Tim Burton has a style of filmmaking that is instantly recognizable. He's made several live-action and animated films, and many fans suspect that these stories may connect into one shared universe. This is because there are reoccurring themes and characters, sometimes sharing both name and appearance. For this theory, only Tim Burton's original films (meaning not adapted from any other source material) will be discussed. It will also include The Nightmare Before Christmas, even though this film was directed by Henry Selick and therefore widely under his influence rather than Tim Burton's. However, it will be included because the main characters within the story were designed by Burton, and the movie loosely follows Burton's poem of the same title.
To make sense of the theory, skeptics have to put aside timeline since several of Tim Burton's movies are taking place a century or more apart. But going with the fact that all of these works are fiction, one can assume the possibility of time travel, reincarnation, or ancestry to be a factor. Tim Burton has actually only written one screenplay by himself for his short film titled Vincent. Although he is given recognition for broad ideas and character designs, most of his original movies' screenplays were actually written by John August and Caroline Thompson. The theory includes the films Frankenweenie, Vincent, Edward Scissorhands, Beetlejuice, The Nightmare Before Christmas, and Corpse Bride.
To kick off the theory, it starts with Tim Burton's first-ever stop motion short film, Vincent. In the short, Vincent Malloy is a seven-year-old boy who is inspired by actor Vincent Price. Vincent experiments on his dog out of a desire to turn him into a zombie. His obsession with Edgar Allan Poe's stories leads to him having delusions about being a depraved and tortured artist and scientist. The short ends with Vincent falling in a dramatic fashion to the ground, his imaginative mind convincing himself that he is indeed dead. Because the boy lost his mind, his dog Abercrombie is given away. In the theory, the dog later gets adopted by Victor Frankenstein and renamed Sparky. When Sparky dies, his spirit awakens in Halloween Town. Jack adopts and renames him Zero.
When Victor Frankenstein lost his dog Sparky, fans believe the boy's parents got him a new dog to help with the loss. The new dog's name was Scraps (the skeleton dog seen in Corpse Bride). But unfortunately for Victor, Scraps suddenly dies soon after bonding with him, and the loss of two beloved pets back to back is too much to handle. So Victor runs away and is later adopted by the Van Dort's. When Victor comes into adulthood, he is forced into an arranged marriage to save his family from succumbing to poverty. So when he dies and finds Scraps, he is extremely happy to be reunited.
Another character who makes their way into Halloween Town from the world of Vincent is Sally. During his delusional state, Vincent believed himself to have a wife whom he loved but came to the horrible realization that she had been buried alive. He then had to "suffer in solitude" after being punished by his mother for digging up her garden, and could do nothing but look upon the paintings he had made of his beautiful wife. Although this was all in his head, Vincent believed that his wife was calling to him beyond the grave.
Although it is not shown in the short, fans believe Vincent may have experimented on his wife like he did to his dog so he could bring her back to life. This results in the pieced-together-looking rag doll that Vincent created, later known as Sally. When Vincent "dies" at the end of his psychotic episode, the creation of his wife dies with him. Her spirit later wakes up in Halloween Town. There are other lesser spread theories about how Weird Girl (sometimes called Anne Chambers) from Frankenweenie is actually Kim from Edward Scissorhands. This is mostly just due to them looking similar, but if Kim was put up for adoption after the events of Frankenweenie like theorists say she was, that would explain the lack of baby pictures in her new family's home.
The theory most commonly spread around the internet is that Victor Van Dort, Victor Frankenstein, and Jack Skellington are all the same person. The two characters named Victor are almost identical in appearance having a heart-shaped face and pointed chin, a long nose and short forehead, large circular eyes, and a similar tuft of black hair. It's possible that Victor Frankenstein (Frankenweenie) might not be the same person as Victor Van Dort (Corpse Bride) but rather a great-grandson. But if they are all three the same person, perhaps Victor forgot his identity from his living life and invented a new name and persona for his afterlife.
There are a ton of other theories about different characters within the Tim Burton universe and how they can be seen in multiple films. Fans seem to think Elsa Van Helsing (Frankenweenie) looks oddly similar to Lydia (Beetlejuice). Some say that Sally and Emily (The Nightmare Before Christmas and Corpse Bride) look like they could be sisters. It could be possible that every Tim Burton original film is all connected to his earliest original, Vincent, and the jumping timelines are due to Vincent progressing into adulthood and later death all while still going through his delusional state where he comes in and out of reality. Most of the theories seem far fetched and stretched to work based on similar character looks alone, but maybe Tim Burton has been using the same characters at different stages in life without intentionally connecting stories.