crackedegotheories

[crackedegotheories]

Looks like the Plier Corporation has received a makeover since the last time we saw it. Under new management, perhaps?

M

A reference to the 1931 film "M"? Could it stand for Mörder, or simply murder?

Wait, no, I remember something about that word being...bad. Maybe it stands for something else, like...Murdoch? Malarkey? Marco?

I don't know, I just feel like I'm missing the Mark on this one. Maybe there's some kind of, I don't know, place with a bunch of files out there to help figure this all out?

[crackedegotheories]

Thank you for the shoutout! I'm excited to see where all this is going and so, so glad there's people like you all finding codes and piecing this stuff together.

(The numbers. They mean nothing to me. But @canceltheact has more breakdown posts like this one that are definitely worth checking out and following as these cryptic clues seem to keep coming with each new video, if you haven't checked them out already.)

Poppy Playtime Vids - Lixian's New Codes and Potential ARG Things

And here I thought this blog would be on permanent hiatus, but HERE WE ARE! If you may have noticed, Lixian has been including some codes in the latest Poppy Playtime videos that look like they're not only connected to the previous 3 Scary Games lore, but in fact leading up to something big.

(Special thanks to @astrumnihilum to helping us find the Poppy Playtime Pt. 1 codes!)

Confused on what I'm talking about? Here's a (mostly up to date) masterpost on the Lunky-Lixian-Eldritchplier lore thus far.

Let's dive in!

Poppy Playtime Chapter 4, Part 1: Hexidecimal codes at 5:11 and 10:41.

Leads to Imgur links ending in 5GgAG94 and ggW6PcQ. Imgur links overlay on top of each other when combined to form an image that goes as: [ ] [ ] FILES . [ ], as well as a message on the bottom left reading "more soon". Separately, the imgur link ending in ggW6PcQ has text on the bottom once brightened that says "find them".

Find who, you may ask? Well, this could be referring to the other editors, or to all three editors, as in canon as we saw from the Longeyed Project videos and beyond, they seem to have been replaced with similar Lunky-style knockoffs.

Poppy Playtime Chapter 4, Part 2: Glitches at 3:58 that give us 3 more Imgur links ending in 2P2UrwN, jQLW0kh, and NoOO2Pz. Putting these images together gives us this:

This is moreso an out of game explanation to the audience from Lix, but all this tells us that we have something big coming soon. It seems like we might finally be getting the project teased way back in the Longeyed Project videos. From the fact that we have an unfinished fill in the blanks, we might just be getting a full website (the ". __" alluding to a ".com" or the like).

Keep your eyes peeled! And let us know if you have any questions!

The mysteries we've been looking for may just be around the bend...

EDIT: oh my gosh I forgot to mention this but ALSO in the time since we were gone, we also got ANOTHER showcase of proof that the 3SG lore is alive and kicking - through a video where Lixian puts us down into a hole and we get text that reads "Help me" and "Only you can find the axe" - the same font we've seen in the lore prior too.

@crackedegotheories actually made a good sum up of this tidbit in one of their posts! I'll link that here. Go show them love! Thanks for fighting the good fight Cracked!

[crackedegotheories]

Finally, we're free.

[crackedegotheories]

SIR!

In the livestream on Friday Mark mentioned there was an official trailer for The Edge of Sleep and kept saying he'd love to make his own version (not wanting to diss the creator of the official trailer, he just has his own preferences for these things), then waffling back and forth on it before finally saying he would post the official trailer on his channel right after the stream ended.

Two days later, no trailer on his channel.

At this point it's not even a theory, this man is using his weekend off to make his own "fan" trailer, isn't he?

[crackedegotheories]

In the livestream on Friday Mark mentioned there was an official trailer for The Edge of Sleep and kept saying he'd love to make his own version (not wanting to diss the creator of the official trailer, he just has his own preferences for these things), then waffling back and forth on it before finally saying he would post the official trailer on his channel right after the stream ended.

Two days later, no trailer on his channel.

At this point it's not even a theory, this man is using his weekend off to make his own "fan" trailer, isn't he?

[crackedegotheories]

7 years.

He’ll finally be free tomorrow (of the bad luck from breaking that mirror).

(Apologizing to the DA did not make it on the list because we all know that’s not going to happen. Maybe next year, buddy.)

[crackedegotheories]

when there's smth strange in the new mark vid who you gonna call?

crackedegotheories!!!

(got thrown into a swirling rift in what I can only guess is the fabric of reality and told I needed to find an ax to help someone talking in blue lettered text)

You rang? (Side note, YouTube lost its notifications privileges with me, so I saw this message before I saw Mark's new video. It's probably the only reason I had enough time to type this post up before I head off to the airport, so thank you!)

Okay, to recap: We have a really weird drive by bee attack. No relation to the lore or anything, just bizarre. RIP, bee, you went out stinging. Then we have Mark talking about his love of being dropped into horrors beyond his imagining (not a masochist) and deep lore, before asking Lixian to show us something very deep--"throw them in the hole!"

Lixian says to the viewer, "I guess it's your turn to go into the hole" (my emphasis, we'll get back to that), before we go into a pink, flaming hole. It's tempting to draw the comparison to the wormhole from ISWM, but what's interesting is the color--the only time we see a pink wormhole in Space is when Wilford calls us a ride after ours, uh, was "mysteriously" stabbed.

Inside the hole, there are swirling clouds and flashes of blue lightning. Near the end, there's a break in the clouds that actually kind of looks like a side path to the left, but unlike In Space, we don't have an option of left or right here, we just plummet through the main hole to be met with darkness, and blue text.

"Help me", "Please, help me", and "Only you can find the axe."

Someone is asking for help, someone who claims that only the viewer can find the axe. So, let's talk about the axe, shall we?

First, we start with my boy, Damien:

In DAMIEN, the very first thing we see is Damien himself, chopping down a tree with an axe. This is apparently a daily thing for him, and he chops down a LOT of trees, but in the climax of the video when finally confronting Actor Mark, Damien doesn't have his axe. Instead, Celine arrives, using the axe to break through to Damien and, uh, giving it to Actor Mark to hold for a second.

Chronologically, the next time the axe is picked up is at the end of the fan game for Damien made by Lixian, just for Mark. At about the 48 minute mark, Damien/Dark sets his axe down as he's greeted by Wilford, which is then picked up by Lixian himself.

Lixian is scratched up, presumably from his fight with Lunky in 3 Scary Games #61 which has Lixian attempt to cage Lunky only for Lunky to break out.

It's in the following, unnumbered 3 Scary Games that we first see Lixian wield the axe, to split Lunky in half. (Brutal!)

He would then go on to use the axe in 3 Scary Games #64 and 65 to kill the horror abominations of Mark featured in those videos, and attempts to use it again in #66 only for it to bounce off.

Lixian tries to attack, and gets captured for his efforts, and we next see him in #75, waking up outside of the mysterious Plier Corporation and realizing he doesn't have his axe.

Since then, as far as I can tell in what time I have left to type this, the axe hasn't shown up again. It's missing, and someone needs our help finding it, but who and why?

Part of the explanation may lie with what the monster in #66 says at the beginning of the video: "The end is nigh. He has opened the door. The great Eldritch Plier is coming. Your end is here."

We get a hint at who this "Eldritch Plier" might be in 3 Scary Games #69, which begins with a man standing outside of a pink (!) portal, through which pops out Spider!Mark (one of the same creatures Lixian killed when he had the axe).

This man resurrects Lunky, its two halves barely clinging together, and the next time we see it is with Mark, who admits he doesn't actually remember making Lunky.

Lunky's most recent reappearance is in 3 Scary Games #103, where now whole again he uses the viewer as a sacrifice in his ritual to go back and seek vengeance, presumably against Lixian.

So the safe bet is that it's Lixian asking us to help find the axe so he can take on Lunky, right?

Except...why would he send us through a portal to tell us that? And why would he think we would be the only ones who could find it?

It would make more sense if someone else, someone who is well aware of the workings of the channel and the viewers' place in it, someone who may know of this Eldritch Plier and the danger he poses and shares his ability to summon portals, to do so.

Someone like one Wilford Motherloving Warfstache.

Or, y'know, Dark. He might also be involved.

[crackedegotheories]

Between Mark's treatment of Helpy during Help Wanted 2 and his comments during Momiplier's let's play of Pizzeria Simulator, I can't be the only one thinking...

Mark should absolutely voice Helpy if the animatronic shows up in a future FNAF movie, right?

Hear me out, he has experience voice acting a cartoon bear (hi 505!), and if Helpy is a character the audience/other characters in universe are meant to trust, what better (and funnier) way to do it than to give him a surprisingly deep, charismatic voice?

Not to mention he just really seems to get the character of Helpy in a way that most people who are taken in by that "demon animatronic's" cute exterior don't. He even points out that Helpy's role of helping is fulfilled by showing the dangers of how NOT to do things, which what is that if not Markiplier Makes and many an Unus Annus video in a nutshell?

I'm just saying, it could definitely work and this idea is not completely built on Mark telling his mom that Helpy is a masochist who likes pain.

[crackedegotheories]

Hey, advertising/marketing managers, YOU could be responsible for Markiplier's next Bathtub Breakdown! Is that not reason enough to sponsor this man?

[crackedegotheories]

soooo.......

thoughts on the poppy playtime pt. 3?

I'm so proud that Mark is learning to read. It's tough to struggle through words you don't know, but the more you try the more you learn and the more you know...something about half the battle I think?

Sorry, couldn't help it. I'm guessing this is a follow-up on the last ask about the ego hints, in which case: I thought it was interesting.

I guess the big thing was about 7 minutes into the video, where Mark tells Ollie/Gregory "Things are just happening a little out of order for me at the moment, I'm kind of experiencing multiple realities all overlapping." (Sounds like a typical Thursday to me.)

More under the cut which I had to move up to here because Tumblr keeps rearranging all the photos and putting them one by one instead of a cluster like in the draft. It also keeps moving the read more link around, so who knows if it'll actually be here.

And then we get several cuts, each about a frame each, all from ISWM:

In order, we've got the guy in the woods from the Hee Hoo universe, Cecil H. H. Mills, Cryptid!Mark from the timeline where you mocked him for crying (how could you, Captain?), Abe, Chef, Old Man Mark at the restaurant at the end of the universe, Dorene Whitacre in the void, the campfire scene, Lady aiming a gun in your face, and the Invincible II seen from the outside.

I think the reasonable response would be to assume this is one of the editors slipping in a bunch of ISWM references after an off-the-cuff remark. After all, the second year anniversary is coming up in a little over a month, and Mark's been known to drop hints to go back and watch his larger projects before ("When's the last time you visited Yancy? He misses you, you know" or something similar.)

But eh, let's have fun with it and keep going.

Because I think we could tease out some more (very probably unplanned) references to ego stuff.

Take the very beginning of the video, during the elevator bug that started Mark's spin off into other realities. While Poppy and Kissy Missy have trouble with gravity, Poppy continues to speak to Mark--her voice seemingly coming out of nowhere as he gets farther and farther away. Cue Mark begging her to "Get out of my head!"

A similar scenario actually happens in Wilford Motherlovin' Warfstache, where Abe is monologuing to himself while driving and Wilford, in the backseat, intrudes on his thoughts. Abe tells Wilford to get out of his head and Wilford tells him to stop shouting without either one actually saying a word out loud, then Abe almost runs into a truck. During a series of red gas induced hallucinations about 11 minutes in, Mark responds to "Poppy's" question and says, "I don't know, how am I alive?"--something Abe also questions during WMLW, until Wilford snaps him out of it.

During the multiple realities reference, Mark mentions not being able to separate fact from fiction, something that comes up again later during a second round of hallucinations when "Poppy" asks, "Do you even know what's real?"

Difficulty separating fact from fiction is a recurring problem for Wilford, and even makes up a central theme when the WAIA is speaking to the viewer during The Warfstache Automated Interview Automaton video.

About an hour and a half into the video, after Mark, eh, successfully defeats Catnap, he says, "Remind me why I was doing this in the first place, because I don't recall," slipping into the Warfstache voice as he does so. Wilford doesn't exactly have the greatest memory, or really know why he does most things it seems like.

(He also slips into the Warfstache voice after he gets the finger gun, but that's par for the course every time Mark gets a surprise gun in a video game and starts getting shooty.)

Back to ISWM, we have the Catnap fight. Or more specifically, Mark's unfortunate choice of words, "And I wait to do it all over again." Cue it becoming the recurring phrase during a montage of Mark's failed attempts to beat the boss until, after an unknown number of retries, finally succeeding.

What is that, if not the exact same thing that the Captain goes through In Space? Whether it's the ultimately futile attempts to save the ship in Part 1, or your choice in the warp core that sends you all the way back to the beginning to try again?

When Mark is greeted by Ollie/Gregory who has the audacity to say things like, "Wow...you did it," "You must feel pretty good," and "This win is yours," he immediately breaks out into a storm of cursing.

Very much the same reaction we see in the Captain after failing and being sent back early in Part 1, but especially after obtaining an "ending" only to go into the light and find themselves right back in the cryopod again.

This is the hand gesture of someone (silently) cursing their existence.

Mark slowly turning to stare into the camera while going through the vents (twice) and suggesting he could come crawling out of the screen is just normal Mark behavior though, not sure what else to say about that.

[crackedegotheories]

*shaking you wildly*

WAKE UP WAKE UP

NEW VIDEO WHERE MARK DECIDED TO FUCK WITH US BY ADDING TONS OF EGO REFERENCES JUST DROPPED

[crackedegotheories]

"But if Unus Annus taught us TWO things, one was to not soak in your own urine, but two was to appreciate the time you have left."

I'm glad MatPat took away all of the appropriate lessons from Unus Annus. May we all do the same.

(But in all seriousness, the theory channels won't be the same without him. I hope his retirement from YouTube treats him well, and that he gets to spend more time with his friends and family.)

[crackedegotheories]

Not a theory, I just feel you all should be aware that in The Stupendium's latest song on Game Theory, A Little Theorizing, Mark gets a brief shoutout.

...Or rather, MatPat's attempts to make a Markiplier smash-worthy pokemon do.

[crackedegotheories]

Spoilers for Loki season 2 under the cut? Or at least an image from the mid-season trailer for a future episode, in case that bothers anyone.

Can’t believe Mobius turned out to be a variant of Stan the Water Man.

[crackedegotheories]

Okay, I’ll admit it: this one was a little funnier in theory than in reality. 😬

Last month near the end of the PowerWash Pals video (around the 1:41:25 mark for those looking), Mark floated the completely hypothetical scenario of if someone that MatPat knew were to be filming something early next year, would he be available to be part of it, and Matthew said yes, especially if it was with a director he’d known and worked with and respected, which is awesome and great and also super intriguing but of course not a whole lot to speculate on just yet.

Now, cut to today and Blumhouse has announced the Five Nights at Freddy’s movie would begin filming in February of next year. (For realsies this time, they swear!) I’ve already seen people hoping Mark and MatPat will be involved in some way (along with the other familiar names such as Dawko).

It would be tempting to try and connect the dots between these two things, but a) Mark specifically mentioned a pilot and not a movie ; b) both of them seemed doubtful that the FNAF movie was ever going to be a thing at the time, which is fair ; and c) I think the alternative would be hilarious:

Casting director for FNAF: Okay, so filming starts in February–

Mark: Yeah, sorry, I already have another project I’m going to be working on then.

Casting director: Really? But this is FNAF!

Mark: And I’m the king of Five Nights at Freddy’s, sure, but I’ve been planning this for months now, everything’s already set up and I’m really excited about where this is going to go. I just don’t have the time.

Casting director: No, no, I get it, it’s fine. Well, at least we know we’ve got that guy from Game Theory on lock.

Mark, hissing: About that…

[crackedegotheories]

Dark has officially entered his last year of bad luck, after breaking that mirror six years (and a day) ago. Just one year left, and he, at least, will be free.

Assuming trapping an innocent district attorney in said mirror does not add or reduce the traditional seven year run, of course.

[crackedegotheories]