Game Theory - How Bendy EXPOSES Disney's Cartoon CONSPIRACY (Bendy and the Ink Machine)

Episode Date: April 7, 2023

Bendy and the Ink Machine! I am SO excited about this game. The world of Bendy is a throwback to the earliest days of cartoon animation. I love the look and feel -- but most of all, I love the MYSTERY. You see, Bendy and the Ink Machine is a game with a lot under the surface. When you actually look at characters like Bendy, Boris, and Alice, you start to see parallels to some of the most famous cartoons in history, and you start to piece together a dark truth about the early days of animation. You learn about Disney's conspiracy theory to be the pioneer of a new age of animation...at the expense of perhaps some of the most innovative cartoonists of all time. THAT is the SECRET story of BENDY!

Pocus, pocus, ibidi-bibbidi, sibidi-sibbidi-simidi-sad. Concentrate! Concentrate! I will now bear the naked truth. Hello, Internet! Welcome to Game Theory! Today we're flashing back to a simpler time. A time before video games and YouTube, before Marvel and Star Wars, a time before, dare I say it, fidget spinners.

That's right, loyal theorists. Today we're flashing back to the years between 1920 and 1940 A truly simpler time in which the US just so happened to be thrown into an economic crisis during the Great Depression and Hitler rose to power overseas Thus sparking the beginnings of World War II But hey look on the bright side at least there was no such thing as fnaf in such dark times the world was a desperate need of entertainment They needed a reason to laugh and thus animation exploded onto the scene I mean sure animation had been around since 1900 and if you really want to get technical could date back as far as the invention of the thoma trope from 1825 But it was this era the 1920s

to the 1940s when history entered what's known as the Golden Age of Animation. And it's this world where we find ourselves in for today's theory. The World of Bendy and the Ink Machine. Now if you haven't been watching a lot of let's plays lately, this one might have slipped past you. It's a small indie title told in five parts, because at this point it's always five parts. There isn't a whole lot to do in every chapter. But what it lacks in gameplay, Bendy makes up for it in style and story. Putting you into the throwback world of the earliest days of anime,

In the game, you play as Henry. A retired cartoonist invited to come back to his old studio after 30 years. The invite comes from a man named Joey Drew, your former boss at the company Joey Drew Studios. Inside, you find that everything is abandoned. And by putting the bits of lore together collected from audio logs sprinkled throughout the game, you learn that Joey was experimenting with ways of bringing his cartoon creations to life. And apparently, his experiments were a success. The company's signature character, a little devil named Ben, Bendy is now alive and very, very dangerous.

You also learned that some employees, like Sammy Lawrence, Joey Drew's music department director, worship these living cartoons as gods, forming what seems to be a good old fashion cult. But the believers must honor their savior. I must have him notice me. For our Lord is calling to us, my little sheep. The time of sacrifice is at hand. Besides Bendy, there's also Boris the Wolf walking around, and Bendy's great girlfriend Alice Angel.

And honestly, that's about it for now. Now many of you've been asking me on Twitter, at Matt Pat GT, as well as during GT live, to do a theory about this game, to try and predict what's going on. But after doing the research, I think I can do you one better. Instead of just trying to put together a rough plot summary,

I think I can reveal the true identity of the main character of the game. Joey Drew, the mastermind animator, obsessed with bringing his creations to life. Because here's the thing. I believe he's inspired fired by a real person and that the events happening in the world of Bendy actually mirror events that occurred at one of the top animation During this golden age of animation

Joey Drew in-game is playing the role of perhaps the single most important pioneer of animated entertainment A man whose name has sadly been almost completely forgotten by history a man by the name of Max Fleischer Now seeing Bendy and Boris you probably immediately think of Walt Disney and the old Mickey Mouse cartoons I mean we're all trained to think that Walt Disney was the pioneer of this style of animation, that he's the guy who made cartoons into what they are today, but that's because he purposely planted those thoughts into your head. And that's not an exaggeration. If you read about Walt Disney, you start to learn that he was a master of marketing himself. Taking credit for things that weren't his idea to begin with and using the media to sell his story to listeners who didn't know any better. No, if you're looking for the true masterminds responsible for helping to shape the early world of animation, it was Max Fleischer.

with his brother Dave Fleischer working from their animation studio in New York. Way back in 1914, when Walt was still only a teenager, Max Fleischer invented rotoscoping, a technique that allowed an artist to trace over live-action footage to create more realistic-looking animated movements. This was a huge advancement, allowing cartoons to be drawn faster and with a higher quality of movement. It also gave rise to the first of the major Fleischer-Brother series known as Out of the Inkwell,

in which live-action footage of Max was combined with his and his hands, animated characters as they literally came to life off the page to interact with and explore the real world. But the Fleischer's didn't stop there. Ask anyone what the first cartoon to feature synchronized sound and music was and they'll usually say Steamboat Willie, Mickey Mouse's monumental debut from back in 1928. But it was Max, not Walt Disney who was the first to combine sound and animation in his series of shorts called song cartoons back in 1924, four years earlier than Steamboat Willie. These were those famous Follow the Bouncing Ball sing-alongs that you've probably seen or heard of. Well, you have Max Fleischer to thank for those.

But according to rumors when Steamboat Willie launched, Walt Disney, despite being four years late to the party, actively tried to discourage reporters from mentioning these past sound videos in their articles, thus allowing Disney to claim all the credit for being the first to use these techniques. And thus began the animation feud with the Disney's on the West Coast in Hollywoodland, going up against Max and his brother back east in New York. An animation that would last in the industry for the next two decades. At their prime, the Fleischer Studio would be a premier producer of animated cartoons for theaters, with Walt Disney productions being their chief competition. And yet, as I'm sure you can guess,

it was the Disney's who came out on top. Their marketing smarts and location in California amongst the growing movie industry ultimately buried Fleischer's business and erased his name from the annals of animation history. But what's any of this have to do with an incomplete indie game hits? Well, first, think about what you just heard. Even with animation in it Infancy, Max Fleischer's work without of the ink well, was literally bringing animated characters into the real world. Just like Joey Drew in his ink machine, a man who literally wrote a book on bringing images to life, as we see in Chapter 1's The Illusion of Living. It's also clear that Joey Drew's animation studio has fallen to ruin by the time your character visits it.

A detail that reflects Max Fleischer's eventual bankruptcy, ultimately losing his business to Walt Disney, the man who stole the credit from him. At this point, I don't get what Joey's plan is for this company. The animation sure aren't being finished on time anymore. Think about it. If this game was truly meant to parallel Walt Disney animation, then why would it happen in an abandoned studio? And why would the characters be out for revenge? I mean, Disney won everything.

Disney runs the world. Max Fleischer was the one who was left with a crumbling business and a name lost to obscurity. So if there's anyone out there who would have a chip on their shoulder and be out for revenge, like you see Joey Drew and Bendy in the Ink Machine, ink machine, well, it would be him. But we're not even to the good stuff yet. One look at Bendy's design and I'm sure you immediately think of Mickey Mouse. Right, small mischievous character with big white gloves? Well, Max Fleischer had his version of the character too. Bimbo, a tubby black and white cartoon dog complete with big white

hands. One of the five main recurring characters that his studio would produce during their run. A character whose personality is a much more direct parallel to Bendy than Mickey's is. Mickey in his early cartoons tends to be the good guy. The one who's having to fight back against bullies, but Bimbo is actively a troublemaker. So much so that one of his most infamous appearances, 1930s, swing you sinners, is entirely about undead spirits punishing him for his misdeeds. He's constantly chasing women and pulling pranks.

Bimbo's behavior just seems to be the stronger match for what you'd expect from a little devil like Bendy. And the parallels aren't just with Bimbo. There's also a direct relation between Max's real-life characters and Bendy's girlfriend Alice Angel. Now admittedly we don't know too much about Alice. She was just introduced in chapter 2 through one poster and one audio log. But what we do know is that she appears to be a female devil creature like Bendy who somehow became an angel, like a Looney Tunes-esque Lucifer who happens to sing. We also

know that she's drawn to be beautiful. Not only does she just physically look pretty, but she's also wearing a tight black falter top dress. Something that back during this era of animation would have been seen as sexy and scandalous. We also know via the audio logs that Sammy Lawrence expects her to surpass Bendy's popularity. People really seem to enjoy my Alice Angel voice. Sammy says she may be as popular as Bendy someday. Long story short, this ain't your mama's mini mouse,

but it is your mama's Betty Boop, one of the Fleischer's most famous creations. Betty Boop matches exactly with Alice. She's a singer who was introduced into the cartoons to be Bimbo's love interest, surpassed him to become way more popular, and was considered to be an attractive, sexy character back in the day. in the day. So much so in fact that her design had to be toned down in 1934 when the government started cracking down on the sexual content in films. Oh yeah! And she also happens to wear black halter top dresses. Well eventually red, but you know this is black and white cartoons.

And if you're wondering how a human woman would become the love interest of a cartoon dog, well get this. Betty Boop actually started as a dog. A French poodle in fact. It's kind of disturbing, really. Her long dog ears became her long hoop earrings. It's kind of gross. Anyway, she's also the matching species. of her love interest, just like the Ink Machine's two little devils. But it's stylistically where we see these two worlds collide the most. During Fleischer's War against Disney, two styles of animation developed. Disney's West Coast style was much more family friendly, with characters behaving much more realistically,

and in settings that happen to be brighter and cheerier. The New York style, Max's work, is much grittier, twisted, aimed at more mature audiences with character bodies contorting like rubber bands. It was a looser animation style that felt like improv, where characters aren't so tightly bound. to the rules of reality. It was a lot like the YouTube animations that you see from channels like Gonzo SSM, psychic pebbles, Oni NG, and of course, Ego Raptor. The settings were grungier, taking place in cities and sewers,

inside buildings rather than outdoors, and the topics dealt with were racier. Just like Betty Boop, a character made to be a sex symbol that has literally persisted across generations. In short, these were scarier cartoons with darker, sometimes even hellish imagery. And this is the aesthetic that seems to embody the game. Joey's animation studio is a tight, confined space filled with industrial pipes and dripping ink, dark and shadowy. It's literally a hell on earth. And yet for all the jump scares, what's creepiest in the game right now is the cult. The big reveal that ends chapter 2 is that Sammy is trying to sacrifice you to their ink god Bendy. He's clearly in a cult worshipping these living breathing cartoon characters. But in this case, truth is actually stranger than fiction. Because there's an unexplained recurring theme of cult activity throughout the first

Fleischer Studio roster. In Betty Boop is my palm red, we see Bimbo and Cocoa the clown worshipping a shadowy witch figure. A shadow mind you that never gets referenced or explained, it's not a joke in any way. They're just there, bowing to it and presumably it gives Bimbo his fortune-telling powers. Then there's Betty Boop Red Hot Mama where a fireplace suddenly, for literally no reason, transforms into the literal mouth of hell. Also let me just say how creepy it is that every Betty Boop cartoon requires a scene that shows her with some sort of sort of strong backlight so you can see her legs through the dress.

I mean, come on guys, find a magazine or something. Here we all thought that anime was creepy. But perhaps the single most disturbing, bizarre, inexplicable example of this is in the cartoon Bimbo's Initiation, where our lovable dog Bimbo gets locked in the sewer by Mickey Mouse, Max clearly showing his grudge against Disney there, when all of a sudden he's confronted with a bunch of cultists. No joke, actual cultists asking him, Wanna be a member? Want to be a member?

No. When Bimbo refuses, he's suddenly tortured with all sorts of horrific punishments, including a knife cutting through a spinning room to stab him repeatedly. Wanna be a member, want to be a member? No. Over and over again, he's asked to join until he's finally had enough punishment and says yes, at which point it's revealed that the cult is made up entirely of Betty Boob's. What the... what? What?

So are you saying Betty Boob created a bunch of clones? that there's a cult that worships herself? Or maybe you're saying that when a stranger asks you to join a cult, you should absolutely say yes, because there's gonna be a hot girl in it for ya. Regardless, it's weird and it's creepy, and I have no idea how people back in the early 30s found it funny. But I think this scene gives us a really strong indication

of what's going on in Bendy and the Ink Machine. So in the words of Good Mythical Morning, let's talk about that. Between the gritty setting, the failing company, the desire to bring cartoons to life, the mischievous white-gloved mascots and matching female partners, a boss with a chip on his shoulder, and the recurring cult imagery, there is little to no doubt that Max Fleischer is in fact the real-life Joey Drew.

So then what? What's all this mean for the game? What's the point of doing this? Well, if this theory proves true, first, we'll see Alice take center stage as the game goes on. Like Betty Boop, we'll hear about how our popularity skyrocketed, surpassing Bendy. And you can expect, Bendy probably won't be too happy about that, creating some infighting between the characters with you stuck in the middle. I don't know. I don't It also hazard to guess that we haven't seen the last of that cult. Just like we saw in Bimbo's initiation, how intense would it be to learn that these characters are using the ink machine to replicate themselves?

Building a cult consisting of hundreds of horrifying Bendy and Alice clones. And lastly, just like Sammy is an ink monster, it wouldn't surprise me to see Joey Drew as the real identity behind the first Bendy, fused together with his creation by the cursed ink machine, literally consumed with his desire to bring cartoons to life, just like Max Fleischer desired to bring his cartoons to life, and was eventually consumed by his desire to get revenge on Disney. I guess we'll just have to wait until Chapter 3 is ready to find out.

But in the meantime, remember, a, that's just a theory, a game theory! Thanks for watching! Ha-ha!