BATDR Analysis/Post-Playthrough Theory Revision Pt. 4/4: Guess what? I found some more highly suspicious songs…
So, let's add some nice, juicy lyric/film analysis to our dish (sorry, Betty, I couldn't resist the joke rofl… Speaking of Betty's comment, “all those juicy, lovely books gone to waste. Only Keepers go in there these days, and they'll tear you apart limb from limb if Wilson isn't with you…” sure sounds like the fandom simultaneously lamenting that all the Bendy books are supposedly “no longer canon” after the Memory of Joey/Nathan Sr.'s so-called “retcons” and, in a few cases I've seen, getting downright vicious towards anyone who tries to dig back into them)!! I'm very excited about how perfectly these wound up matching my theories, I had all but the first one in a playlist to watch/listen to later, and when I did and re-watched/re-listened to the first after writing Parts Two and Three? Wowzah… 👀
Before we start, summaries in case you haven't read/recaps because it's been a while since I posted the other parts.
(Sorry again that this part took so much longer to repost than expected… I live in shame.)
Part One: Wilson and Audrey have been trapped in their time loop for at least a year of real-world time, the game is actually taking place sometime between 1974 and 1992, and the beginning of BATDR is just a replay of June 18, 1973 like how the ending of BATIM is just a replay of August 1963 (there's also still all the evidence in my original analysis/theory that suggests BATIM and BATDR are both taking place sometime between 1978 and 1991, so do with that what you will). Also, there's definitely only ever been one studio and timeline, it's just that multiple entities have been editing everything beyond recognition (mostly Nathan Sr., whose alteration of the Ink Dimension is definitely symbolic of gaslighting, which I continue touching on throughout, but especially in the next part, which is my personal favorite).
Part Two: Wilson told us his entire life story and explained how his dad always was and still is the true villain to us in riddle format (which The Mug and the Maiden is the key to starting deciphering). Information he divulges includes but certainly is not limited to:
- Arch Familial Dysfunction (Understatement of the Century): Wilson is the younger half-brother of Nathan Jr. from an affair that Nathan Sr. had with their housekeeper in 1926 (yes, the year before Joey reunited with him at the Sparkle Unicorn in 1927 and he was looking for girls to dance with there; dude's a serial adulterer). It's heavily implied that Nathan Sr. was not just emotionally but also physically abusive of him, that he was the cause of those big honking scars of his.
- Power Dynamics: while Nathan Sr. was never officially involved in JDS, he was always pulling strings behind the curtain, to the point that it's accurate to describe him as one of the Three Kings of JDS (the other two obviously being Henry and Joey); we're given intimate details of how manipulative he is, including that it was under his influence that Joey claimed responsibility for horrible things that he didn't actually do.
- The Truth About TLO: Joey and Allison were in Atlantic City schmoozing Bill's dad in order to get out from under Nathan Sr.'s thumb after the events of and since DCTL knocked sense into them, but Nathan Sr. retaliated by orchestrating all of the events that lead to Bill's “death” so that Mr. Chambers would instead put a price on Joey's head and they'd have no choice but to come crawling back to him for protection from he who they thought would be their way out.
- Wilson's Corruption Arc: Wilson spent his youth watching his dad's machinations from the shadows and warning people through riddles so that Nathan Sr. wouldn't realize what he was doing; when Joey created the hivemind, he connected to it in order to do this more easily. This is how he was actually involved in the events/writing of TLO and DCTL. Unfortunately, his dad caught him by the end of TLO because he'd done a little orchestration of his own to lure a wildcard – Brant Morris – into the mix in hopes of exposing Nathan Sr. to the world and he was punished, starting him on a decades-long journey to Murder Puppet/Decoy Villain status that eventually involved Nathan Sr. ordering his mom (again, the housekeeper, not Tessa Arch) to put him through some sort of obedience test and then drug him so that he would be there when the crate containing the Ink Machine “accidentally” broke. He wrote The Mug and the Maiden to Audrey (like Buddy wrote DCTL to Dot and, as I previously theorized, Joey wrote TIOL to Henry) under the unsubtle pen name of “Wilton,” taking inspiration from her childhood memories of a toy (the Cracked Mug) that reminded her of her dad (like how he took inspiration from Bill's memories of Alice in Wonderland for the riddles he sent to him, Constance, and Brant) as a last, desperate cry for help before his own dad finally finished turning him into a Murder Puppet (like how TIOL was a cry for Henry to come save Joey from Nathan Sr. before he did the same to him and DCTL was a cry for Dot to stop Joey and save everyone else before his mind was overtaken by Boris's).
- True Identities: the Memory of Joey is actually either a puppet created and controlled by Nathan Sr. or just straight-up Nathan Sr. in disguise; he symbolizes the image of Joey that Nathan Sr. has carefully curated and ingrained into the public's memory. Meanwhile, Bendy is actually the real Joey Drew, forced back into the Murder Puppet/Decoy Villain role by Nathan Sr. postmortem but most definitely not the real monster; Dapper Bendy symbolizes the side of him that did his best to heal from what Nathan Sr. did to him and be a good uncle/father and friend and that Nathan Sr. brainwashed him into hating and suppressing, Freaky Teeth Bendy symbolizes the habitual remnants of his maladaptive coping mechanisms formed by decades of being manipulated and abused by the man in question which he doesn't want to be, anymore.
- Signs To Watch Out For: does something about the story make no sense (e.g., facts like dates and how the heck the ink actually works aren't matching up, an event gets called out as as weird/odd/strange only to have questions about it brushed aside, characters seem to have very different thoughts/feelings/motivations in one game/book than in another, an event gets written off as accident/coincidence/fate, etc.)? Great news /s! That's a sign of Nathan Sr.'s interference. Also, if a character seemingly randomly says something weird/odd/strange, that's a sign that Wilson's sending us a warning riddle through them (especially if it gets directly called out as weird/odd/strange).
Part Three: Henry and Allison's so-called “story retcons” are actually blatant lies made up by Nathan Sr. to keep Bendy/Real Joey trapped and at odds with his two real best friends postmortem (and put icing on the torment cake by allowing those friends to still be friends with each other but not him); the truth appears to be that Joey did call Henry for help but Nathan Sr. had him murdered, and then Allison tried to switch sides for good and help Joey through recovery as a fellow reformed abuse-victim-turned-abuser, so of course Nathan Sr. also had her and Tom murdered. Audrey is neither a soulless ink creature nor a sacrificed human but instead has her own, completely new soul created from pieces of Henry and Joey's via the same ghostly soul-combination process that creates all “children of the darkness/Machine” (many of whom seem to be hiding messages in their audio logs/memos in order to rat Nathan Sr. out on their parents' behalves), making her Henry and Joey's daughter (Henry, Bendy/Real Joey, the Memory of Joey/Nathan Sr., Wilson, and Audrey also appear to be the most powerful beings in the Ink Dimension because all souls are combinations of pieces of one's parents' souls in the Bendyverse, so all five of them have Royal Souls). Porter and Heidi are not Audrey's siblings, they were given their powers by the Memory of Joey in order to push us towards thinking that Joey was a cruel uncle/father who discarded the failed Audreys when he got sick of taking care of them (when, in reality, Joey was a very loving father who cherished every second with his baby girl and fought for her to have a better life than he did even though he made mistakes due to decades of being trapped in survival mode [e.g., having Audrey call him “uncle” in her previous reincarnations in order to cope with the grief of her dying over and over due to only having a partial soul] and it's actually Nathan Sr. who was the irredeemably evil dad, straight-up celebrating when they found Wilson's dead body on the floor of his JDS museum); Gent CEO Alan/Allen Gray/Grey appears to also be a child of the darkness/Machine, the son of Tom and possibly either Allison, Bertrum, or Nathan Sr. (who's definitely rewriting history to include Mr. Gray/Grey as one of his many Decoy Villains, regardless of whether he's his other parent or not), Grace the daughter of Norman and possibly Shawn, Heidi the daughter of Allison and Susie, and Steve the son of Wally and Tom. Bendy/Real Joey being the center of the hivemind and anyone infected with the right kind of ink becoming a personification of part of his psyche has confirmation out the wazoo, except it seems that Norman, specifically, may have become a personification of part of Wilson's psyche just because he's very powerful, himself, as another JDS Royal. “Cyclebreaker” doesn't seem to truly mean “person who can reset the loop,” but instead “person capable of breaking the cycle of trauma/abuse,” and Wilson's Keepers seem to be called that because Nathan Sr. gave them orders to ensure that his son continues obeying and remove anyone who might help him recover from what he did to him from the picture.
Both Parts Two & Three: many scenes appear to be heavily symbolic of or just straight-up Audrey leaning on/being tempted to lean on Joey's maladaptive coping mechanisms generational trauma-style and having a choice between cruelty and compassion. There's also quite a bit of evidence pointing towards Joey having intended the Ink Dimension to be a heavenly paradise for the salvation of suffering people (especially his fellow victims-of-Nathan-Sr. and people that Nathan Sr. used him and his studio to hurt/disappear), but Nathan Sr. having sadistically hijacked it and created the End Reel in the process of twisting it into a hellish prison to continue torturing his victims in postmortem (especially Joey).
Real quick, some thoughts I had while working on fanarts:
- The cheese store man (from The Mug and the Maiden) may symbolize Porter and Steve McGregor in addition to all observers of the Joey-and-Nathan Sr. situation (a giant man with bits of cheese stuck in his beard? Sounds like Big Steve with all those bits of metal and whatnot that he eats stuck in his body. An old man with a long beard and ropes around him? Sounds like Porter, who got stuck in a pipe just like how Brant/Mr. Darble Mouse got stuck under the secret door in the warehouse basement/Governor's cellar… And the cheese store man knows the widow's real name but she calls him by the wrong one? Porter's definitely Brant Morris using a different name and he may have actually spied on the Memory of Joey in order to tattle on him, I love him even more now. Also… Brant/Porter is totally a personification of Wilson's sense of humor in addition to Joey's shame. Brant's the funniest character in TLO, Porter's downright mirthful about everything, Wilson/Wilton wrote the funniest fairytale I've ever read in my life… they also both apparently dealt with early hair thinning, interestingly), trying to push us towards investigating them in order to expose Nathan Sr.'s Fake Siblings plot.
- The Decoy Villain and their Keeper dynamic is actually something we see repeatedly across Nathan Sr.'s victims, especially when the torch is about to be passed from one Decoy Villain to another… Arthur was Isabel's Keeper when it was time for her to kill Walter, Allison was Joey's Keeper when it was time for him to turn his employees into ink creatures (turning several into fellow Decoy Villains in the process), mayhaps we could even say that whoever figured out how to create the Slugs was Chef Buck's Keeper when it was time for him to start his “recycling” spree… and Heidi is Mr. Gray/Grey's Keeper now that it's time for him to take over from Wilson? 👀👀
- Wilson's BATDS audio log was 100% about him wanting to pass on his secrets before his dad could silence him completely and forever in death as he did to so many others, just like how Joey managed to leave clues about the reality of the whole situation behind despite everything.
…Welp, now that that's out of the way, on with the show!
