History WMG / LittleNightmares

[[WMG: The Maw harvests humans for meat, and the first area is where they keep the cattle.]]

[[WMG: The Maw originated somewhere in Japan or is currently stationed near it.]]

[[WMG: The game takes place in the aftermath of a CosmicHorrorStory.]]

[[WMG: The food on the maw only makes you [[HorrorHunger hungrier]].]]

[[WMG: Little Nightmares is in the same universe as [[VideoGame/BioShock Bioshock]].]]

[[WMG: Little Nightmares is a coming of age story and a satire of consumerism]]

[[WMG: Expanding on the coming of age theory... perceived power dynamics and the roles of the characters]]
First off, we gotta acknowledge that we’re seeing this story through the perspective of a little girl. As the viewer being shown the narrative by the girl, she’s not reliable, but the world is still circling the drain, cosmic horror story-style.

As a child, all the threats just seem bigger because there’s nothing to compare them to. With that said though, there’s no shortage of predatory adults. So what’s going on?

The world imploded in a big way, and the children are bearing the brunt. In this case, between the comic and the game, we know there’s demand for eating children. From the things like arms hanging out of bags, they’re essentially getting processed into meat. This is partially due to their limited ability to defend themselves.

We have the gluttons. They’re also “the masses.” It becomes almost literal when their falling all over each other to get at the girl. They’re also great stand-ins junkies.

Then there’s the geisha: she’s comparably beautiful in a very ugly world. As a provider to consumers, she’s sort of like a drug kingpin. She knows not to indulge in her own product, hence her figure. The game also plays on the “power is beautiful” concept. The mask sort of highlights how brittle that power can be.

Interestingly, towards the end of the game, just before the final confrontation, Six “climbs to the same level” as the geisha, while she stands on the balcony. The final confrontation is less about showing the geisha “her corrupted image” with the mirror, and instead, more like “mirroring the geisha’s power.”

By the time we get to the final cutscene, Six effectively supplanted geisha by being more ruthless than her; hence the absorbing all the life energy of the gluttons. By the time we get the image of Six standing at the edge of the ship, she not ‘escaping,’ she’s expanding. Its kind of safe to assume, if she ate glutton and gnome alike, there’s nobody still alive on the Maw.

[[WMG: The Maw's Staff and Guests aren't human...]]

[[WMG: Six isn't the first child to try and escape.]]

[[WMG: The Janitor is, or was, the king of the Nomes.]]

He seems somewhat different from the others working on the Maw in appearance, as well as the fact that he seems to be the lowest in the hierarchy, remaining on the lower floors shambling through the darkness blindly, tending to the ‘livestock’ to send to the next level.

** [[spoiler: This theory is made a little unlikely with ''The Hideaway'''s reveal that the Nomes are children.]]
** It's still possible if you assume that [[spoiler:only some of the children are Nomes]] and the rest are their own race, as Tarsier Studios confirms that [[spoiler:the Nomes were around before the Lady.]]

[[WMG: Why Six eats [[spoiler:the friendly Nome and the Lady.]]]]

[[WMG: Six can see the future]]

Quite clearly Six is not a normal child. She can withstand falls that would kill a normal human being, and her hunger fits are clearly abnormal and inhuman. (Also, a normal human, especially a child, would have very hard time [[spoiler:eating a rat raw]].)

[[WMG: Six is the daughter of the Lady]]

[[WMG: The Maw is [[LivingShip alive!]]]]

[[WMG: The Lady, Six, and The Granny are all one family.]]

[[WMG: The Chefs were once one entity, but they were split in two when they looked into one of the hangman's mirrors.]]
In the comic, a group of children stumble across a bunch of mirrors that cause whoever views them to see themselves in a radically different form. Then the person ''takes on'' that form. One of the kids sees two of himself in one mirror, and then there are two of him outside of it. It's not the same as suddenly having a twin though, as when one of them is ripped away from the other, the other's words are cut in half and can't be understood.
[[WMG: The Lady is Five.]]

[[WMG: The Shoe Burrower and the North Wind are the same entity.]]

[[WMG: The Lady murdered the Hanged Man for trying to disrupt/kill her in the past.]]
The second issue of the comics has revealed that the Hanged Man (the one seen dangling lifelessly from the ceiling in the early part of Six's journey) was actually a MirrorMonster. He has the power to move from mirror to mirror and to catch and magically manipulate people from behind the glass. This may be connected to the broken mirrors in the Lady's quarter: The Hanged Man may have tried to disrupt or even kill her through her mirrors, resulting in her breaking all but one of them. The Lady would understandably be pissed, and perhaps that's why the Ferryman showed up in the Hanged Man's mansion - he was ordered by the Lady to go get the Hanged Man. The Ferryman was there *for* the Hanged Man - getting the hunchback kid was just a bonus for him. Once the Ferryman brought the Hanged Man to the Maw, the Lady had him executed.

[[WMG: The significance of the mirror that was used to defeat the Lady]]

[[WMG: What we consider to be “ordinary” is “alien” to the world this takes place in]]
For Six is an “odd” thing and the Lady is “odd” as well. And that’s why she wears a mask.

[[WMG: None of the characters are human]]

* They might not be human, but ‘the children are too small to grow to adult size’ has been jossed by Mono’s [[spoiler: transformation sequence that shows him growing up to be the Thin Man]]

[[WMG: The Bellhop isn't committing suicide, but greeting the Guests]]

[[WMG: The monsters are the real humans and it's a case of HumansThroughAlienEyes[=/=]HumansAreCthulhu.]]

[[WMG: The Lady's reflection works like the picture of Dorian Gray.]]

[[WMG: The Shadow Kids are the souls of the petrified kids in the secret room of the Lady's Residence]]

[[WMG: The games are set in the final season of ''Podcast/TheMagnusArchives'']]

[[WMG: The whole game is just Six's hallucination]]
Six is only a starving and frightened child who stowed away on a cruise ship, and her child's mind, deluded by hunger and fear, twists the figures around her into monsters.

All of the children are trapped in a hellish zone where they are too tiny and weak for the world around them, and instead of trustworthy adults who can protect and comfort them, there are only deranged, grotesque giants who are invariably hostile to them. Even death is no escape, because they will simply wake up as if from a nightmare, forced to confront the horrors around them all over again. And even if they do prove themselves clever or lucky enough to overcome their current tormentor, there's always another monster just around the next corner. The only available option to stop being a victim of the horrors all around you is to become a monster yourself, but even then you're still trapped in an endless cycle of torment and fear.

They clearly have some connection to the Lady and judging by the shackles on their legs they were formerly imprisoned kids in the Maw, yet they don't seem to be created through the same process that creates more Nomes. Given that there's a secret room in the Lady's residence where a group of petrified children (and the ashy remains of presumably other children) are gathered around a table holding an urn, it's possible that the Lady has the ability to create them by taking some kind of essence from captive children, leaving only the distorted remains of their souls.

It's possible the reflection is somehow enchanted to remind the Lady of her internal ugliness or the age she's avoided by artificially extending her youth, and her frustration with not being able to enjoy her beauty in the mirror has caused her to destroy most of them in anger. She doesn't fully believe she's that ugly in reality, but is insecure enough about the reminder in her mirrors that she set up the Maw so she'll be surrounded by uglier beings: employing monsters, destroying children who could grow up beautiful, and deforming adults through obesity from eating them.

[[WMG: The monsters are the real humans and it's a case of HumansThroughAlienEyes[=/=]HumansAreCthulhu.]]

* The wrapped-up bodies being sent to the kitchen are, compared to Six (and assuming she's human herself), roughly around the right size for an adult human.

Six, the other children, and every other being shown in the game is not a human creature. Six has no problem devouring a live rat without any sort of knife or something to tear it into bite sized chunks, and the 'adults' are much, much larger than the children; it is unlikely the children will ever grow to be that size. The species the 'children' such as Six and the Runaway Kid are are considered vermin and are being raised by the larger folk for food (if they are children, and their species aren't always that size at full maturity) They probably have sharp ratlike teeth to allow them to tear into food easier, and due to all of them covering their faces, showing your face or eyes is probably immodest in their culture. Maybe they all have the ability to copy the powers of those they kill and eat, which is why the empowered people want them all considered vermin and exterminated. The Lady, the Butler, and the Pretender are another species, as shown by their lean body types and their psychic powers. The Janitor, the Teacher, and the Craftsman are also members of the same different species, due to their long and bendy limbs. The Guests are a species of their own as well, and I'm not sure where the Chefs and others fit in, perhaps they are all separate creatures. This takes place in another world where many sentient species have evolved at the same time and place.