The World of Little Nightmares

I first saw Little Nightmares at EGX Rezzed, one of the few gaming conventions I would venture outside my house to go and see. Its focus is on indie games and compared to the regular EGX and bigger gaming cons here in the UK there are significantly less people (and more specifically less queues) which in turn leads to more time to play the games on show. That’s when I came across this creepy little exploratory, puzzle platformer Little Nightmares and for sure it wasn’t something I’d soon forget. Though it took me a good few years since then before I actually played the game in full for myself and by that time the game had already become incredibly popular.

That popularity was in large part due to disgustingly creepy designs of the antagonists of this strange world in which you explore. It is full on nightmare fuel with the teacher from the sequel being for me personally, the most terrifying of the lot. But only mentioning the designs of the antagonists would be doing the franchise a disservice. I could mention the incredible sound design that gives the world its eerie fill, its nifty platforming puzzles and straight up terror the chase scenes put upon you, the player. And as much as I enjoy the game and would recommend anyone who hasn’t played LN1 or 2 to go and get, its pretty cheap. That’s not why were talking about it.

Now normally having played through both games, read the comics and lived on the wiki for some time I would normally be able to start off these discussions by breaking down, usually chronologically what is happening in these games, why its happening and try to understand it. However Little Nightmares actively leaves open so much of its lore and reasoning to the interpretation of the player that no one theory will ever be proven right, but I guess that’s kind of the point of theories. Especially given the developers Tarsier Studios are no longer working on Little Nightmares anymore, unless the IP is continued by Bandai Namco as reported.

However lets try deduce a timeline of events based purely on the two games and the mobile game Very Little Nightmares and go from there.

Timeline

Lets start this off by reading a quote from a QnA of Mervik, one of the devs of Tarsier Studios when discussing the release of Little Nightmares 2. “Question: Is this a direct sequel to the first game, and when does it take place? Answer: It is a sequel to the first game, its in the Little Nightmares timeline, is all I can say about that!”

Now you want to talk about interpretation, lets interpret that, they stated it is a sequel, but then said its in the Little Nightmares timeline, rather than saying directly that it follows on from the first game. Now for me this implies that yes it is a sequel in name, Ln1 LN2 (that is sequential) but in the world and timeline of Little Nightmares, it is in fact not sequential from the first game. You could say that the 2 in the title refers to the fact that there are two characters progressing through the game together, rather than one and does not in any way relate to it being a sequel to the first game. We have to take what clues are provided to us, to draw up reasonable conclusions, and to do this we have to follow Six’s iconic yellow raincoat.

In the opening of Little Nightmares 1, Six is wearing her trademark yellow coat. In Little Nightmares 2, when Mono first meets her she isn’t wearing it until she finds it washed up just past the beach in the Pale City. So how did it get there, well we can assume at the very least that it washed up there from the end of Very Little nightmares, when a different girl wearing the yellow raincoat fell off of the cliff of the Nest, another location where children were being kept prisoner and either turned into dolls or given to the Lady at the Maw. Now upon landing in the water The girl in the yellow raincoat never reappeared from the surface… but the raincoat did and this ending implies that the other child that helped drop a boulder on the Pretender, the antagonist of the Nest is in fact Six as they are seen escaping on a Raft, likely towards the Forest Island where the Hunter was located.

Now its fair to conclude that once Six made it off of the Nest, the raft washed up by the forest and she was subsequently captured by the Hunter and kept prisoner until Mono crashes through his first TV and makes his way to the woods and saves her. They then use a raft to move onto the Pale City and Six finds her raincoat not too far from the shore. Now it is in the centre of the room and there is a gap in the roof, leading me to think that the only and more logical explanation is that this is a storage room for clothes that are left by those viewers who get sucked into TV’s and the raincoat was taken by lets say another Janitor and threw from the roof down, into the room. That would explain how it got there in the end. Maybe I’m focussing on this too much….

Moving on!

Six and Mono progress through each location, with Six being captured on more than one occasion and Mono doing his best to save her. After Mono is seen interacting with TV’s and trying to reach a door at the end of a strange hallway, we then meet the Thin Man who takes Six through a TV and once again Mono has to go and save her. After being chased by the Thin Man and being led to the Signal Tower by a glitched Six (which has a lot more significance than I first realised, more on that later).

Mono then meets The Thin Man head on and bag off, at the signal tower and we see a bit more of what Mono can do, which I think again is further evidence of the connections between Mono and the Thin Man but we’ll get onto that in a little bit too. After seemingly evaporating him, and literally pulling the signal tower towards him (or vice-versa), Mono enters through the hallway he has been seeing in those numerous TV sequences in each chapter of the game. Though I don’t think any of us quite expected to see what was inside…

The floating chairs aside the Signal Tower is clearly highlighting the not so straight forward aspects of time in this world. The first room we enter, we go through a door that takes us back to exactly where we were. But if you are slow you can see Mono’s shadow at the other door and I think that this tower and the puzzles within symbolises how time, at least in here, is not necessarily linear. Whether this applies to outside the signal tower, that’s probably less likely given the more human like environments and time sensitive puzzles for elevator switches etc.

Once you follow the music you look upon the deformed figure of Big Six, with those same gangly arms that we all remember from our first encounter with a monster in the Little Nightmares series, the janitor. The music box seems precious to Six for some reason, it also mirrors the music box six was playing when Mono first met her so perhaps at elast to her its holds some sort of significance.

Maybe it’s the only thing keeping her sane at that point in time, or helps her forget past memories. In any case at the same time its keeping her in this state, as we see when we destroy it Six reverts back to her previous form. Which does open up the question can the rest of these monsters be saved, do they all have prized possessions that can save them from their eternal torment, or are they doomed to live this life of feeling nothing but hunger, rage, or classroom etiquette?

Then we are chased by the fleshy embodiment of the eye, that watching eye that we see everywhere and the Signal Tower is seemingly where it resides, watching, controlling the monsters that complete its tasks. It then sets about destroying both Six and Mono which leads us to this cliffhanger of a moment, literally in the form of Six holding onto Mono that beautifully mirrors one of the new game mechanics of LN2 in which Six and Mono jump further gaps and use the other to help them get across. Only this time, somethings different, Mono isn’t wearing his brown paper bag to cover his face. He has revealed his true face and Six can it, theres even a moment where she leans in closer maybe to get a proper look and she clearly does not like what she sees. And she lets him fall, and its not long after that, that we learn exactly why Six did that in the first place. Mono sits atop a chair, growing older, and older and older before finally donning the signature fedora of the Thin Man.

He was the one in that room at the end of the hallway the entire time, the connections between Mono and the Thin man were there in plain sight for us to see, the communications with the TV’s. The almost reflected powers of the two shown at the entrance of the Signal Tower. It was all there, but what does it all mean?

Well the secret cutscene that you get for collecting all of the glitched children shows us Six’s exit out of the signal tower and back into the Pale City, with the Glitched Six once again appearing and motioning to something on the floor, specifically an advertising poster for the Maw. And then that familiar hunger sound of Six’s stomach growls, which all but confirms that this game is set before Little Nightmares 1. Six after being captured for a certain period of time we don’t know how long, without food, as well as surviving the nest and becoming a deformed monster for a little bit, is probably now a bit peckish. So it now makes sense to say that Six willingly entered the Maw so she could eat what food is likely there. Yes we were surviving horrible monsters in LN1 as well but look at this world, there is no salvation, there is no safe haven. The only way Six can survive at this point is to find some edible food, where better than a place where the seemingly elite class of this nightmare world go to fill their fat bellies. This also highlights just why Six does not use her newly gained powers from the end of LN1 after munching on the Lady of the Maw, because Six does not have them yet.

Now going back to Glitch six very quickly, I believe its fair to say that Glitch Six and the Shadow Six  that we see in the first game during the hunger scenes are one and the same. Perhaps at he  time of making LN1 they didn’t then know they were going to use TV’s and  glitch children etc which would potentially justify why they look different, but are meant to represent the same thing. Glitch Six looks similar to the other glitched children but was actively interacting with Mono by helping him reach the ladder to meet the Thin Man by the Signal Tower, and also in the secret ending cutscene where she points Six towards the flyer of the Maw. The glitched Six clearly holds a level of understanding of the world and time, that our Six currently doesn’t and wants her to go to the Maw. My guess is and this will link in with the time loop and other timeline theories we’ll get onto in a moment is that glitched Six and other glitched children and maybe the thin Man himself all came from another timeline of events through the TV’s for one reason or another. Now with that in mind lets go back and reassess the connections between Mono and the Thin man as this is what seemingly has created another theory for the games timeline.

Timeloop theory

The ending to Little Nightmares 2 certainly gave us more questions than answers and a lot of theories as to what this meant. Six letting go of Mono and then Mono growing up within the Signal Tower and becoming the Thin Man leads many of us to see the entire Little Nightmares series as an infinite time loop that runs over and over. Now I’ve been racking my brain over this and trying to see why it works, not if it works. Before we do that however, lets first define a timeloop. And checking good old Wikipedia, it states timeloops are repeating periods of time that are constantly resetting when a certain condition is met and once this condition is met, the loop then resets to its designated start point. Now when it comes to Six and Mono and more specifically, Mono becomubg the Thin man, I believe this situation fits the causal loop theory more. This is when whether by means of retrocausaility or time travel, in this case retrocausality, which is a concept of cause and effect in which one effect precedes its cause in time and so a later event affects an earlier one. With this in mind lets apply it to Six and Mono’s situation. For Mono to be the Thin Man which is what is heavily implied if not flat out fact at this point, Six has to let him go at the end of the game creating the causal loop paradox they are in, as the Thin Man already existed in this timeline. Now the effect that precedes its cause in time is the Thin Man, and this is important as the Thin Man should not already exist as Mono has not grown up in the Signal Tower to become him. However we also need to take account of the fact that if this timeloop affects Six, then it has further ramifications for the other games in the series. The loop can’t just reset within the timeline of just LN2, from Mono crashing out of the first TV to him becoming the Thin Man, as where does that leave Six? Six leaves the Signal Tower and goes to the Maw, starting the events of LN1, so would that suggest that because Mono is the Thin Man and is connected to the Signal Tower, only Mono relives the time paradox and the events in LN2 and Six only lives through them once? Again another question to  ponder.

But with that in mind lets back to the why, it could just be a quite literal looping of time. and time in this world resets to those particular points, Mono, crashes through the TV resetting the timeloop from LN2. But why does this time loop exist, there has to be a reason that the Thin Man is chasing Mono and Six throughout LN2 and why he captures Six and turns her into a monster (assuming  he is the one that did it).

Well, lets look at the website description of the Thin man and try and gleam something from that:

 “As The ever present hum of the transmission chokes the airwaves, The Thin Man continues his endless journey through this desolate place, haunting the shadows, searching for something..”

Now thers a few key words that help back up the timeloop theory here, his endless journey as in endless through time and the other key part is that he’s searching for something. What I think he is searching for is a way to break this cycle that has been created by some otherworldly force (and we’ll come onto that in the next section of the video). What else is he searching for when the only scenes we see of him reflect that of Mono’s abilities during the game? Why would he go to the effort to capture Six as the Thin Man, because he knows that Six is going to drop his ass out of the sky as Mono. The Thin Man has those memories, but Mono does not, as it hasn’t happened to that Mono yet. But perhaps in alternate reality or timeline that exists because of this timeloop, it has happened to The Thin Man. We could go as far as to say that The Thin  Man is from seperate reality of time and space, the same with the rest of the glitched children, lost in time and space, just a shadow in our world.

And if we go with that theory then that opens up another huge question, if the Thin Man is not responsible for creating the timeloop in the first place because he seemingly wants to break that cycle and is a victim of it, then who is?…

Lovecraft and the North Wind

Now I’ll be totally honest I had never heard of lovecraftian horror. It wasn’t until I had a comment on my LN2 video that mentioned it which then made me go through and find out more about Lovecraftian horror and how you can see the inspiration of Lovecraftian horror, surrounding the world of Little Nightmares. I believe that this can also help support our understanding of Little Nightmares, but first let me briefly explain just what Lovecraftian horror actually is:

According to Wikipedia Lovecraftian horror is a subgenre of horror fiction that emphasizes the cosmic horror of the unknown (or unknowable) more than gore or other elements of shock. It is named after American author H. P. Lovecraft (1890–1937). His work emphasizes a philosophy of cosmicism, the idea that the reality underlying the veneer of normality is so alien that seeing it would be harmful.

We see the world as it is and we all have certain beliefs however Lovecraftian horror challenges the notion that we have any understanding as to what is really going in the universe. And this is because were we to find out, our brains could not comprehend the things we would be seeing.

Take Fran Bow and the pills she takes as an example of this, she walks through what you would consider to be the normal world that we would all know and understand to some extent or another. There is precedent there and not anything really unexplainable, — then Fran takes her special duotine pills and is shown other realities that are layered on top of her own. Now start thinking about if those realities and trillions of others were layered on top of ours in the same way, except we can’t see them. We are blue pilled if you like and once you see the truth, the red pill, there is no unseeing it and it would most likely send you mad at the thought. Now take these other realities and add Lovecraftian creatures like Cthulu (the most iinfamous of HP Lovecrafts creations) into the mix…theres no way our brains could process what is happening in that kind of scenario.

But how does all this relate to Little Nightmares, well for starters lets discuss what the devs actually said when describing the monsters in LN2.  Eurogamer interview

Mervik – All of the residents of Little Nightmares… they don’t really have motivations, it’s like id – it’s the base instinct of people, so we take this base instinct and pull it in different directions. So the Hunter is just bloodthirsty, he has the blood sport impulse I guess, just reduce people and animals to nothing or trophies on the wall, just pure naked aggression. They don’t have a goal in life, that they want to achieve, it’s just this urge –  teachers can be terrifying – this sense of authority that people have over you as a child, teachers are wonderful as well – but this one isn’t.” This tells us a lot, it tells us that these creatures carrying out these acts and tasks have no emotion, no thoughts, just urges and an innate desire that’s been set upon them. Have we ever stopped and wondered why its only children that are chased around by these terrible monsters in this world.

Well this is where I think the Little Nightmares comic series come into focus. Only two issues were completed and issues 3 and 4 were cancelled but I do hope we get to more stories like this, maybe we’ll get more similar to the LN2 comics which were shorter and focussed on 4 individuals who we may see in future DLC.

Now there is no confirmation that these are canon (as far as I know) so take for that what you will, but in a game series where so much is left open to interpretation I think to take elements from the comics to help build a picture for understanding the game is something, that at least I’m okay with. So if you will indulge me if nothing else, lets crack on

The comic I want to focus on here is titled:

The Tale of the North Wind –

It is a story told to Six by another child in the Maw, he explains that he came from a village with his sister and left as The North Wind came through destroying everything in its search for children. The brother and sister hid in a barn for refuge, [just as a quick easter egg at the start of VLN the girl in the yellow raincoat also runs into a barn, this may have no connection but just thought id mention it anyways…]

Unfortunately the North Wind finds them and after the boy tried to protect his sister from harm, the North Wind showed him the truth, his sister was in fact dead or part of the North Wind’s wrath the entire time and the hand he had been holding was in fact the Ferrymans hand and not his sister.

For those of you that don’t know the Ferryman finds and brings children to the Maw, not much else is known about him as well as if he brings children to the Maw to help them (i.e get food and survive) or if  he is being controlled by another and brings them there to die.

But if we break down some of the phrases and speech used in this comic, it starts to paint a picture of the real reality of Little Nightmares.

“The two children survived but the North wind gave them no rest” “And after what happened to their village, they were of course welcomed by everyone”. This aptly showing that the North Wind didn’t just destroy the village but turned its adult inhabitants into monsters, or at least controls them to go and attack all the children. Likely as previously mentioned stripping them away to their base urges.

The boy asks the North Wind to leave them be as it approached the barn that they hid in, to which the North Wind replied:

“Leave you be? Wheres the fun in that? To say nothing of the Wager I’d lose…. Even though my adversary is a bit of a cheat”

This right here I think says so much about why this world is the way it is and why only children seem to have survived. The adults are turned into monsters by the North Wind and each are tasked with different activities to undertake or as previously mentioned are driven by horrible urges based on their former lives and professions, hence why the names of a lot  the bosses are the jobs they either had or now complete. But anyway so it seems to me that it plays out something like this:

The North Wind, this otherworldly Lovecraftian like entity was tired of not being seen or wanted to be able to interact with the human world reality. So it made a deal with the devil, why the devil you ask, well it’s a stretch but its purely based on that quote there, “even though my adversary is a bit of a cheat”. The devil is of course well known in regards of mischief and cheating so I think its safe to assume this is who it was referring to and so the North Wind made a bet with the devil. The devil gave him his opportunity to move into the human world, the world that we all know, from its previous one and do as he pleases (whether that was post WW2 as has been speculated or not I’m not too sure) but the devil afforded the children of the world a little bit of protection from The North Wind. That protection was darkness, we see this from the earlier pages where one of the other children says to Six “sometimes the light doesn’t help at all” because in the light you see things and of course they see you. Children can never outrun the Northwind and the creatures it has created, all they can do is hide in the darkness.

It controls these monsters, each with their own urges but with one desire above all else, find the children, find them anyway they can. Even if you have to trap them in a time loop that forever tortures them through death and horror and nightmarish situations that they barely survive. You see where I’m starting to go with this. For the North Wind to try and catch the last few remaining children, it created this time loop through Mono, perhaps as he saw what strength and courage, as well powers he had so that he could, for one thing, make Mono another of his monsters, and two to catch a potentially dangerous child that was seemingly causing havoc and alluding its other subordinates in the Nest (Six). Perhaps it could also see the future, and knew what Six would become after its encounter with The Lady of the Maw. Something that could challenge the nightmarish world that The North Wind had created, someone who could fight back and ruin its little game of nightmares for these poor lonely children.

Now the comic portrays this North Wind like a puppet master, the children and the rest of the world are toys being played with by these otherworldly beings that far outmatch anything humankind has to offer against it. That is exactly what Lovecraftian horror is about, it’s the idea that we are not the top of the food chain. We are small, insignificant and alone, we just don’t know it yet…

Does that in itself not mirror everything about Little Nightmares and the themes of loneliness and escapism?

Occam’s Razor

However with all that said and with this section being a very late addition to the script for this video, I don’t think I would be doing you guys justice for exploring as many theories as possible, which leads me to this.

The @Littlenights twitter feed, I saw this pop up not too long ago and it essentially threw everything I said out the window, depending on how much you apply it.

“Are you sure youre living in the real world, little ones”? –  A quote retweet for some amazing Cosplay for LN2 btw. But this now massively implies that the world of Little Nightmares is not the normal reality which would debunk everything I just explained previously. Maybe the children of the real world were brought to this nightmarish one that has been ravished by the North Wind. Though at this point I feel like I’ve gone down too deep into the Lovecraftian rabbit hole.

Which then leads me to go back, all the way back to the simplest and most obvious answer is which according to the Occam’s razor principle, makes it the correct one. This is a nightmare, a literal nightmare being dreamt up by a child who has horrible experiences with his teacher, taking frequent trips to the doctors, weird creepy looks or even more from the janitor of his school, his potentially abusive mother…maybe. Look no further than the quite brilliant Ln2 official Nightmares Explained video with Derren Brown.

Were never likely to find this out however as I have discussed at length this game is purposely left open to your interpretation of events. I have taken slices from all different kinds of pizza’s and put this together in one rather gargantuan video that I really should have cut down, but hey, I’m thorough if nothing else. So why don’t we wrap this thing up!

Final thoughts

Whether this is indeed just a nightmare that someone in the real world is having or if indeed The North Wind brought children to its own reality as part of crazy deal with devil, or a never ending timeloop for Mono, the game does a perfect job of making you question everything about it.

Initially I was very much looking at the series thematically, you know, it’s a looping nightmare that Six and Mono (or just Mono) is experiencing and they have to go through it over and over, but even then there has to be something that is controlling the time loop and I don’t think it’s the thin man. As the ending showed us, the eyes, the fleshy embodiment of I guess the North Wind is what is really pulling the strings and sets Mono up in his role as the Thin Man.

Little Nightmares is not a straight-forward game to try and understand, like many horror franchises it sprinkles lore and secrets within its gameplay and story whilst leaving out obvious answers as to why things are the way they are. And for a game like this it makes perfect sense to do so, the game is called Little Nightmares, these children are experiencing the manifestations of horrific creatures that are fed from our normal, everyday lives. Like scary classroom teachers, going to the doctors, even bullies from your childhood, they take these bad memories that I’m sure a lot of us have experienced in our youth and turned it into the worst kind of nightmare fuel.

References:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txAinWUInTg – Lovecraft – Arkham Reporter

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vyBkjLCwtNg – Lovecraft – Mythology and Fiction Explained

https://blog.playstation.com/archive/2018/02/21/little-nightmares-creators-answer-your-questions-about-the-latest-expansion-to-its-ps4-puzzle-horror/ – LN1 DLC Playstation Blog Interview

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2019-08-29-little-nightmares-2-interview – Eurogamer Interview in 2019 about the release of LN2

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/little-nightmares-creators-are-moving-onto-something-new-though-this-might-not-be-the-end – article about Tarsier Studios working on new IP’s

https://www.astronomytrek.com/5-bizarre-paradoxes-of-time-travel-explained/ – Time travel explained

https://twitter.com/LittleNights/status/1371976836083806210 – Littlenights Tweet about the real world