Game Theory - Garten Of BanBan Lore Is... Something

Episode Date: June 18, 2023

Join Game Theory Host MatPat as he breaks down the hidden LORE of Garten Of BanBan! Credits: Writers: Matthew Patrick and Tom Robinson Editors: Dan "Cybert" Seibert, Warak, JayskiBean and Shannon (Bomb0i) Assistant Editor: Caitie Turner (Caiterpillart) Sound Designer: Yosi Berman Thumbnail Artist: DasGnomo

I think we can all agree that mascot horror has been a defining genre of the online gaming scene. Every year, there are dozens of new contenders all vie in to make their mark. Franchises like Bendy, Hello Neighbor, Baldi's Basics, Rainbow Friends, Choo-Choo-Charls, Amanda the Adventure, Poppy Playtime, all of them competing for your attention and your gamer dollars. But I think we can all agree that one franchise has truly stood above them all. One series with gameplay so deceptively simple that it took the internet by storm. One series that pushed out sequels at a blistering pace to keep the height-trained

going. One series with a story that was so convoluted that it makes theorists like me we weep. And that series is, Ban Ban. Wait, are we, are we doing this? Are we really doing this? Oh boy. All right. Go internet. Welcome to game theory, where today I give up my last shred of dignity and stare into the abyss that is, Garten of Ban Ban. Kish, you missed it. Congratulations. You missed it. Garden of Ban Ban Ban is no joke, the most searched new horror IP on YouTube. But believe me, it wasn't always this way. Upon first release back in January, this game broke the internet, and not in a good way. People got mad, like mad, mad about the phoned-in graphics. The incredibly short first chapter.

The basic monster design and the clear attempt to cash in with a merch page on the main menu of its first installment. It was hailed as the final nail in the mascot horror coffin. The moment that the genre jumped the shark, a cash grab with no thought or care put into it, which I say, yeah, them and every other mascot horror game out there. I mean, Mob Games announced a and made NFTs immediately after the success of Chapter 1, which, mind you, was only a half-hour experience. Hello Neighbor was so busy making TV pilots, books, and spin-offs that they basically forgot they had to build their game beyond an alpha, and Scott was busy releasing a new FNAF game every few months back in the old days, just like we see Gart and Ban Ban doing now. The point is, well, these things may be cause for concern, they're also not exactly new for the genre.

Which brings us to today where Gartnaban Ban Ban Ban has three games in six months, and it also has bootleg merch for sale at my local North Carolina Fair. You see your bootleg Poppy Playtime merch. Obviously, there's your Five Nights at Freddy's merch. Fine, okay. But here's the thing that never in a million years would I have suspected to see. Garden of Ban Ban. But for as much as I like to give this franchise a hard time, actually kind of like it. These games are just dumb fun.

It's kind of like the Fast and Furious franchise, just stupid stuff that you can turn your brain off to. Or at least that was my intention. But then Ban Ban had to go and ruin it all. It's okay to have no friends and be miserable like that. me y'all nab-nab is band-band backwards war yep gartn a band-band went the full nine yards and added lore lore that is definitely there i think i said it best in gt live if there are sharks to be

jumped i feel like gartan a band-ban has jumped all those sharks and continues to find new sharks to proceed and jump over but shark or no shark where there is lore there is mat And so, against my better judgment, I dove deep into the pancreas chewing storyline of this game to unlock its secrets. And what I found there won't surprise you. No, I didn't misspeak. You heard me right. It won't surprise you. Stop me if you've heard this one. Evil Corporation, science experiment gone wrong, inanimate objects come to life, dead kids, playtime facilities that break every OSHA code.

Yep, it's like the IKEA instructions for building an indie horror game. So what does Ban Ban do differently to merit its own theory? Well, it takes the insanity meter and cranks it up to 11. Then takes the meter, puts it into a blender, grinds it up, and drinks it like a smoothie. Because for as much as I've seen a lot of this stuff before, I've also never seen anything like this before. Wow. That's what I'm talking about.

Philo, what do you think about this? It's not every day that you see the monsters in your mascot horror game taking a casual road trip through a desert alongside a psychic jellyfish and a screeching pink bird. So throw your sanity to the wind, dear theorists. Today we're piecing together the lore of Gart and a Ban Ban. And let me tell you, it is... First, let's just review the basic premise here. In these games, we play as a parent desperately searching an old, empty kindergarten facility

for any signs of our missing children. And that's it. That is pretty much as far as we got on the main story. In each installment, we find a single note addressed to mommy left by a nameless child and a girl named Claire, which means that we're pretty safe in assuming that these are our kids, but, you know, might not be... Through these letters, we also know that our children are fighting off monsters and that they're ultimately saved by a giant jellyfish. Other than that, bupkiss, not a whole lot.

which means that we have to make our way deeper into the facility where things are much less Sesame Street and much more back rooms, as twisted versions of the kindergarten's mascots roamed the repetitive maze-like halls. But who would have built a facility like this? And more importantly, why? The answer to those questions are hidden in Chapter 2. If you manage to find the red key card, you can actually go back into the building's medical center where a secret door leads to three lore notes. Notes that reveal the game's true villain, corporate greed.

The first document is addressed to Dr. Uthman, the same name that we actually find on an airplane boarding pass in chapter 1, Uthman Adam. In it, we learned that the company has been using a mysterious substance known as Gyvanium to try and bring their mascots to life. Hold on, hold on. Creatures that shouldn't be alive but are for inexplicable reasons. Mark that one off on your indie horror bingo card. As other lore notes reveal,

Givanium is basically a kind of blood alternative that's being injected into giant monster bodies that are made of a Plato-like material. But as you'd expect, this method isn't without its side effects, mainly enlarging both the veins and body of the subject, exactly like we see with one of the designs of the mascots, Jumbo Josh. Side note to this one, kind of love how instead of just making cleaner-looking models they just made the bad textures part of the lore.

Euphoric brothers over here playing 4D chess with game design. And while that side effect ends up being purely cosmetic, we're also told that any creature brought to life with givanium is in constant pain, leading to extremely hostile and nervous behavior. Not exactly something that you want for the things that are designed to be looking after young children at a kindergarten all day. Needless to say, Dr. Uthsman's experiments

haven't been going all that well. And that's a problem when they've promised to unveil their creatures as part of the kindergarten's big Bring a Friend Day. So they decide to push forward, desperately looking for ways to circumvent the violent effects of gyvanium by mixing it with human DNA. Yep, they skipped the animal trials and just jump straight into the main events. The hope was that the human genome would allow these creatures to have rational thought and parental instincts towards children.

And who better to contribute their DNA than the good doctor himself, Uthman Adam? This experiment would lead to the creation of the one and only, Ban Ban. At first glance, he seemed to be quite successful. He wasn't violent and was actually incredibly intelligent thanks to Uthman's DNA. Except, yet again, there was something they didn't account for. Ban-Ban was too intelligent. Ban-Ban believed that he was human, which meant that when he finally did come into contact with Dr. Uthman, it caused him to go into a deep depression.

To try and bring him out of it, they made a female equivalent, Banbalina, using the genomes of the one person that Ban-Ban would speak to, Dr. Weaverly Mason. But all this did was just make him less cooperative. So overall, things aren't great at the kindergarten, they're by In one last ditch effort to fix the problem, they lower Ban Ban's ability to self-think by dosing him with an updated gyvanium solution, which works a bit too well. Again, the higher levels of gyvanium cause him elevated pain, which turns him into a mindless beast. But of course, evil corporation gonna do what evil corporation gonna do. And they push onward.

Throughout the facility, we find a handful of other case reports where they try various other animal genomes. Spider DNA gives us nab, snail DNA gives us slow selene, and a mix of flamingo and ostrich results in the fan favorite opila bird. It wasn't until they used woolly spider monkey DNA for the creation of Captain Fiddles that they finally struck on a winning combination. In fact, Captain Fiddles was deemed so successful that he was passed on to be presented to parents and investors at the big Bring a Friend Day. That day, though, would be the day it all fell apart. The third note that we find in the Red Medical Room describes how the ball pit can't take the weight of all the kids that have registered for that big event, and that this extra weight is likely to cause the ball pit to collapse. Considering that there's no ball pit in the ball pit room of Chapter 1, and the fact that,

that it's all boarded off to the public, think it's safe to say that that's exactly what happened. I'd also suspect that this is why Uthman had a boarding pass. He was gonna escape before anything bad happened, and he was right to worry. According to a note that we find later in the game, the loud crash of the ball pit collapsing causes all the mascots' primitive instincts to kick in,

resulting in them going on the attack. However, midst all the chaos, there was one creature who didn't become a monster, the one and only giant orange jellyfish, Stinger Flynn. In fact, not only does he stay friendly, thanks to a series of kids' drawings, we know that he actually saves are children from both Ban Ban and Opila.

The nice jellyfish is strong. He carried everyone here, but Miss Mason hates him, and I don't know why. Well, don't worry yourself about that one, kiddo, because I know why Miss Mason hates him. Also, can I just say you have some remarkably good spelling for a kindergartner. If you've played through Garten 3, you'll know that this is no ordinary jellyfish. Stinger Flynn is massive and threatening, but more threatening than his size are the size of his words. This dude talks a lot, and often in very vague, cryptic terms. I come to this place, and then I'm reminded that what I'm fighting for is worth all of the space and suffering.

One thing he's not vague about, though, is wanting us to get out, to leave our children behind. And when we refuse, he turns on us, releasing the evil Ban Ban to kill us. He's able to do this thanks to the unique combination of genomes he's received. You see, Stinger Flynn is the only creation in the kindergarten to have received two genomes alongside the gyvanium, human and Atlantic Sea Nettle. The case studies tell us that this led him to becoming more intelligent than all the other creatures, making him comfortable and aware with what he was. However, he's far from content with his current state.

I already have more than enough subjects to move forward with my aspiration and my ultimate mental refinement. But what could he possibly mean by mental refinement, and why would Miss Mason hate him for it? Well, elsewhere in Chapter 3, Stinger Flynn describes his level of intelligence as a burden. Oh, to live this simple life of a completely brainless jellyfish, just munching on shrimp and avoiding getting eaten by turtles all day. You never appreciate how calming it is to have no conscience. Until you have one. This is where the children come in.

So far, the only human genomes that we've seen used have been fully grown adults. Adults with developed brains. Too much intelligence, too much introspection. But children, I suspect that that's exactly what he wants. They're fully sentient, but they're also not all that self-aware. That's why he saved our kids and why Miss Mason doesn't like him. He's planning on using them for experiments of his own, reverting himself back to an immoral conscienceless creature.

However, I have a feeling that that's going to go horribly wrong for our giant jelly friend. You see, in Stinger Flynn's room, there's a special white door you can go through if you find the correct key card. Inside of it, we get one final update about givanium and a new development known as a genome cloy. Quote, in short, it was found that when a subject's system is overloaded with different genomes, the body will enter an irreversible state in which all but one genome are set to circulate through the body, with the rest all getting disposed of. This reveals the critical necessity of ensuring that each case receives its genomes from no more than three sources or donors,

lest we're left with cases that are permanently animalistic and wild, with absolutely no place in a kindergarten. The genome that gets preference in a genome-Cloy event remains to be discovered, but it has been theorized that it is whatever genome is most different from the rest. Basically what all that tells us is that creatures in this world are limited to three genomes mixed together, max. More than that, and suddenly you transform into an animal. We know that Stinger Flynn already has himself three genomes, givanium, human, and jellyfish.

But if he's planning on using these children to give himself more DNA, it'll create a cloy. And if the theory is correct and similar genomes basically cancel each other out, that leaves behind the most different one. In other words, good old Flynn is going to end up becoming a mindless jellyfish once again. Stinger Flynn isn't aware of any of this because the tests happened off the record. They were likely done on the creatures down below in the basement that were likely going to meet in the next chapter. But just like Stinger Flynn thrown too many genomes together, I'm not done throwing too many theories together.

You see, there's still one experiment that I haven't talked about, One who's iconic for this franchise, but strangely absent from all the case reports. The jolly green giant himself, Jumbo Josh. If you look across the game, we have case studies for Ban Ban, Banbalina, O'Pila, Captain Fiddle, Stinger Flynn, heck, even oddball characters like Slow Celine. But Jumbo Josh is basically an enigma. He's one of the only mascots to show up in every chapter, and yet we know nothing about him, or so I thought. Once you get the green key card in Chapter 3, you can make the long trek backwards to the medical center where there's a secret room filled with characters faces on the wall. This puzzle is actually incredibly well done and it hides the game's

biggest secret. If you found all the case reports in the chapter, you'll see that certain ones come with a QR code in the corner. Scanning the QR codes get you shadowy images of various character details. Van Balena's bow, slow Celine's smile, Jumbo Josh's teeth, Ban Ban's horns. But this is a dark image in an indie horror game, my friends. That can only mean one thing, brightening the image to find secret messages. If you do, in each corner, you'll see a number hidden in each picture. Click the buttons in order and you open the final door that leads to one last note, quote, we're very selfish. He was never going to be normal, and assuming we could even get him out of this place with his size, what was next? What house would he fit in? What school would accept him? I don't even want to imagine the consequences, not to mention how dangerous it is to keep him around those other monstrosities. He plays with them like their toys, throwing and commanding them around and everything. They're talking about Jumbo Josh, a creature of immense size, strength, and with a grotesque appearance. We also see him throw around the other monsters at the end of Chapter 3, like toys. This is also something that we hear about earlier in the chapter. During the Jumbo Josh mini-gain, Bambalina tells us that he thinks that we're dolls.

That big green guy keeps checking in on us? I think he believes we're some sort of dolls. But why is this so important? What makes Jumbo Josh so different? Well, the end of the note gives us our best clue. Quote again, sometimes life denies you beautiful gifts, and we should have accepted that. But we're doing the right thing here, and I'm proud of us both. The only time I see language like being denied a beautiful gift?

Yeah, that's in reference to losing a child. Them not being able to have a child or a child dying prematurely. Either way, these parents lost the most precious thing had, but they found their second chance through science experiments. That said, they aren't the scientists that we know already. Uthman and Weaverly, because in letters from those guys, they talk about Jumbo Josh as the Green Guy, which doesn't really sound like a loving, desperate parent. Instead, I suspect that these parents might be the ones who started the program in the first place.

Hine behind the idea of bringing mascots to life, but their real goal was saving what they lost, bringing their dead child, Josh, back to life. Reincarnated Dead Kid, come on, someone's gotta have a bingo at this point, right? But along with that note, there's also an audio file. If you play it, it's some enzulfiates. The creepy, giant worm thing that appears from the abyss at various points throughout the chapters. Basically, sack boy crossed with kingseeker framped for all your Dark Souls fans. And when we encounter him, we see two simple words,

I'm sorry. It's my belief that Zulfius is the parent that wrote that note. It's because of their hubris that our children are now missing. Their determination to bring back their child has now meant the loss of so many others. And that is why all they can do at this point is to say sorry, parent to parent. And I think maybe that's the most unique thing about this game that reuses so many indie horror tropes. character finally apologizing, finally acknowledging their mistakes and recognizing the wake of destruction that they've left. Am I right? Am I wrong? I guess we just got to wait like, what,

24 hours before Garton of Ban Ban 4 drops, and then we can see what other sharks they found to jump. But hey, that's just a theory. A game theory. Thanks for watching.