MatPat has gone crazy. He has us running the Theory Machine 24/7.
He says he needs to "Appease the YouTube Algorithm" to save us all. Whatever that means...
The Theory Machine was never meant to sustain this kind of load. Things are bound to go wrong.
I heard the machine said that Han and Leia were Rey's parents.
I tell ya, if we have one more researcher turned into an ink monster for a "SCIENCE!" video, I'm outta here!
Hello, Internet!
Welcome to Game Theory, where today, it's getting a little sketchy. (Pun entirely intended!) That's right!
It's time to revisit the world of Bendy and the Ink Machine.
Recently, chapter four - the penultimate episode of this five-part series - came out and hoo-hoo boy! -
What a difference a few months make. Out went the exhausting series of fetch quests from chapter three,
and in came stealth, minigames, actual gameplay, a barbecue--
"What the heck is this?"
--and not just one, but two boss battles. In fact, the game had us seeing double everywhere.
Double Alice, that is.
After proving herself to be a little devilish in chapter three -
(Stephanie): My god! (MatPat): Holy balls!
- chapter four ends with Alice Angel finally getting her comeuppance at the hands of... Alice A-Angel.
( MatPat): What?!
(MatPat): Excuse- hih- heh- huh- 'sc- 'sc- 'scuse me what?
Great question, me from the past. That's exactly what I aim to answer today.
Now obviously, the reveal of a second Alice Angel accompanied by a Mecha-Boris was a huge twist that no one saw coming.
But it was also the clue that we needed to figure this whole thing out.
Because, for all the time that we online have spent theorizing about Bendy,
we've also been ignoring the other title character here.
The Ink Machine.
Specifically, how that ink machine works.
And between the twist ending of chapter four, some hidden files in the game,
and, most importantly of all, changes to the first three chapters now that they've been remastered,
we'll finally be able to piece together what's really going on in this game,
and the surprise reveals that will bring chapter five to a close.
Let's start at the end. The shocking reveal of Alice Croft and Mecha Boris.
Watch everyone on YouTube play-through this chapter,
and we're all shook by this moment.
(What?!)
(What!?)
(Boris!)
(And the real Alice Angel. Hold on!)
But in retrospect, we shouldn't have been. Two Alice Angels shouldn't have been so surprising.
We've literally been walking through halls of dismembered Borises - uh, Bori? - for months now.
I mean, the first big reveal way back in chapter one is a dead Boris.
A big moment of chapter three is dedicated to escort
missioning of Boris through a swamp of dead Bori, and yet, all of a sudden,
we're like, "Whoa, there are two Alices? How is that possible?"
What this clearly confirms for us is that the ink machine is able to produce the same character multiple times.
And as Alice mentions in chapter three, not only is the machine producing multiples of the same character,
but it also does it at varying levels of quality.
So now, let's take a closer
look at our two Alices to see what we can learn.
Chapter three's Alice clearly has something wrong with her.
Her face is half-melted off;
she talks with some kind of weird echoey voice -
oh yeah - the homicidal rage.
This Alice refers to herself as Susie, meaning that she - at one point - was Susie Campbell,
Alice Angel's original voice actress.
Spoiler alert, Susie. They don't.
Unless, of course, your dream was getting run through the chest by a Kill La Kill style scissor blade.
Now let's look at our new Alice.
If you look in the game files, chapter four's Angel is referred to as Allison... Angel.
This name is likely a reference to Allison Pendle,
the voice actress who took over for Susie Campbell.
This, honestly, goes a long way to confirm our last Bendy Theory.
That Joey Drew was using the ink machine to
transform employees into the characters.
But not only that - the fact that the jealous rage fueled Susie became the twisted form of Alice
seems to imply that good-hearted people have the potential to become perfect versions of the characters they most relate to,
while those with impure souls become imperfect copies.
It's almost like the ink machine is passing judgment on those who touch the ink.
Susie's biggest fear was being unremarkable and forgotten.
So the Machine, like some sort of dripping sepia-toned sorting hat,
transformed her into something truly monstrous:
a perversion of the very character that she loved. And that's not all that we learned from Susie.
We also learned that a person can go through the machine multiple times and get different results.
Wriggling, shapeless slug?
It sounds like her first time through, she was selected to be a Searcher.
Like the ink people and ink enemies that we encounter throughout the game.
Because Susie initially became one of these ink creatures,
it's likely that these kinds of creatures are the ink machine standard output for its basic employees.
Much rarer, however, is the machine turning employees into the biggest stars of the Joey Drew universe:
Bendy, Boris, and Alice.
In short, the ink machine is all about a cycle of reincarnation, and it's using humans as ink.
All these instances of "HE WILL SET US FREE" written on the walls are the Searchers literally
searching for an escape - an escape from this endless cycle of death and rebirth.
And someone or something keeps putting them back through this cycle.
Bendy! And that's exactly what we see the ink demon doing.
Gathering ink monsters like we see him do the
projectionist in chapter four and sending them back into the ink supply to be spat out again.
Why? Because everyone, as well as Bendy himself,
I would suspect, believes that a pure-hearted, perfect Bendy output
would be the one who'll be able to end this cycle and finally set all of these trapped people free.
This idea of kind-hearted employees transforming into perfect versions of characters is further supported by Mecha Boris.
Like Allison Angel, "Cy-Boris" isn't given a name in the main gameplay of the chapter.
But if you dig around in the game files again,
you'll find that this character is actually named Tom.
A reference to Thomas Connor, the disgruntled ink machine maintenance employee.
And if you're saying to yourself, "Who?"
Come on, you guys remember Tom, right?
You know.
Tom, the conman, the Tom-ster.
But in all seriousness, you really had no reason to take notice of this guy.
Before chapter four, Thomas Connor was one of those side characters who had no real purpose in the story.
He had one out-of-nowhere audio log from chapter three that didn't reveal any new information.
This, in turn, led me to conclude in my last Bendy theory that
Wally Franks was going to be revealed as Boris in chapter four because
"throughout the chapters, we've seen how every other major character from the audio log
has been transformed into an ink monster."
"So, unless a new monster is introduced in chapter four,
which is pretty late in the game story to be introducing new characters, that leaves us with only one option.
Wally Franks is Boris."
Well, wouldn't you know it, but with the release of chapter four came a bunch of updates to chapters one through three.
The new Remastered Edition!
Which, if you're a theorist like me, reads instead as the Retcon Edition.
It's moments like this that are the most telling for me as I hunt for clues,
because as creators go through the process of telling their story,
they tend to have a better sense of where they're headed and how they actually want to tell that story as they get closer to the finish line.
And so they go back and tweak a few things and add a few things to better telegraph where they're headed.
And true to form,
Thomas Connor suddenly became a much more prominent character, with an audio log and ink output schedule being added into chapter one
and a joint conversation with the janitor Wally Franks added into chapter three.
Which begs the question of "why?"
My last theory concluded that Wally Franks had to be Boris.
He's one of the most prominent characters in the game,
he has a connection with The Ink Machine as evidenced by the blueprints,
and theMeatly has made it clear on Twitter that despite saying time and time again that he was -
(Wally Franks:) Outta here!
He never actually made it!
Wally never got out of Joey Drew studios.
We also know, based on the items you collect in chapter one for the summoning ritual of The Ink Machine,
that he's now the only character left at this point.
Joey Drew has his book; Sammy is the record; Thomas Connor is now established with the wrench;
Alice is the stuffed toy based on her chapter taking place in the toy workshop;
our character Henry is the artist, so he's represented by the ink;
Which leaves the last item as The Ink Machine's gear.
That's Wally Franks!
He's an essential character to the story, appearing in every chapter,
and yet the creator of the game decided to retcon Thomas into a bigger role, so that he could become Boris,
despite the fact that all the signs were pointing to Wally Franks becoming Boris.
This tells me one thing.
That theMeatly has other plans for Wally and has had other plans for Wally the entire time.
It tells me that Wally Franks is gonna be revealed to be the Bendy Monster.
I know. I know.
It seems like it should be Joey Drew. There is tons of evidence for that.
But it's starting to feel like that's more and more of a misdirect by theMeatly.
I mean, think about what we've learned about Joey Drew up to this point.
He's selfish. He steals. He's a liar.
He's not the type of person to test The Ink Machine on himself,
which is why he gives people like Susie a special "opportunity",
using the ink to turn her into Alice - as a test case.
But our evidence isn't just a psychological analysis of the character.
The limping, twisted-footed Bendy that I talked about in the last theory that I thought
connected with this shot of a wheelchair from chapter one?
It appears to be gone in the newest chapter!
And in the remasters, as confirmed by these animated models released by the game's official team.
And if that wasn't enough, if nothing else,
we know that Joey Drew sent that note from the beginning of the game.
Unless he sent it right before he transformed himself,
it doesn't make a whole lot of sense that a Bendy monster looking like that would have the best penmanship.
Now, look at another change that happened in the remasters.
It used to be that Bendy was summoned by pentagrams on the ground.
But if you play through again, you'll notice that
they're just random shapes in a circle.
Pentagrams come with evil, satanic connotations.
This change tells me that Bendy is no longer meant to be purely a villain.
But if he's Wally Franks, a man who was - against his will - thrown into the ink and transformed, this suddenly makes sense.
We also know, based on that Twitter post I mentioned earlier, that Wally doesn't escape from Joey Drew Studios.
So he has to be someone in the game and we have yet to meet him with just one chapter left.
There's only so many people he could possibly be.
Now look at his audio log from chapter four.
This reveals to us that he's disgruntled and vengeful to his fellow employees.
A trait which, we know from Susie as "Twisted Alice", would turn him into an imperfect ink creature,
like the imperfect ink demon Bendy.
The clip also reinforces the idea that Wally cleans up the messes of everyone else.
What do we see Bendy do with the projectionist in chapter four?
Cleans up his mess by dragging his body away.
In fact, if I'm right in saying that Bendy is constantly throwing people back into the ink machine in the hopes of producing a perfect Bendy,
well, that's what he's doing in the context of this entire plot.
He's trying to clean up after the mess Joey Drew created.
But, regardless of whether evil Bendy is Joey Drew or Wally Franks,
one thing I can promise you is that just like there's an evil Alice Angel and a good one,
there is a perfect Bendy to balance out the ink demon.
And dear viewers,
I'm here to tell you that perfect Bendy is
YOU!
That's right!
You, Henry the protagonist, are gonna be the prophesized Bendy
that saves Joey Drew studios and all its employees from their cycle of rebirth.
Here's how I see the whole thing playing out.
First, we know that Joey and Henry started this business together,
and we know that Henry created one of the characters.
Based on the fact that his desk has what appears to be an early version of Bendy with a NO over top,
it seems pretty clear that he created Bendy but got rejected by Joey.
Eventually, Henry leaves the company.
However, we know that Joey Drew steals characters,
so he stole and tweaked the design of Bendy, leading to huge amounts of success, and even its own theme park.
Which begs the question then, "what would lead Susie to say this?"
Why would Joey, despite all this success, be poor?
Well, it's because of Henry.
We know that Henry did something to the studio, or to these characters based on this line in chapter three.
I'm thinking Henry sued the company for stealing his character
or perhaps, based on the poison ink that he's represented by in that opening ritual,
is the one who created and sent the ink machine in the first place.
All in the name of sabotaging the man who stole his character.
!t was his OC - do not steal, but then someone did!
Joey Drew stole his OC, and we, online, know that that's unforgivable.
So Joey invited him back thirty years later, to see the ruins of their business,
forcing Henry to face what he did.
Joey approaches Henry, forces him into the ink, and everything seems lost.
But then, since the ink machine clearly judges people,
Henry's pure love of these characters will be the thing that ultimately allows him to emerge as perfect Bendy,
overcome Joey Drew, destroy the ink machine, and set everyone else free.
The end.
Well, at least until Five Chapters at Bendy's 2.
But hey, that's just a theory -
a Game Theory!
Thanks for watching.
If you want more Bendy action,
then check out my friends over at The Leaderboard,
as they break down all the secret Easter Eggs from Chapter Four.
Like, did you realize that the connections between
Bendyland and Disneyland actually go a lot deeper than you might think?
If you head on over, do me a favor -
let him know in the comments that MatPat sent ya.
Or if you want to see how this theory got put together,
click the box to the right to check out the live stream
where we actually break down all the little changes and details from chapters one through three,
and describe a little bit of what it's like to be a theorist, looking at all those retcons.
Now, if you'll excuse me, next week - something long overdue.