Game Theory - What Everyone Else Missed About the Prototype (Poppy Playtime)

Episode Date: May 22, 2025

Since the release of Poppy Playtime: Chapter 4, there is still one BIG question on everyone’s minds…what is the Prototype’s SECRET? What is he hiding and what does Poppy have to do with it? After several weeks of research and many whiteboards later, we may have finally solved this lingering mystery.

What is the Prototype's Secret? Ever since the release of Poppy Playtime Chapter 4, this is the question that everyone has been asking. And after several weeks and many whiteboards later, I believe I finally cracked it. Hello, Internet. Welcome to Game Theory, the show that's been clawing at the Prototypes door begging for law.

But today I say, no more! I'm barging through like the juggernaut to reveal to all of you the answer to the biggest mystery of Poppy Playtime Chapter 4. In our previous episodes, we've been putting the prototype under a microscope, looking at where their plan started and how it's going to end. But the thing that I've yet to address is why? Why is the prototype doing all of this? I've actually teased at it a few times in previous episodes,

because the game has, as usual, been purposefully coy about the whole thing, simply referring to it as the secrets. You know I'm still your best shot of cracking that secret. The trouble is, knowing there is a secret isn't really satisfying in and of itself. No, we theorists need to know what this secret is. Otherwise, we have no way of knowing what the prototype's true goal is. Why he was willing to work with Harley again despite being infamously tortured by him

and why our traitor sidekick puppy is so important to everything. Well, dear theorists, I can say that after weeks and weeks of research, digging into parts of the game, no one ever expected us to look at, I believe I figured out exactly what the secret is. And it not only answers everything I've already mentioned, but it also, for the third time, gives us an explanation for the prototype's true identity. Fair warning, though, this may be my most insane theory to date. Yes, even more than Shadow is a genie.

But if you stick with me, I promise you there's method in the madness. So, no more delays, it's finally time for us to learn what this Playtime Co-Secret truly is. We're first told about this secret on one of the VHS tapes called Time. We hear Harley Sawyer and the prototype going back and forth about an experiment they're doing and how Harley is failing to get results. Your suggestions? To produce the results are accurate. When Harley asks for more resources from the lab, the prototype refuses.

When Harley asks for more time, the prototype refuses. Doesn't really sound like you're setting the guy out for success there, 1006. Did Playtime Co not offer it? any managerial training? Oh, who am I kidding? This is the company that decided flesh-eating toys made of children was a good idea. Anyway, while Harley and the prototype are purposefully being obtuse when it comes to saying what the secret is, they do give away a few details in the conversation to give us a head start. Firstly, Harley has convinced the prototype that he is the only one with a chance of helping him with this project, whatever it may be. Harley was the

head of special projects and was the brain behind the bigger body's initiative. So for him to be the best shot of figuring out the secret, it's clearly something that needs his genius, likely some kind of scientific experiments. Although it's also clear that this isn't the same kind of experiment he was doing with the bigger bodies. Harley has done hundreds of those experiments and been relatively successful. And yet, he doesn't know the answer to cracking this secret. That being said, that doesn't mean it isn't somewhat related. That would give me labs access. That is out of the course trip. Harley isn't allowed in the lamp. which Poppy has told us is where the orphans are being kept.

The orphans weren't killed during the hour of Joey. They're below in the labs. The prototype's home. The prototype has been portrayed as the guardian of the orphans since the Chapter 3 ARG, and so him not wanting to let Harley near there makes a lot of sense. He doesn't want Harley going back to his old ways and using the kids to middling results. But Harley then talks about not having many test subjects left, which implies that there is some kind of connection between the work Harley was doing for the bigger

bodies and this secret, like humans, are involved somehow. And the final detail we have is that for some reason, there's a time crunch on figuring out the secrets. The situation necessitates it be wrong. This makes me think it once again has something to do with the orphans, who have supposedly been sleeping for 10 years. Maybe they're about to wake up, or maybe they're slowly dying. It's hard to say, but regardless, we have our initial base of options. Though this VHS tape isn't the only thing pointing us towards the answer. At the end of the game, we are trapped inside the ventilation system alongside Poppy and Kissy Missy. Ollie then calls us on the phone revealing themselves to be the prototype.

During this exchange, he doesn't mention the secret specifically, but he does give us a bit more insight into another one of his mysterious motivations, his obsession with Poppy. The emphasis is on what 1006 and Poppy physically are, and that it could mean a lot for other people. Immediately my mind went to what we saw from Poppy's cut lines in Chapter 2. Being able to exist as a doll, it has killed so many people. But if it's just that they are living toys, Harley mostly already figured that out.

And why wouldn't he have mentioned Kissy, Huggy, all the hundreds of other toys? No, there's something different about their existence specifically, and we aren't the only ones wondering about what that is. In both Chapter 3 and 4, we learn that 1006 and Poppy are being studied by Harley and his team. I learned something new about you every day. It's been weeks and weeks of taking things out and putting them back in and taking things out and putting them back in.

He was trying to figure out what made them tick. What made them different? But he wasn't able to replicate them. He had some successes, but there was still more he could learn from them, almost like he hadn't truly figured out the secret to their existence. And with there being an implication that the secret is in some way related, related to the experiments going on a Playtime Co, I feel like our answer has to lie with these two characters. So, what do we know about them that's different from every other toy?

Honestly, not a lot. The prototype is being kept purposefully mysterious, to the point that we've only ever seen an arm and the shadow of some spider-like legs. The only real details we know about him is that while he's called the prototype, he wasn't truly considered a success by Harley. That honor went to Boxibu 154 experiments later. May, naturally, you have proven my bigger body's initiative a success. We also know the prototype is incredibly intelligent, something that they actually wanted

to repress in future experiments. Further suppression treatments will need to be enacted to ensure that no other experiments develop these qualities. And thanks to the background text in the first trailer, we know that he has a digestive tract like all the other toys, but he didn't require food to survive. All of those are interesting details, and Poppy does seem to to share some of those characteristics, but I just couldn't figure out a way to connect them back to the secret that is supposed to mean so much more. Instead, let's try turning our attention to Poppy, because while she is arguably just as mysterious as the prototype,

there's one big difference between her and all the other toys that stands out like a sore thumb, her creation. All the other experiments were created by Harley from kids who were raised inside the play cap, but Poppy was created from Elliot Ludwig's daughter, who died tragically in the 1960s. In the 1960s, an unfortunate family death had pushed Ludwig down to his lowest. She also wasn't created by Harley, but we believe by her own father, Elliot. From what we can tell, his approach seemed vastly different to the approach Harley took during the bigger body's initiative. Harley is a neurosurgeon.

We saw his credentials during the Chapter 4 ARG. His specialty is focused around the transferring of the brain and therefore a person's consciousness and reactivating it once it's in their new toy body. But the fact that even after thousands of attempts, they still couldn't recreate the perfection of Poppy, it's telling us that the way Harley is doing it isn't correct. Though we've had no idea how Elliot actually made Poppy. That is, until now.

While I was going back over all the evidence we've gathered over the last year of Poppy Playtime releases, I realized that there was a part of the Chapter 4 ARG I haven't really talked about the maze. This was right near the end of the ARG, and in it we are shown a bunch of text on screen with hyperlinked, that take us to new pages with new text and new hyperlinks. If you managed to get to the end of the maze, you were rewarded with the very important letter

about Harley's removal from the Young Geniuses program. But that isn't the part I wanted to focus on. We've already talked that one to death on this channel. Instead, I took a look over the dozens and dozens of different text screens we got as part of the maze. They all appear to be from Harley Sawyer's perspective, usually talking about how you shouldn't be here or I can see you. Some even reflect questions the audience asked Harley during the ARG. Like, do you ever look back upon your past in regret? These thoughts, they aren't mine.

But as I went through them, there was one in particular that stood out. Is it her? That's impossible. Severely understated. The organization of older established biological sciences like embryology. How did you get in here? The part of this that caught my attention initially was this word, embryology. Embryology is a branch of animal biology that focuses on the prenatal development of sex cells,

fertilization, and, as you may have guessed, embryos. This fell out of place given what we know about Playtime Co's experiments. Harley was using pre-existing brains and other vital body parts to create the toys. The science wasn't looking at things on a cellular level or from a developmental standpoint. However, this isn't the only time that this word comes up in the ARG. If you've seen our recent Poppy Brogat's timeline short, you may know where I'm going with this. During the ARG, we learned about the now infamous theater incident via a zip folder that contains a number of photos of burnt items. Some were toys, one was a theatre projector, but one was a

torn-up document. This document contained phrases from Harley cursing Elliot Ludwig for kicking him out of the Young Geniuses program. Though, if you look closely, the document he wrote on wasn't just any old document. It's actually an excerpt from a research paper, unifying biology, the evolutionary synthesis and evolutionary biology. Now, this paper was originally published in 1996, which breaks the timeline every which way from Sunday. But regardless, it is a very interesting read when considering what we've already been talking about. But anyway, This paper discusses how science has approached evolutionary theories over the years, with the parts we're seeing from the theatre incident,

referencing how Darwin's natural selection theories and evolution in general, were almost entirely abandoned by the scientific community at one point. Scientists at the time wanted to lean away from what they considered natural sciences and focus more on the newer, shinier, experimental sciences like embryology. Oh hey, there it is again. Basically, rather than just observing larger changes over long periods of time, you could do experiments on the cellular level of embryos, observe their development,

and potentially alter their evolution through direct environmental factors. And all of this was happening, yet this, during the 1930s, exactly when Elliot Ludwig founded Playtime Code. That, along with this being something that Harley had in his possession during his time in the Young Geniuses program, implies that this isn't a coincidence. This was the foundation of Elliot's scientific philosophy. Elliot was always keen on innovating the toy world, making puppies out of biological parts.

Just instead of using parts from rats or children, as we've all suspected, it looks like Elliot was trying to continue the expansion of evolutionary science, creating embryos that would develop and evolve into their toy bodies, allowing them to be fully working, functioning, living toys. He could even control their development to mean they wouldn't require food to survive. When Harley brings up embryology, it's because he remembers studies, it under Elliot. He knows that it's the only way this could be possible. But hang on, if Elliot's method is about creating and developing new life from embryos rather than stealing

life from someone else, how is the poppy we know Elliot's daughter? She died in the 1960s, and yet this poppy knows that Elliot is her father. I wish you were here, Dad. In the cut lines from Tavta 2, she also seems to be aware of what exactly she is. And I am the cause. Being able to exist as a doll, it has killed so many people. And when Harley asks, is it her? He follows up with, that's impossible. He's not referring to just any generic poppy.

Those weren't impossible. They were a dime a dozen, actually. He's referring to this very specific poppy. Elliot's daughter. Her being alive, conscious, inside a poppy doll, that should be impossible. Even with Elliot's embryological prowess. has to be a part of this that we're missing.

And indeed there is. Because as I looked more and more into embryology, there was one particular expansion in the field that I kept coming across. Cloning. Which I recognize sounds completely insane. But please, trust me, this actually ties everything together really nicely. Cloning is just embryology with a slight twist. Rather than going through the fertilization process,

cloning works by putting an already developed cell nucleus inside an empty sex cell, like an egg cell. At least this is how we got the first ever clone animal Dolly the Sheep back in 1996. The same year that evolutionary paper was published. From there, the cells divide into a viable embryo and then into whatever creature the cell originally came from. Because there's no fertilization, there's no mixing together of different DNA. Instead, it's identical DNA to the original donor. Elliot has mastered embryology and found ways to make embryos develop as he needed to,

to create skeletons, organs, eyes, all within a torrential. body. So, when his daughter was dying tragically in the 1960s, would it be unreasonable for him to use that knowledge to take her cells and put them into the embryos he was using to make the biological poppy dolls, forcing it to develop more intelligence and personality so it could actually become his daughter rather than a generic living doll like the others, essentially negating the whole being dead thing. Now, in reality, clothing doesn't really transfer things like memories or personalities. That is known as the resurrection fallacy and it's a, bit of a misconception. Your memories and personality are products of your environment rather than

your inherent nature and DNA, which is a whole debate in and of itself that we're not going to go into today. However, it's possible that Mob is going down the more sci-fi route with this. I mean, we've got kids being turned into toys. What isn't sci-fi about this series? In many a sci-fi franchise, we've seen clones show up with their original memories intact. Heck, even Garton of Bamban has been using this trope when it comes to making their mascots out of other people's DNA. This could very well be what's happening in Poppy Playtime. with Elliot's daughter essentially continuing her existence as Poppy rather than this Poppy being an entirely new person just with the same DNA, which is then why she knows about what she is and who her father is.

But at the start of all this, I said that the secret had to do with both Poppy and the prototype. And from what we can tell, Elliot didn't make the prototype. Harley did. So all this embryology stuff can't be the secret, right? Well, since I made that initial point, we've realized that Harley not only knew about Elliot's embryology, but was being trained in those same methods, and that he knew exactly what Poppy was. So, looking at this from a logical perspective,

which may be rich for this franchise, but we're going to try anyway, if I'm Harley and I'm trying to recreate Poppy, the first thing I would do is attempt to do things how Elliot did them, using the poppy flower and embryology to try and bring to life the first successful bigger body, a creature that evolved to fit and combine with its robotic body. Obviously, it wasn't a total success, which would eventually lead to Harley abandoning Elliot's method

for his own, making the prototype completely different to the other living experiments, and more similar to Poppy. But if Harley was following Elliot's methodology, that would mean he'd need a donor to make this biological clone from, someone whose life could be worth extending. Well, who better than the main man himself, Elliot? For a long time, we theorised that 1006 was actually Elliot Ludwig. Both of them were incredibly intelligent and both cared deeply for the orphans. Then Elliot was killed and turned into the prototype by Harley and the Playtime co-executives for getting in their way.

And during chapter 4, we got these lines from the prototype that had the entire fandom feeling like this had to be the case. You can come home. In the orientation notebook, P.W. talks about where Poppy is stored being a version of Elliot's home, where he and Poppy could spend time together. So the prototype telling her to come home felt really poignant. I just couldn't fully get behind it because of one piece of evidence that I pointed out in my first. my first poppy theory. There's a drawing in Elliot's office that is specifically addressed to Elliot's. And with the drawing containing mummy long legs, then this thing had to have been drawn

after her creation in 1991. That means he cannot be the prototype. As the Bigger Body's experiments started in 1990, with experiments like 1188 being made that same year. 1006 comes before that. And so if it was Elliot, he'd have to be dead before this drawing was given to him. Now, I have seen people say that maybe the employee, were just delivering stuff to his office despite the fact he was already dead.

But the issue I have there is that Elliot's death was incredibly public. We hear people on the radio talking about it in Chapter 3. If everyone knew he was dead, then no one was going to address a drawing to him. So he would have to still be alive in 1991 and therefore cannot be the prototype. This was the dilemma I faced for weeks after Chapter 4 came out. It felt like so much was pointing towards Elliot being the prototype, but this one piece of evidence just couldn't let me justify it. But with our new ideas around embryology and cloning,

we can have our cake and eat it too. Elliot can still be alive in 1991 to receive the drawing and hang it in his office, but he can also become the prototype, with all of his scientific genius, able to build new scientific marvels, his intimate knowledge of Playtime Coe and its systems, and his memories of his daughter being Poppy. However, wouldn't this mean that 1006 already knows the secret?

It's just Elliot's method of embryology. If 1006 has all of Elliot's memories, then he could just do it again without any issue. Except there is an issue. The issue is that even Elliot's method wasn't perfect. Remember, there is one more detail about this whole secret that's unaccounted for. They are running out of time. Time is precisely what we do not have. If Elliot had figured out the next step of evolution,

developing embryos that would naturally grow to fill the toys, able to use cloning in order that someone could live on as a toy. He'd have still missed out on the one thing that even Harley was trying to avoid. Cloning isn't without its flaws. Dolly the Sheep began developing arthritis in 2001 when she was just five years old. Sheep do often get arthritis, but it's usually when they're much closer to the end of their lives, like 10 or 11. Scientists figured out that the cloning process was causing her to age faster, and the The numbers would seem to back that up.

The sheep Dolly was cloned from was six years old at the time of cloning. Meaning, even though Dolly was a newborn, her cells were technically already six years old. All of this meant that at the age of six, Dolly was actually 12, which is the end of a standard sheep life expectancy. Sure enough, Dolly developed tumours in her lungs at six years old, leading to her death. Even if a clone could keep all the memories of its past life, elongating that person's life or bringing them back from the grave, you're only delaying the inevitable death will still come for you eventually. That's the thing with life. No one makes it out alive. And I believe we're actually seeing this in Poppy Playtime.

Many fans have been quick to point out that in each chapter, Poppy's eyes have begun to change. You could chalk this up to the mob team just getting better as the chapters go on, finessing and improving the designs. But it isn't just that Poppy's design is getting more detailed. In each chapter, Poppy's eyes have become more bloodshot. In Chapter 4, almost the entire side of her eye is red, which is way more than we saw in Chapter 1, or even in the first Poppy VHS take, something has begun to change in Poppy. Her body is beginning to degrade. If she is a clone of Elliot's daughter from the 1960s, like we suspect,

then she would be 50 years older than the child she was cloned from, likely putting her close to her 60s. The point where humans begin to experience rapid changes in their molecules and microorganisms, which can lead to age-related disdemeanor. diseases. And speaking of diseases, Elliot's daughter died tragically in the 1960s. Usually when it's tragic, it's unexpected. Which could mean something like a car crash, looking at you, David, but it could also mean a sudden unexpected illness. And if that was the case, cloning her could mean that this version of Elliot's daughter, Poppy would be susceptible to the same disease.

She could be dying from the same thing she died from the first time. The prototype would also be suffering with this issue. In one of our previous timelines, we've hypothesized. that Elliot would have been around 28 in 1930 when he got divorced, because the average age for a man getting married in the 1920s was around 25. By 1990, he would therefore have been 88 years old, which is definitely old, but not old enough that he couldn't feasibly still be working at the factory. However, if he was cloned to make the prototype, that a newborn toy would have been 88 to begin with,

meaning that by 2005, when the game takes place, While he's only 15 years old physically, his cells are really 103. Again, that is very old, but in 2021, there were nearly 90,000 people living across the US above the age of 100. So it's definitely possible. But if the prototype is aware of this, then he'd know he's in the minority. And that he may not be long for this world if he doesn't find a way to perfect the process. Time is precisely what we do not half. That, my friends, is what the secret is.

It's not just embryology. It's not just cloning. It's the method to achieve the next stage of evolution. Something that could, quote, mean so much more. Living forever. During the Chapter 4 ARG, Elliot said that scientific progress should always be to benefit humanity. Finding a way to cheat death, to clone yourself and live inside an immortal toy body,

avoiding the need for food or rest, also eliminating disease and aging? That sounds like the kind of scientific development that would benefit the entire human race. Carly also said that immortality was his driving force. Mortality is the curse of the weak. Fire that incinerates the flesh. I strive to snuff that flame.

And after all his time in the Young Geniuses program, I wonder where he got that from. He and Elliot may have had different approaches, but at the end of the day, they were both after the same thing. However, neither of them could figure out how to overcome the inevitable. Age and disease still haunt these quote-unquote immortal bodies. Both the prototype and Poppy are dying, which is why the prototype, Elliot, is in such a rush to figure out the secret.

The secret to ridding, aging, and death from these embryos, the secret of eternal life, to save him, his daughter, and the world from death. And with our player character's scientific background and connection to this company's experiments, I wonder if we might end up being the ones to help him figure it out. If we don't, there may be no way to save Poppy. Although, she has betrayed us multiple times, so maybe that's for the best. But hey, that's just a theory. A game theory! Thanks for watching.