2008's Cloverfield is a found footage film about a giant creature that destroys New York City, forcing the U.S. military to drop a nuke in order to kill it. On the surface, it seems like any other monster movie, but J.J. Abrams actually developed an incredibly elaborate marketing campaign involving an ARG (alternate reality game) that revealed the monster's origins. Through Cloverfield's ARG, it was revealed that the monster had been asleep beneath the ocean for thousands of years, before being accidentally awakened by the mysterious Tagruato corporation.
The film's follow-ups, 10 Cloverfield Lane and The Cloverfield Paradox, also featured elaborate marketing campaigns to fill in the details of their respective universes. In particular, 10 Cloverfield Lane's ARG made use of various extraterrestrial conspiracy theories to hint at the origins of its alien invaders, while marketing for The Cloverfield Paradox teased the idea of parallel dimensions. However, there very well may be a hidden connection between 10 Cloverfield Lane's aliens and the first movie's monster.
Cloverfield's ARG revealed that the monster was only a baby despite being thousands of years old, and only rampaged through New York after being prematurely awoken. This raises the question of how the monster got under the sea in the first place, and the answer may lie with 10 Cloverfield Lane's aliens. Considering the fact that the sound made by the alien ship is almost identical to the monster's roar, as well as the resemblance between the scout creature released by the ship and the parasites that fall off Cloverfield's monster, it stands to reason that the aliens may have been the ones who created the monster and put it beneath the sea in the first place.
There is one more piece of promotional material that gives this theory legs: the 2008 tie-in manga Cloverfield/Kishin, which features a different monster being awakened and captured by Tagruato. At the very end of the manga, it is revealed that there is what appears to be a nest of massive eggs beneath the sea, and it is heavily implied that the monsters hatched from these giant eggs. This would add further credence to the idea that the aliens planted the monster beneath the sea thousands of years ago with the intention to allow it to gestate and hatch naturally, only for it to be awoken early by Tagruato's experiments.
Once the monster was awakened and killed, the aliens would likely have set off for Earth to seek revenge, finally arriving and taking over the planet in 10 Cloverfield Lane. The aliens' arrival was heavily teased through a fake NASA broadcast as well as images of one of their ships nearing the planet in Lane's ARG. While Michelle (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) was able to defeat one of the ships, the film's ending revealed that there were several more around the United States, and presumably the world.
While The Cloverfield Paradox ultimately revealed that the Cloverfield films take place in a multiverse, there's nothing to disprove a connection between the aliens and the monster. The first film's monster exists in at least one of the new universes created over the course of Paradox, so it's very possible that similar events could have occurred in multiple universes. The series has proven to be a unique experiment in the sci-fi and monster genres, and with a direct sequel to the first movie on the way, audiences may soon learn the truth behind the creatures of the Cloverfield franchise.
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