Game Theory - Don't REJECT His Offer! (Poppy Playtime Chapter 4)

Episode Date: March 19, 2025

Join Game Theory Host Tom as he predicts the story of Poppy Playtime Chapter 4!

Poppy Playtime's Chapter 4 ARG is over. And as a reward for solving all the puzzles, we got nothing. No new character, no new trailer, not even a release date. Was this all just a pointless exercise to keep us fans busy? No. Because the information we got throughout the ARG paint a much better picture of what we can expect from chapter 4. And how our main villain became the monster we know today. All it takes is one bad day.

Hello internet. Welcome to Game Theory. the show that's always keeping an eye out for Poppy lore. So you can bet that I was watching the Poppy Playtime Chapter 4 ARG very closely. And I have to say, the ending of this ARG felt rather unceremonious. At the end of Chapter 3's ARG, we got a teaser for the Smiling Critters cartoon and a news report on their cancellation, which gave us theorists a bunch to talk about. But this time, we got nothing.

So much nothing, in fact, that the only reason we really knew the ARG was over was because the devs took to Discord and said, Thanks for playing. Guys, please. I know I joked about this last time, but you've got to stop breaking the fourth wall to give us information like this. Let your content speak for itself.

And if it doesn't, then maybe that's something you need to look into. Since then, we did get a short showing off a new character that was found early on in the ARG, pianosaurus. But it doesn't really give us a whole lot to work with. Hey, Future Tom here, and apologies if my voice sounds a little bit off. I've been sick this week. But that didn't stop Mob from once again releasing something new, the week our video goes live. I'll talk about this specific teaser a little bit later on, though it doesn't really change

a whole lot, but I wanted to let you know that I've seen it. I'm not ignoring it. It's just that this script and the whole premise was written three weeks ago. Right, back to past me. However, it's out of the ashes of disappointment that theories rise. We may not have gotten a new full trailer, but I still haven't done a theory on the previous teaser that was released. Similar to the Pianosaurus teaser, at the time, it didn't really feel like there was much

to say about it. But now, thanks to everything we've uncovered through this ARG, there's actually a lot more beneath the surface of this two-minute teaser. So, it's time for another ride down into the depths theorists. We've got some new backstories for our primary villains to uncover, a bunch of interesting references to Decipher, and an unlikely ally to put our faith in if we want to make it out alive. I'd say grab your plushy for comfort, but that may not be wise down here. In case you missed it, here's how the teaser goes down. Get it? Because it starts with a lift going. Down? Yes, we say lift in the UK instead of elevator. Just forget it. After travelling down, we see more mountains of dead toys, like we did in the first teaser, as someone walks through

the darkness with their grab pack and a flashlight. We see the red smoke being pumped through the pipes and into the prison cells, while a mysterious creature stalks us, killing a little nightmare critter Poe in the process. Finally, we end up in the main hall as a TV with a realistic eyeball watches us, only to hear a broken songplay. Like one you'd hear. from an old forgotten toy, we turn around and reveal a lion made of yarn. Yarnaby. You may remember we spoke about Yarnaby in our last video. It was one of the trademarked names submitted by mob entertainment, alongside the name, Doey the Do-Man. Sorry, I still can't really believe that's the name they went with. Anyway, in that episode, we theorized that Harley Sawyer, the man responsible for the bigger body's

initiative, had been turned into a bigger body himself, finally escaping the mortal flesh that would incinerate him. And that meant that he was either going to be Yarnaby or Doey the Do-Man. My money was on Doey and according to the poll we took at the end of the episode, nearly 200,000 of you agreed with me, while 100,000 of you found like Yarnaby was more likely. Well, here's Yarnaby, let's see who was right. This is where the ERG really comes in. I'm not going to go through every puzzle this time, mainly because it's actually quite complicated. And sadly, the website is gone now, so there's no way for you to use this as a guide so you can play along for yourself. If you do want a more in-depth breakdown of the puzzles, I highly recommend you check out the Poppy Playtime Discord where a lot of these solutions were first discovered.

But early on in the ARG, there were some real-world coordinates hidden in camera feed audio. YouTube, Sheep Rampage happened to be relatively close to one of these locations. And once they got there, found a huggy doll sewn together with yarn, containing two documents. These were child assessment documents, like the ones we found in Chapter 2, where a child would be paired with a toy for their eventual conversion. The toy from these experiments was Yarnaby, with the second document referring to him specifically as Experiment 1166. In another set of documents, we get reports about 1166 after the bigger body's conversion process, one of which is about how Yarnaby lacks the desired high cognitive function, making him more akin to a dog or a cat, with the final decision being for it to essentially become a guard dog for the person writing the report.

Harley Sawyer. Sound the bells of celebration, editor! I called it! Harley Sawyer did not become Yarnaby. And given that Yarnaby has been revealed in this second teaser, rather than the final trailer like Catnatt was, I don't believe he's going to be our Big Bad either. Instead, he's going to be the lapdog for the real Big Bad,

his master, Harley. Now that doesn't mean we're done with Yarnaby. There's been a lot of importance put on him and his character during this ARG, just like in Chapter 3's ARG with Catnap. In that ARG, we found out that the human identity of Catnap was an orphan named Theodore. In the chapter 4 ARG, we are now being given the human identity of Yarnaby, Quinn Navidson, a young orphan boy who Harley Sawyer took personal interest in.

His initial test scores that we see were fine. Nothing great, but nothing bad either. This is where Harley stepped in and tried to relate to Quinn, talking to him about how the other scientists just don't understand Quinn like he does, trying to push him to do better in the next assessment, and it works. Partially. His physical skills do increase. But his mental functioning in musical memory gets worse, which matches what we end up seeing in Harley's report about Yarnaby.

Strong, agile, swift. And yet, I'd hoped for a greater mind behind it. Later on in the ARG, Harley gained access to an email address and people began communicating with him directly. When asked about Yarnaby, his response was pathetic. Amusing, but pathetic. Harley sees Quinn as nothing more than an amusing plaything, something to be manipulated. And when that manipulation didn't work out fully the first time, he then perceived. to manipulate him further by isolating Yarnaby so that he would answer to no one but himself.

Which brings up an interesting point about this recent teaser. And the very start of this teaser as we head down the elevator, you can hear the final words of Poppy from the end of chapter 3. However, they're distant, as if they're coming from a different part of the factory. At the end of chapter 3, we were standing right next to Poppy. It would be weird for it to sound this different if this was meant to be the same elevator shaft, which means this isn't from our normal player character's perspective, but someone else's. Who this new person is felt unclear until those details about Yarnaby came to light. Yarnaby was the guard dog for Harley.

He was loyal to Harley. And what happens when Yarnaby sees this person at the front desk? Or more importantly, what doesn't he do? He doesn't attack. Sure, he opens his mouth and reveals his creepy alien second mouth, but he's not pulling a huggy or a mummy or a catnap and ripping us to pieces. If anything, he's actually being nice to us. he brought us a gift.

Up on the monitor behind the desk is the Poe toy that we saw Yarnaby kill earlier, like a cat, bringing a bird that it caught to its owner as a presence. If Yarnaby is like a pet, then that would mean he's presenting this to his master. The point of view we're seeing from, Harley Sawyer. And this is where Future Tom comes back in again, because this new teaser does seem to suggest that while I was right about Harley not being Yarnaby, I wasn't exactly right about it being Doey either. So sorry, Future Jericho.

There's a little more for you to edit now. Hey, don't look at me. It's not my fault. Blame Mob games for releasing new stuff every single week. Anyway, in this new teaser, we see a humanoid robotic hand reach for a catnapt toy. And then the eye that we saw in the monitor of the Arnaby teaser flashes on screen. When Mob tweeted about this teaser, they used the phrase, Someone's been watching your every move. Last time, we spoke about how Harley is the one that's been watching us,

recapping chapters 1 through 3 on the Mob Entertainment YouTube channel. And so that means this eye, and likely hand, belongs to him, implying that he's less of a traditional toy bigger body and more like a digitised computer entity with a robotic body that he can use to interact with the world. So the Yarnaby teaser can still be from Harley's perspective, it's just his humanoid robot form we're seeing through rather than his all-seeing eye computer view through security cameras and screens. And that would explain further why the Poe toy was presented on top of the computer rather than on the front desk. Yarnaby was giving it to his master directly. So Yarnaby wasn't right,

But neither was Doey, so I guess we'll call this one a draw. What is fascinating about all of this, though, is the complete juxtaposition we get between Yarnaby and Catnab from these ARGs. As a quick reminder, in Chapter 3's ARG, we were introduced to Theodore, the orphan that would eventually become Catnap. We received a number of documents throughout the ARG that told us that Theodore was a little bit of an odd child. He was antisocial and seemed to have an imaginary friend that turned out to not be so imaginary. A drawing of his revealed it to be 1006.

the prototype, and they had Theodore looking through the office for documents, stealing a grab pack, and trying to help 1006 reach freedom. Sadly, during that escape attempt, Theodore was badly injured. But instead of running away, 1006 took Theodore to the Playtime Coast scientists in order to save him. 1006 was recaptured and Theodore became catnep. But inside their cage, 1006 and catnap stick together with catnap following 1006 like a quote, lost puppy. Now, look at what we learn about Quinn.

He's an anti-social kid with some strange tendencies, like ripping the heads off of toys. He's approached by Harley who manipulates him into helping him create a better, bigger body. But the experiment doesn't go as planned, and he is deemed a pathetic failure. Harley continues to act like he cares about Yarnaby, but according to Dr. Carmine in one of the reports,

he really doesn't, leaving Yarnaby sad and alone, waiting for his master to come home like a lost puppy. In both cases, an authority figure takes an interest in a specific orphan with anti-social tendencies. They then convince that orphan to work with them to achieve their desired goal, the goal doesn't go as planned, and in the end, the kid gets turned into a bigger body, becoming obsessed with the authority figure and their approval.

However, the key difference comes down to these authority figure's motives and how they react when things go awry. 1006 wasn't trying to hurt anyone. They just wanted to be free, and so influenced Theodore to help it escape. When things went south, it sacrificed itself to say. Thieodore. Harley, on the other hand, wasn't afraid of hurting people to get what he wants. And once Quinn was turned into Yarnaby and was deemed a failure, Harley lost interest and mocked him. Now, to be fair, 1006 does end up betraying catnap in the end. I mean, who could forget

that? But here, we're being shown that if we felt that was bad, Harley is much worse, because he never cared to begin with. He doesn't have any empathy. All he's pursuing is his selfish desire for progress. And actually, this part of Sawyer's personality is front and centre throughout the entire ARG. One of the first pieces of evidence we got for this thing was a poster for the Young Geniuses program, an initiative started by Elliot Ludwig to gather the greatest minds of the generation to help Playtime Kobe at the forefront of innovation. Turns out, Harley was one of those bright minds selected for the program. Elliot actually takes a special interest in Harley, saying he was the kind of person that could lead the science of the future. Although as time goes

Elliot realizes that Harley's only concern is progress for progress's sake, rather than for the betterment of mankind, which Elliot believes is the true key to driving scientific progress. This then leads Elliot to kick Harley out of the program. And as you might imagine, Harley doesn't take this so well. We found an image of some distorted torn-up paper, creating what looked like the silhouette of a jester? Maybe a new character from Chapter 4.

Maybe Doey? Anyway, by separating the image into its color layers and de-sacept, saturating them, we can see a much more clear message being written. He took everything. I thought you cared. Nobody cares. Nobody understands. Elliot Ludwig is a soft, pathetic, small-minded backstabber. Nothing more. Despite all of this, as we know, Harley does eventually come back to Playtime Coe to start the bigger body's initiative. We even found his offer letter from Leith Pierre and the search Playtime Co did to track down old members of the Young Geniuses program. Because of course the shady company keeps all your personal information on file after all these years. Now, let's see what happened to Harley once he returned to the factory. Well, something had changed within him.

Something was not the same. Sorry, I couldn't help myself. But it wasn't the new perspective Elliot was hoping for. Instead, Harley's picked up a new mantra. Notes from the employees about Harley show us that he liked to remind them regularly that they were all just one bad day away from catastrophe. This phrase is actually repeated a bunch of times because it's later used as a past. to access some of the ARG documents. But to my nerdy brain, it was a little more than that, because it isn't just any phrase.

This phrase comes specifically from the 1988 Batman graphic novel, The Killing Joke. The plot of this story initially follows a man who fails as a comedian, loses his wife and unborn child in an accident, and then jumps into a chemical waste shoot to escape Batman during a heist gone wrong. All those things happen in a single day, and it drives him insane. the chemicals he dives into, turning his skin white, his lips red, and his hair green, creating the Joker, we all know today. In the present day, the Joker proceeds to kidnap Commissioner Gordon attempting to drive

him insane, so that he can prove to Batman that all it takes to make someone like him is just one bad day. That's how far the world is and where I am. Just one bad day. The problem is, Joker is using this phrase after the fact, after his bad day turned him into the Joker. So for Harley to be reciting this mantra now in more recent times, it would imply that he has already gone insane.

That him losing his place in the Young Geniuses program, Elliot's betrayal, that was the one bad day that pushed him over the edge. And looking back at that note we saw of him not taking the news particularly well, that kind of tracks, reads very Joker-ish. And actually a lot of his actions do seem to line up with certain iterations of the Joker. Harley starting the Bigger Body's initiative is already an insane idea, but it may be he could continue to chase progress for the sake of progress. I'm a dog chasing cars.

I wouldn't know what to do with one if I caught it. You know, I just do things. In that same scene, Joker refers to people in authority like Gordon as schemers that need to be shown how pathetic they are and that he is the one to do it. Again, Harley regularly sees the people around him as pathetic. Those with ideals, dreams, or even just less intellect, he considers soft and getting in his way. You can see it with how Harley treats Quinn. I keep wanting to say Harley Quinn.

That's like... Oh, that's... I can't believe that's just occurred to me. Oh, sorry, I'm in the recording booth literally right now. This isn't scripted. But we have Harley and Quinn. Harley Quinn. Are you kidding me?

Oh, that makes so much sense, and it really ties together this Joker thing. Sorry, I'm probably getting ahead of myself a little bit. For those of you who don't know, Harley Quinn is Joker's sidekick that he turns from a normal member of society into a monster. Sounds familiar, right? But while she loves them... the Joker, to him, at least in some interpretations, she is more like a pet, another porn that he can abuse and use to further his own goals, exactly like we saw with Harley's relationship

to Quinn. And in typical Joker fashion, all of this culminates in one insane grand finale. At one point during the ARG, players were able to unlock a new page that displayed a set of nonsensical sentences. He asked if I still dream, why? This changes nothing. A broken leash. Caskets, I do.

What became of her? Theatre incident. Still, it's strange the things that linger. Quickly, people began to notice that theatre incident was hyperlinked, and that gave them a zip folder containing a number of burnt items, like a theatre projector,

a huggy doll, and a candy cat. And right at the end of the ARG, we got to hear a conversation between some of the higher-ups at Playtime Coe discussing an incident, which is heavily implied to be the same theatre incident. The crux of the conversation is

whose heads on the chopping block for this incident. What, halfway? Soon to be dead man made this mistake. Finally, it's revealed that it was Harley Sawyer that caused it. And in a second version of this recording, there was some audio that when put through a spectrogram, gave us what appeared to be ancient Greek, spelling the words, the baptism of fire.

We spoke last time about how Harley sees mortality as a fire that we must escape. So, him being insane and acting upon it in a literal sense, baptizing everyone with a fire in the theatre, all as part of his grand idea of program, It fits the bill quite nicely. Harley is Poppy Playtime's version of the Joker. All it took was One Bad Day. So, how on earth do we stop him?

Joker is notoriously one of Batman's most dangerous villains, and now we've been shown how One Bad Day has made Harley the most dangerous enemy in Poppy Playtime. He's smart, he's unpredictable, he's a loose cannon, he doesn't care who he hurts to prove his point. And unlike Batman, we don't have the Infinite Money Glitch or toy repellent Batsprice or toy repellent BatSpray. Well, don't worry loyal theorists because the solution might just come from an unlikely ally. Earlier I mentioned that Harley Sawyer gained access to an email address in order to communicate with us directly. But that wasn't how it initially started. When we started this ARG, the email address was just a generic automated message. At the same time, we were receiving Intel from

someone on the Poppy Playtime Discord with the username Playtime Code. They were feeding us clues that looked like computer commands that would help us gain access to the files for the ARG, leading us to all this information about Harley's backstory. That was until the Playtime Co-informment realizes that we had been compromised and that the email address has been taken over by Harley. Eventually, they do end up losing control of that Discord account as well, and the account profile image became the eye that we saw in the teaser, warning us to stay away. This informant, before they lost control, was trying to show us who Harley was, how dangerous

he truly is. They want to help us, and I suspect we're going to need to trust them if we want to be. But who is them? Is it Barbar? I predicted last time that they are likely going to be an ally in this chapter, and I still think that's true, but I don't think it's who is talking to us right now. Take a look at how this informant spoke to us in the Discord messages. Hello again, we need a favor. We believe you may have been compromised. We need a favor. We gave you instructions. Can't say specifics, but we are making noise. Did you catch it? I should hope so. I was putting emphasis on the word. Or was all my theater training for naught.

The person behind the Playtime Co-account is referring to themselves as we. They are using plural pronouns, something we've seen before back in Project Playtime. We understand. You desire answers. You wonder who we are. It was your doing that made us. And due to lines like that about how we helped to make whoever this is, we have suspected for a long time that this person speaking to us in plurals is the creature we know that is made up of multiple beings or toys.

1006, the prototype. That's right, theorists. The one that has been revealing the truth about Harley, helping us to understand this threat that awaits us, the one I'm telling you all to trust for this upcoming chapter, is the villain I've been telling you not to trust since my very first video. Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not playing the classic game theory.

Villain was the hero card here. Remember what he did to his last partner? I still don't trust 1006. But previously we spoke about how our player character is likely PW, a biologist that worked for Playtime Code that wrote the notes we see in the Orientation Notebook. Due to him having the same birthday that Bunzo Bunny mentions in Chapter 2, I know when your birthday is June 28. And how the Smiling Critter Cutout seemed to associate us with screaming,

because PW was the one that helped experiment on them. Hey, I remember you! Ah! ha ha ha ha ha! We concluded that the RELDUCTS, we concluded that the reason Poppy was leading us further into the factory was because she and the prototype needed us to help finish creating whatever the prototype's final form will be. But that's the key. The prototype needs us alive. And so they've shared this information because they know how dangerous Harley is and they need our help to stop him once and for all. And so I believe 1006 is going to be doing

what they can to help us survive. Giving us a heads up about Harley's mentality during this ARG, and then as the totally not Gregory voice over the phone during Chapter 4. It may not be the most reliable partnership, and after Harley is defeated, all bets are off. But if Harley truly is as deranged as the Joker, I'm not really sure we have any other choice. I guess the enemy of my enemy is my friend, at least for now. But I've got my eye on you, so you'd better remember that's just a theory. A game theory! Thanks for watching.