Cloverfield’s ending left a “plot hole” that The Cloverfield Paradox was expected to fix, but the answer to what crashed into the ocean was out there way before the third film was released. After a very interesting viral marketing campaign that included teasers without titles and websites that had virtually nothing to do with the plot or the characters, Cloverfield was released in 2008, gaining praise from critics and fans.

Made in a found-footage style, Cloverfield followed five New York City residents fighting to survive during a massive monster attack that was destroying the whole city. The film spawned two sequels, 10 Cloverfield Lane and The Cloverfield Paradox, which have been the topic of many debates among fans due to inconsistencies between their timelines. But the most talked-about detail is that of the unknown object that crashed into the ocean at the very end of Cloverfield. What exactly was it?

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The final scene in Cloverfield shows the ending of Rob and Beth’s video from their trip to Coney Island, and an object can be seen crashing into the ocean in the background. Many fans have theorized that this was the Clover monster, but after The Cloverfield Paradox was released, the theory changed and many believed this was the pod in which Ava Hamilton and Ernst Schmidt came back to Earth. However, none of these are true: what crashed into the ocean was a satellite from the Japanese government, called ChimpanzIII.

The Cloverfield monster attacks in front of the Chrysler Building in New York

One of the websites created for the Cloverfield marketing campaign was that of the fictional Japanese company Tagruato. The website mentioned that a piece of the ChimpanzIII satellite fell off into the Atlantic – and that’s the object seen at the end of the film. Tagruato’s subsidiary Bold Futura was involved in search and identification of the fragment, but their plans had to be postponed after the events in Cloverfield. Some fans argue that, due to the parallel universes in The Cloverfield Paradox, the object was actually a fragment of the Shepard, but that’s not the case.

Although all three Cloverfield films are connected by a massive monster, the timelines are confusing and don’t add up, and that’s probably because they’re not exactly following each other – they’re set in a multiverse, meaning they don’t exist in the same reality, instead running parallel to each other. That way, it’s even less possible that what fell into the ocean in Cloverfield is somehow connected to The Cloverfield Paradox. Until a fourth film comes and sheds more light on the matter, what crashed into the ocean wasn’t the monster nor an escape pod, but a Japanese satellite.

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