History Fridge / NightInTheWoods

* 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 final 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 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...]]

* 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 it's 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 school. 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.

* A minor one. Early on, Mae mentions that she [[CantHoldHerLiquor 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.]]

* Throughout the game, Mae meets itinerant freighthoppers whom Germ has befriended. 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.]]

* During the night of the party, a drunk Mae begins talking to Angus about how their dad's 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.]]

* 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".]]]]

* 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.]]

* During the Historical Society segment, Mae (and the player) hear 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 Cat and the Janitor fit into the description perfectly]].

* 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]].

* In the opening scene, Aunt Molly finds Mae while the latter is walking home through the woods from the bus station, ''[[AdultFear alone]]'', and jumping on the power lines which is noted to being very dangerous even on it's 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 school. 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.

* In the opening scene, Aunt Molly finds Mae while the latter is walking home through the woods from the bus station, ''[[AdultFear alone]]'', and jumping on the power lines which is noted to being very dangerous even on it's own later on. Mae's parents also didn't know that Mae would be home that night, which means [[spoiler:no one would have missed Mae for weeks possibly if the cult had caught and killed her.]] 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.

* Couples with fridge sadness. Casey Hartley was a member of the band before his disappearance, meaning that he most likely had a hand in writing the song Die Anywhere Else. Since most artists write songs about their desires, it could be safe to assume that Casey wished for just that, to die anywhere other than in Possum Springs. [[spoiler:Thanks to the cult, he never got that wish granted.]]
* [[spoiler:As far as the cult is concerned, the posters about the disappearances of their victims, who they deem worthless, may as well read 'HAVE YOU SEEN THIS CAT?']]
** [[spoiler:[[ComicallyMissingThePoint But there is a poster that reads 'Have you seen this cat?' in-game.]]]]

* At first, the [[spoiler:kidnapping of a teenager after Harfest seems to be random, like they just picked a kid who was alone and not paying attention, looking at their phone. Which could be true, but on a second playthrough, this troper went into the trolley tunnel the day after the party, and saw that town council squad talking with Aunt Molly about the graffitied Possum Springs mural on the wall. They were super upset about it since it was a historical mural, claimed that they were treating it as a 'terrorist act', and asked Molly to check out any 'dirtbag teens' as suspects. Considering that Harfest happened only a few days later, and that the council is definitely part of the cult, it's very likely that the teenager Mae saw kidnapped was the actual person who tagged the mural. Even more damning, the council actually got upset when Molly told them the most the tagger might get was a fine and some jail time...almost as if they had a worse fate planned...]]
** Talking to Lori Meyers in the epilogue reveals that [[spoiler:she was the one who tagged the mural, so thankfully that theory is disproved, but it's still extremely likely that her tagging the mural is what drove them to kidnap someone only a few days later. She says she didn't even have a specific reason for doing the graffiti- and of course she had no idea that her petty vandalism would indirectly lead to someone being killed...]]

* 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. If not a FridgeHorror of her aunt possibly knocking her out, due to being a cult member, 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.]]

* It's possible that [[spoiler: Mae's aunt is a member of the cult. They recognize her voice ''immediately'', and her aunt shows up just as Mae finishes pursuing the kidnapper. There's also the fact that you never see her in the Epilogue, which only adds to the horror. Mae may have condemned her own aunt to starve to death in the darkness.]]
** In the opening scene, [[spoiler:Aunt Molly]] finds Mae while the latter is walking home through the woods from the bus station, ''[[AdultFear alone]]'', and jumping on the power lines. Mae's parents also didn't know that Mae would be home that night, which means [[spoiler:no one would have missed Mae for weeks possibly if the cult had killed her.]] [[spoiler:Aunt Molly might have protected her niece from becoming the next target by forcing her to take a ride home.]]
** Combined that [[spoiler:she shows up just ''moments'' after the severed arm at the diner is found...]]
** Also during that night, after [[spoiler:Aunt Molly orders Mae to get in the car, we FadeToBlack, and then to Mae's nightmare. Mae wakes up in bed, not recalling her aunt being at the scene of the kidnapping. Did her aunt ''knock her out'' the way the kidnappper knocked out the victim Mae saw?]]
** After Harfest [[spoiler:Mae's aunt emphasizes the fact the kidnapper Mae was chasing would not have been able to escape unless they could walk through a solid fence. She does this until Mae expresses doubt in what she saw. Walking through walls is the one explicit unusual power of the cultists.]]
** Not to mention [[spoiler:the gang avidly hides from the police in Gregg and Angus's apartment after the run-in at the mines. Considering that they recognized some of the voices, there's an eerie possibility she was the one they were hiding from...]]
** Let's suppose the above theory is true, how will Mae react if she realizes that [[spoiler:she condemned her aunt to starvation, and that her aunt helped murder her friend Casey and cover up the crime?]]
** And then there's the other side of this theory: if she isn't [[spoiler:part of the cult, she has to at least have some idea of what's happening.]] It's clear from the speech she gives Mae outside her house about the things that happen around town that she knows things aren't normal. She has to know about [[spoiler:the disappearances, even if they are people that wouldn't be missed too much, and although she is doing her best to protect the townspeople, she either doesn't know about the cult or can't stop them. So the two possible interpretations of Aunt Molly are that she's A) slowly killing off the people she's sworn to protect, or B) aware that something is picking them off, even if she doesn't know what, and is powerless to do anything about it.]]
** Well whaddaya know [[spoiler: In the epilogue of Weird Autumn Edition she's alive and well and was (probably) never involved in the cult to begin with.]]

** 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...]]

** [[spoiler:The game even implies how he did it - apart from when there's people there, whenever you visit the cliff past his camp, the soundtrack drops out completely.]]

** And then there's the other side of this theory: if she isn't [[spoiler:part of the cult, she has to at least have some idea of what's happening.]] It's clear from the speech she gives Mae outside her house about the things that happen around town that she knows things aren't normal. She has to know about [[spoilers:the disappearances, even if they are people that wouldn't be missed too much, and although she is doing her best to protect the townspeople, she either doesn't know about the cult or can't stop them. So the two possible interpretations of Aunt Molly are that she's A) slowly killing off the people she's sworn to protect, or B) aware that something is picking them off, even if she doesn't know what, and is powerless to do anything about it.]]

* At first, the [[spoiler:kidnapping of a teenager after Harfest seems to be random, like they just picked a kid who was alone and not paying attention, looking at their phone. Which could be true, but on a second playthrough, this troper went into the trolley tunnel the day after the party, and saw that town council squad talking with Aunt Molly about the graffitied Possum Springs mural on the wall. They were super upset about it since it was a historical mural, claimed that they were treating it as a 'terrorist act', and asked Molly to check out any 'dirtbag teens' as suspects. Considering that Harfest happened only a few days later, and that the council is definitely part of the cult, it's very likely that the teenager Mae saw kidnapped was the actual person who tagged the mural.]]

** [[spoiler:And that's assuming the Black Goat exists at ''all''. Maybe the supernatural stuff was all just dreams and a hallucination. Even our universe has a Black Goat: entropy. In time, all the energy leaks out, everything runs down, and everything will be lost. Even if there IS a god... well, the janitor doesn't seem to be capable of fixing everything. Caring, Uncaring, Vicious. What seems to be the weakest one?]]

** Let's suppose the above theory is true, How will Mae react if she realizes that [[spoiler:she condemned her aunt to starvation, and that her aunt helped murder her friend Casey and cover up the crime?]]

* [[spoiler: Trapping the cult in the mine was a really good idea. It takes them out permanently and no one ever has to worry about them ever again. Unless, of course, they somehow acquire the ability to walk through solid matter, but what are the odds of that happening?]]

** Let's suppose the above theory is true, How will Mae react if she realizes that [[spoiler:she condemned her aunt to starvation, and that her aunt helped murder her friend Casey and cover up the crime? For all her prickliness and snark, Mae does love her family, and she doesn't want to believe anyone would do such a thing.]]

** [[spoiler:But there is a poster that reads 'Have you seen this cat?' in-game.]]

* [[spoiler:As far as the cult is concerned, the posters about the disappearances of their vicvtims, who they deem owrthless, may as well read 'HAVE YOU SEEN THIS CAT?']]