#thug 2

Tony Hawk's Underground 2 (2004)

Okay okay, so THPS4-split happens after Tony travels back in time, so in THUG 2, “World Destruction Tour”, that’s where the initial timeline split happens.

Now, according to the game canon Tony does win, so the core timeline continues towards American Wasteland and later Project 8 and Proving Ground. HOWEVER, it’s at the end of the “Bam wins”-timeline where Tony travels back in time to cause THPS4-split, but it doesn’t make sense that Tony himself is able to time-travel just like that; it would mean that he traveled from core timeline back to THUG 2 to cause his own loss, later regretted his decision BUT instead of stopping himself decided to make him never meet Bam in the first place.

Theory then goes, that someone/some group in core timeline, after the events of THUG 2, creates a time machine/invents some other time traveling method to return back to the time of World Destruction Tour in an attempt to destroy Tony, and even then fails at least once, creating “Tony wins, Bam dies”-side-timeline, before managing to cause Tony’s loss.

I’M NOWHERE NEAR DONE YET

Now, WDT is clearly a centerpoint here, and while the existence of it gets revealed to the world at the end of said tour, it makes most sense that whoever caused the timeline split was personally involved and wanted some sort of retribution against Tony.

Now, Bam lost to Tony, but it’s very unlikely that he’s to blame. First off, even though he lost the Tour, he still continued his fame in Jackass and elsewhere, so he doesn’t have strong enough motive to travel back in time to ruin Tony. But more importantly, since the true culprit created “Bam dies”-side-timeline, possibly by accident, it couldn’t have been Bam, at the very least not alone. THUG2 Bam dying would have caused time-travel Bam to ceace existing.

So who then?

We need to follow the money.

Nigel Beaverhausen had enough money to pay all the expenses of the WDT like it was no big deal, and even then in the end he got cheated by Tony and Bam, not only NOT getting the footage of the tour, but getting both almost killed in Australia AND embarrassed on live-TV, in front of millions of viewers.

Suddenly we have a suspect, motive and means.

...But how could future-Nigel change the past? He didn’t have Tony’s and Bam’s respect during the tour, how could future-him do any better? He’s not even a skater, how could he cause Tony’s team to lose, and more importantly, why would he even care which team won?

...How did Tony manage to win in the first place?

Because you, the player, managed to perform one final challenge at the last second, escaping burning Skatopia while simultaneously pulling off a sick combo! Everyone else in Tony’s team had been arrested earlier, only you and Tony were in there. It was solely thanks to the player that the core timeline took it’s course. It then follows that causing the player to lose at that critical moment would create entirely different timeline.

But who could possibly manage to do that, WANT to do that, and simultaneously want to team up with Nigel? To cause the player to lose...

...or to never get that far in the first place.

This is the moment the timeline broke to pieces

Behold

Tony Hawk's Underground 2 (2004)