Destiny 2 is a game of mysteries; in such a massive, sprawling world built over a decade that includes book after book of additional lore, there’s just no way for one player to know it all. Because the game is so huge, there are always new dots to connect and new theories about what, exactly, is true in the world of Destiny, and some theories are sillier than others. One such theory, that the exotic pulse rifle “Graviton Lance” was used in the assassination of John F Kennedy, recently got shot down by Destiny‘s Narrative Director herself.
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Graviton Lance, Old Chicago, and John F Kennedy
For those who don’t know, there was a recent theory that Graviton Lance was used to assassinate President John F. Kennedy based on the tab on the weapon’s lore page. The page is a conversation, presumably between two guardians, talking about a weapon one found. A portion of the page reads:
“It fires black holes.”
“No it doesn’t.”
“Oh yeah. It does. Actual, tiny, bullet-sized black holes.”
“Did you tell the others?”
“Only that I found some weird gun in some overgrown tunnel back on Old Chicago. And that my Ghost was all, ‘THIS is why we were led here…’”
This lore piece mentions that the gun fires tiny, bullet-sized black holes, which would create gravitational anomalies in the wounds it leaves behind, along with a distinct damage pattern. Later, in the Collector’s Edition version of Edge of Fate, a piece of paper from Lodi’s desk in Old Chicago mentions an injury with wound patterns that “revealed extensive disruption of the tissue.” It continues, explaining that, “[REDACTED] and [REDACTED] concur that the pattern is indicative of tissue being pulled towards the projectile as it passed through the skull, before it was pushed outward again.” This lore piece seems to suggest the gun used in some brain injury used bullets that had some odd gravitational pull. Sound familiar?
While there’s nothing explicitly linking Graviton Lance to the incident referred to in this lore entry, it doesn’t take much to connect the two ideas. Additionally, Graviton Lance was found in Old Chicago by two Guardians hundreds of years later. This is the very same city that is home to the Department of External Observation and their Project Graviton, and this coincidence was enough to suggest to players that Graviton Lance is the weapon in question. However, Bungie caught wind of these theories and shut them down.
Alison Lührs Definitively Shoots Down the JFK Theory
There are a few reasons that the “Graviton Lance killed JFK” theory doesn’t work, the main one being another section of the lore included in the Edge of Fate‘s Collector Edition. One of the pages reads, “…our readings at Dealey Plaza indicate nothing out of the ordinary. [REDACTED] After extensive review of the materials recovered from the [REDACTED] Incident, I can find no conclusive link between the weaponry and energy sources present at the Incident, and the evidence from the scene of President Kennedy’s assassination.”
This section indicates that nothing supernatural seemed to happen in Dealey Plaza in Destiny 2‘s version of this historic event, and despite the odd brain injury mentioned in the other note, the Department of External Observation didn’t deem it enough of a connection to declare them related. Piggybacking off this, Destiny Narrative Director Alison Lührs spoke on this topic briefly in an interview with YouTuber MyNameIsByf.
Lührs explained that “Graviton Lance is based off of, like, [the DEO] brought that weapon in and were able to deconstruct it and were trying to recreate it themselves…the Graviton Lance didn’t kill JFK, we don’t know what weapon did, and we don’t know—well, it was Lee Harvey Oswald, that’s, that’s who killed JFK, I’m sorry.”
Her explanation is, essentially, that the weapon found in Old Chicago that players know as Graviton Lance isn’t the same weapon being referred to in the DEO file. Rather, Graviton Lance is a prototype version of that weapon, created by the DEO in an attempt to reconstruct the energy they found in those wounds. It’s a technicality, but no, Graviton Lance isn’t responsible for the incident in Dealey Plaza.
Should Some Things Be Left to the Imagination?
While the “Graviton Lance killed JFK” theory is relatively low-stakes in terms of importance to the actual events of the Edge of Fate DLC, it does raise the question of how much it matters. When it comes to fan theories, these silly ones are those that end up part of the deep lore, something a veteran player might use as a trivia piece to pique the interest of their non-playing friends. Deep-cut theories like these add richness to fictional worlds, and to have the devs come right out and say, “No, sorry, you’re wrong,” shuts that kind of thing right down.
Player interaction with the world of Destiny is the primary reason so many people are invested in its lore. It’s through discussion of what makes this world unique with other players that makes it feel real and alive, and getting roadblocked by executive narrative decisions, particularly over something as small and silly as this, can feel sort of bad. It doesn’t matter either way whether or not Graviton Lance was actually used to kill JFK, but stories feel more complex when some of their questions are left unanswered.
