Game Theory - Your Mind is BROKEN!

Episode Date: May 8, 2026

In today’s episode, we will be breaking down every path and ending as we journey through the memories hiding in Subliminal…

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Twizzlers keep the fun going. Yeah, I know. I just stopped whatever you were listening to to tell you that Twizzlers keep the fun going. Well, irony isn't my forte, but twisty, chewy, yummy Twizzlers sure is. So think of Twislers as a little pallet cleanser for whatever's queued up,

which, by the way, should be coming very soon. Like any second now. Okay, Twizzlers, time to keep the fun going. Are you suppressing trauma, worried you can't move on and be happy, Scared it will haunt you forever. Concerned that if you don't, you'll be hunted down by a monstrous version of your favorite childhood mascot and brutally murdered over and over again? No, just me.

Hello, Internet! Welcome to Game Theory. It can be nice to reminisce of simpler times. Like when my brother and I would go and play video games all day and never leave the house. No responsibilities, nothing. But for some people, the past can bring up some less enjoyable memories, to the point that even the good memories are tainted by negative emotions. That, my friends, is the premise of the new indie horror game, Subliminal.

A backroom's inspired psychological horror game where you travel through memories to try and avoid the looming feelings of despair and loneliness. As far as mascot horror games go, subliminal has a lot of the classic tropes. Black goo, creepy mascot, nostalgic locations, you know, the usual stuff. But much like I was talking about in our meta-mascott horror video a few weeks ago, this game has got a number of things going for it that do separate it from others we've seen before. For starters, the premise is just fascinating. It combines things like the Stanley Parable with a narrator you can listen to or ignore, But rather than exploring an actual location, we're diving into the mind of our player character.

These places are from their memories, which means things can twist, evolve, change. We can't trust what we're seeing because once we turn around, it might be gone. It also has some of the most impressive graphics I've seen in a Masker Horror game. Plus, there's puzzles. Now, Masker Horror games are not strangers to puzzles. I mean, that was one of the things I liked about Poppy Playtime to begin with. But these puzzles are cranked up to 11. Some have even said these are too challenging, and they may not be wrong.

But hey, I'll take it over another Simon says puzzle. Finally, there's the story. One complaint I've seen online is that there's barely any plot or law to this game. And that's true. If you don't study all the details left in each room, explore every hidden pathway and the multiple endings. If you do that, and throw in a bit of psychology along the way, there is a ton of law that explains the true story of the game,

what our character is going through, and what the best method is to help them feel joy again. And while the answer may not feel like the best approach, it's the only way to put an end to the trauma. So lie down in this chair theorists as we take a journey through the deep memories hiding in subliminal. The game starts with you in an empty space, with a voice speaking to you. I am your conscious, your sense of direction. Your name is Caleb.

And this vast void of nothingness that we're currently floating in is your mind. Conscience describes Caleb's mind as a bit gummed up with negative emotions. And so the brain is in maintenance mode. To help, Caleb needs to bring more joy to the surface by recalling memories and transporting them there. This allows him to travel to a water park, a bounce house and a play place. Place is full of joy and absolutely nothing scary or ominous, right? Well, not exactly.

While Caleb tries to recall these memories, he is continually distracted, appearing in empty backroom, star hallways and corridors and your dingy childhood home. And within these joyful memories, you are chased by a horrifying monster. By looking at the steam achievements, we can tell that this guy's name is Smile.

But naming him doesn't exactly make him any less terrifying. Don't worry, though. Conscience is here with Caleb to help guide him to the right path, reminding him that smile is not really real and so should just be ignored. Conscience wants to help you remove the gunk from the joyful memories and load up your memory meter so that you can feel happy once again. That is the main goal of the game. But if you pay attention to the things conscience says and the paths we are told not to go down, it's clear what's really going on.

The very first remit transport to is your childhood basement. It doesn't look great and... Our memories here and their corresponding feelings of loneliness, anxiety and soul-crushing guilt are rather... Inconvenience doesn't want us to be here, and whatever is in here is apparently not good for Caleb to remember. The same thing happens later when you try and go into a door label Deep Storage. Ah, Caleb, please, no, not there. This isn't where we need to go. But if you ignore conscience and go through the door, you can see black streaks across the floor. And the further into deep storage you go, the more of this black goo there is.

Oh, Rodden. There's no real danger to it, of course, but it is unfortunately quite unpleasant. Certainly not the kind of thing we will crue. The black goo seems to be Caleb's negative emotions that conscience wants to remove so that we can be filled with joy again. The fact that deep storage has it all over the walls tells us that there's something in here that conscience wants Caleb to forget. Something deep in the recesses of Caleb's mind that is causing his mind to be gummed up. And after our first encounter with smile, conscience gives us a clue as to what that might be. After running into smile in the playplace, we get distracted and go on a bit of a detour. Once we get back on track, conscience addresses the issue with smile.

These intrusive thoughts and their accompanying feelings of loneliness, guilt and existential dread are in fact not real and bear no truth or substance whatsoever. This is the same thing Conscience said when Caleb recalled the memory of his childhood basements, feelings of guilt and loneliness. This is what has Caleb's brain going into maintenance mode. Something in Caleb's past in his deep memory is affecting his mental state. His trauma has manifested in smile and every memory is now tainted by the trauma that haunted. which is why conscience is trying to make you ignore smile, to not go down the paths and bring up these traumatic

memories and to try and focus on the joyful ones. Conscience is healing Caleb of childhood trauma. Studies have found that by recalling autobiographical positive memories, it lowered cortisol levels, reduced stress and improved mood if you were feeling sad. However, while this sounds like a good idea in theory, in psychology theory, the problem is brains are complex and the memory. The memories of joy that Caleb has at the water park, play place and bounce house are not isolated just as joy. Memories are accompanied by context. How old Caleb might have been? Why was he there?

And who was he there with? This brings those memories and the ones attached to them, good or bad, to our mind as well. But there is some hope for this method of dealing with trauma. The brain is able to train itself to focus on the positive parts of a negative memory, allowing the brain to essentially update the emotional tone of that memory. This can be done by deliberately ignoring the negative parts of the memory, which is exactly what conscience is trying to get Caleb to do. When smile appears, we are told to just ignore it.

And if you don't look directly at smile in the playplace, they disappear and a different path is opened up. Studies even show that the prefrontal cortex can send stop signals to reduce hippocampal retrieval. Essentially, our brains can suppress the unwanted memories so much that we reduce the ability to even retrieve them. This is what is going on in deep storage. Caleb has managed to push down this trauma into parts of his mind where he can't easily retrieve it. And conscience wants to keep it that way. By ignoring it and focusing on the joy, we are doing this update removing the painful parts. I just want to be happy. But as we see, no matter how hard they try to suppress it, Caleb keeps recalling these negative memories. So perhaps this approach of avoidance, well documented as possibly working,

may not be the best approach for dealing with Caleb's specific trauma. Thankfully, Caleb does explore other options throughout the game, and when he does, we see how each one leads to different results regarding his mental health. Another set of studies show that by fixating and ruminating on negative traumatic experiences, it can exaggerate, though, and cause anxiety and guilt to worsen. We see this happen in the ending titled Rotten. We've established that this muck is the negative memories and the trauma that plagues Caleb's joy-filled moments, which is why conscience advises us to avoid.

avoid following the paths covered with it. But if you go full Stanley parable, ignore conscience, and go down one of these routes, Caleb uses a TV to transport himself back to his childhood home. And as you explore, Smile is lurking behind the door. Triggering an intense game where intrusive thoughts are frantically knocking on the doors around the house. It becomes progressively harder to keep all the doors closed and keep the lights on. More black goo appears and conscience gets more aggressive towards you. No, no, what are you doing?

Turn the TV off. You're ruining it! But eventually, the knocking stops and the path down the hall is opened. As you go through the door, you enter a void, with nothing but a distant door. As you hear a knock, the door approaches you, and you catch a glimpse of a tape recording of a man and a few other short moments. This is what happens if Caleb chooses to dwell on the trauma. He gets to the point where all he can think about is that trauma, exactly like the study showed. The CRT TV, which leads Caleb here, even has the word rotten written on the word. the back of it. But as we've seen, recalling joyful memories isn't working either. The brain is just

too complex and it's hard to separate the negative triggers from a memory and so you might get led down a darker route. Each memory is tainted with a reminder of Caleb's trauma and as he is proven, he struggles to focus on the good and dwells on the bag, which leads to another approach Caleb can take in the game. Across the game, there are these large levers labelled erase that you can pull. Doing so hurts conscience. Oh! Caleb, I can see you curious, but please, let's not interact with any more mysterious switches. But in addition to that, it removes certain items from the room, kids toys, inflatable items, that sort of thing.

It seems like these items are what Caleb associates with his trauma, and so is trying to suppress the emotion so aggressively that they are essentially erased from his memory. People with PTSD or other traumatic experiences have been known to do this. Rather than ignoring the trauma, Caleb is trying to erase it entirely. That sounds like a good idea, right? But conscience seems to think otherwise. Because although this feels like the only way to remove the pain, there can be larger knock-on effects.

If you find all the levers in the game, you end up walking down a storage room hall and each door has a year on it. If we've been slowly erasing trauma-triggering memories, I would bet money that 2016 is the year the trauma event occurred. But at the end of the hall, is a large room with many screens and a large erase lever. Conscience tries to convince you not to pull it, but when you do... Wait, no, no, not everything. thing. Please, Caleb, this isn't what I meant. I can find another way. I can. Please. No. When the screen goes black. Some studies have found that for people who suffer from PTSD, their general memory has been affected by their desire to suppress the negative ones. Remember,

the brain is complex and memories are intertwined. One is associated with another and by suppressing one, you may suppress all the others associated with it. Resulting in long-term memory issues and even amnesia. Caleb's attempt to forget the trauma is leading to him losing his entire memory. So, that option is a bus too, but that leaves us with one more ending, into the pit. You get this ending if you play the game regularly, following Conscience's advice and don't venture down any secret parts. After continually becoming distracted by Smile, conscience decides the only way to stop this distraction is to dispose of it completely. You send Smile down a shaft and now you can return to the joyful memories and continue your

mission of being happy. But when you opened the door, it's bricked up. Not like that. Get your mind out of the gutter. Anyway, conscience gets pretty mad at this point. No, no. This can't be right. I've done everything right. I've corrected everything you've messed up. Every mistake, every misdirection, every distraction you've entertained. I fixed it all. Why do you insist on defying me? We're just trying our best, man. While conscience tries to figure out a way back to the joy-filled memories, Caleb goes his own way, wading through webs of black goo, until he finds himself in a large space with conveyor belts everywhere and fragments of other memories, chairs, wardrope, washing machines, TVs.

As Caleb goes through here, we hear conscience in the distance yelling. But as Caleb explores deeper, smile appears, and the chase sequence ends with them catching Caleb and attacking. Now, this ending might seem vague, but there is a lot to unpack here, starting with the brick wall. Despite conscience being in charge, here, there seems to be another force at play. Blocking the path conscience is so dead set on following. And in the mind, there is something that can take executive control without the conscience being

aware, and that is the unconscious. The unconscious mind consists of mental processes occurring outside of awareness. It's a place where random things are recalled in an unorganized manner, known as implicit memory. Stuff just gets recalled involuntarily when met with certain stimuli. In fact, 95% of our brain is driven by the unconsciousness. mind. The space that we travel to is littered with random items on conveyor belts from other memories like trees from the plate place, a couch from the house, and a water slide. It's not organized in a space, it's just scattered everywhere. This is the unconscious part of Caleb's mind. When you're a mid-sized business, you need every competitive advantage you can get,

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modern, not overwhelming. Plus, that signature, wait, for this price, moment. Old Navy's drapey denim wide leg. That is what is blocking the way to the good memories. And it's why Smile is still down here despite the fact we disposed of them. Memories can't just be easily erased as they are in the game. What really happens is the more we suppress a memory, the memory becomes less consciously available. But it still leaves traces that influence thoughts, emotion, or later perception within the unconscious. mind. So, when we disposed of smile, they weren't gone completely, but have ended up in the unconscious mind. And the unconscious mind is now taking control and forcing Caleb to access the suppressed trauma and address it head on. But that can't end well, right? Choosing to dwell on

the trauma ended up making things worse in the rotten ending. And that's true, but there's a nuance between this approach and the rotten ending. In the rotten ending, Caleb is ruminating on the trauma. Ruminating is described as deeply thinking about something. But, into the pit is different. This approach is something doctors actually do with trauma victims. Rather than teaching them to forget trauma, knowing that may never happen, they use exposure-based therapies. You see, avoidance helps keeps trauma alive. But confronting it in a way that doesn't dwell on the feelings surrounding the trauma can actually heal the person's mental health. Scientists have done this by bringing up patients' deeply suppressed memories so that the trauma

can be fully understood and dealt with, rather than only remembering fragments. And the patients that have gone through this method, have found that bringing suppressed trauma into memory actually allows them to function better. This is what Caleb is doing in this ending. And there is one piece of evidence that proves definitively that this ending is the canon ending. That's the load screen. There, you can load up specific save points of the game and you are shown the path and how different choices lead different ways. The Into the Pit ending is the only ending memory that has an arrow continuing forward towards chapter 2. And the reason this is the only way to continue the game is because it's the only way Caleb can truly move on and feel joy again by facing trauma, bringing back suppressed memories,

and dealing with it. But I have one last surprise for you, theorists, because despite all this analysis, we still don't know what Caleb's trauma is. We've seen black goo and scary monsters. It's clearly related to his childhood, and we know it took place sometime in 2016. But other than that, it's just vague trauma. However, I'm certain that we can figure it out thanks to small fragments in each location, starting with the first room, your childhood basement. There's a mini fridge where you could spell out your name and look inside. But there are some more red letters around the room. Putting them on the fridge helps to spell the name Lily, which makes Black Goo appear all over the inside of the fridge. So Lily is likely the source of the trauma. A conscience said this room

is associated with loneliness. If Lily is part of this room, which we can see from the blackboard that says C and L, Caleb and Lily, she was probably another child in our lives, a sister, maybe. Throughout the game, we see two silhouettes of children running around. This is Caleb and Lily. But these feelings of loneliness must be because she is no longer here. If you go through the deep storage room, you'll still end up at the play place, but there is a noticeable difference in something conscience says. When you meet a balloon called Walter, he is described as, An integral and fundamental part of our childhood. In a moment, you'll get to actually hold him again. But this reaction changes if you travel through deep storage and begin to remember your traumatic

memories. Now, when meeting Walter, conscience says, you'll get to actually hold her. Excuse me. Let's move on. Walter isn't just a representation of our joy. It also represents Lily. Every time we see red stuff, it has to do with Lily. Back in deep storage, you find a door with red text over it that says Lily. Go into the room and you'll be thrown out only to hear a girl crying and a TV is thrown out of the room too.

All of the memories conscience wants Caleb to avoid end up having something to do with this girl Lily. She is the reason our mind is gummed up. At first, I figured Lily has died by some evil force and Caleb is grieving the loss because, you know, it's an indie horror game. But there are some other clues that suggest something else is going on here. The first is, once again, in deep storage. When you exit the elevator, there's a loud banging on the door. What did you do?

This suggests Caleb is responsible for the trauma he's feeling, and conscience confirms this when we enter our basements. Our memories here and their corresponding feelings of love. loneliness, anxiety and soul-crushing guilt are rather inconvenient. He says soul-crushing guilt. And as we've already established, this is where Caleb and Lily were together. Based on how deep this trauma goes, Lily is likely dead, but it is Caleb that is responsible for it, or at least he believes he is. This is the root of Caleb's trauma, and the reason he can't escape it is because Lily was such an important part of his childhood, and it was his fault this happened.

We even know where it happened thanks to Smile. We first encounter Smile, in the play place and when we do, conscience reminds us, These intrusive thoughts and their accompanying feelings of loneliness, guilt and existential dread are in fact not real. Smile is also associated with Caleb's feelings of guilt. But if you look around the playplace and the bounce house, you'll find pictures of something else, a cuddly character with a big smile. This is the actual smile character.

But Caleb's mind has twisted it into a more monstrous version because it's here that the Lilly incident occurred. While other memories that remind Caleb of Lily have muck in them, the playplace has a literal monster of guilt manifested. Which is why Smile only appears in the playplace and the bounce house. Something happened here in 2016. Maybe Caleb and her got into a fight. Maybe he pushed Lily too hard and she fell.

Admittedly, that's conjecture. The specifics are unclear. But what I am sure about is that even if he meant to push her or even hurt her, he didn't mean for her to lose her life because of it. But I'm sure we'll get to learn all about that as we dive deeper into Caleb's unconscious mind in chapter 2. But hey, that's just a theory. A game theory. Spotify, it's Jay Shetty.

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