History Fridge / NightInTheWoods

** Then again, the Taco Shop opened up after the cult sacrificed the Harfest, and Eide was killed and the rest of the cult, which may have counted as sacrifices as well, mean not only it may have worked, but ''the gang actually may have did what the cult wanted them too, without even knowing it.''

* Mae saying that Selmers made the fruit snacks and juice boxes sound so real could be subtle [[{{Foreshadowing}} foreshadowing]] for the reveal of Mae's disassociation/derealization, where she no longer saw things as real but as "just shapes".

* When Mae recounts what she saw on Harfest to her friends, that is the "ghost" kidnapping someone]], she never mentions that [[spoiler:Aunt Molly stopped her from going after the ghost. It could mean that subconsciously Mae doesn't want to associate Aunt Molly with the "weird happenings" since Molly is a cop and looks out for her.

* The [[spoiler:creature Mae finds in her final dream]] states to have never seen anything that resembles God. This does not mean God doesn't exist, but as the end implies, [[spoiler:it works in such a subtle manner, it's imperceptible to it and also to Mae, which makes sense if the Janitor really is God, as he went unnoticed even by the entire Possum Springs]].
** Notably, the Three Weird Teens offer the options that [[spoiler: God]] is [[spoiler: "caring but absent", "uncaring but distant", or "vicious and roaming"]]; similarly, during the Historical Society segment, Mae (and the player) hears about there being ''three'' gods: the one who cares but is powerless, the one who is powerful but doesn't care, and the one who is wild and destructive. Notably, the first could apply to [[spoiler: the Janitor]], the second to [[spoiler: the cat "God" Mae meets in her dream]], and the last one to [[spoiler: the Black Goat and his followers]].
** The Teens follow up the first option by saying "[[spoiler: She works still in hopes it will return. If the sky is empty, is it enough to be a good watcher?]]". It's possible that this could refer to [[spoiler: Pastor K]], the only person apparently still working to that purpose.
** Later in the game, while Mae is [[spoiler: lying in a coma in the church, Pastor K. pointedly begins the vigil for her by saying "God is here." When everyone else has said their peace, the Janitor enters and the church dissolves into the hospital. The Janitor then offers seemingly omniscient reassurance to Pastor K and the Borowskis on Mae's health despite not having seen her since Harfest.]]
** Related, in ''Longest Night'', one of the constellations is Ibon, the First Singer. [[spoiler:A goat who drank the ocean dry so that he could hear the fishes' voices and teach them to sing. A ''goat'' who descended from the skies, destroyed an entire people's way of life, either ignoring or reveling in their anguish - he wanted to hear them, after all - for his own selfish motives? And who is tied to singing, like the cultists supposedly hear at the bottom of a pit? That couldn't possibly mean anything. And, even more tellingly, Longest Night is a dream of Mae's. She claims to not know the constellations, but if that's true... ''where did the knowledge of Ibon come from?'' Someone "caring but powerless" perhaps? Someone who was the first person Mae met returning home...]]
* Mae saying that Selmers made the fruit snacks and juice boxes sound so real could be [[spoiler:subtle [[{{Foreshadowing}} foreshadowing for the reveal of Mae's disassociation/derealization, where she no longer saw things as real but as "just shapes"]]]].
** Similarly, Mae dropped out of college [[spoiler:and the giant statue that she felt was always pointing at her, made of lines and circles, ''definitely'' didn't help with the depersonalization/derealization issues she had. With a constant stressor/reminder like that]], it's unsurprising college "wasn't for her".

* In Mae's first dream, the sign she smashes with her bat reads "DURKILLESBURG" (the name of the college she attended). Smash the letters in the right order, the message spells out "___KILLE___R_". [[spoiler: The nickname Mae earned after brutally beating another kid with a baseball bat.]]
* When Mae recounts what she saw on [[spoiler:Harfest]] to her friends, [[spoiler:that is the "ghost" kidnapping someone]], she never mentions that [[spoiler:Aunt Molly stopped her from going after the ghost. It could mean that subconsciously Mae doesn't want to associate Aunt Molly with the "weird happenings" since Molly is a cop and looks out for her.]]

* Mae's nightmares and fears of [[spoiler:having disassociation]] start after the party, where she gets drunk on three cups of beer. Generally it's not a good idea to mix [[http://www.healthyplace.com/blogs/dissociativeliving/2015/03/dissociative-identity-disorder-and-substance-addiction/ addictive substances]] and [[spoiler:mental illness]].
** Basically, the legal drinking age in the United States is 21. Given that Mae is just a year younger than 21, drinking beer at a party should have been illegal, especially since it's taking a toll on her body [[spoiler:along with her mental illness]]. But then again, given that Gregg and Angus are both 21, and they can drink the watered down beer, who knows what could happen to them?

* As the game progresses, Mae begins to show signs that she's finding it more difficult to stick a proper landing despite previously being able to jump from higher up and land on her feet. In both Gregg and Bea's investigation quests she complains about injuries she picks up (falling off Gregg's bike, and landing on her back when she broke the gate open for Bea), and it's impossible to complete the game without Mae experiencing one or both of these injuries. She also falls off Germ's bike in his second friendship quest, as well as landing hard while jumping off the bridge. By the end of the game it's clear Mae isn't able to shrug off hard falls like she could during her walk home from the bus station, [[spoiler:so by the time she's running from the cultists that are shooting at her, she's ''already'' injured and exhausted, and was never going to make the fall into the ravine without getting seriously hurt.]]

* The musicians in Mae's dreams appear and begin to play only after she's found them. [[spoiler:They originally died of exposure playing for ghosts - Mae's dreams slide her just close enough to the other side that they think she, too, has died, and begin to play for her.]]
* Judging by appearances and dialogues in the PlayableEpilogue of the Weird Autumn edition update, [[spoiler:''none'' of the obvious suspects are part of the Cult. It's not the Town Council, since they're still alive and able to vote on Karen's proposal (and the Cult seems to be having none of them anyway), and it's not Molly, either, since she shows up alive as well. Of course it isn't -- the Cult represents the faceless group consensus of needing to protect one's way of life at all cost, and by extension can verge on YouBastard. Having it be someone we already know with established motives would only cheapen that.]]
* Why does Mae insist on her potential significant other being able to beat her in a fight? [[spoiler:So she wouldn't have to worry about hurting them as much if the Killer Incident ever repeats itself.]]

* After finding the arm, it's barely mentioned for the rest of the game. [[spoiler:The cult only attacks people who wouldn't be missed.]]
* In the opening scene, Aunt Molly finds Mae while the latter is walking home through the woods from the bus station and jumping on the power lines which is noted to being very dangerous even on its own later on. Mae also had been away from town for a long time and only her parents really knew she was coming back from college. Aunt Molly just protected her niece from [[spoiler:becoming the next target]] by forcing her to take a ride home without even realizing the true danger she was in.
* [[spoiler:When Mae asks if the cult is going to kill them, their leader responds that of course they're not, since Mae and her friends are 'part of the town' through either belonging to a family of contributors, or being a contributor (hard worker) themselves. Mae doesn't work, but her father was one of the factory workers and her mother works for the church, so she's set. Bea's family owns the Pickaxe, so she's similarly set. Angus is a good student and a hard worker, so he's likely to have been safe from the cult. Gregg is a hard worker... but the thing is that he's not. He IS working hard, but it's only because he has plans to move to Bright Harbor with Angus. Add that to the fact that we don't hear of his family from other town members, so they're probably not a 'contributing family', and Gregg would have most likely found the same fate as Casey, if he had never fallen in love with Angus. Angus says that Gregg "saved him" by being there for him when he was abused, but Angus LITERALLY saved Gregg by motivating him to work and thereby giving the cult a reason to let him live, even if neither of them realizes this. A heartwarming thought, but one that still definitely counts as fridge horror.]]
* A minor one. Early on, Mae mentions that she [[CantHoldHisLiquor gets woozy on cough syrup]], but later on [[spoiler:she tells Bea that she was drinking cough syrup just to keep sleeping while having her breakdown in college]].

** [[spoiler:The game possibly implies how he could have done it: whenever you visit the cliff past his camp by yourself, the soundtrack drops out completely.]]
*** Though this could also [[spoiler:just mean the cliff is particularly haunting/moving to Mae; it's not the only place where the soundtrack cuts out in the game.]]
* [[spoiler:Members of the Black Goat cult]] claim that Possum Springs' economic downturn and natural disasters were due to [[spoiler:Black Goat. The cultists perform human sacrifices to appease Black Goat and keep their town safe and prosperous. However, even though they've been performing sacrifices for years, the town is still declining. In other words, Black Goat has no intention of sparing Possum Springs, and will allow for the town's disintegration no matter how many sacrifices it receives. The cultists murdered countless innocent people for ''nothing''.]]
** [[spoiler:And that's assuming the Black Goat exists at ''all''. Maybe the supernatural stuff was all just dreams and a hallucination.]]
* Gregg and Mae's game of "Too Bad You Didn't" is funny at first, [[spoiler:but when Gregg tells Mae "too bad you didn't die at college", it's a little scary, since Mae was really depressed and alone. No one visited her at college for two years, not even on holidays, and Mae was too afraid to leave her room, and didn't go home on holidays. Mae might have [[DrivenToSuicide committed suicide at college]] if she hadn't made the decision to go home. Lots of students kill themselves at college, and it's not that hard to find ways to do it, either. Mae could easily have overdosed on cough syrup if she'd stayed there, since even a regular dose makes her overly woozy.]]
* Throughout the game, Mae meets itinerant freight hoppers whom Germ has befriended (and who join the Trolleyside Tunnel teens for the Harfest play in the ''Weird Autumn Edition''). Toward the end of the game, [[spoiler:the Black Goat cultists reveal that they target homeless people and drifters for use in their human sacrifices. The cultists probably kidnapped and murdered Germ's hobo friends.]]
** Even worse, [[spoiler: the crusties are also somewhat aware of the fact that transients tend to disappear if they get off in Possum Springs, blaming the disappearances on ghosts. Twice they also mention that only the "good and pure" of them are the targets, which implies that the cult targets younger drifters who don't otherwise draw attention to themselves while the more belligerent ones are untouched.]]
** A little later on, Germ says that [[spoiler:he knew that he was being stalked by one of the cultists who chose him to be sacrificed, but he had to escape from the cultist that was after him. These cultists should have known that Germ is an average guy who doesn't have a DarkAndTroubledPast, nor has he had any mental problems or wished he could leave Possum Springs; and he also has a large, close-knit family, including one of the road crew who work outside Mae's house]].
* [[spoiler: Casey's parents will never learn what really happened to their son. The story of the cult is too outrageous to be believed, so they will either be told a lie, or stay in belief that Casey is out in the world, still missing, not realizing he isn't coming home. Even if they were able to accept the truth, they'd have to realize that their ''neighbors'' kidnapped and killed their son. That is a bitter pill to swallow, that the people you trust to be decent took your child away from you.]]
* Mae hasn't gotten [[spoiler:proper treatment for her mental health. She's unlikely to get it, unless she can find a good therapist in Possum Springs that doesn't believe in journalling as a sole treatment]]. Statistically speaking, [[spoiler:without talk therapy or medicine, the odds of a health decline will increase. How far away is she from a forced hospitalization?]]

* During the night of the party, a drunk Mae begins talking to Angus about how their dads knew each other as drinking buddies [[spoiler: and how Mae's father had to stop drinking because he was a danger to her and her mother]]. Angus replies back to her telling her that she's not allowed to drink anymore. [[spoiler: We later find out that Angus's mother was horribly abusive to him and his father was never around. No wonder he didn't want her to keep going on about his dad. There's a good chance that Angus was being locked into the pantry on many of the nights his father was drinking with Mae's.]]
** Even worse, [[spoiler: Mae's father stopped drinking when he became a danger to his family. It sounds like Angus's dad never did.]]
* Bea's bitterness towards Mae for dropping out takes a darker note towards the end of the game. No matter which route you play, Bea for all her anger does care about Mae. [[spoiler:Then while chasing a ghost Mae gets injured, finding something actually dangerous, and then goes back to find the ghost and possibly die. If you play the Gregg route and not the Bea route, Bea's last conversation with Mae would have been less than cordial. Bea would have suffered PartingWordsRegret.]]
* When talking to Bruce, Pastor Karen says that she can provide him with blankets, and comments that they have a surplus for "some reason." [[spoiler:The local homeless people that used to be getting the blankets normally would be easy pickings for the cult. Bruce may be the only one left to give the blankets ''to''.]]
** Then there's the city council's [[spoiler:rejection of Karen's idea to turn the church into a homeless shelter. They want to attract business into Possum Springs and don't want their beautiful old church filled with bums... ''especially if the bum problem seems to be self-resolving''.]]
* [[spoiler: The "Eide is Casey" theory. If it's true, then that means not only did he attempt to straight up ''murder'' Mae, who was one of his best friends, but that she, Bea, Gregg, Angus, and Germ all unwittingly left their friend to ''die''.]]
* It's cold and snowy during the epilogue. Various NPC's have dialogue indicating that it's very early in the year for snow. The grumpy porch bird outright declares that winter is "gonna be bad this year". [[spoiler:Could this be foreshadowing of an upcoming natural disaster brought on by the local cosmic horror? After all, this force is implied to have caused natural disasters in Possum Springs before (i.e. the flood). And Mae openly defied this being less than 24 hours ago. There may very well be a series of life-threatening blizzards in the town's near future]].
* While Mae's account of [[spoiler:her mental issues]] is quite horrifying on it's own, take a look at the backgrounds and characters... It's very geometric. Lots of... Shapes.
* When Mae is recovering at the church, the people who come see her are expected. Her parents, Pastor K, and three of her closest neighbors. Then there's a random goat who the player and Mae have never seen before, and who is very insistent on wanting to know precisely what Mae saw. It's very likely [[spoiler: he was one of the cultists who endangered her in the first place, and nobody in the room knew.]]

* Gregg and Mae's game of "Too Bad You Didn't" is funny at first, but when Gregg tells Mae "too bad you didn't die at college", it's a little scary, since Mae was really depressed and alone. No one visited her at college for two years, not even on holidays, and Mae was too afraid to leave her room, and didn't go home on holidays. Mae might have [[DrivenToSuicide committed suicide at college]] if she hadn't made the decision to go home. Lots of students kill themselves at college, and it's not that hard to find ways to do it, either. Mae could easily have overdosed on cough syrup if she'd stayed there, since even a regular dose makes her overly woozy.

* What instrument is playing whenever Mae attempts to shoplift? ''Steal'' drums, of course!

*** This is further connected to Germ's grandma asking "How do you un-haunt a haunted house?", connecting the two. If Possum Springs itself is the "Haunted House" that Grandpa spoke of, Mae's dissociation is what "un-haunts" it - both in that it makes her unable to distinguish living and unliving things, and also in terms of causality in that without her dissociation she would never have returned to Possum Springs and ultimately destroyed the cult of the Black Goat.

** In Bea's ending, at least, she's encouraged to start focusing on her mental health and seek out a better doctor.

** Notably, the Three Weird Teens offer the options that [[spoiler: God]] is [[spoiler: "caring but absent", "uncaring but distant", or "vicious and roaming"]]. Any of the three are accepted as the correct answer, but notably the first could apply to [[spoiler: the Janitor]], the second to [[spoiler: the cat "God" Mae meets in her dream]], and the last one to [[spoiler: the Black Goat and his followers]].

* During the Historical Society segment, Mae (and the player) hears about there being ''three'' gods: the one who is wild and destructive, the one who is powerful but doesn't care, and the one who does care but is powerless. [[spoiler: The Black Goat, the Sky Cat, and the Janitor fit into the description perfectly.]]
** Related, in ''Longest Night'', one of the constellations is Ibon, the First Singer. [[spoiler:A goat who drank the ocean dry so that he could hear the fishes' voices and teach them to sing. A ''goat'' who descended from the skies, destroyed an entire people's way of life, either ignoring or reveling in their anguish - he wanted to hear them, after all - for his own selfish motives? And who is tied to singing, like the cultists supposedly hear at the bottom of a pit? That couldn't possibly mean anything. And, even more tellingly, Longest Night is a dream of Mae's. She claims to not know the constellations, but if that's true... ''where did the knowledge of Ibon come from?'' Someone "caring but powerless" perhaps? Someone who was the first person Mae met returning home...]]

*** This is further connected to Germ's grandma asking "How do you un-haunt a haunted house?", connecting the two. If Possum Springs itself is the "Haunted House" that Grandpa speaks of, Mae's dissociation is what "un-haunts" it - both in that makes her unable to distinguish living and unliving things, and also in terms of causality in that without it she would never have returned to Possum Springs and ultimately destroyed the cult of the Black Goat.

* In Mae's first dream, the sign she smashes with her bat reads "DURKILLESBURG." Smash the letters in the right order, the message spells out "___KILLE___R_". [[spoiler: The nickname Mae earned after brutally beating another kid with a baseball bat.]]

* Bruce, the homeless man living next to the church, tells you mid game that he's going to hop on a train that night to go meet with his family, since his presence here is causing a lot of grief to Pastor Karen, and might even make her lose her job. He only asks you to let Karen know the next day. When you do tell the Pastor that he left to meet his family, she doesn't seem happy in the slightest, but still thanks you for letting her know. [[DrivenToSuicide And that's when you remember that he indirectly told you his daughter is dead earlier in the game.]]
** [[spoiler:The game even implies how he does it - apart from when there's people there, whenever you visit the cliff past his camp, the soundtrack drops out completely.]]

** Notably, the Three Weird Teens offer the options that [[spoiler: God]] is [[spoiler: "caring but absent", "uncaring but distant", or "vicious and roaming"]]. Any of the three are accepted as the correct answer, but notably the first two could apply to [[spoiler: the Janitor]] and the last one to [[spoiler: the Black Goat and his followers]].

* In the opening scene, Aunt Molly finds Mae while the latter is walking home through the woods from the bus station, ''{{a|dultFear}}lone'', and jumping on the power lines which is noted to being very dangerous even on its own later on. Mae also had been away from town for a long time and only her parents really knew she was coming back from college. Aunt Molly just protected her niece from [[spoiler:becoming the next target]] by forcing her to take a ride home without even realizing the true danger she was in.

* As the game progresses, Mae begins to show signs that she's finding it more difficult to stick a proper landing despite previously being able to jump from higher up and land on her feet. In both Gregg and Bea's investigation quests she complains about injuries she picks up (falling off Gregg's bike, and landing on her back when she broke the gate open for Bea), and it's impossible to complete the game without Mae experiencing one or both of these injuries. She also falls off Germ's bike in his second friendship quest, as well as landing hard while jumping off the bridge. By the end of the game it's clear Mae isn't able to shrug off hard falls like she could during her walk home from the bus station, [[spoiler:so by the time she's running from the cultists that are shooting at her, she's ''already'' injured and exhausted and was never going to make the fall into the ravine without getting seriously hurt.]]
* During the Historical Society segment, Mae (and the player) hears about there being ''three'' gods: the one who is wild and destructive, the one who is powerful but doesn't care and the one who does care but is powerless. [[spoiler: The Black Goat, the Sky Cat and the Janitor fit into the description perfectly.]]

* Judging by appearances and dialogues in the PlayableEpilogue of the Weird Autumn edition update, [[spoiler:''none'' of the obvious suspects are part of the Cult. It's not the Town Council, since they're still alive and able to vote on Karen's proposal (and the Cult seems to be having none of them anyway), and it's not Molly, either, since she shows up alive as well. Of course it isn't--the Cult represents the faceless group consensus of needing to protect one's way of life at all cost, and by extension can verge on YouBastard. Having it be someone we already know with established motives would only cheapen that.]]

* Gregg and Mae's game of "Too Bad You Didn't" is funny at first, but when Gregg tells Mae "too bad you didn't die at college", it's a little scary, since Mae was really depressed and alone. No one visited her at college for two years, not even on holidays, and Mae was too afraid to leave her room and didn't go home on holidays. Mae might have [[DrivenToSuicide committed suicide at college]] if she hadn't made the decision to go home. Lots of students kill themselves at college, and it's not that hard to find ways to do it, either. Mae could easily have overdosed on cough syrup if she'd stayed there, since even a regular dose makes her overly woozy.
* Throughout the game, Mae meets itinerant freighthoppers whom Germ has befriended (and who join the Trolleyside Tunnel teens for the Harfest play in the ''Weird Autumn Edition''). Toward the end of the game, [[spoiler:the Black Goat cultists reveal that they target homeless people and drifters for use in their human sacrifices. The cultists probably kidnapped and murdered Germ's hobo friends.]]

** This is TruthInTelevision. In rural America, not only is it difficult to find mental health professionals, much less good ones. The mental health professionals that do practice in rural areas are often very expensive even for people with insurance and difficult to get appointments with (there are wait lists to get on wait lists, with multiple-month waits. Mae's difficulty in finding good therapy is no surprise at all.

* Gregg and Mae's game of "Too Bad You Didn't" is funny at first, but when Gregg tells Mae "too bad you didn't die at college", it's a little scary, since Mae was really depressed and alone and might have committed suicide at college if she hadn't come home.

* [[spoiler:When Mae asks if the cult is going to kill them, their leader responds that of course they're not, since Mae and her friends are 'part of the town' through either belonging to a family of contributors, or being a contributor (hard worker) themself. Mae doesn't work, but her father was one of the factory workers and her mother works for the church, so she's set. Bea's family owns the Pickaxe, so she's similarly set. Angus is a good student and a hard worker, so he's likely to have been safe from the cult. Gregg is a hard worker... but the thing is that he's not. He IS working hard, but it's only because he has plans to move to Bright Harbor with Angus. Add that to the fact that we don't hear of his family from other town members, so they're probably not a 'contributing family', and Gregg would have most likely found the same fate as Casey, if he had never fallen in love with Angus. Angus says that Gregg "saved him" by being there for him when he was abused, but Angus LITERALLY saved Gregg by motivating him to work and thereby giving the cult a reason to let him live, even if neither of them realizes this. A heartwarming thought, but one that still definitely counts as fridge horror.]]

** Basically, the legal drinking age in the United States is 21. Given that Mae is just a year younger than 21, drinking beer should have been illegal, especially since it's taking a toll on her body [[spoiler:along with her mental illness]].

** A little later on, Germ says that [[spoiler:he knew that he was being stalked by one of the cultists who chose him to be sacrificed, but he has to escape from the cultist that was after him. These cultists should have known that Germ is an average guy who doesn't have a DarkAndTroubledPast, nor has he had any mental problems or wished he could leave Possum Springs; and he also has large, close-knit family, including one of the road crew who work outside Mae's house]].

* Bruce, the homeless man living next to the church, tells you mid game that he's going to hop on a train that night to go meet with his family, since his presence here is causing a lot of grief to Pastor Kate, and might even make her lose her job. He only asks you to let Kate know the next day. When you do tell the Pastor that he left to meet his family, she doesn't seem happy in the slightest, but still thanks you for letting her know. [[DrivenToSuicide And that's when you remember that he indirectly told you his daughter is dead earlier in the game.]]