So you want to play a game, Matpat?
I have got a game for you.
But beware the Shadow Monster Man.
Good luck solving this one, Matpat.
[Game Theory Into Music]
Hello Internet! Welcome to Game Theory! The show
that's not afraid to turn to the right and become the shadow monster man. Last year
I presented you with the single most emotional episode of Game Theory I'd ever done. PETSCOP. A fake
Let's Play of a fake game that, at the time,
I thought was
retelling the events surrounding the tragic death of a young girl named Candace Newmaker. If you missed it - link is in the icard
in the upper right hand corner of the screen. But be warned it is an intense episode.
However, since doing that theory two more installments of Petscop have been released. The first on Christmas Day of
2017 and the second on January 4th of this
year.
And where the first 10 episode certainly offered a lot of clues and puzzling threads to explore, there wasn't quite enough
there to see the clear goal of what this series was trying to accomplish.
But now with these latest two installments the series has introduced a ton of new information.
Information that blows the lid off the Petscop mystery. Uncovering a deep twisted tale of
kidnappings and secret murders that span decades!
So today, while we all wait for FNAF's new custom night to spoil my lore one final time; and while we all hold our breath
For Doki Doki's is bizarre a new spin-off;
I wanted to spend some time taking a second updated look at
unraveling Petscop. One of the creepiest, most mysterious, and definitely most unique
YouTube Let's Plays out there. A game that, as you're about to see, was literally made to expose
a murderer.
At first glance the basic premise of Petscop is simple: it's a creepypasta
Let's Play of an unfinished Pokemon SPS1 era game. Like the beginning of most
creepypastas, a young kid named Paul found a copy of this game with a disturbing note attached.
"I walked downstairs and when I got to the bottom, instead of proceeding. I turned the right became a shadow monster man."
6/13/97 For You.
Please go to my website on the sticker and also go to Roneth's room and press "start".
and press "down" "down" "down" "down" "down" "right" "start".
After Paul does what the note says -basically performing the Petscop's equivalent to the Konami Code - things start to go haywire.
Locations appearing and disappearing, disturbing glitched sprites,
characters talking through the game, and
recurring themes of dead or abandoned children. It's like the game is haunted. Paul even comments on it himself.
"This game is trying very hard to make it seem like there's an entity in it. Like a ghost."
Oh spooky so creepy. I'm so scared. It's a haunted game. Hopefully
Slenderman doesn't come out and get me! Except the Slenderman is legitimately a scary character model. The guy in Petscop
LITERALLY looks like he has a nauseous butt for a face.
But what first appears to be a simple case of a make-believe
haunted game made to get popular on the internets quickly becomes the most intricately plotted piece of game based
storytelling you've ever seen! Even beyond that of Doki Doki Literature Club!
And that's saying a lot.
Throughout the 12 videos uploaded onto the Petscop channel, we see demo sequences pop up. Like you would have with any game
that's left idle for too long.
One such sequence happens in Petscop 9, where we see the on-screen avatar running on a treadmill while a counter ticks down
beside him. And then suddenly the character stops. Just stops dead in his tracks and stands there... waiting
....waiting...waiting
until he finally starts running again. And throughout the whole thing the video doesn't cut away. While it is just supposedly a demo
watching it something just feels off. It feels...
intentional. It feels like there's a reason for this awkwardly long pause and, even more importantly, that there's a reason it was left in the
final video uploaded onto the channel.
It was a reason that would remain hidden until CDriggers24 on Reddit noticed that the demo of the treadmill sequence synced up
perfectly with something that we had seen seven uploads earlier. Each time the treadmill comes down in Petscop 9, a
petal is picked off a flower in Petscop 2. She loves me she loves me not.
Running on the treadmill. Running on the treadmill and still.
These two moments -
completely disconnected in sequence and upload dates - share a commonality. The treadmill counting down the petals of a flower.
A flower that when picked completely clean gets you access to this deformed girl trapped in the basement of a nearby shaft.
But clearly this just had to be a coincidence right? Two unrelated events in the game that just so happened to share a
random pattern of timing. Not at all.
But we wouldn't know it for sure until the most recent uploads of the series. In Petscop 10
we watched the on-screen Avatar wander around a section of the game map labeled "The Quitters Room". A room separated into two mirrored halves.
After about 30 seconds of exploring we teleport away.
It's nothing too exciting right? Just a typical mirrored puzzle room like you see in most any other game.
And that's the way most people perceived it until the most recent upload in the series. Video 12. When suddenly we're on the other
side of the mirror.
Reenacting those exact same 30 seconds of movement. It's yet another instance of perfect
synchronization. Except this time when we look to the other side of the mirror where we used to be - it's no longer our avatar!
But instead... Pyramid Head? What is this a Silent Hill game? Heh! Ya-Yo-Yo! And the synchronizations
don't stop there!
They even exist within the same video - Petscop 11 has a perfect sync down to the waveform of Paul's voice
speaking.Ffirst at 11 minutes into the video and then again at 16 minutes. Overlay the two
and you can see that even the tiniest movements of the on-screen avatar match up perfectly. But what does all of it mean?
Synchronizations and haunted games and demo sequences are all well and good
but it has to amount to something! So -
what is the story that this game is trying to tell us?
Well as you might be sensing already, a full exploration in the Petscop can get very deep, very
complicated, very quick. In all seriousness, if I were to cover every detail in this game story
I would be sitting here discussing with you who does and doesn't have eyebrows. That's no
exaggeration! Of all things - this is the
crucial detail in this whole story.
It's silly in the same way dissecting the difference between Withered Foxy and Phantom Foxy is. (Technically they're both) the same thing
But when you strip away all of these excess details, at its core Petscop boils down to the tale of two men. A
murderer and the man who's out to punish him for his crimes.
Marvin vs. Rainer. One a killer and child abuser - the Shadow Monster Man
that was warned about the note attached to this game. And the other,
the creator of Petscop. The good guy trying to use this game as a means of avenging his brother's death. Now
that's a lot unpacked, so let's start working our way through this. First
we know that this is a battle between these two characters in particular based on a few crucial letters that are hidden throughout the series.
The first appears in Petscop 9. Quote: "You must have guessed, but I was looking through your things.
I found that picture of you from
1977., standing in front of an old windmill with your friend. Wou went there
and it was a bad idea. Your friend and the windmill both disappeared into thin air. Her sister was holding the camera.
She took another picture minutes later;
just you, no windmill, and no friend. You married her sister and, years later, your friend was
reborn as your daughter. Your wife won't admit
this is true, but I know it, because I found evidence. Your friend never returned with you, and the windmill was gone.
I went to see it myself. Where is it?
What did you do?" The letter is signed - Rainer, Newmaker. Based on this letter
we know a few things. First, that the character Rainer has a bad case of the pronoun game. She, you, her, your friend.
Use a freaking proper noun once in a while! Like
3/4 of the mystery of this game is just figuring out who's talking to who at any given point in time.
Anyway!
More importantly we see that Reiner's already discovering some secret. A crime that the recipient of the letter wants to keep hidden.
We learned that the story of Petscop truly begins back in
1977. When Marvin - that's the you being addressed here - takes the two ladies to a windmill but only one gets back alive.
The sister who he ends up marrying.
And if there was any confusion about any of the events described in that letter, later in Petscop 9 we actually flashback to
1977 to see what exactly
happens in that windmill.
We first see the player avatar descend the stairs and, instead of continuing forward to load the new screen, turn to the right.
This glitches out the game, and he becomes the Shadow Monster Man.
Just like the note we mentioned earlier
that was attached to the game said would happen. And as the monster, we're able to access the windmill. It is the only
time that the windmill is physically accessible in the game. Inside of it
we see a girl spinning atop the gears and Marvin, as the Shadow Monster Man, plunging this white tool
towards her. It seems like the game's implying that he killed her because
after the screen cuts away in that moment and then fades back up, the girl is gone.
And you've gotten points for your monstrous actions.
But to further confirm what we just saw, read deeper into Rainer's notes.
He accuses "your friend was reborn as your daughter" and indeed she was.
As those same facial features that we see on the girl in the windmill reappear on the character Care. The
"she loves me, she loves me not" flower girl that we rescue from the basement of the shack that I mentioned earlier.
The girl with no eyebrows. Told you the eyebrows were important in all this! That
establishes that Care is Marvin's daughter. But why would Rainer be digging around in Marvin's past?
Well the answer is actually kind of tragic. Because seventeen years after the windmill incident in,
1995, Marvin would kidnap and abuse Rainer's brother - Michael Hammond. Pushing him to the point of suicide.
We know this based on another letter found from Rainer in the game.
Quote: "When the emergency
began, you were all looking for Care A.
I told you all we would never find Care A. When Care A goes missing, she goes missing forever.
My brother didn't want us to find him, because he knew we were all looking for Michael A. I'm back.
This is my present for you. I started it in 1996, for Marvin. If you think they're worth any effort,
see if you can save Care B, or Care NLM. Care B is in the school, of course. Merry Christmas.
Check your bathroom now.
- Rainer". Notice that Rainer specifically says my brother,
Michael A. Now the only other Michael that we see in the game is the grave of Michael Hammond. "A gift"/"The dead kid"
as Paul so delicately describes him. But I hear you asking - Michael Hammond wouldn't that be Michael H?
He just said his brother would be Michael A. And yeah, I
totally see how that's confusing.
But let me explain. In the world of Petscop, kids have three forms: "A" form when they're loved and happy,
"B" form when they're sad scared or something bad has happened to them, and "NLM" short for nobody loves me. When they've been
completely wrecked on an
emotional level. When Rainer says "my brother didn't want us to find him because he knew we were all looking for Michael A" it means
that Michael went missing and didn't want to be found because he was
emotionally scarred. The family searching for him was still expecting the pre-emergency Michael. The happy one, the loving one.
But because of whatever tragedy befell him during this emergency, he couldn't go back.
He had become a new form, for a lack of a better term. Michael B or Michael NLM. And that's not all!
The fact that Rainer says that "Michael didn't want to be found" and that in the game
we actually see his grave, seems to imply that Mike took his own life. He was ruined and in his opinion -
worthless. So he ended his own life rather than
disappointing those he cared about. And that's exactly how we find Marvin's daughter Care in the shack.
She's Care NLM. Abused to the point of being
unrecognizable.
But what happened? And more importantly - how do we know that Marvin is guilty of the crimes against both Care and Mike? Well the windmill isn't
Marvin's only atrocious act that we see. We see him break into his own house and kidnap Care in "A" form in episode 11.
It's a bit hard to tell with these goofy sprites that this is an evil and scary act but all you have to see is
the words of his wife to know that she is clearly afraid of this man. From a note found on the wall of their house:
"My husband may come here after 6:00 p.m.. Please stay here if you can.
Thank you, so so so much." The desperation in this note is obvious.
She's scared of Marvin and wants protection.
But her cries for help aren't enough. We see it happen in the game,
just after six o'clock. Marvin breaks through the window in Care's room and
captures her. But why would he kidnap his own daughter? One word:
"Rebirth".
But what exactly that means we'll have to wait until next week. Since HOO-BOY!! When you think about it,
we've covered a lot of territory. That is a lot of information to unpack in this very obscure series.
So I encourage you now, that you're done with this video, go back and watch the Petscop series again with this information. in mind
And make sure you watch this theory one more time, so everything's crystal clear. That way next week
you'll be fully prepared as we wrap up the Petscop mystery. Now that we know who the main players are - of Rainer,
Marvin, Mike, and Care. What is Marvin doing to these kids? Why did Rainer make the game of Petscop for him?
What's with all this creepy real-life imagery
that's hidden in the game's loading screens? And most importantly of all - when can we expect the next installment of the series?
Spoiler alert! It might be a while.
But you know what won't take a while? Unraveling the mystery of it all next week.
So make sure you capture that subscribe button you seen on screen to ensure that you're here to help us decode
YouTube's biggest Let's Play mystery. And by doing that you'll be seriously helping us hit that
all-important 10 million subscriber mark. It'll be a huge milestone for the channel and this community.
It would be incredible. And in the meantime - remember! That's just a theory! A -
That was weird I could have sworn. I put an end card there. Thanks for -