Grease fan theory: Was Sandy dead all along?

The whole plot of Grease was just a hallucination in the head of a dying Sandy, according to an online theory that attempts to explain the film's surreal ending, which has baffled viewers for generations.

While a film in which characters randomly erupt into song and dance isn't going to be held to a high standard of realism, the action at least confines itself to the laws of physics – until the very end, when Danny and Sandy soar off into the sky in a flying car.

Just a whimsical flight of fancy? Not so, according to a Reddit user going by the name of atomicbolt. In a post to the website, he lays out a mind-blowing alternative explanation – Sandy drowned at the beach with Danny and hallucinated the whole plot in her last moments.

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"At the start of the film, we see Danny and Sandy meeting on the beach. Later, Danny explains through song that they first met when Danny 'saved her life – she nearly drowned'. Sandy actually did drown on the beach that day," atomicbolt wrote.

"As she drowned, her brain deprived of oxygen, she had a vivid coma fantasy involving her summer fling Danny, where they shared a magical year of high school together. The visions get increasingly outlandish as time passes, until finally, as Danny desperately tries to resuscitate her on the beach, she sees herself flying into Heaven in her dying moments. The entire movie was a drowning woman's coma fantasy."

Whoa.

The Redditor actually put forward the out-there theory in 2013, but it came to wider attention this week when Buffy the Vampire Slayer star Sarah Michelle Geller posted about it on Facebook.

"This has blown my mind," the actress wrote, describing the dark alternative interpretation that turns the peppy world of Rydell High into a coma-induced hallucination.

Her status was shared more the 2,000 times and attracted almost as many comments, as movie fans shared their reactions to the crazy take on the classic musical.