Featured Image Credit: NBC
Topics: The Office, TV, TV and Film
Michael Slavin
The Office may have been off the air for 12 years, but fans are still discussing one key debate that the show never answer: who was the real Scranton Strangler?
The American spin-off of the Ricky Gervais show ran for eight years and nine seasons and was one of the most successful series on TV.
The Office is a predominantly light-hearted affair, but a rather dark storyline surrounding a serial killer plaguing the local area plays out in the background.
Though the show introduces someone who is presented to have done it, many aren’t convinced, and fans may be hoping an upcoming spin-off series titled The Paper coming out later this year will finally address the common theory.
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The culprit is introduced in season six, when Andy frames a copy of the newspaper from the day Jim and Pam’s first kid was born, and expresses disappointment as the newspaper in question has the headline ‘The Scranton Strangler strikes again’.
On the paper, a man named George Howard Skub is convicted of being the Scranton Strangler, but many fans believe he wasn’t guilty, and that the real killer is still out there.
This theory is made even more believable when Toby, who served on the jury for the case, expresses his own belief that Skub is not guilty.
A longheld fan theory is that the killer is actually a member of The Office.
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And while many could expect it to be Andy due to his well-documented anger issues, Dwight because of his casual reactions to death, or Creed because of his general weirdness, the major suspect in the eyes of many fans is none of those three.
Instead, Toby Flenderson is who many believe to be the Scranton Strangler.
The theory is so popular that the official The Office YouTube channel posted a ten-minute video of clips that hint at the theory titled Making a Strangler, and the actor himself has addressed it on multiple occasions.
One Reddit thread explains the theory, saying: “After losing Pam to Jim in Seasons 3 and 4, Toby abandons hope for happiness in Scranton and attempts to start over in Costa Rica.
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“After failing to find happiness even there, he takes his pent-up frustration and disappointment with life and releases it by strangling people over the course of The Office’s later seasons.”
Paul Lieberstein, who plays Toby, was also one of the writers on the show, and has said that ‘seven out of 10 tweets he gets’ are asking if Toby was the Scranton Strangler.
Lieberstein said that, while Toby was never written to be the Scranton Strangler, the theory is ‘kinda fun’ and that ‘there’s a world where he was the Strangler’, and even suggesting there may have been multiple.
The actor and writer also appeared on Office Ladies, a podcast hosted by Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey, who play Pam and Angela respectively.
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Lieberstein said regarding this on the podcast that he was unaware of the fan theories ‘until after they wrapped’ when he saw a YouTube video about it.
Sorry to say though fans, in this podcast appearance, he denied that Toby is the Scranton Strangler.
He added: “Because we wouldn't do that. We're about, like, relatable… if you weren't breaking the fourth wall, then you would just you say it's too unlikely. This is like an Occam's razor kind of thing.
“Like, no, the most likely thing is generally the truth, where the guy convicted is guilty of the thing.”
With The Paper coming out later this year and the character of Oscar returning confirming it lives in the same world as The Office, maybe we’ll finally get an answer of who actually did it in the spin-off show.
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The Office is available to watch on Netflix, Prime Video, and Disney+ in the UK.