When a series stays at the forefront of pop culture discussions for decades, there’s bound to be lots of fan theories about the characters. Naruto has existed in the form of manga, anime, and movies for twenty years.

A lot of character backstory was never explained and fans have also had time to think about their fair share of plot holes. As a result, fan theories abound all over the internet.

Some fans prefer to think about the motivations of the villains in the series, while others like to see just how crazy their predictions can get. With Team 7 always in the middle of the action, theories about these characters come up a lot.

When the series debuted, Team 7 was formed based on the Academy Exams. This was the ninja academy where Naruto and his friends essentially attended primary school tested their students before they could move on to missions.

Based on their test scores, the teams were meant to balance the top students with the weaker students. Team 7 consisted of Naruto, Sakura, and Sasuke, and was led by Kakashi.

Over time, that team grew to include newcomer Sai as Sasuke left the village. They also got a temporary team leader in Yamato when Kakashi was sent on missions without them.

With varied backgrounds and so many story arcs surrounding the team, fans spent a lot of time with them. All of that time gave them plenty of time to form theories about the mysteries involving the characters.

We’ve rounded up some of the most interesting of the bunch for these 20 Crazy Fan Theories About Team 7 (That Actually Make Sense).

Naruto’s Love Life Was Manipulated

Throughout the series, it was clear that Hinata Hyuga always had a crush on Naruto.

Naruto, meanwhile, appeared to be infatuated with his teammate Sakura. In the end, Sakura explained to Naruto that his feelings for her were simply an extension of his competition with Sasuke, whom Sakura loved.

Hinata and Naruto eventually ended up marrying and starting a family. Some fans think Hinata ending up with Naruto wasn’t simply fate in The Last: Naruto The Movie.

There are those who believe Hiashi Hyuga may have somehow manipulated the two into falling for one another.

Always wanting his clan to be the best, the elder Hyuga would have wanted to make sure his clan had plenty of power at its disposal. This includes a nine-tailed fox sealed inside of Naruto with lots of power.

Married to Hyuga’s daughter, Naruto wouldn’t let anything happen to the Hyuga clan.

Naruto Trains Konohamaru

Konohamaru looked up to Naruto when he was just a young boy at the Academy.

Cut to 20 years later, and it’s Konohamaru standing in for his former sensei Naruto at his ceremony to become Hokage. The two share a tight bond, and some speculated that the bond might even be familial.

We know that Konohamaru is a Sarutobi because his grandfather was the third Hokage. What we don’t know is which of his parents was a Sarutobi.

When the Uzumaki clan lost their home and scattered to other villages, Naruto’s mother came to Konoha. S

he’s the only one we know of, but it’s possible that one of Konohamaru’s parents might have been an Uzumaki as well, as he shares Naruto’s large chakra reserves, which is an Uzumaki trait.

We’re unlikely to see this confirmed, but it’s fun to think about.

Sakura Was Supposed To Master Genjutsu

Something that has bothered fans for years about the Naruto franchise is whether or not Sakura would ever master genjutsu.

Early on in the series, Kakashi pointed out that she had a natural affinity for it, even teaching her how to release herself and others from hallucinations.

Just a few episodes into Naruto Shippuden, her former sensei also referred to her a “genjutsu type.”

Despite her seeming aptitude for it, we never see Sakura learn any special genjutsus to use.

The only shinobi of the Leaf Village who seem to use genjutsu regularly in their fights are Kakashi and Kurenai.

Fans believe that franchise creator Masashi Kishimoto had intended for Sakura to be a genjutsu user, but somewhere along the way, he changed his mind. Instead, she became a medical ninja.

Kakashi’s Mother Was From The Inuzuka Clan

Akamaru shows Kiba affection in Naruto

One long held theory about the sensei of Team 7 is just where his affinity for dogs, and ninja dogs in particular, came from.

Throughout the series, we’ve seen many shinobi sign contracts with summoning animals. The animals provide them backup in a fight.

Tsunade has her slug, Orochimaru has his snake, and Jiraiya (and later Naruto) has his toads.

Kakashi, despite not appearing to have a contract with any giant summoning animals, can summon a lot of ninja dogs.

His connection to dogs is never explained, but there is one clan in the series that also has an affinity for dogs. The Inuzuka clan, where Kiba’s family is from, raises dogs.

Kakashi is also described as having a sense of smell sharper than Kiba’s, which is another trait of the clan.

Since Kakashi’s mother’s identity has never been revealed, fans speculate she was an Inuzuka.

Dogs Got Kakashi Through Tragedy

Hatake Kakashi in Boruto Naruto Next Generations

With Kakashi’s affinity for ninja dogs, there’s one interesting fan theory that some might have taken as a joke.

Posited on Reddit is the idea that Kakashi has been able to overcome so much tragedy in his life because of those very same dogs he can summon.

Throughout the course of his life, Kakashi lost his father, his mentors, his students, and his best friends under tragic circumstances.

It seems like everyone who gets close to him loses their life. One person can only endure so much suffering.

In the real world, some dogs are trained in therapy. They comfort survivors are horrific experiences.

Some therapists even employ dogs for depressed patients.

Perhaps Kakashi is able to endure the tragedy with the help of his own version of therapy dogs in the shinobi world.

Naruto’s Family Now Shares Kurama’s DNA

Hinata Naruto Himawari and Boruto

When the children of Naruto and Hinata were revealed, fans had one question: why do Boruto and Himawari have whiskers?

In the series, Naruto has whiskers on his cheeks his entire life. It’s an artistic choice to show that he has the nine-tailed fox Kurama sealed inside of him.

What’s interesting is that his mother had the fox sealed inside of her as well, but she didn’t have the whiskers.

Instead, it appears that she passed a bit of Kurama onto Naruto while pregnant with him, just as Naruto did to his children through Hinata.

This makes fans wonder if there could be a boost to Boruto and Himawari’s abilities as a result. The tailed beasts have a lot of unique abilities, but they also have immense chakra reserves, just like the Uzumaki clan.

Sai Was Supposed To Have Copy Powers

Sai Yamanaka in Naruto

Characters like Kakashi and Sasuke have the sharingan, an ability in their eye that allows them to copy the powers of others. The ability is pretty rare, as only the Uchiha clan is known for the sharingan.

When Sai was first introduced to the series, Sakura went through some of his artwork. As she flipped through his picture book, the images made fans wonder if Sai was going to have a copying ability as well.

The images in the book showed Sai fighting an opponent, and then using their weapons after defeating them.

His pictures seemed to indicate that he would be stealing or copying powers, but nothing ever came of it.

Instead, all of Sai’s abilities are rooted in his artwork. Many fans have theorized that Kishimoto changed his mind along the way.

Sasuke Married To Continue The Uchiha Bloodline

Sakura and Sasuke in Boruto

Fans are very clear on how Sakura feels about Sasuke. Her crush when she was a child became something of an obsession as a teenager.

As an adult, she’s clearly in love with her husband. However, it's less clear how Sasuke felt (or feels) about her.

After defecting from Konoha, Sasuke tried to destroy Sakura on numerous occasions, and even came pretty close to doing it. Sakura, however, never turned her back on him.

The single driving force behind Sasuke through the series has been his devotion to the Uchiha clan. Even if he was the only one left, he wanted to avenge everyone else.

It makes perfect sense that he would want to restart the clan with his own family, even if he wasn’t head over heels for his wife the same way she was for him.

Kakashi Actually Had The Mangekyo Early

A closeup of Hatake Kakashi in Naruto Shippuden

Fans don’t see Kakashi activate the mangekyo until well into his adult years in the series, but many think that he had it long before this.

The mangekyo is a special form of the sharingan. It’s activated when the sharingan user witnesses the loss of someone they love.

While the Uchiha clan are known for the sharingan, Kakashi has it because his best friend Obito gave him one of his eyes after he was pinned by falling rock. The latter thought he was leaving it as a parting gift, but he survived.

Obito later witnessed Kakashi take their teammate Rin’s life. Obito’s mangekyo is then activated.

With both young men caring deeply for her, it’s likely Kakashi’s would have been activated as well, even though we don’t see it.

Yamato Is Tsunade’s Son

Naruto Team 7 In Office Of Lady Tsunade

We don’t know a ton about Yamato. In fact, Yamato isn’t even his real name - it’s a code name given to him by the ANBU.

As a child, Yamato was orphaned, and then kidnapped and experimented on. He eventually got out of Orochimaru’s clutches as the only child to survive the villain’s experiments.

He went on to become a powerful shinobi and the equivalent of a secret agent before briefly filling in for Kakashi in Team 7.

During the time that Yamato was orphaned and experimented on, Tsunade was traveling the shinobi world and gambling away all of her money.

It’s entirely possible that Tsunade actually gave birth to Yamato during this time period.

It would explain why he survived the experiments, which involved manipulating his DNA with that of one of Tsunade’s ancestors.

Sakura Did Develop A Crush On Naruto

Sakura Saves The Group From A Genjutsu In The Last Naruto The Movie

Though the Naruto franchise is devoted to the battle between good and evil, there’s a large group of fans interested in the romance.

Until they reached the end of the series, there was much debate about just who would end up with whom.

Naruto started a family with Hinata, while Sakura started one with Sasuke.

However, plenty of fans still believe that Naruto’s past crush on Sakura was reciprocated during Naruto Shippuden.

Her respect for him grew after the two year jump when he went away to train.

She saw what a powerful ninja he became, and they treated one another more like equals.

At least one fan speculates that it was then that Sakura had her own crush on Naruto, but she never acted on it because she knew how deep Hinata’s love was for him.

Sasuke Will Return To His Dark Side

sasuke orochumaru experiments

During his teenage years, Sasuke did some horrible things in the name of power and revenge. He was immature and believed that he was on the right path.

As an adult, he’s spent most of his time trying to make amends.

Sasuke spent that time not only making amends, but also spying for the Hidden Leaf Village, and learning about the darkness inside of him.

As one fan theory points out, Kurama, who reads unhappiness in others, knew that Sasuke’s darkness could never be completely erased.

At this point, it would probably take a lot to push Sasuke back over the edge, but now that he’s a major character in Boruto, fans could see it happen.

If something were to happen to his family or friends that he couldn’t stop, he might return to the young man who wanted revenge.

Sasuke Will Bring Sarada Back From The Edge

On the flip side, there are also a lot of fans who believe that Sasuke has enough control over the darkness that plagues the Uchiha line that he won’t fall prey to the anger and violence within him.

Instead, they think he’ll have to save someone else from it.

The franchise has long pointed out that the Uchiha bloodline is cursed.

Uchihas in particular seem prone to using violence to solve their problems. In Boruto so far, Sarada doesn’t seem to be heading in that direction, and she has been able to stop herself from going too far.

However, one day, she might not.

It’s when that one day comes that fans think it will be Sasuke who can talk her down. She doesn’t know everything about her family’s past, and Sasuke revealing it all to her might be enough to stop her.

Naruto’s Childhood Was Manipulated

Before Kurama could be sealed inside of Naruto, the nine-tailed demon fox went on a rampage through the Hidden Leaf Village.

Many shinobi lost their lives, and survivors resented that the fox still existed. That resentment was taken out on Naruto.

Naruto was left to fend for himself as a child. Nearly everyone in the village was rude to him through his years at the Academy. Adults and children alike would either ignore him or target him with abuse.

Many fans think this treatment was purposeful. Naruto’s isolation made him appreciate the people who cared about him later in life.

The way he was treated also made him empathetic to many antagonists, making him more likely to talk someone down than fight them.

Could an entire village have conspired to turn him into a more empathetic shinobi?

Sai Is Really An Uchiha

Naruto Team 7

Thanks to the mysterious background of Root members, we don’t know much about who Sai was before he was conditioned to work for the organization.

Members of Root put the organization above all and are trained to not only forget their past, but also to not experience any emotion.

When Sai joined Team 7 after Sasuke left, he began to learn about teamwork, love, and just how to let himself feel things. During his introduction to the franchise, plenty of fans referred to him as Sasuke-lite since he didn’t quite fill the void left behind.

Some fans went a step farther, though, as they believed that Sai could have been related to Sasuke.

After all, we don’t know anything about his past, and his original artwork did seem to indicate an affinity for copying, just like the Uchiha clan’s sharingan.

Kakashi Was In Love With Obito

Naruto Team Minato Includes Obito Rin and Kakashi

Many fans have wondered why Kakashi never settled down and had children. There’s been plenty of speculation, but some think tragedy in his past might be the reason.

Kakashi’s original ninja team had quite the love triangle going on. Rin was in love with Kakashi while Obito was in love with Rin.

Kakashi witnessed both of their tragic ends, or so he thought. He was forced to bring an end to Rin’s life, which is something that Obito never forgave him for.

Because of this, Obito set out for revenge.

Fans believe that this particular turn of events hurt Kakashi even more than he let on. He wasn’t just hard on the future shinobi he trained, but he also closed himself off to a love life.

The love triangle would truly be complete if Kakashi was in love with Obito and couldn’t move past the tragedy.

Naruto Will Teach Kawaki

Most of the higher ranking shinobi, and the Kages in particular, have been teachers of the younger generation.

We know that at some point Naruto taught a few classes at the Academy and he trained Konohamaru, but other than that, it doesn’t seem like he led any ninja teams.

Some fans have theorized that he took more of a Tsunade approach to working with upcoming shinobi, giving specialized training to one at a time.

It makes sense for his relationship with Konohamaru, but we also might get to see him train Kawaki in Boruto.

Hiruzen Sarutobi trained Orochimaru, who turned on him; Jiraiya trained Nagato, who turned on him; and Minato trained Obito, who also turned on him.

There seems to be a bit of a pattern with powerful shinobi who want world peace training those who start all out wars.

Sasuke Created Kara

Members of Kara in Boruto Manga

Following the events of the war, Sasuke hasn’t settled in Konoha for long. Instead, he’s spent a lot of time wandering the shinobi countries, gathering information for Naruto and trying to redeem himself.

Perhaps that redemption came with an idea.

Kara is a new group that surfaced in the Boruto series. It appears that their goal is to bring an end to the shinobi lifestyle.

Some fans think the new group of antagonists might have been created with a different idea in mind, though.

If Sasuke created Kara, the aim would have been to give the shinobi something to fight for. Banding together against a common threat would strengthen the alliances between shinobi nations.

The need for shinobi would rise again, just like it did in times of war.

Battling Kara would actually preserve the shinobi way of life.

Naruto Will Become The Big Bad

Naruto

Naruto was always the hero. He wanted to do what was best for his people. Even when Sasuke turned his back on the Hidden Leaf, Naruto was determined to bring him back. He’s a good guy.

As we all know, though, a hero can live long enough to see themselves become the villain.

We’ve seen plenty of well respected shinobi turn to their darker natures for revenge, and some fans think Naruto might go that route as well.

Unless Naruto was driven by a need for revenge, like Sasuke early on in the series, it’s difficult to imagine him as a full out villain.

His alternate universe counterpart Menma in Road to Ninja gave us an idea of what that would be like.

It seems likely that Naruto could make a mistake that inadvertently makes him an antagonist down the line.

Team 7 Was Not Protected From The Infinite Tsukuyomi

naruto team 7 reunited

During the Fourth Shinobi World War, it seemed as though Sasuke was able to protect his teammates from the massive genjutsu created.

While all of their allies were caught in the Infinite Tsukuyomi, Naruto, Sasuke, and Sakura continued to fight.

The genjutsu caused a mass hallucination where the shinobi in battle experienced an ideal world. This imaginary world was built based on their deepest desires.

For example, Shikamaru saw a world where his sensei was still alive

Some fans believe that Team 7 was never actually protected, but that the events that followed were part of one of their own versions of the genjutsu.

After all, Naruto achieved every dream he ever had following the war, and so did Sakara. Kakashi became Hokage, and Sasuke was redeemed.

With all of them living out their dreams, the Infinite Tsukuyomi seems possible.

---

Did we miss any crazy theories about Naruto's Team 7? Which theory do you think is most likely to end up being true? Let us know in the comments!