*Jack-in-the-box music*
POP goes the weasel!
Hello Internet! Welcome to Film Theory, where everything is all fun and games until it isn't.
So it's been a bit of a hot minute since we last talked about spoopy, scary animatronics
on this channel. Over a year, in fact. It's a long time, especially when you consider that
some other channels out there are able to get like, a video a week out of that sort of stuff.
I mean, who do you think we are? gAmE tHeOrY? That said, there is a series that I've been
wanting to talk about that scratches the same animatronic itch: Harmony and Horror. Created
by the incredibly talented animator Battington right here on YouTube.com. Now, if you've
watched any analog horror before or you follow our theories covering them, you know the drill. It's
the eighties, everything is on low quality VHS camera footage and things that are normally fun,
in this case toys, are getting corrupted, turning scary, attacking nearby security guards.
Man, this really is like FNAF, isn't it? I just can't escape it.
Another thing Harmony in Horror borrows from its FNAFather is a complicated timeline. In
classic analog horror fashion the uploads here aren't happening in chronological order,
which means that putting together a timeline of events gets challenging.
We see the same event from multiple different perspectives. Those uploads are happening more
than a year apart. Characters are pulling double duty. There is a lot of mystery here. What's more,
it appears that the story of harmony and horror is being told to us through literal tapes in
universe, with most of the upload, starting as a VHS tape that gets put into a VCR, meaning that
there is a meta layer on top of all of this. So with my FNAF timeline finally done and
written, I wanted to sit down and put together another animatronic story,
one that's much scarier and isn't afraid to go darker. That said, before we dive in,
I do want to say that this theory is only going to be talking about season one. Yeah,
season two is already underway. But considering how much there is to cover in season one,
we wouldn't be doing the series justice if we tried cramming it all together.
So do me a favor. Try not to spoil anything from season two down in the comments,
we'll be saving that one for another video. Without any further ado, dim the lights and
hug your Stitchbuddy close. You're going to need him. It's time to tell the tragic tale of a family
that's been broken apart by greed and ultimately held together, reluctantly, by Satan himself.
Our story follows the Greywhinder family: Martin, his wife Gloria, and their three children,
Thomas Macy, and their infant girl, Ava. Martin and his brother Arthur co-found a
toy manufacturing company called M&A Harmony Toys, along with an entertainment production
company called M&A HarmonyPlay Productions. The M&A here obviously standing for the brothers,
Martin and Arthur. Now, sadly, things don't seem to be going too well for the both of them. In the
video Are_Y0u_HappY? We see the screen briefly glitched to reveal a newspaper clipping reviewing
one of their toys, Henry the puppet doll. And the criticism isn’t kind, saying that the toy
feels more dead than alive. This infuriates the prideful and jealous Martin, starting an obsession
to make the most lifelike toys imaginable by incorporating parts of real life creatures.
Arthur begs them to stop, but Martin refuses. Partly out of obsession, partly out of pride,
but mostly because Arthur is having an affair with Martin's wife, Gloria.
With his life crumbling around him,
Martin becomes angry and violent, especially towards his son, Thomas.
It gets bad enough that the police eventually have to intervene as we see in the video, _Rebirth_.
By 1982, Martin's become a full on murderer. We see this in the videos Are_Y0u_HappY? and
Wh4t_Went_Wr0ng? Two archives of the local children show that Martin produces through
HarmonyPlay Productions, and what they depict is, ah, it is truly disturbing.
In the videos, two children and their dog Banzo visit a traveling toymaker in
the hopes that he'll make them the perfect toy. The toy maker agrees,
but is sad because he can't make the toys more lifelike.
Can't make the toys more lifelike, huh? It's almost like art imitates life. Regardless,
the kids offer to help the toymaker out, so he sends them out on a series
of fetch quests. This includes bringing back a needle and thread,
painting and fabric, and perhaps most strangely, their dog, Banzo.
This then becomes his first monstrous creation,
a giant living version of Stitchbuddy with the spirit of the dog inside of it.
Large, dangerous and obedient. Martin loves his creations, so he continues. The final
ingredient he needs for their perfect toy is their voice, asking the kids to repeat
after him. But before we hear what he's saying, the tape is interrupted by a federal warning,
telling viewers that if any of the original audio or video from the section of the broadcast
remains, they must close their eyes, cover their ears and turn their head around 180 degrees.
Public access television ain't great, but can't be that bad,
right? Towards the end of the tape were shown pictures of several kids who died in 1982,
the same year as this particular broadcast. Under each picture is the child's cause of
death, one that came from a seizure while watching his favorite show,
the other whose head was facing backwards. Both of these are heavily implying that
whatever happened to these kids was caused by the cut part of the broadcast. The whole
event would eventually come to be known as The Harmony Broadcast Incident. But evil tapes,
that's only the beginning of Martin's descent into depravity. Around the same time, Amy Willson,
Martin's Intern at M&A Harmony Toys goes missing. And here's the thing, this isn't the first time
we hear of this character either. One of those pictures of people who died in 1982 was labeled
Amy Willson. But she wasn't the victim of some TV broadcast gone wrong, she was murdered by Martin.
Her picture says she stopped screaming when her spine came out. Hoo, That is just… that's
just a special layer of dark. And it would seem like The Harmony Broadcast Incident was
Martin's confession to this particular crime. You see, when the boys from the cartoon go to
collect the needle and thread, they get it out of a body bag with a human corpse inside of it.
Just look at that face, it is floppy and structureless. Almost like its skull and
spine were removed, just like Amy Wilson. Hold on. Going from cuckolded husband and jealous toymaker
to serial murderer? I mean, that is a massive leap of escalation. Why? Why did these kids die? Why
did Martin kill Amy Wilson? Why is he resorting to releasing a creepy, evil video broadcast if he's
just obsessed with creating lifelike toys? The answer, my friends, is Satan. The devil
literally made him do it. Right at the beginning of the video Are_Y0u_HappY? we get this line:
A man dressed in red with ice cream cones on his head. Ice cream cones?
or horns? Later in Wh4t_Went_Wr0ng? We actually see the silhouette of
this very man. It's a figure that's so intimidating it scares the toymaker.
Not only that, but we see evidence of demonic rituals happening outside of that particular
video as well. In She_C4n't_Sle3p.mp4 We see another toy, the singing Sophia doll hidden
inside of a closet, surrounded by candles and a crucifix on the wall. Almost looks like some
sort of ritual’s happening. We see more of those candles lined up in the Toymaker Shop
during The Harmony Broadcast Incident and in the video Go0d_B0y we get confirmation as to
what's happening. Martin is killing things and then performing satanic rituals to bind
souls to the various toys around the toy shop. His first successful victim is the dog Banzo,
who gets fuzed into the giant animalistic Stitchbuddy toy.
the part that was clipped from The Harmony Broadcast Incident? Yep, it had to have been
some sort of demonic incantation that certain viewers at home felt the need to repeat.
He clearly made a deal with the devil to make his toys more lifelike and all of it
for perfection and control, especially control. He really likes that feeling and it's something
that we're going to watch him assert on his family over and over again across the next four videos.
Frustrated at the lack of control that he has over his family and his wife,
Martin breaks. As he puts his daughter Macy to sleep. Martin seems distracted and sad,
refusing to sing her a lullaby. But he promises to, quote, “make her a doll” that can sing. A
promise that he will literally make true later that night. He reminds Macy that he and Mommy
have a business meeting in the morning and that she might not be seeing her mother for a while.
But clearly there is no business meeting here. Instead, Martin confronts Gloria about her
infidelity and in the video She_C4n't_Sle3p, we hear the aftermath of that conversation. Gloria
frantically enters Macy's room, waking her before the pair are attacked by Stitchbuddy.
After a glitch, we hear Gloria hiding Macy before Martin ultimately finds and kills
Gloria. Martin, though far from deterred, continues to hunt. He moves on to Macy,
Thomas and Ava. Binding each to a different toy in the M&A roster.
Thomas becomes Henry the puppet, Macy becomes Sofia the singing marionette,
and Ava the baby becomes, well, this thing.
Now with control over his family, Martin seems happy again. With a pep in the step,
he introduces a new mascot named The Ice Cream Man to his brother Arthur,
believing that this character is going to be a hit for the company.
But Arthur is done. Unaware of the previous night's rampage Arthur reveals that he's talked to
Gloria and that she and the kids are leaving with him, at least until Martin gets his act together.
That's when Martin reveals that he's already fixed their, quote unquote “little problem”.
Interestingly, this is exactly what the Toy Maker says during The
Harmony Broadcast Incident. At this point, Martin has basically become the character.
Using his demonic rituals Martin then fuzes his brother into the Ice Cream
Man suit. But even though he's gone, parts of Arthur's soul still shine through. In
a scene split across two separate videos released a year apart, we see that Arthur,
in the form of the ice cream man, forces Martin to pay for his crimes.
Legitimately it's a cool, creative choice, but as you might suspect, this is far from
the end of Martin. He suffers the exact same fate as his family: his body disappearing,
and his soul becoming trapped inside yet another animatronic… toy… puppet thing. EVERYTHING'S
BEEN USED. I suppose you could say he always comes back. This time, though, we're dealing
with the creepy clown known as the jester. At this point, the outside world considers
the Greywhinders to have vanished. We see a news report in the video Local 13 detailing
a police raid on the Greywhinder household. Well, they find no signs of Martin or his
family. They do discover the bodies of eight other victims with their limbs cut off and
their skin empty. Presumably the people that he killed to make his first wave of monstrosities.
With the Greywhinders now gone, some other corporate entity swoops in and buys the business,
taking over the M&A Harmony toy store and continuing to sell the evil dolls. So is
that the end? Obviously not. We find out exactly where the family is these days,
thanks to the title of the next video, which is, ah this. If you're an ARG veteran,
you'll recognize this as an encrypted sentence in a simple Caesar cipher.
If you shift each of the letters in the title back by one, it reads “They are inside the building”.
Their souls are still trapped there; inside the toys, begging for release, bashing their
heads against the wall in an attempt to escape. And bit by bit, they're losing themselves to
whatever demonic curse that Martin cast on them. In I_WaNt_4_T0y we see the Henry puppet doll sing,
before breaking down as a literal demon crawls out of his head. In D0n'T_CrY.Mp4 if you refuse to
sing with Sofia, her face opens up and a demonic tentacle comes out to attack the viewer. And in
Go0dbye_My_L0ved_One5, Arthur's spirit straight up tells us that he doesn't have much time left.
But most interestingly, he asks the viewer to stop him.
Stop him from what exactly? From attacking and hurting innocent people. Several of the videos
feature the toys at the M&A Harmony Toy Store coming to life, attacking the security guards,
crawling through the vents to get to them. And one shot here features a grotesque pink
monster. That right there, that is Arthur. That is what he's been cursed to become.
And through it all, Martin’s soul is still within the jester, haunting the store right
alongside the rest of them, trapped in a nightmare of his own creation.
Now, we could certainly leave things there, and we'd already have ourselves a tragic,
compelling story, a man so obsessed with creating perfection that he ends up being the downfall of
his own family. But we're not done yet. You'll notice that one member of the family avoided
being stuffed into an animatronic suit, as it were. Martin's wife, Gloria. For whatever reason,
she isn't transformed into a toy, and she isn't cursed in the same way as the rest of her family.
So where then is she? She can't have been the only one to have escaped. Right? Right. She's
here too. Throughout all of the videos, if you pay attention, you'll notice a ghost appearing
in the background of several shots. She appears in Are_Y0u_HappY? as a ghost lingering in the
background, in Thr0ugh_Broken_WindOws she's behind the image of her son, in Wake_uP_B4nZo.mp4 she's
emerging from the shadows, in Henry.mp4 she's staring into the toy shop. And most importantly in
Go0d_By3_ArThur.mp4 she's reaching a hand out and begging the viewer to “Come With Me”. But why? Why
has she invaded these tapes, this archive of all of Martin's sins? Why is she breaking the fourth
wall to tell us to come with her? Why is she talking to us? Well, it's because we are Martin.
We are the jester. We are literally the bad guy of this story. Rewatching these tapes over and
over and over, obsessing over the details of our life, trapped inside of this nightmare. At the top
of the theory, I mentioned how most of the uploads in the series begin with a VHS tape being inserted
into a VCR. What I didn't mention is that if you look closely, you can see the reflection of the
character watching the tape inside the television screen. That right there, is a great detail.
And whose reflection is staring back at us every time? Martin, the jester. He's watching the tapes.
And Gloria is using the tapes to try and get through to him, to us. In the Season one finale,
Ple4se_C0me_B4ck_T0_M3 Gloria's twisted face calms, the wide eyed scream becoming a solemn
sadness. It's here that she reveals that she was the one playing these tapes for us, showing us the
story, begging Martin to see what he's done, how he's hurt the family, how they were all proud of
him before his deal with the devil, how he can still come back to them and make things right.
And for a minute it seems like there might be hope. The beginning of this video reveals that
the field from ReSt_As5ure.mp4 where all his fears and regrets from his life can't hurt him. That was
actually where he had his first date with Gloria, where they started their relationship, which led
to their family. That's a place where he doesn't have to be the jester, he doesn't have to be the
toy maker or whatever his deal with the devil turned him into. But Martin can't come back. At
least he doesn't want to. Whether it's because of his rage or his regret or his corruption, Martin
is too far gone. He breaks the television and banishes Gloria's spirit as the screen shatters.
So there you have it. That's Harmony & Horror season one,
or at least the best I can do it. Putting together this fragmented narrative into the
heartbreaking story of a man's destructive need for perfection and control. As I mentioned before,
Battington has already started season two. So if you want to get there before I do my next theory,
go check it out. Link is down in the description below. And hey, if there are other little known
online series that you want me to check out, leave them down in the comments.
I'm accepting all recommendations. Bonus points if there are no animatronics or possessed spirits.
But hey! If you want to check out some more killer content, why don't you go check out our brand new
style theory channel. All about fashion, beauty and hygiene. If that sounds a bit strange. Yeah,
I get it. Seems like a weird subject to theorize about, but I promise that you're going to be
surprised by what you find there. For example, have you ever wondered whether or not you could
be allergic to color? Well, I was inspired to ask that very question from the Netflix
series Wednesday. It's actually a much more interesting and complicated question than you
might initially think. So go and check that video out if you're interested. Link is onscreen right
now or if you're looking for more animatronic adjacent horror, our coverage of the Walten
Files is to the right. That is another scary and very dark series. Anyway, as always, my friends,
thank you for watching. And remember, it's all just a theory A FILM THEORY! aaaaaand cut.