Jacob Had Dibs On John Locke by Question Mark

In another theory on this board, a poster that Locke had been 'claimed' by Jacob when he touched him following Locke's plunge from the building. This theory claimed that Locke's body would need to be dug up (by Hurley or Miles, who could talk to it) and that a resurrected Locke would then become the new Jacob.

I'd like to take that basic idea in a different direction. We know the following facts...

* MIB and Jacob can 'claim' dead people on the Island.

* MIB apparently cannot shape-shift to any forms other than Fake Locke or his Monster form.

This tells me that there is something unique about MIB's current Locke persona. It seems like an extreme that MIB had to go to, posing as an actual flesh-and-blood being rather than an apparition, and one that he can't come back from. It seems to me that the MIB has lost one of his most useful powers (shape-shifting) and this may have been intentional on Jacob's part.

We saw Jacob touch Locke following his plunge, and suddenly Locke seemed to wake up. Some speculated that Locke was brought back from the dead at this moment, and I'd agree that this was the case. At this moment, Jacob was claiming Locke for his very own. Since then, there has always been a little bit of Jacob within Locke (as there has been within all of the candidates that he touched). However, the MIB didn't realize this. So when he devised his loophole plan to pose as Locke, he didn't realize that he was claiming an already-claimed body.

As we've seen with MIB's knowledge of Locke's memories, there are definitely still vestiges of the real John within MIB's impersonation. But what MIB may not understand yet is that this real John may be slowly reasserting itself within the body. In the last episode we saw MIBLocke bust out the "Don't tell me what I can or can't do!" line as the latest indication that there may be a growing John within MIB's disguise.

Basically, Jacob knew that MIB would try to get him through one of the candidates, so he may sure to claim them well before they arrived on the Island. (Or, in the case of Hurley and Sayid, before their return to the Island.) Think of it like a computer virus --- the 'virus' of a Jacob-powered soul/spirit/aura whatever programmed into Locke after his fall, and now that MIB has logged into the system, the John virus is starting to gradually infect him. To continue the computer analogy, John Locke was the backup file that Jacob has saved just in case another hacker (i.e. MIB) 'broke the rules.'

The only way for MIB to escape being overwhelmed by John's persona would be to transform back into the Smoke Monster full-time. Now, Smokey is of course very powerful in that form, so this wasn't the perfect solution to defeating him. But, as a permanent Monster, MIB can't shapeshift at all (and thus is unable to manipulate the Losties and Others), is in a form where he is obviously perceived as a major threat and still has some exploitable weaknesses (i.e. the ash and the sonic frequencies in the fence). Jacob might've figured that his candidates and followers had a better shot at victory if they knew they were up against a Monster rather than a shape-shifting manipulator.