u/Responsible-Farm6794

was that kane narrating the async findings in the post credit scene? sounded like him to me

idk why but stop signs creep me out now after backrooms 😭 they lowkey are kinda sinister when i think about it

photo at clark’s bedside within the store is of him and his wife who indeed has red hair, so this further confirms red headed still life is likely his wife. didn’t notice that photograph of them at first. or rather, didn’t think too much about it first time i saw it.

there are several stop signs in the basement in clarks store in standard. where the hell did they come from if the stop sign is still there in the backrooms? was he taking them out and then the backrooms would just copy another?

clark doesn’t describe the woman with the red hair like he does the man with the striped shirt and the man in the wheelchair when he has mary tied up. assuming he doesn’t want to let mary know he’s materialized his wife in the backrooms.

red headed still life / clark’s wife wearing an outfit she’d likely had worn before in court or would where if she passed the bar. maybe he materialized her as having become a lawyer in his version of reality.

by the time mary enters the backrooms, all the furniture that had originally been piled in the middle of the room was gone.

after mary first enters the backrooms, there is a shot of the front of the room that the stop sign is in but we see the shot from the back of the stop sign. sticking out in the dark area of the shot on the floor to the bottom left is a decaying hand. you can see the fingers. assuming bobby or kat or someone else’s. you can also hear the fly buzzing near that decay.

based on the descending sequence following mary’s mother being admitted, does this imply mary’s childhood home is also a gateway to the backrooms? does this explain what happened to her mom? why it was demolished likely by async and the cover up is they’re building a new high rise?

you can see on mary’s face in the interview she knows she’s back in the same loop now as an adult as she was when she was a child. she grew up indoors in a fabricated reality her mother created. she spent so much of her life trying to run away from that past just end up stuck and alone yet again, now secluded in the backrooms. when phil shows her the picture of the furniture store, you get the feeling they are likely going to have it demolished so that people cannot find that particular entrance to the backrooms. where does the standard mary end up i still don’t understand. sad ending for mary and clark nonetheless.

i’m at about a 7/10 rating now on the second watch. i’m probably in the minority in wishing it was longer. felt rushed in the third act.

I haven’t seen all the shorts but seeming as it was revealed in the film what still life are, does anyone have any thoughts on how or why the misremembered copies of people generate? I was almost wondering if the other sales guy, the redhead (maybe his wife?) kat and bobby were intentional sacrifices made by clark. maybe he learned that to keep certain entities at bay that they need to be fed. Theorizing that pirate clark was quite literally hungry when he took a bite out of standard clark. Does backrooms only copy people who are already dead? And does this mean mary died and seeing her still life confirms it?

I think pirate clark is excluded from the still life materialization and that it is more of a distorted version of clark that is a direct manifestation of all the bad parts about him.

I’m so glad I stayed to listen to that sick ass Boards of Canada track from their latest album. Sounded like it was specifically designed for this world. If no one stayed to hear that one, I highly recommend it.