I think we can all agree that mascot horror has been a defining genre of the online gaming
scene.
Every year there are dozens of new contenders, all vying to make their mark.
Franchises like Bendy, Hello Neighbor, Baldi’s Basics, Rainbow Friends, Choo-Choo Charles,
Amanda the Adventure, Poppy Playtime, all of them competing for your attention and your
gamer dollars.
But I think we can all agree that one franchise has truly stood above them all.
One series with gameplay so deceptively simple that it took the internet by storm, one series
that pushed out sequels at a blistering pace to keep the hype train going.
One series with a story that was so convoluted that it makes theorists like me weep.
And that series is: Banban.
Wait, are we…are we doing this?
Are we really doing this?
Oh, boy.
All right.
Hello Internet!
Welcome to Game Theory, where today I give up my last shred of dignity and stare into
the abyss that is Garten of Banban.
In case you missed it.
Congratulations, you missed it.
Garten of Banban is, no joke, the most searched new horror IP on YouTube.
But believe me, it wasn't always this way.
Upon first release back in January this game broke the internet and not in a good way.
People got mad like mad-mad about the phoned-in graphics, the incredibly short first chapter,
the basic monster design and the clear attempt to cash in with a merch page on the main menu
of its first installment.
It was hailed as the final nail in the mascot horror coffin, the moment that the genre jumped
the shark, a cash grab with no thought or care put into it, to which I say, Yeah, them
and every other mascot horror game out there.
I mean, Mob Games announced a movie and made NFTs immediately after the success of Chapter
1, which, mind you, was only a half hour experience.
Hello Neighbor was so busy making TV pilots, books and spinoffs that they basically forgot
they had to build their game beyond an alpha.
And Scott was busy releasing the new FNAF game every few months back in the old days,
just like we see Garten of Banban doing now.
The point is, while these things may be cause for concern, they're also not exactly new
for the genre.
Which brings us to today where Garten of Banban has three games in six months and it also
has bootleg merch for sale at my local North Carolina Fair.
But for as much as I like to give this franchise a hard time, I actually kind of like it.
These games are just dumb fun.
It's kind of like the Fast and Furious franchise, just stupid stuff that you can turn your brain
off to.
Or at least that was my intention.
But then Banban had to go and ruin it all.
[Matt]: It’s okay to have no friends and be miserable like me.
[Ash] Y’all.
Nabnab is Banban backwards.
[Matt]: LORE!
Yup.
Garten of Banban went the full nine yards and added LOOOOOORE.
Lore that is…definitely there.
I think I said it best in GTlive.
If there are sharks to be jumped, I feel like Garten of Banban has jumped all those sharks
and continues to find new sharks to proceed and jump over.
But shark or no shark, where there is lore, there is MatPat.
And so against my better judgment, I dove deep into the pancreas chewing storyline of
this game to unlock its secrets.
And what I found there won't surprise you.
No, I didn't misspeak.
You heard me right.
It won't surprise you.
Stop me if you've heard this one: Evil Corporation, Science Experiment gone wrong, inanimate objects
come to life, dead kids, playtime facilities that break every OSHA code.
Yep.
It's like the IKEA instructions for building an indie horror game.
So what does Banban do differently to merit its own theory?
Well, it takes the insanity meter and cranks it up to 11, then takes the meter, puts it
into a blender, grinds it up and drinks it like a smoothie.
Because for as much as I've seen a lot of this stuff before, I've also never seen anything
like this before.
Wow, they’re going hard.
[In Game]: Opila, what do you think about this?
[Opila]: *screech* *some shocked noises* What the heck?
It's not every day that you see the monsters in your mascot horror game taking a casual
road trip through a desert alongside a psychic jellyfish and a screeching pink bird.
So throw your sanity to the wind dear theorists, today we're piecing together the lore of Garten
of Banban.
And let me tell you, it is…something.
First, let's just review the basic premise here.
In these games, we play as a parent desperately searching an old, empty kindergarten facility
for any signs of our missing children.
And that's it.
That is pretty much as far as we got on the main story.
In each installment, we find a single note addressed to Mommy left by a nameless child
and a girl named Claire, which means that we're pretty safe in assuming that these are
our kids.
But, you know, might not be.
Through these letters we also know that our children are fighting off monsters and that
they're ultimately saved by a giant jellyfish.
Other than that, bupkis, not a whole lot.
Which means that we have to make our way deeper into the facility where things are much less
Sesame Street and much more Backrooms.
As twisted versions of the kindergarten’s mascots roam the repetitive maze like halls.
But who would have built a facility like this?
And more importantly, why?
The answer to those questions are hidden in Chapter two.
If you manage to find the red key card you can actually go back into the building's medical
center, where a secret door leads to three lore notes.
Notes that reveal the game's true villain, corporate greed.
The first document is addressed to Dr. Uthman, the same name that we actually find on an
airplane boarding pass in chapter one: Uthman Adam.
In it, we learn that the company has been using a mysterious substance known as Givanium
to try and bring their mascots to life.
Hold on, hold on.
Creatures that shouldn't be alive, but are for inexplicable reasons.
Mark that one off on your indie horror bingo card.
As other lore notes reveal, givanium is basically a kind of blood alternative that's being injected
into giant monster bodies that are made of a Play-Doh like material.
But as you'd expect, this method isn't without its side effects, mainly enlarging both the
veins and body of the subject.
Exactly like we see with one of the designs of the mascots, Jumbo Josh.
Side note to this one, kind of love how instead of just making cleaner looking models, they
just made the bad textures part of the lore.
Euphoric Brothers over here playing 4D chess with game design.
And while that side effect ends up being purely cosmetic, we're also told that any creature
brought to life with givanium is in constant pain, leading to extremely hostile and nervous
behavior.
Not exactly something that you want for the things that are designed to be looking after
young children at a kindergarten all day.
Needless to say, Dr. Uthman's experiments haven’t been going all that well.
And that's a problem when they've promised to unveil their creatures as part of the kindergartens'
big bring a friend day.
So they decide to push forward, desperately looking for ways to circumvent the violent
effects of givanium by mixing it with human DNA.
Yep.
They skip the animal trials and just jump straight into the main event.
The hope was that the human genome would allow these creatures to have rational thought and
parental instincts towards children.
And who better to contribute their DNA than the good doctor himsel, Uthman Adam?
This experiment would lead to the creation of the one and only Banban.
At first glance he seemed to be quite successful.
He wasn't violent and was actually incredibly intelligent thanks to Uthman's DNA.
Except yet again there was something they didn't account for.
Banban was too intelligent.
Banban believed that he was human, which meant that when he finally did come into contact
with Dr. Uthman, it caused him to go into a deep depression.
To try and bring him out of it they made a female equivalent: Banbaleena.
Using the genomes of the one person that Banban would speak to, Dr. Weverly Mason.
But all this did was just make him less cooperative.
So overall, things aren't great at the kindergarten there Bob.
In one last ditch effort to fix the problem, the lower Banban's ability to self think by
dosing them with an updated givanium solution, which works a bit too well.
Again.
The higher levels of givanium cause him elevated pain, which turns him into a mindless beast.
But of course, evil corporation gonna to do what evil corporation gonna to do, and they
push onward.
Throughout the facility we find a handful of other case reports where they try various
other animal genomes.
Spider DNA gives us Nabnab, snail DNA gives us Slow Seline and a mix of flamingo and ostrich
results in the fan favorite Opila Bird.
It wasn't until they used wooly spider monkey DNA for the creation of Captain Fiddles that
they finally struck on a winning combination.
In fact, Captain Fiddles was deemed so successful that he was passed on to be presented to parents
and investors at the big Bring a Friend day.
That day, though, would be the day it all fell apart.
The third note that we find in the red medical room describes how the ball pit can't take
the weight of all the kids that have registered for that big event and that this extra weight
is likely to cause the ball pit to collapse.
Considering that there's no ball pit in the ball pit room of Chapter one, and the fact
that it's all boarded off to the public, I think it's safe to say that that's exactly
what happened.
I'd also suspect that this is why Uthman had a boarding pass, he was going to escape before
anything bad happened.
And he was right to worry.
According to a note that we find later in the game, the loud crash of the ball pit collapsing
causes all the mascots’ primitive instincts to kick in, resulting in them going on the
attack.
However, amidst all the chaos there was one creature who didn't become a monster.
The one and only giant orange jellyfish: Stinger Flynn.
In fact, not only does he stay friendly, thanks to a series of kid's drawings, we know that
he actually saves our children from both Banban and Opila.
The nice jellyfish is strong.
He carried everyone here, but Miss Mason hates him, and I don't know why.
Well, don't worry yourself about that one, kiddo, because I know why Miss Mason hates
him.
Also, can I just say you have some remarkably good spelling for a kindergartner.
If you've played through Garten III, you'll know that this is no ordinary jellyfish.
Stinger Flynn is massive and threatening, but more threatening than his size are the
size of his word.
This dude talks a lot and often in very vague, cryptic terms.
One thing he's not vague about, though, is wanting us to get out, to leave our children
behind.
And when we refuse, he turns on us.
Releasing the evil Banban to kill us.
He's able to do this thanks to the unique combination of genomes he's received.
You see, Stinger Flynn is the only creation in the kindergarten to have received two genomes
alongside the givanium, Human and Atlantic Sea Nettle.
The case studies tell us that this led him to becoming more intelligent than all the
other creatures, making him comfortable and aware with what he was.
However, he's far from content with his current state.
But what can he possibly mean by mental refinement?
And why would Miss Mason hate him for it?
Well, elsewhere in Chapter 3, Stinger Flynn describes his level of intelligence as a burden.
This is where the children come in.
So far, the only human genomes that we've seen used have been fully grown adults.
Adults with developed brains.
Too much intelligence, too much introspection.
But children, I suspect that that's exactly what he wants.
They're fully sentient, but they're also not all that self-aware.
That's why he saved our kids and why Miss Mason doesn't like him.
He's planning on using them for experiments of his own, reverting himself back to an immoral
conscience-less creature.
However, I have a feeling that that's going to go horribly wrong for our giant jelly friend.
You see, in Stinger Flynn's room there's a special white door you can go through if you
find the correct keycard.
Inside of it we get one final update about givanium and a new development known as a
Genome Cloy, quote.
“In short, it was found that when a subject’s system is overloaded with different genomes,
the body will enter an irreversible state in which all but one genome are set to circulate
through the body, with the rest all getting disposed of.
This reveals the critical necessity of ensuring that each case receives its genomes from no
more than 3 sources or donors, lest we're left with cases that are permanently animalistic
and wild with absolutely no place in a kindergarten.
The genome that gets preference in the Genome Cloy event remains to be discovered, but it
has been theorized that it is whatever genome is most different from the rest.”
Basically what all that tells us is that creatures in this world are limited to three genomes
mixed together max.
More than that, and suddenly you transform into an animal.
We know that Stinger Flynn already has himself three genomes: givanium, human and jellyfish.
But if he's planning on using these children to give himself more DNA, it'll create a cloy.
And if the theory is correct and similar genomes basically cancel each other out, that leaves
behind the most different one.
In other words, good old Flynn is going to end up becoming a mindless jellyfish once
again.
Stinger Flynn isn't aware of any of this because the tests happened off the record.
They were likely done on the creatures down below in the basement that we're likely going
to meet in the next chapter.
But just like Stinger Flynn throwing too many genomes together.
I'm not done throwing too many theories together.
You see, there's still one experiment that I haven't talked about.
One who's iconic for this franchise, but strangely absent from all the case reports.
The jolly green giant himself, Jumbo Josh.
If you look across the game, we have case studies for Banban, Banbaleena, Opila, Captain
Fiddle, Stinger Flynn.
Heck even oddball characters like Slow Seline.
But Jumbo Josh is basically an enigma.
He's one of the only mascots to show up in every chapter.
And yet we know nothing about him.
Or so I thought.
Once you get the green key card in chapter 3, you can make the long trek backwards to
the medical center, where there's a secret room filled with characters' faces on the
wall.
This puzzle is actually incredibly well done, and it hides the game's biggest secret.
If you found all the case reports in the chapter, you'll see that certain ones come with a QR
code in the corner.
Scanning the QR codes get you shadowy images of various character details: Banbaleena’s
bow, Slow Seline’s smile, Jumbo Josh's teeth, Banban’s horns.
But this is a dark image in an indie horror game my friends.
That can only mean one thing: brightening the image to find secret messages.
If you do, in each corner you'll see a number hidden in each picture.
Click the buttons in order and you open the final door that leads to one last note.
Quote: “We are very selfish; He was never going
to be normal, and assuming we could even get him out of this place with his size, what
was next?
What house would he fit in?
What school would accept him?
I don't even want to imagine the consequences, not to mention how dangerous it is to keep
him around those other monstrosities; He plays with them like their toys, throwing and commanding
them around in everything” They're talking about Jumbo Josh; a creature
of immense size, strength, and with a grotesque appearance.
We also see him throw round the other monsters at the end of chapter 3 like toys.
This is also something that we hear about earlier in the chapter.
During the Jumbo Josh minigame Banbaleena tells us that he thinks that we're dolls.
But why is this so important?
What makes Jumbo Josh so different?
Well, the end of the note gives us our best clue.
Quote again: “Sometimes life denies you beautiful gifts,
and we should have accepted that.
But we're doing the right thing here, and I'm proud of us both.”
The only time I see language like “being denied a beautiful gift.”
Yeah.
That's in reference to losing a child.
Them not being able to have a child or a child dying prematurely.
Either way, these parents lost the most precious thing they had, but they found their second
chance through science experiments.
That said, they aren't the scientists that we know already.
Uthman and Weverly because in letters from those guys, they talk about Jumbo Josh as
“the green guy”, which doesn't really sound like a loving, desperate parent.
Instead, I suspect that these parents might be the ones who started the program in the
first place, hiding behind the idea of bringing mascots to life.
But the real goal was saving what they lost, bringing their dead child, Josh, back to life.
Reincarnated dead kid!
Come on, someone's got to have a bingo at this point, right?
But along with that note, there's also an audio file.
If you play it, it summons Zolphius, the creepy giant worm thing that appears from the abyss
at various points throughout the chapter.
It’s basically Sackboy crossed with Kingseeker Frampt for all you Dark Souls fans.
And when we encounter him, we see two simple words.
I'm sorry.
It's my belief that Zolphius is the parent that wrote that note.
It's because of their hubris that our children are now missing.
Their determination to bring back their child has now meant the loss of so many others.
And that is why all they can do at this point is to say sorry, parent to parent.
And I think maybe that's the most unique thing about this game that reuses so many indie
horror tropes: a character finally apologizing, finally acknowledging their mistakes, and
recognizing the wake of destruction that they've left.
Am I right?
Am I wrong?
I guess we just got to wait, like, what, 24 hours before Garten of Banban IV drops?
And then we could see what other sharks they found to jump.
But hey!
That's just a theory.
A GAME THEORY!
Thanks for watching.
And don't forget that the fun doesn't have to stop here.
Why not click the video on the left where you can watch me literally lose my sanity
in real time as I play through chapter three of Garten of Banban on GTLive.
Let me tell you, it goes way off the rails.
Or, you know, if you fancy a little bit more lore, you can always watch me break down the
hidden lore inside Amanda the Adventurer.
That video is on the right.
As always don't forget to subscribe so you are notified when that inevitable Garten of
Banban IV theory drops.
And as always, I'll see you next week.