not fully a conformitygate truther nor a denier, but a secret third thing where I think it would be super cool if the duffers pulled something like that off while also recognizing that actually Stranger Things has had writing problems since S2 and sometimes production errors are just production errors.
"mike disappears from a shot in the finale" and "mike climbs up the ladder twice" can be convincing proof of the finale being a strange dreamscape created by vecna! but, like, in S2 when the kids are searching for Dart, Will drops his walkie in the bathroom before running out to the field and confronting the MF, but his walkie isn't there when the other kids get to the bathroom, and then the walkie is on the field by Will's feet in the next episode when Joyce finds him there. production errors happen. no matter how many people are working on editing a project, or how many people you have trying to ensure perfect continuity, sometimes things just slip through. it's possible the mike things are just mistakes no one noticed, or they did notice, but decided to go with that final cut anyway because those were the best takes and assumed no one would notice (I've watched the ladder clip several times and I can still barely make out that Mike climbs up twice).
this isn't me trying to dissuade anyone from the theory, or disprove it btw. I like conformitygate! I think it's a lot of fun! but there are some people getting way too comfortable insulting other people's media literacy skills and arguing that every damn thing has to be 100% intentional and, as a creative with experience working in a writers room and working on the set of more than one short film when I was in undergrad, I promise that isn't always the case.
