honey West · 5/12/2017 9:48 pm

I think the DOJ card will probably lead Cooper to something else. I just had my fingerprints scanned in February for a government job. They were sent off to the FBI and DOJ. That suggests to me that there are maybe two fingerprint databases or else they use the same one but maintain separate files? Otherwise why send them to both for clearance?

Last edited by Honey West (5/12/2017 9:50 pm)

lara1 · 5/13/2017 12:09 pm

Honey West, your comment got me thinking. And I remembered being fingerprinted for two previous jobs and the technology used.

When I got a job in the late 1980s/early 1990s, I was fingerprinted. Those prints were done the "old fashioned" way, i.e. fingers pressed and rolled in ink, then pressed onto paper.

When I got a different job around 2000/2001, I was fingerprinted again but this time a scanner (like that referenced in those full hand prints in Red's file) was used. So your finger was pressed onto a pad but instead of ink, it was a scanner that read the prints optically and sent them into a computer.

Which again makes me question the optical scanner reference on the 1989 report and whether it makes sense to have that in 1989 (or was something in the file altered later). Of course, its not at all conclusive, and based on one example! And it could be that the FBI had the more advanced technology earlier than other industries did, but I don't know. It just leaves me with an unanswered question because I don't have enough knowledge and information to make a more informed observation.

Interesting though.

Last edited by lara1 (5/13/2017 12:12 pm)

Honey West · 5/13/2017 3:26 pm

lara1, I had what they called a LiveScan. They rolled my fingers on a scanner and they were scanned in extremely great detail. I have "poor quality prints", lots of little hairline cracks. I blame working in clay for that. I was actually surprised that I had any readable prints at all since I'd just done a marathon bowl-throwing project a couple of days earlier, using some fairly rough clay. Anyway, they commented that they might have to check them the old-fashioned way and it could take a few days longer. I guess they are read by a computer program that matches them against the database. Mine might need to be looked at by a human. I don't know if they did that or not, they don't tell you.

I checked the website and it says in their FAQs that the DOJ does not share fingerprint info with other agencies, so maybe the FBI database is separate?

Last edited by Honey West (5/13/2017 3:31 pm)