u/airport-cinnabon

As seen here in his holster, in the scene where they Mary through the facility. I’m guessing he’s security, this was the guy that made sure Mary didn’t look at Pirate Clark in the exam room for too long.

I’ve seen some talk about whether Async would ever try taking guns into the complex again, but we at least know they have armed security in the facility at this point.

I’m guessing they wanted to be prepared to apprehend Clark alive, as they would certainly want to interrogate him. But were also prepared to use lethal force if necessary, to prevent him from escaping or as defence in case Clark was armed.

This is from Lighting and Tile Survey.

The photo is from the Async guy’s footage (the one who’s not a vent guy). After we hear him talk about what he sees above the ceiling tiles, the video cuts to black and we hear the female scientist in mid-sentence stating the quote in the title.

This raises several questions. What was the first half of that sentence? What was she saying about more than one floor? Even more mysterious is why she said she means “floor” in a loose sense??

The reason I’m so interested in the floor now is what we learned in EMG. Not everyone noticed this, but the sign weren’t actually no-clipped into the floor, they disappear about one centimetre under the carpet. So the floors are fundamentally different from the walls. Objects can be embedded in walls, but not floors. Why?

It seems like the floor is a strict spatial boundary that ‘crops’ all matter, whereas the walls are just normal matter like the furniture and other objects.

I’m also wondering if still lifes and other objects grow up out of the floor. Are the ‘statues’ embedded in the floor unfinished still lifes? Clark’s mural seems to show that they grow up from the ground like a tree.

A final observation is that there is usually distortion or strange phenomena whenever someone goes down through a hole in the floor. I wonder if these are null zones that can take you to other places in the complex that aren’t actually adjacent in space, or even time. Entities don’t follow through. VHS gets staticky. Commercials from the future are heard.

At the bottom of the steep ramp in the movie, the VHS is heavily distorted as Clark goes through a ceiling tile. This room was sideways so it was like going through a wall, but we still got the distortion so the direction/rotation is irrelevant. It’s still a ‘floor’ (whatever that means) that Clark passes through so the distortion happens regardless.

This is from the end of FF2, it’s the TV that someone (presumably Async affiliated) watched the footage on.

In Everything Must Go, the TV they found repeatedly showed a similar blue screen but with “no signal” in Chinese instead of English. It also looked like there could have been a plant near that TV similar to this pic (but it was too dark to tell for sure).

The area they were studying in EMG, and the ‘outpost’ Naren found in the opening footage, has a lot of these archways all over. Aside from that footage, we only see them in Clark’s ‘house’ (no idea if it’s actually a copy of his old house), along with Mary’s ‘dream sequence’ transition to that scene. The house drawn in the mural has a few arches along the bottom, not sure if there’s any connection there.

I don’t remember seeing arches like these in any of the ‘real world’ scenes, so I have no idea what the complex is copying these from. And they seem to be localized around the same areas of stuff copied from Clark’s store.

Any ideas?

[SPOILERS FOR EVERYTHING MUST GO FOOTAGE]

I haven’t seen much discussion of the areas revealed in the footage and how they might be situated in relation to the areas we’ve seen Clark and Mary explore.

I notice on Clark’s map there are large areas that were seemingly inaccessible. For example, the wiring for the surveillance setup led to an inaccessible area that I think Clark wanted to see.

Maybe there are no doors (or pitfalls/tunnels) that connect these areas, they could be totally walled off from each other. In the extra footage, Async found a new area by cutting through the walls. Perhaps that’s the only way to travel between certain areas.

The large area that they found on the other side of the wall seemed to be a very distorted copy of the upstairs of Clark’s store. I noticed an emphasis on the trapezoid-shaped mirrored storage structures that Clark has against the walls, which repeated in this area. We saw one storing some tiny boxes, and another one that framed a large ominous entrance to the TV area. This one looked exactly like the one in the back corner of Clark’s store (near the rolled up carpets) that is usually covered with mirrors. This is the same yellow structure that Mary ran through to escape Pirate Clark, except the opening was much smaller.

It’s strange that there were no overhead lights, but maybe this copied the store at night when those would be off, but the TV on.

In the footage, it pans across Async’s map of the Kelowna branch (their name for the area) but I’m struggling to see how it could fit together with Clark’s map.

The clock reads 5:10 in the movie, and 5:20 in Static Dead End.

The clock in the Christmas room is especially interesting in connection with how the redheaded still life seemed to be holding her scalp on. Could this room be shifted forward in time, or is the dinner scene shifted to back before this?

If Clark did travel backwards in time, the grandfather clock could be a hint towards the grandfather paradox, which points out that backward time travel can enable a person to prevent their own existence.

On my first watch, I just thought that some of the furniture in the original, pile that Clark found was moved here (by Pirate Clark and/or Clark) to barricade the Async area. Especially since that pile is totally gone when Mary steps in, I thought some was moved through the portal into Clark’s real basement, and the rest was moved here.

But none of these pieces resemble the furniture in Clark’s,store at all, they seem a few decades older and made of real wood.

Then when Mary is running from Pirate Clark and gets to the (fake?) copy of Clark’s store, we can see the distorted backroom copies of his furniture are upstairs, and the basement is decluttered and back to its normal state.

So after Clark is confronted by Redheaded still life by the tree, he escapes through this area that looks like a yard decorated for Christmas. Oddly out of place is this grandfather clock.

I’m wondering if this is a hint about time shifts in different areas. The clock appears to read 5:10, and we know from Bobby that it was about 9:00pm when the three entered the backrooms. There was also noticeable video distortion as Clark stepped into this area. Finally, the redheaded still life appeared to be holding her scalp on with her hand, suggesting that the scalping at the dinner scene had already happened.

The grandfather clock could possibly be a reference to the Grandfather Paradox about time travel: if backwards time travel were possible, then you could kill your grandfather before he had any children, resulting you never existing and thus never killing him. Something to do with Clark being killed by Pirate Clark? The established Goya reference suggests that Clark is Pirate Clark’s son (Saturn devours his son), and this is in tension with the fact that it seems that Pirate Clark came from Clark, not vice versa. With all the time weirdness, it’s worth asking who came first?

I also noticed video distortion going both in and out of the area at the bottom of the ramp. The distortion happened each time the camera went up or down the ramp, and again when Clark escaped through the ceiling tile. So I feel like that area might be a “time zone” if you will.

Also, since most of the film is not shot with vhs camera (unlike most of the youtube series), there could be other “time zones” in the complex with no related video distortion clues.

I also think there might be some time weirdness happening with the scene of Clark approaching the surveillance camera and the corresponding scene of Phil watching the footage, but I still need to look a bit closer at the details. Might make another post just about that because I find that use of the analog AV technology really interesting.

Early in the film when Clark arrives at his store and gets angry at the sight of the graffiti on his window, he then pushes the door open and we cut to a wide angle shot of the darkened interior. If you look closely, there is a spot of light that pans across the room with the movement of the door, like a little spotlight.

I interpreted this as suggesting how places are ‘scanned’ into the backrooms using electromagnetic waves.

But I noticed something else about this scene once I paused at the right moment, I’ll put a pic in the comments.

As Clark begins to untie Mary, he says “I’m sorry”. It then cuts to redheaded still life, and we hear a woman’s voice say “for what?”.

Right after that is when the redhead runs screaming into the corner and clawing at the wall, as Pirate Clark comes storming in. It’s almost like Clark’s apology is what set this whole climax into motion.

I think I always assumed it was Mary who said that, but now I’m realizing that really wouldn’t make sense for her to say that. She’s very upset at him for choking her out and tying her up, she knows what he’s apologizing for. Also, the voice doesn’t sound like hers, it’s more breathy/whispery.

If this really is a still life of Barbara, Clark’s saying sorry might have triggered her characteristic behaviour loop. By asking “for what” she would be asking sorry for coming home drunk, for breaking the glass, or for hitting her? (The reason I assume that Clark laid hands on his wife once is because that’s an easy way to end up with a restraining order forcing you out of your own house.)

Maybe this was their argument routine they had as a married couple. Clark says sorry, Barbara says for what, and they get into all the things Clark’s done wrong over the years and it spirals out of control, possibly toward violence. Of course that’s just one interpretation.

But what I’d really like is for y’all to watch the clip and confirm I’m not crazy.

Notice the torn sleeve, and possible blood spatter. The graphic and text look a bit sloppy/weird, but it’s not mirrored.

In the original, the top of the chain looks like a freed stick figure happily walking away. But in the Backrooms version, it looks more like the horned head and shoulders of a scary entity. Maybe that’s just me seeing things though.

I’m guessing Pirate Clark blocked it with chairs to keep Async out of his lair.

Each of these shots is shown very quickly in this order, between the scenes of Mary’s party and Clark watching the Big Wayne commercial.

The first shot of the red sunset immediately reminded me of the red neighbourhood and city. An airplane is descending from left to right.

In the second shot, the Family Dental sign is flickering, and it sounds like the airplane can still be heard. So this may be near the first shot but facing the opposite direction (away from the sunset). At the end of the film we see a misremembered version of this area.

In the third shot we hear the airplane sound much louder. Presumably this is the original sign that the POTS signs in the complex and Clark’s basement are copies of. Not sure why this one has a white spot on it, is this a thing in California?

These shots seem like they give us a lot to think about, like they’re hinting at how the complex interacts with Standard.

I’ve seen a few posts asking about the white liquid that Clark served to himself and his ‘dinner guests’. Some suggested almond water, or even that it’s the breast milk of a still life. But I recently came up with a serious theory about what it is.

My theory is based on the art at Phil’s house as shown in photo 1 above. Photo 2 is a result from a reverse image search for Photo 1, which shows the names of the plants. One of the plants is known as Wall Lettuce. It is known for being able to grow and thrive in “extreme urban environments”. This piqued my curiosity as it could be alluding to plant life in the complex.

Another interesting thing about Wall Lettuce is that it contains a milky liquid known for its sedative properties in herbal medicine. Have you ever ripped the stem of a dandelion and seen the milky liquid inside? It’s like that, but it’s a sedative.

Perhaps Clark stumbled on a room overgrown with wall lettuce, and initially thought it could be a food source, and then discovered its sedative properties. We know Clark likes his booze, and without alcohol available in the complex he may have been happy to find an alternative drug to numb himself with.

Another question often asked is: How did Clark tame the still lifes? Maybe he used wall lettuce milk to sedate them. Think of how the redhead still life acted when he first saw her in the Christmas Tree room, she was pretty feisty. She walked right up to Clark as if to confront him. But in the dinner scene she is mostly motionless, not even responding to Clark’s command to get the lights. She’s sedated. And the bearded Still Life seemed sedated too.

I know this is pretty out there, but I’m having fun with it! I welcome any criticisms and comments as well.

After it kills Clark and chases Mary, this is what its hand looks like as it reaches through the doggy door. I know that the actor is white, but there is clearly a lot of prosthetics on the hand (note the six fingers and webbing), so I’m unsure why they wouldn’t make the skin tone match.

The only reference shot I can find of Pirate Clark’s hand looks to be AI enhanced. Either Pirate Clark’s hand was always white, or it turned white, or else it’s unintentional by the filmmakers. What do you think?