Game Theory - The Bloody History of Poppy Playtime

Episode Date: April 7, 2023

What would you do if you were trapped in a toy factory and the toys came to life? I'm not talking in a fun Toy Story way, I mean in a Five Nights At Freddy's you are trapped and they want to END you kind of way. This is Poppy Playtime and I think there is a lot of lore hiding in the depths of this toy nightmare. Today I'm going to explain how I think Poppy may NOT be our big bad and what may still be lurking in the shadows.

Dokey Dokey Literature Club, solved. Bendy and the Ink Machine, solved. Five Knights of Freddy's, solved, maybe. Then kind of retconned and solved again. I don't know, it's kind of solved. Yeah, remains to be seen. Anyway, today there's a new challenger, Poppy Playtime. And with only one chapter available, this thing is ripe for the theorizing.

We've seen children's toys and games trying to kill us in the past, but it's never been anything like this. Oh, internet, welcome to game theory. where today I wanted to start off by introducing you to our latest piece of merch. Say hello to the Maddie Pally doll. Maddie Pally, the perfect friend for every theorist. And that's not all he can say. He's actually full of all the favorite catchphrases from the channel.

I'm coming to get you, Matt Pat. Oh, okay. Very funny. Who changed the voice box? No one did Matt Pat. Okay. I'm going to kill you, Matt Pat, and that's no theory. And we're done with that one.

Why do I always end up with all the creepy possessed stuff? I guess it's just kind of the brand now. But hey, Poppy Playtime, the latest horror craze fill in the void of emptiness as we asymptotically approach the release of security breach. If there's a formula for indie horror, this thing checks all the boxes. Simple creative gameplay, check. Horrific childhood playthings, check. Mysterious hidden lore sprinkled throughout, double check. So today we're going to look at the first chapter to start piecing together what's really going on in this game and what's going to be coming in the future installments. And let me tell you this.

Well, it may certainly look similar to the dozens of indie horror games. that we've seen in the past, this one has some unexpected twists that make it all the more surprising, and the more terrifying. And I gotta say, for the first time in what seems like forever, there's no malicious AI trying to steal your identity to escape their video game prison by hopping into your body. No matter what else this story entails, big props on being creative on that one. When we boot up chapter one, we're told that we're taking on the role of an ex-employee of the Playtime company, finally returning to the factory years after everyone mysteriously disappeared inside. If that's not a theorist invite, I don't know what it is.

What happened? Why are we the ones who remain? One click into this game and already there are so many questions circulating around. So to start our adventure, we receive a note informing us that these missing employees never actually left the building. Alongside of VHS tape that introduces us to the titular character Poppy Playtime. A doll with hair that smells like Poppy's weirdly realistic eyes and the ability to have actual conversations. She is the first truly intelligent doll in the world. A little girl can talk to her. Poppy gives her answers.

What you gotta say is a whole lot of red flags right off the bat. I've played enough horror games over the years to know that when inanimate objects start talking to you, you start running in the other direction. But, I don't know, it's a game. What else am I going to do? I'm curious, so off to the factory, we go. Right off the bat, we find a giant version of the popular Playtime company mascot Huggy Wuggy. Huh, those cold dead eyes aren't ominous at all. I'm sure nothing bad's going to come from this guy. Now, watching playthroughs at Poppy Playtime, there is one thing that immediately stands out.

Everyone high fives Huggy. Hi five. Hi five, buddy! Hey! High five, man, let's go, let's go, let's go. Even me. High five, huggy. Boom!

Apparently there's just some sort of primal reflex in our monkey brains. Raised hand equals high five. From there, we unlock the second hand of our grab pack. We get to build one of the toys and look! It's that Muppet reject that we met earlier, except now he's trying to kill us. Oh no! Who could have seen that one coming? I mean, to be fair, it is a legitimately terrifying encounter. Once we managed to escape the nightmare by throwing him down into the factory abyss, we see a lot of

large flower on the wall, along with all sorts of warnings about why we shouldn't go through that door. But nah, those people clearly didn't know what they were talking about. We plower way inside and find Poppy yourself resting inside a glass case. Without any forethought or concern for our own well-being, we rip open the case, because, of course, we do. Do horror games not exist in these universes? We almost died in the arms of this giant Sesame Street reject. Let's just make our presence known to the creepy living doll now. The lights flash, Poppy's eyes open, and we get the final line of the chapter.

You open my case. And that's it, big old cliffhanger for the next installment. But is it just me or did it feel like there was something more going on here? Ha ha ha! Who am I kidding? Of course there's something more going on here. This is a modern indie horror game. There's hidden lore all over this thing. For starters, let's rewind a bit to take a closer look at Huggy Wuggy himself. We know from the opening placard that the toy was made in 1984 and became playtime company's most popular mascot, but how do you go from this? from this to this. Toys just don't come to life. Unless Toy Story was right all along.

They don't. So what is this thing? Well, for obvious reasons, I immediately jumped to animatronic. But the game actually gives us clues that he's something else entirely. Something even more horrifying than we could have ever anticipated. If you're unfortunate enough to get killed by Huggy during the chase, you get a randomized death screen with a message that ranges from it's not your time to don't let them inside. But mixed in there is the chance of you seeing one that reads, EXP 1006, isn't he wonderful? This would suggest that someone is asking us what we think of their experiment, the monster that just killed us. This isn't the only time that we see Huggy referred to by this name either.

Throughout the game, we discover VHS tapes with recordings from various factory employees. The last one you receive is simply titled Unknown, and on it we hear this message. Final log in relation, Experiment 1-006, the prototype. Coordination and cooperation is evidently within his skill set. Those still missing. Today's events are no doubt in relation to him. We must forge onwards in the name of science. But are those who are beneath us understand it or not.

So, he's an experiment within the facility that escaped and clearly created an incident within the factory. But this still doesn't explain why I think his creation is different from something like the animatronics and FNAF. Well, in the trailer for the game, we get our first look at Huggy, walking towards us while bits of text flash up on screen. These messages seem to be excerpts from documents of Playtime Co. But before he can read them, most of the text disappears to reveal. a new eerie sentence. But you know I'm gonna pause the video and read all the frame perfect stuff right? Most of the vanishing messages cover pretty standard stuff, mostly about grab pack safety.

That is, until we get to the 43 second mark of the trailer where suddenly we have a giant wall of darkened into rolling text happening behind the main message. Hold the phone, things that are hidden in the dark? What is this? A 2015 Fnapp 4 teaser image? So true to form, I do what I do best. I lower the contrast, I up the brightness, and voila, we got this. Experiment 1006, the prototype. He seems serviceable as the prime example for the type of vessel which we're trying to create. Despite his digestive tract being wired properly, the prototype finds no necessity for sustenance, unlike the others.

All other experiments can only survive while subsisting on much larger portions. Huggie, as well as these other experiments, has a digestive system. That's not something an animatronic possessed by the soul of a dead child would need. It leads me to believe that Huggie is a living, organic creature, not just a stuffed toy turns sentient. Although, if we're reading this right, Huggie just kills for fun. He doesn't need to eat, unlike the others. Plus, if we take a look at this scene where you cause the walkway to collapse,

Huggie falls into the factory below, hitting two pipes along the way. Notice anything unusual? Here's the before and after shot to make it easy for you. You see, there's blood on the pipes. Huggie bleeds. He is definitely organic, a literal living, breathing monster. But how are they turning toilet? toys into organic creatures. For that, let's actually turn our attention to the perfect toy herself, poppy. When we're introduced to her in that initial VHS tape, we're told that she's perfect. She has hair that smells like poppies, which side note I looked into and it turns out that poppies don't really

have that much of a smell, unless of course you're talking about opium, poppies, in which case you're opening up a whole lot of messed up there. In the olden days, opium was used to relax and help you to sleep. No wonder this thing was a hit, especially with the parents, but I'm getting myself sidetracked here. Anyway, the important part of this ad is that a child can have convent conversations with Poppy and that she can talk back to give answers, which seems like a strange level of AI for a company that was around during the 1950s and 60s Unless of course she's not an AI in the teaser for Poppy Playtime we see a tutorial on how to look after your Poppy doll Near the end of the video the voice box gets pulled out and we see that it's dripping with blood Again leading me to believe that these toys are actually all organic

But with Poppy we can actually go one step further and figure out how she's been made organic See, the hardest secret to find in Poppy Playtime Chapter 1 is a pink VHS tape right before the final chase Wait wait wait wait wait wait oh my gosh is that it? Oh no way Oh my gosh, that was it? Well done. Wow I'm assuming the game really doesn't want me to do this, but I don't care Because I found the lore. Oh no If you managed to find it before getting locked out the tape shows you an intervie

with a prospective employee, Stella Graber. She's a woman obsessed with living forever, wanting to be more like a child and longing to bring joy to children like her toys did for her. Your body just gets... Human bodies just can't stay young forever. This tape feels really random in the grand scheme of things. Like, why would we be shown this? Well, it starts to make much more sense in the context of living organic toys. Based on the way that she talks, Stella would be the perfect candidate for some experiments that playtime were running. I believe that they used employees, specifically Stella to make Poppy. Not just transferred her consciousness either, but used her physical body, their digestive systems,

their brains, and in the case of Poppy, Stella's eyes. It seems like an extreme leap to make, but look at Poppy's eyes in the video. Tell me that those aren't human. You don't just add capillaries to your cute little doll's eyes. This would also align with the whole bleeding thing. Organic bodies made of flesh and organs that can bleed. It's also Also worth mentioning that the voice actor for Stella is the same as the voice actor for Poppy. This may just be because of limited voice actors, but it also feels like an interesting detail to call out. If I'm right about Stella and Poppy being one and the same, I think it gives us a pretty good idea of what her part is in the wider story. The general consensus online is that Poppy is gonna be the big bad.

I mean, the game's got her name on it after all, but for me, I'm not so sure. I don't believe that Stella would be mad about being turned into a toy. I think that honestly she'd be delighted. She would not be delighted, however, in being locked away in a sealed glass case. Listen to that final line again when we opened the glass case at the end of chapter 1. You opened my case. It sounds like a confused, but thankful response. By being locked away, she hasn't been able to go out into the world and bring joy to children.

It's not much of an existence living inside a tiny box. Believe me! I know. Doing this many videos every week, I've become very used to the confined space of my recording closet. Us coming along and freeing her? I think that's gonna be the rescue that she's been longing for. Some of the death messages also lead me to believe that Poppy isn't trying to kill us. Look again at these screens. I need you alive.

It's too early to die. Death isn't permanent. Who is talking to us in these screens? Well, I think it's Poppy. She's the only other character that we've been introduced to so far, so if it's not her, it kinda has to be someone else that we haven't really met yet. She's calling out to us. She needs us, and it's not just for her sake either.

Another death screen reads, More lives are at risk than just yours. Whoever this person is, they're hoping that we can help all of the vanished employees. And it doesn't end there. There's one final death screen to call out, this one. Which looks like somebody headdests their keyboard repeatedly. But it actually appears to be Cyrillic characters, or at least approximately close to Cyrillic characters.

For those of you who don't know, Cyrillic is the alphabet used for Slavic languages, places like Russia, Bulgaria, the Ukraine, you know, the countries that give new meaning to the word cold. Who knows, maybe the languages all look this way with the extra accents and swoops because people trying to write them are shivering all the time. Anyway, for it being so relic, it actually looks to be a simple substitution cipher, with different characters representing different characters from the Latin alphabet

that we're more familiar with. Notice these two in a row right here? Probably E, or EOO. Using that as our base and trying lots of different combinations, we can't come to a definitive conclusion. There just isn't enough letters here, but stay, they need help, certainly fits the pattern that we're seeing in the letters,

which again hints at the fact that these are people, ex-employees trapped inside the bodies of the monsters looking to escape. All of this points to Poppy becoming our companion. Maybe she'll help us solve puzzles by getting into spaces that we can't, or she'll be able to distract the monsters while we progress, or she'll just be our guide through the factory maze, kind of like Gladys the Potato from Portal 2. But in some small way, I think that she's going to be helping us both save herself and all the others.

So if Poppy is our helper, then who's our big bad? Well, remember the trailer? While discussing Huggy, it mentioned others. So did the VHS tape. that Huggy's experiment 1006, which if this scientist has any respect for logical procedure would imply that he's actually the sixth experiment they've created. Sure, they call him the prototype, but he's gained that name because as the trailer said, he seems serviceable as the prime example for the type of vessel that we're trying to create. So they thought

they'd got the experiment right that time, but clearly there were others before him. All with cognitive ability, but these ones are going to be hungrier. They're going to be more bloodthirsty than Huggy. Gotta admit he was already pretty bad. So then who or what came before? Well, during the course of the game, we're actually made aware of five other toys that Playtime creates. Candy Cat CatB, Boogie bot, Braun, Catby, and a pink version of Huggy, which we'll call Ms. Huggy. If Huggy was Experiment 1006, with five other toys available, I think it's likely that they're gonna be the monsters that show up in future chapters. But kicking us off in Chapter 2, I believe, will be Catby. Why? Well, because as much as there are references to all the other toys throughout the factory,

Catby's the one that has an active part in this chapter of the story. After getting the storeroom tape, we see a conveyor belt, which is covered in catby parts. Once we crawl through the vents, we end up at an assembly line, where we then proceed to activate and create a Catbee toy. The others have all been background characters to the chapter, but we actively create Catby, which seems like a metaphor for the humans creating monsters, and that points me in the direction of Catby being our next Big Bad.

But all of it leaves me with one final question. Clearly, Poppy put Playtime on the map in the 1960s, based on the vintage style of the Poppy ad and the fact that the ad is actually in color, which is something that wasn't available until the 1960s. Huggy Wuggy was invented in 1984 after Poppy. So, if Poppy was a human experiment and she was perfect, then why are Huggy and all the other experiments than monsters? Well, my theory is that Poppy was a human experiment done back in the 1960s and was a roaring success, but the secret to how it was done was kept under wraps. And as dolls came out of fashion, the company had to evolve, creating new, colorful toys like Candy Cat and Huggy Buggy.

We can see, based on the toy packaging, that this went on for some time. Huggy's packaging is very similar to those of the 1980s. Boogie Bot and Candy Cat looked much more like toys from the early 2000s. Clearly, the company was able to survive for a long time, but it wasn't enough to keep the company afloat. And so someone in the factory decided to pursue new innovations to bring Playtime Coe back to its former glory. Innovation is key, after all, as we see in one of the death screens. Without any knowledge of how they managed to successfully create Poppy, the scientists get to work trying to recreate the magic.

Toys that would come to life, acting like pets for children, bring them joy. Once again, they succeed in creating something organic, but they missed the one human element that made the original Poppy experiment successful willingness. Stella was the perfect subject. She seemed like she'd be over the moon with living forever as a child. However, our scientists may not have known about Stella and what made her and therefore Poppy special. I bet you that characters like the disgruntled storeroom worker Rich that we meet in the tapes are people that have been turned into these monstrous toys. He doesn't seem all that pleased with the company making his life difficult,

and we know that although they may have a clean, sparkly outward image, playtime don't tend to treat their employees very well. Wouldn't be too hard to believe that they saw the tape of Rich complaining and decided he needed to be disciplined in a very special way. But Rich doesn't have that childlike wonder of Stella or that natural love of toys, and so when he gets made into one, he becomes a monster. The experiment backfires and starts killing the employees. The scientist locked himself away in the same room that we found Poppy. She was Patient Zero, locked away in the case to protect and study her, until of course we come along and set her free.

There you have it, friends, my predictions for Poppy Playtime. Was I right? Was I wrong? I guess we're just gonna have to wait and see. But hey, that's just a theory. A Game Theory! Thanks for watching!