The Office may be a fun and lighthearted comedy series, but it wasn’t without its darker aspects. I mean, sort of. One of the subplots in the middle of the series revolves around the Scranton Strangler. No, he had no real actual importance, but it was a name that popped up on several occasions. Later on, the name popped up again when Toby Flenderson acted as a juror for the trial of the Scranton Strangler. It was a throwaway thing, and I honestly don’t remember it being such a hot topic of debate initially.

However, because the internet is the internet, many fans have since gone on to throw out some mad fan theories about the Scranton Strangler’s identity. One popular theory is that Toby Flenderson himself was the strangler. After all, after the man was convicted, Toby had something of an existential crisis over convicting who he thought was an innocent man. He would only know this were the case if he himself were the Scranton Strangler, right? RIGHT?! I mean, they also did that release that “Making a Strangler” mockumentary that pointed right at him.

One other likely contender is the shifty Creed Bratton. Over the course of The Office’s nine seasons, we saw perhaps one of the oddest men ever put to digital film. Of all the people in the Scranton branch of Dunder Mifflin, he is objectively the one dude who could have easily committed those murders (and what was he collecting all those chairs for?). But is this actually the case?

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ComicBook.com recently spoke with actor Creed Bratton (yes, the actor shares the same name of the character he portrays), and the man showed hesitation if revealing the truth.

“I feel I really, really shouldn’t let much of that go,” Bratton told the outlet, “because I feel like could incriminating myself. Even though I’m not that character, he’s very personal and if I give away that, then I lose a little of my mystique.”

So, we may never know for sure if he’s not the strangler, but there is enough evidence to at least accuse him of murder, right? Bratton referred to the “Here Comes Treble” episode where Creed walked in with blood all over him. Luckily, it was Halloween, so that fact went mostly unnoticed.

“I mean for God’s sakes, he did come in with blood all over him. He obviously had bodies in his fridge. I’m not saying that he was the Scranton Strangler, but he certainly killed people, we know that. Well, I don’t know about a strangler so much as maybe a slasher, because a strangling is pretty clean. Because he had blood all over him, so he might’ve been more of a slasher. The Scranton Slasher.”

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Okay, so Creed isn’t the Scranton Strangler. That seems pretty much open-and-shut. But this leaves the final mystery still up in the air. In Bratton’s opinion, however, the other likely suspect is an unlikely one.

“I don’t think that the Toby character had the huevos to pull that off,” Bratton concluded. “I just don’t see that, him having the cojones.”

That isn’t a definitive answer. Ironically, we find ourselves slightly closer to accusing Toby and Creed at this point. Perhaps in another decade, we’ll get the true story. But for now, we can only imagine the poor H.R. employee taking out his Michael and Pam-related frustrations on the poor victims of Scranton, Pennsylvania.

Who do you think the Scranton Strangler is? Let us know your thoughts down below!

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SOURCE: ComicBook.com