Thank you, ephraim
Hello, Neighbor. (Ominous Satanic Music starts and continues to rise)
Well hello, Neighbor, it's so nice to have you here. Where you belong
I never knew
(Distorted) Satan
Hello, internet
Welcome to Game Theory
The show that's secretly a long meta-story about my week after week march toward baldness as I slowly tear all my hair
out trying to make sense of the symbolic nonsense developers throw at me. In this week's edition of mad Pat's journey to premature chrome
dome-ness hello, neighbor because well the game was supposed to be released tomorrow
And it was really my last chance to try and predict the plot after two more alphas and a beta had been released. I even had
A theory mostly hammered out and then of course the unthinkable. A delay; if it have been Scott Cawthon
It would have been released like three days earlier, but no a delay until December, but then something even more
unthinkable Beta 3 goes public and the developer announces all sorts of information about the final game in just 5 minutes of them talking we
Get so much information
One of the basements one of the bosses fear rooms the fact that this is only 40% of the full
Games, so I took the remnants of my shattered script
Then went back to the drawing board with all this new information only to come to some very interesting
Conclusions. So put your globes on ice and hold on to your umbrellas cuz if you don't it'll probably glitch out and force you to
Restart the game from the beginning cuz it's time to invade a sad lonely man's privacy in the quest for the truth
You can't handle the truth
In the one and a half videos that I've done covering hello, neighbor
I talked about how all the clues in the game up through Alpha 2's release
Pointed at the Neighbor having sold his soul to the devil. Bible passages, Golden Calf imagery, Devil costumes the number
666, but over the past several iterations of the game the edge on the Neighbor has been softened by quite a bit
the ending of Alpha 3 showed us the neighbor alone and crying in a room apparently even the
Antichrist over here has a softer side, but Beta 3 seems to suggest more and more that the neighbor now regrets
whatever deal he made with the Devil so long ago. For proof look no further than the first minute of the game we hear a scream
*scream*
Neighbour runs over to the basement and when he slams the door shut he looks
Panting like he's trying to keep something in and away from him. It's not about keeping us out
It's about keeping whatever is down there stuck down there
I mean heck even props a chair against the door on your side. I'm not gonna keep you out
you literally remove it within
Seconds of pressing start that chair is meant to prop the door shut against whatever
Entity is lurking down there, and then for more proof when you do finally make it down there
What do you find the neighbour or some mental projection of him hiding behind a locked cage with dozens of security?
cameras pointed at the door
It's an eerie image that clearly shows us the neighbours Paranoia, but that begs the question. What else is down there
What is he so scared of what doesn't he want to escape the basement?
Well, we actually see it, The Dark Shadow, in my previous theory on the game
I called out the dark shadowy figure lurking behind the neighbor and some of the promotional illustrations for the game
Hypothesizing based on the faust book also seen in those images that it was the devil Satan himself
Standing behind the neighbor and since that theory came out the role of the shadow has only gotten more
Important in the game. For one the shadow is always present in the so called fear rooms these nightmarish
Dreamscapes forcing you to confront and overcome some type of trauma a pantry where glowing eyes watch you a gym where everyone crowds around
You a grocery store. We are being hunted by other shoppers
It's important to note that these are childhood nightmares and the visual design
Reinforces that idea as everything about these fear rooms is huge and misshapen.
Towering shelves in the supermarket, oversized items in the closet, an enormous twisting classroom.
It's almost as if you're experiencing the world from a whole new perspective, the perspective of a child and watching you the whole time
Not half life's G-Man this time
But the shadow man observing from the rafters in the grocery store looking through the window at the basketball game
staring down from an overhanging beam in the school and peeking into the pantry watching you struggle and
Watching you suffer, but why what's actually going on here? Well
It's my belief that these fear rooms are recreations of the past experiences of the neighbor's
childhood being bullied in school, getting lost in the supermarket.
Getting locked in a pantry. These are all things that happen to our neighbor and we know this for two reasons
First the mannequins. To solve THE major puzzle of Beta 3 we have to bring four mannequins to the
Recreation of a birthday party happening in the center of the Neighbor's house now clearly the Mannequins are
Stand-ins for people from the Neighbors history as he tries to recreate this old birthday party
It's kind of like FNAF 3's happiest day mini-game
it's also worth noting that one of the Mannequins is sad and rejected.
Positioned like he's hiding in a corner again like FNAF 3's happiest day minigame
Go figure, childhood birthday parties huh?
Wrecking more childhoods than game theory who knew where dreams go to die?
Satan is ever present in the impetus for so many
Indie horror games anyway more on that in a second for now all of that evidence seems to establish that to the neighbor
Mannequins are used for recreating moments from his past
it's also heavily hinted at through one of the biggest puzzles in alpha 3. Hidden in the yard next to the neighbor's house is a
Gramophone sticking out of the ground it's odd, but I mean have you seen this game. Odd is like its middle name. Hello odd Neighbor.
Using a mega seed and I'm gonna need you to put them away up inside your butthole
You can grow a tree that produces a golden apple. Drop the apple into the gramophone and suddenly. We're in a flashback
experiencing the world
briefly through the eyes of the neighbor in a moment that
Symbolically feels like he as a child broke a gramophone and lived to regret it
That's the framing device for all these flashbacks and who's there to comfort our poor crying antichrist? None other than the shadow man?
So who, or better yet what, Is the shadow?
While my original theory was that it was Lucifer, Satan himself
And while that might have seemed far-fetched at the time the latest builds only strengthened that theory for one, the number 4 is everywhere
Yes, the number 4.
*The most evil number*.
In the grocery store fear room you see signs everywhere that have four eggs on it with the fourth one being broken and
Falling out of it a golden apple back at the Neighbor's house
There's a large platform balanced on a support on that platform
Four boxes, and if you happen to look inside the boxes by hacking the game inside the fourth box another Golden apple
There are four fear rooms throughout the game, four beds in the house, four mannequins at the party with the fourth one being
Scared and next to that gramophone buried in the ground is a sign that looks like an adult holding on to four
Children with the fourth child tilted like it's being dropped or better yet like it's falling
But what does any of this have to do with Satan?
Well, in Christian texts of all the heavenly hosts cherubim and seraphim lining the skies there are only
four, count 'em, four named angels of all of God's Messengers: Gabriel, Michael, Raphael, and Lucifer.
Lucifer the shining one. The
Morningstar the one that decided he would be greater than God and fell from heaven to become the devil
Just like we see on the side next to the gramophone
What large God figure overseeing four smaller figures with the fourth one?
Falling now all of you attentive theorists may have noticed that most of these
Foursomes came with a golden apple the box on the platform has a golden apple in it the gramophone
Accepts the Golden apple the broken egg in the grocery store has a golden apple hatching out of it heck
there's even a stack of Golden apples that are unreachable on a shelf in the grocery store minigame a
grocery store that has a picture of a golden apple on its sign and was called
The Golden Apple in earlier releases when they were still using English
Golden apples are in paintings alone in paintings hanging from a tree even in the basement
There's a small patch of trees that we know from alpha 3 are the same type of trees that will produce Golden apples.
This symbol is literally everywhere in the game
And of course it comes back again to the Bible or the Torah
Either one will do this time because we're going all the way back to Genesis not the console though
I will say the biblical book of Super Nintendo would have made for some great reading and put to console wars and a whole new light
No, the book of the bible that tells the first story of human sin in the form of Eve eating a fruit from the tree
Of knowledge after being tempted by a serpent a serpent that in Christian belief is commonly thought to be an early
incarnation of the Dear Old Devil
So what does this all mean? We have a lot of things going on very strong evidence of the devil being the main
antagonist of this game. Very strong evidence for the neighbor making a faustian bargain with him being tempted by some Golden apple the Devil was
Offering than coming to regret it
But then there are all these other lingering threads that try as I might I can't quite knit together into the perfect
Theory sweater for lack of a better analogy, I'll just run through them quickly for you
So we can all piece this story together first the birthday party that isn't a biblical reference
but clearly it's a pivotal clue to the story of this game and again reiterates the theme of
Three good things and one different thing it seems to indicate that the neighbor was ostracized from the rest of the kids or the rest
Of his family so is this the moment that changed him to accepting help from the devil
I don't know number two sure the golden apple is knowledge, and the Devil's trickery and all that
But is that all it is in this game that it just represents the temptation of the neighbor
it seems like it should have something to do with the apple of knowledge of
Learning something and what about the bandage on his right ring finger?
Was the neighbor married at some point in Countries like Russia where the game is set?
It's customary to wear wedding bands on the right hand early builds of the game also had a car crash sound
hidden behind the end door. Could the neighbor have lost his wife and made the deal with the devil to get her back is that
Why he's crying at the end of alpha 2? Number 3. What about your character? In your house
you have a picture of a kid on the steps and someone's standing there like the neighbor seems to suggest that there's some sort of
family relationship between the two of you
It's also worth mentioning that on the wall of your house is a picture of your old bedroom which becomes a pivotal clue to unlocking
parts of the Neighbors house later in the game
Then when you beat the basement you're back in a recreation of that room with the neighbor looking in on you screaming.
Couple that with the idea that we're told by the developers that you're moving back into your childhood home
So is the neighbor your father?
I gotta say him peering in on you in your childhood room makes it feel like he's an overbearing parent and his
Overprotectiveness might have been the reason you moved out in the first place
So maybe you were the kid that was rejected from that birthday party the fallen child was you all along
number four since the
Supermarket of the school are locations for fear rooms. We are probably also looking at a factory church and hospital themed one down the road since
There are models for all of those buildings on the outskirts the game map. Any final plot of this game will probably involve those
locations too - or some sort of childhood traumas happening in each of those locations
And finally perhaps the biggest question of all what is real and what isn't?
I mean clearly the fear rooms in the basement are symbolic
But what about the house itself the russian translation for the Railway reads Subway of the subconscious
Seems to strongly indicate that stuff in the game isn't real and a special huge
Thanks to Lena underscore Chestnut for the tip there on the game theorist subreddit well done
I am no scholar of the russian language all of this also harkens back to the earliest alphas of the game where the door the
Neighbor was protecting had a heavenly glow so is this some kind of purgatory?
Some kind of atonement for sins of the past there is clearly a lot here
But it's all just a bunch of loose threads with just
Conjecture to go off of I presented you with the things that feel the most solid from an evidentiary standpoint but from there
I leave it up to you
Which story you feel best ties up all these loose threads
Debate it in the comments come up with your own theory because with the delay until December and only 40 percent of the game released
We have plenty more time to try and find the missing puzzle pieces that link the story together and honestly that's what it feels like
Right now we have big chunks of the puzzle put together on this one
But we're missing the one or two puzzle pieces that make it form one complete picture so for today's episode
I just wanted to present you with all the major details at play here
I just need some more time to think about it, and I'm sure you guys do too anyway
I'll keep tossing it around in my mind also
I just got to call this out because I think it's a fun cultural reference the boss of beta 3 is a
Giant reference to Baba Yaga a character from Russian Folklore that's not for me to talk about though Goomba put it on the to-do list
Good. It's not Japanese culture; do something different you weeaboo!
He can cover that one whether he likes it or not
And I'll be back when I finally have this thing solved and that big revelation hits because until then it's all just
a theory. A Game
Theory, thanks for watching. Take a bite out of that apple of enlightenment, you see hanging on screen right now
I guarantee you'll have some devilishly good fun