Didn’t Kenner come close to doing a toy line at one point that was based around the premise that Tarkin somehow survived the Death Star and came back to cause trouble after ROTJ? It’s a ridiculous notion, but I guess it was on the table at some level thirty odd years ago. Of course, the canon novel Tarkin and the handful of TCW arcs he was involved in rule out his being a secret Force user, so even if you could come up with a good reason for him to be alive after Yavin, him being Snoke would require yet another insane leap.

Bingowings, I like the Balok idea, but I can’t get my head around this Leia = Snoke thing I’ve seen you throw out a few times. What on earth would her motivation be?

I think if it’s going to be anyone we’ve heard of before, it’ll be Plagueis, but I also think that it’s far more likely Snoke isn’t someone we’ve already been introduced to. I’ve traditionally been down on the Plagueis theory more because the people who buy into it tend to be pretty obnoxious about it than because I think it would be an automatically bad idea. Canonically, the character only exists in those few sentences spoken by Palpatine in ROTS. They could really do anything they want with him.