Fridge / Psychonauts 2

As a Fridge subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.

Fridge Brilliance

General

• Tim Schafer stated that the game revolves around PTSD, and each of the Psychic Six/Seven all deal with it like real sufferers do: alcoholism, drug abuse, withdrawal from society, sensitivity to loud noises and voices, compartmentalizing, self-doubt, misblaming themselves for everything bad that happened, suppressing bad memories, self-harm and so on.
• Promotional material claimed Raz would learn what the term "girlfriend" truly means, but in the end his Relationship Upgrade with Lili isn't expanded on much more than the first game. However, Raz does get a very clear picture of what a "girlfriend" is through someone else... Lucrecia. Raz got to see Ford's relationship with Lucy grow from their first date, to his guilt over her Face–Heel Turn, to how much he sacrificed while attempting to save her. He also experienced Bob and Helmut's romance when exploring their minds, including Helmut's Heroic Sacrifice for Bob. Raz did learn a lot about relationships over the course of this game, which might be just what he needs to make his Relationship Upgrade with Lili work.
• Just like in the last game, clairvoyance reveals how others see Razputin.
  • While it mainly serves as a clever easter egg calling back to Jack Black's first foray into Doublefine's world of gaming, Helmut seeing Raz as Eddie Riggs makes a lot more sense than one would think. Eddie was a roadie who explained that his job is to support the band in any way they can. Like Eddie explains in Brutal Legend: "A good roadie knows his whole job is to make someone else look good, keep someone else safe, help someone else do what they were put here to do. A good roadie stays out of the spotlight. If he's doing his job right, you don't even know he's there." Raz's essentially fulfilling the role of roadie in Psi King's mind by helping him find his bandmates, driving the van, and helping locate their missing instruments.
  • There's a bit of foreshadowing in using clairvoyance on Truman/Gristol while they're recuperating. Viewing Raz as a Grulovian peasant, he sees him as someone beneath him.
    • After everything is said and done and the real Truman has his brain back, he merely sees Raz as a nervous suitor for Lili, wondering if Raz will be a good boyfriend for her.
  • Milla no longer sees Raz as a baby to be protected but instead a fun-loving young man from the '70s, acknowledging Raz can handle himself.
  • After the mission at the Lady Lucktopus, Lili starts seeing Raz as a judge suspicious of her.
  • After Raz and Lili settle the possible suspicion, Lili then sees Raz as himself, though a little taller with cleanly made hair. A slightly idealized version of himself that symbolizes her admiration and trust of him. This also contrasts how she sees him as a Knight in Shining Armor in the first game, having gotten to actually know Raz besides just their Rescue Romance, she sees him for who he is now because she's moved past that phase, and truly loves him for who he is.
  • Sasha still sees himself in Raz.
  • Now Oleander sees Raz as a fellow soldier fighting for the freedom of free thought... albeit of lower rank.
  • Many of the agents in the Motherlobe already accept Raz as part of the organization and as such, already see him as a young secret agent: trenchcoat, suitcase, and all — though this may be them unsure of who he's actually working for.
  • The two Psychonaut agents who are brains in rolling jars see Raz as a soccer player, clearly paranoid that he's going to kick them around like balls.
  • Some Psychonaut agents aren't as accepting of Raz, seeing him as a dirty kid running amok around the place.
  • Some agents talk among themselves in private, and see Raz with a large horn to his ear, paranoid that he's eavesdropping on them.
  • Like cook Ford back at Whispering Rock, the Noodle Bowl chef just sees Razputin as another mouth to feed.
  • Augustus sees Razputin as a confident ringmaster. He has complete faith in his son's abilities and fully believes Razputin can handle himself.
  • Donatella sees Raz as a baby. No matter how old he gets, he will always be her baby boy.
  • Dion sees Razputin as a punching bag. Self-explanatory.
  • Frazie sees Raz as a whining toddler. Razputin must have complained so much during acrobatic training.
  • Mirtala and Queepie also see Raz as the brave ringmaster. Despite him running away from home they still look up to their older brother.
  • Nona sees Razputin as the other family members due to her senility.
  • The mote of light/Psi King/Helmut starts suffering sensory overload when he's put in Nick's body. Clairvoyance shows his surroundings constantly changing colors and Razputin as a rainbow squiggle. Just another part of the overload.
  • When the interns first meet Raz, their hazing is still fresh in their minds, ergo they see Raz as still in the underwear embarrassed.
  • Norma sees Raz as a mole, as do other agents and Hollis (briefly). As in a literal mole signifying how suspicious she is of him.
  • Sam loves squirrels so Raz is seen as a squirrel.
  • Lizzie starts seeing Raz as a fellow rebel, knowing he has about as much respect for authority as she does.
  • Dr. Loboto sees Razputin as an angry tooth. Something to be removed from his life for good.
  • Gisu sees Raz as a fellow skateboarder. After the casino infiltration where he had to grind rails to keep up with her, he becomes cool in her eyes.
  • Ever since Raz earned Morris’ respect, he starts seeing Raz as a fellow radio host.
  • Ford Cruller still sees Raz as a true Psychonaut ready to fight the good fight.
  • Hollis sees Raz as a chick freshly hatched from its egg, seeing him as Just a Kid.
  • Cassie sees Raz as an eager fan asking for an autograph, which he is.
  • Compton, who manages better with animals than humans, sees Raz as a busy little bee rushing about to help.
  • The Bad Moods see Raz as a therapist, someone to help find the source of a bad mood to help undo it.
  • The bartender in the bowling alley sees Raz as a photo ID, as he's just concerned about making sure an underaged kid doesn't try and get any alcohol.
  • The various dealers in Hollis' Hot Streak see Raz as a lollipop, both a literal sucker to fleece of his money, and a reference to how doctor's offices often give kids lollipops after a visit.
  • All of the mental representations of people in Bob's mind share Bob's view of Raz as a gardener, showing that they're all just Bob's own self-loathing masquerading as those close to him, but are hopeful that the first person to enter his mind in a long time can help him.
  • Disturbingly, Otto sees Raz as a brain in a containment jar like those in the Brainframe. He sees Raz as a future casualty of the Psychonauts and another mind he'll be free to experiment with.
• How does Hollis even manage to gamble at the Lady Lucktopus despite them apparently being so good at detecting psychics the Psychonauts need to go full superspy mode to make progress? Because she wasn't doing anything that would have caused her to bring in any scrutiny, in her gamble-crazy state she was completely willing to lose it all as well as win big so she wouldn't be using her psychic powers to cheat or doing anything a dealer would find suspicious enough to bring out sensors. And if a patrolling sensor got too close for comfort? She's likely more than capable of using the physical aspects of her spy techniques to avoid them without powers.
• Hollis gives Raz the codename of "Eggbeater", which shows how much of a psychic she thinks Raz is. "Egg" is a metaphor for "brain" in the series, so Hollis gave Raz a codename that meant Raz is capable of scrambling your brain.
  • Which he already did to Hollis just a few minutes ago.
• One thing that does come to mind is why would Raz have been so willing to go through with tampering Ford Cruller's mind not too long after he had apologized to Hollis Forsythe for doing just that to her mind? Even if it was Truman Zanotto (or who he thought was Truman), Grand Head of the Psychonauts who had asked him to do it, the fact that the head of the Psychonauts should have known better than to do something like this, must have raised alarm bells in Raz's head, even with "the fate of the free-thinking world" at risk. However, it actually makes a lot of sense given some factors:
  • One: Raz tends to have a fair bit of trust in authority figures, especially if he respects them (Sasha Nein and Ford Cruller), and only really disobeys them if he perceives them as causing him harm (like his father Augustus in the first game), and thus even if he might have personal reservations, he'd be very willing to do whatever it is that authority figure asks of him.
  • Two: Raz very likely would not have been willing to risk going against Truman's request precisely because of what happened with Hollis Forsythe. More specifically, he had altered Forsythe's mind and betrayed the trust of not only her, but also two Psychonauts he held in high regard with Sasha (and in an optional conversation, Milla). After the fiasco with the Casino Mission and being told off by several Psychonauts he respected for breaking their trust, he would not be willing to risk the trust of another Psychonaut, even if the message seems to contradict what he learned earlier.
  • Three: Raz is shown very frequently throughout the first game to be eager to please, and is noted to be prone to impulsive decision-making, and thus factoring in the above, was in a prime position to be manipulated by the false Truman Zanotto. He might have also seen it not just merely as an urgent mission far beyond the authority of the other Psychonauts, but also a chance to redeem himself for his earlier blunder. It's a very good thing Ford Cruller was there to set him straight after his mind was restored...
  • Four: Raz isn't tampering with Ford's mind. In Hollis' mind, he was changing her personality by making false mental connections. Every person that Raz interacted with in 1 and 2, he never fundamentally changed who that person was. He only (literally) cleared the cobwebs from their mind and did exactly what those patients' inner selves told him to do, or just make them face the truth rather than their own self-delusions.
• One of the upgrades for Mental Connection is described as being able to connect to "Dark Thoughts". Taken literally, this could mean fleeting impulses that one would never act on such as "Call of the Void" impulses, thoughts of self-harm or worse, or primal urges of violence. The reason it would take an upgrade to jump into them is because it would likely take a fairly experienced psychic to 1; be mentally prepared for what they could see if they glance inside of them and 2: the maturity or awareness that everyone has dark thoughts like these, and they can't be held against the person for having them. Raz himself shows enough awareness about the second point in the finale, where he doesn't hold anything against Nona because he's aware Maligula is one of said dark thoughts that's been given too much power, and not who Lucrecia is.
• Necromancy is introduced as a Red Herring to throw off the mysteries around Maligula... but there is precedence for coming back from the dead; Helmut, who was thought dead (and, in a way, was) but was able to be brought back from his deathlike state and make do with a body that wasn't his. So Necromancy is real, but in a more doctor Frankenstein way than in a genuine magical way. If the Delugionists did their research, they might have realized that if even just Maligula's brain survived (and given the mastermind's distorted view on the Psychonauts, it wouldn't be a leap of logic if they thought they might have de-brained her corpse to keep for research), it didn't matter if her body was alive or not - she could still be "raised from the dead" as long as they got her brain and an adequate host body.
• Those who know caduceuses are actually symbols of commerce, and that it's the Rod of Asclepius with one snake that represents medicine, may be peeved to see them as the Nuggets of Wisdom in Hollis' minds. Until you remember what commerce is. It's the activity of exchanging money- and what's the goal of gambling?
• Raz protests that in a fight between the Sassclops and Nessie, Nessie would win because she's real. At first, it seems like he's just sticking to one superstition and ignoring the blatant tourist trap, but it's actually a sly Call-Back to the first game, since Raz has met a Stock Ness Monster, Linda.
• In the first game, all of Raz's merit badges were signed by Ford, but in this game, only Pyrokinesis and Telekinesis are. This makes sense: Raz was still in summer camp, and Sasha clarified that he needed Ford's approval to use the powers outside of class. Since Raz is no longer in camp, he doesn't need approval from Ford, just proof from Sasha, Milla, and Oleander that he learned their respective powers and can be trusted with them. Pyro and TK, meanwhile, were taught to Raz by Ford himself, so they still have his signature on them.
  • Another reason is that Hollis mentions Ford has no official weight in granting anything due to his unstable psyche. Thus, Ford's authorizations on the merit badges don't mean anything, so Raz needed signatures from the other staff members to show that he's able to use the powers. Ford himself taught Pyro and TK to Raz, so it might have been ok to have his signature on those since there was nobody else Raz could have gotten authorization from.
• Green Needle Gulch, as a place where Psychonauts were founded, where Astralathe is installed, where Ford overwrites Maligula and himself... And where Raz engages in the Psychic battle with Maligula... Using his Brain to overcome her Storm. Brainstorm. Green Needle... Anyone?

Mother Lobe Characters and Interns

• A minor, funny one is that, according to Hollis, there was a period where Sasha used to wear socks with sandals, likely because he still hadn't gotten over his shoemaking past yet.
• In relation to the other Fridge Brilliance Politically Correct History post regarding Helmut and Bob being a gay couple during the game's implied 1970s to 1990s time period, it also provides another aspect as to why Hollis Forsythe didn't just report her superior for stealing her work at the hospital before she joined the Psychonauts; not only was she psychic, but she was also a black woman, two aspects that would have been stacked against her credibility given the time period, and being outed as a psychic would have just been another burden on top of that. No wonder she would have resorted to more indirect methods to fix her problems, and no wonder only a psychic (Truman Zanotto) would have been willing to recognize her potential outside of society's values and barriers.
  • Then again, given the Amazing Technicolor Population in this world, prejudices here might not be the same as in our world. (We know it's literally accurate, since Loboto is referred to as blue.) That being said, one of the images in Hollis' second memory vault implies that race may have been a factor in either Dr. Potts confidence in plagiarising his assistant's work, or Hollis' attempt to rewrite his personality.
  • Or a bit of both? There might be races with blue skin that exist in addition to the typical human races, much like how psychics are also added into the mix.
  • The second Vault in Hollis' mind shows that two of the thoughts in Dr. Pott's mind were "Race" and "Women". Make of that what you will.
• Something that isn't immediately obvious in the game is how much the intern's personalities and interactions with Raz can be interpreted through their mentors, both what they teach and why they were assigned them.
  • Adam's mentor is Truman Zanotto, who is not only the Grand Head of the Psychonauts but also a father. He probably didn't just teach Adam psychic abilities, but also responsibility and how to handle children. Consequently, Adam is the nicest and most mature of the bunch, recognizing the importance of leadership and encouraging others, as well as being the first of the interns to actually apologize to Raz for the earlier hazing (and post-Casino Mission, also be willing to tell off anyone else who tries to keep mistreating Raz).
  • Morris's mentor is Milla Vodello, the woman who has seen Raz as a child that needs protecting. Morris himself is disabled, which means that he may be hypersensitive to even the mildest of Milla's 'gentle help' and consequently wants to prove himself. Combine that with Milla being one of the most famous active agents, and a lot of his egotism suddenly makes sense.
  • Lizzie's mentor is Compton Boole, an anxiety-ridden founding member of the Psychonauts. Lizzie herself often feels annoyed with his requests to get animals and is found trying to 'kidnap' goats instead of just convincing them to come with her. It might be that she was assigned to Compton to learn humility and compassion... a lesson that hasn't taken yet, because Compton is suffering some issues of his own and can't properly teach her anything, so Lizzie expresses her frustration through snark and aggressiveness.
  • Norma's mentor is Sasha Nein, who happens to both be a master at intelligence gathering and the one that personally took Raz under his wing. Norma tries to ape him by 'investigating' Raz and his family, but subconsciously she's jealous and worried that this kid suddenly wearing Sasha's old clothes is somehow going to steal her mentor from him, leading her to bully the boy constantly under the 'justification' that he might be a mole. Her attempts to investigate Raz under the above pretense also ends up being fatally flawed due to her biases, resulting in her nearly jeopardizing the mission instead of helping it.
  • Sam's mentor is Morceau Oleander, an aggressive and quirky individual who doesn't quite have a rational view of the world. Sam herself is an aggressive and quirky individual who doesn't quite have a rational view of the world. It's a match made in "Hollis just didn't want to deal with this so she picked who seemed best" heaven!
  • Gisu's mentor is Otto Mentalis, the polite yet inventive tech inventor of the Psychonauts. Gisu herself does have some teenage sass, but she seems to respect ingenuity and innovation. Whether she invented her hoverboard before or after gaining a mentor, it's clear she picked up some traits from him.
  • Razputin is assigned to Nick Johnsmith, the non-psychic mail organizer. This actually makes a lot of sense; Raz is ten, not a teenager like the other interns, and he ran away from home to boot. Giving him a job that would teach him respect for organization and how to handle other's property responsibly, while not requiring psychic training, would seem to be a good option—especially since Nick Johnsmith, loved by everyone, would almost certainly care for this runaway child. It's just too bad Nick Johnsmith was The Mole, and a narcissistic sociopath...
• It seems strange that Truman would recruit Hollis, seeing as how what she did to Dr. Potts was breaking one of the Psychonauts' biggest rules and didn't have the excuse of being a child still feeling out their powers like Raz. Then again, it probably wouldn't have been too long ago he had to give up on Bob and fire him because he refused to turn himself around, it's likely that Truman was more receptive to someone who did feel ashamed of what they did and would better themselves if given the chance and thus took her under his wing, both to give himself a "win" and reassure himself he made the right call in letting Bob go.

Enemies and Bosses

• The enemy types debut in mental levels that fit them, and several also have Logical Weaknesses pertaining to their real life concept:
  • Bad Ideas debut in Hollis' Hospital, born from Raz' own bad idea of trying to change Hollis' mind. They're vulnerable to Mental Connection, which brings them closer to Raz for a beating just like how one should directly confront and weed out bad ideas instead of letting them grow.
  • Judges debut in Compton's Cookoff, and are either formed from his poor judgement of his friends, or from the anxieties of his own friends judging him. They're vulnerable to having their gavels removed via Telekinesis, similar to how one should stop harshly judging themselves over their assumptions of others.
  • Panic Attacks debut in the Psi King's Sensorium, formed from the Sensory Overload and subsequent panic of a mind who has to re-experience its senses after 20 years. They're vulnerable to Time Bubble which slows them down and makes it easier to hit and avoid them — and the best way to deal with a panic attack in real life is to focus, calm down, and slow your mind.
  • Enablers debut in Cassie's Collection, and are likely formed from Librarian Cassie's reinforced beliefs that she's the only true Cassie who can protect the others. They're vulnerable to Pyrokinesis, which distracts their focus and prevents them from buffing their allies, just like how one should avoid focusing on reinforcing negative thoughts.
  • Bad Moods debut in Bob's Bottles and are caused by his alcohol-induced bad moods. They're vulnerable to having their source found and destroyed, just like how one needs to find out what's causing their bad mood and alleviating it.
• The mental world bosses are mostly Tactical Suicide Bosses: Lady Luctopus' bulbs can be thrown into her tentacles to stun her, the Gluttonous Goats vomit up the ingredients you need to serve, and the Truheltia Memonstria's Helmut flower deploys exploding fruits that can be used as ammunition against the three heads. All of them represent self-destructive thoughts and behaviours, after all; the Lady Luctopus even acknowledges that she's leaving herself vulnerable while doing so, but she's explicitly gambling on trying to kill Raz with her randomly-chosen attacks.
  • As disgusting as it sounds, obtaining the ingredients from the Gluttonous Goats' vomit and later feeding them Compton's dish prepared from said ingredients to kill them symbolizes forcing the goat critics to eat their own words and criticisms.
  • The Helmut and Tia flowers of the Truheltia Memonstria are the only ones that deliver attacks that can be countered, and the Helmut flower's spines can be tossed against all three. Bob loves and trusts Helmut to the point where the Helmut flower saying he never loved Bob is immediately recognized as a lie, so naturally the Helmut flower is the one that provides the most reliable way to fight Bob's inner demons. Similarly, while the real Tia was a mess of a woman who fell apart after the death of her husband, it's shown she at least tried to be a good mother and Bob knows that, so the representation of her as just a source of pain is also flawed. The only exception is the Truman flower, because Truman firing his uncle had no real silver lining - it was genuinely Bob hitting rock bottom and Truman was utterly furious that day, Bob knows it's entirely his fault on some level, and so there are no positive memories there. Truman's sheer anger at Bob's alcoholism-induced carelessness on the day he was fired is reflected in the fiery breath of the Truman flower (as well as being a Stealth Pun on Bob being "fired"), and there's no counter because Bob knows he was in the wrong.
  • The only exceptions to this rule are the Die-brarian and the final boss, because neither of them are self-destructive thoughts and behaviors.
    • The Die-brarian isn't inherently a bad entity, but is part of a system that has decided only she can keep Cassie O'Pia safe and locked up the others on the belief that she is the 'real' Cassie. The other three members of the system help Raz by providing unique artifacts he can use to stun her with, and using the stun moments to jump in; once she comes to her senses, the Librarian realizes she is an equal to the other personalities, and that they are all 'Cassie'.
    • Maligula is an artificially inflated and traumatically empowered Fight or Flight instinct attempting to take over the mind she lives in. It's no wonder that her multi-phase battle is the hardest in the game; she is literally a survival instinct fighting for survival in the mental world she originated from. However, as a literal Fight response she's fully attack-focused and incapable of any defensive strategy, hence being Always Vulnerable in terms of Boss Vulnerability.
• Why is Bob so sure his mind is lying to him about Helmut's never loving him? The last time anybody but Ford saw Helmut alive, he was sacrificing himself to save his husband. If that isn't love, what is?
• The Gluttonous Goats are sockpuppets on Compton's hands because it's Compton who creates the things they say as part of his anxieties. Some part of him knew that he was assuming the worst of his friends without any base.
  • Also, the Goats are Judges blown up to massive proportions by his own influence, just like Lady Luctopus is a Bad Idea that went out of control because of external forces.
  • Why all the vomiting from the goats in their boss fight? A common symptom of an anxiety disorder is the heightened production of cortisol, a hormone that increases the production of stomach acid, which leads into stomach pain, nausea and vomiting.
• During the fight with the Truheltia Memonstria, the Moth places dust traps that cause an Interface Screw if Raz touches them. A fitting ability for a mental construct that represents alcoholism.
• Appropriately, when Cassie's Librarian Archetype declares herself the "Real Cassie O'peia", her subsequent One-Winged Angel form as the Die-Brarian is still made of paper; showing that she's still ultimately a two-dimensional archetype trying to be the proper three-dimensional Cassie.
• Design-wise, Bad Ideas have a similar body shape, color palette and eye and mouth placement to look like the Evil Counterpart of a memory vault. Given how Memory Vaults are either cherished memories or repressed traumas, it would make sense if some vaults start as a Bad Idea before becoming a vault when the idea blows up in their face and becomes an Old Shame they want locked away.
• The enemies in the game are supposedly reflections of various mental concepts, which is reflected in where they do and don't show up.
  • Compton's mind has a lot of combat sections, against Censors, Doubts, Regrets and the debut of Judges. But one enemy type from the earlier levels is conspicuously absent: Bad Ideas. This shows that Compton isn't nearly as incompetent as he thinks he is.
  • The Psi-King/Helmut's mind has no Doubts; he's an openly gay, Large Ham rock star who's very confident in himself, after all. It's mostly free of Bad Ideas, but they aren't completely absent. This might be a reference to his failed attempt at pulling Talking the Monster to Death on Maligula; it wasn't an entirely bad approach, but it didn't work out regardless. No, he suffers from Panic Attacks, which is a common malady for older gay men in particular.
  • Regrets are the most common enemy in all three of Ford's mental worlds, for obvious reasons. Doubts are also common, but there's a single Panic Attack that only appears in Mailroom Ford's mind. From a gameplay standpoint this is because you need to beat Helmut's mind, which introduced them and gave you their weakness, to access this personality, but its placement makes sense from a story standpoint: Cruller's Correspondence represents the moment Ford realized Lucy was Jumping Off the Slippery Slope, and hears Maligula tell him Lucy is gone. It's not hard to believe he might have had a panic attack or breakdown at the time.
  • Cassie's Collection features every enemy so far except Judges and Panic Attacks. Cassie likes to keep everything in order and feel in control of her mind, and among the Psychic Six, she acts the most calm in spite of her issues. She doesn't have Judges, because her Enablers imply she has the opposite of Compton's problem: she's so used to praise from both her colleagues and the public that she uses their validation to convince herself she's doing the right thing.
  • When it comes to Gristol's mind, there are two combat sections—the first is just versus Censors and a few Doubts, which makes sense for Gristol to attack Raz with. The second, though, has all the enemies in the game, which doesn't fit Gristol's personality... until you remember it happens in an area resembling an angry mob. This is Gristol's memory of a near-death experience as a child, i.e. being attacked by angry civilians before Maligula saved him (which can be seen in one of Gristol's Memory Vaults), so of course it's a source of panic, bad ideas, and enabling justifications. He's weaponizing his own trauma against Raz. Despite this, it's notably absent of Regrets, reflecting his narcissistic refusal to admit any fault.

The Psychic Six and Ford Cruller

• One of the things that stood out to me in the mental worlds was the lack of plot-driven mental characters in the mental world (e.g., no Becky or poker dogs that you can have meaningful conversations with). Then I realized that's because most of the people in this game are sane. They all have crippling problems, yes, but alcoholism, anxiety and sensory overload are far different problems than anyone in the Thorney Towers asylum had. This is true even in the past game, Sasha and Milla had no truly interactive NPCs and are/were examples of ideal mental health. This may mean that there is a connection between how sane someone is and how many mental characters they have. The only character with multiple dialog NPCs is Cassie, who's experiencing borderline D.I.D. and could probably qualify as the least sane among the cast (besides Loboto). Ford's Shattered Psyche speaks for itself, and even Hollis who has all the nurses manning parts of her mind is dramatically 'rewired' by Raz' accidental interference, and knows something is wrong with herself which could have led to more 'characters' suddenly appearing. By the same token, Gristol Malik's mind having several plot-important NPCs Raz has to interact with to progress the ride shows that, whilst he might be (relatively) rational and lacks mental illness, he is most definitely not 100% sane.
• The shark theme of the mixer and spatula the Gluttonous Goats use in their boss fight may seem like an aesthetic, but when you think about it, most of the time, when people are ready to judge you, they’re essentially sharks looking for any faults to throw in your face. Then there’s the fact these are brought out after you blow up one of the goats. This possibly symbolizes Compton’s belief that anyone could be a shark ready to eat him alive with judgement and pressure.
• It's noted under Politically Correct History that the gay couple of Helmut Fullbear and Bob Zanotto would not have been accepted given the vague time period the Psychonauts series is set in (vaguely 70s to 90s). However, that's part of the point; they're a gay couple who are also part of an organization of psychics. Having psychic powers and needing to be able to trust each other in missions and in each others' minds if needed would have broken down whatever value barriers that existed at the time, and allowed them to be more open with their sexual orientation among much more open-minded peers.
  • It's also possible that the "Wedding" scene is Bob's mind is just an idealised version of the life he wanted to have with Helmut had he survived. Even if the Psychonauts accepted them as a couple, they still would not have been able to get legally married in that time period. (Notably, the game doesn't refer to either of them as Husbands or Partners.)
    • I've interpreted the Wedding scene as a literal and unofficial one that happened, although Bob likely did still idealize it to a degree. They might not have been able to wed legally, but that wouldn't have stopped them from doing a private ceremony and party.
    • It was a literal wedding, as one of the issues was Bob showing up completely drunk.
  • A completely different interpretation is that, since this is already a fictionalized timeline anyway (Grulovia isn't a real country and technology/fashion is all over the place), the existence of psychics excellerated the acceptance of LGBT people in this universe. This wouldn't be out of the question given the factors already laid out in the first bullet point.
  • Also, given that just ONE of the the Psychic Seven is a Person of Mass Destruction, most probably figure that it isn't wise to discriminate against a pair that could potentially do just as much damage, if not more.
• Why was Helmut unable to contact anybody about who he was with telepathy when we see Pam and Larry as brains in jars (okay, hamster balls) doing just that? Because they're in jars containing special brain fluid and chose to do that to themselves. In the first game, Raz's brain couldn't contact any of the others, even though he could still use TK, the juice most likely helps with not only focusing your powers but also acting as a physical connection to the real world somehow. But Helmet just had an incredibly traumatizing experience, so entered that jar most likely in shock, and wasn't properly cared for before Otto found him a few years later, which caused him to mentally deteriorate.
  • His brain was also tossed into the unclaimed brain bin of Otto's lab, a place that none of the Psychonauts would interact with on a daily basis; if they're in the Lab, it's to speak with Otto about new equipment and then leave (even Otto, seeing as he knows that the brains in there are essentially devoid of all thought by the time they enter). With all this, nobody would even consider looking for the brain of a dead man that was lost decades ago, let alone start by digging around in the brain bin at the back of the Lab; if somebody thought to go looking for Helmut, they'd start by trying to find his body in Grulovia.
  • Also the juice in the brain jars and the brain tank may not be the same, the brain tank jars may be sedative, while the brain jars are more to enhance the senses. Also there Otto probably updated the brain juice recipe to help brains communicate better over the years.
  • Larry states he's only in the hamster ball because his body is exhausted and sick. Meaning, he isn't going to be assaulted with sensory overload because he's just out of his body for the day.
  • There's another, tearjerking and horrific reason. The Brains in Jars do have access to senses through mental connections and ESP; after all they can hear Raz, and see where they're going. Helmut didn't use it. Why? Every time he tried to recover his senses, Nightmare Maligula would come out and torment him. After some time, he just withdrew completely into a place inside his mind where there were no senses and stayed there, not wanting to be haunted by her. He'd rather be in oblivion within one of his Memory Vaults, with no senses, a coma-like state than face her. The second Helmut regains all of his senses, she reappears; fortunately, Raz is with him to give him and his senses encouragement to face her down. This is why he's perfectly happy to be in his hamster ball at the end — he no longer fears using his psychic power to maintain his five senses.
    Helmut: (back to being a Mote of Light retreating from Maligula) There we go, that's better. Problem solved.
• The members of PSI King's band represent the five senses (vision, hearing, touch, taste, and smell), so it's pretty obvious the psychic PSI King represents the sixth sense.
• How Feast of the Senses correlate to the psychic six. Ford was the leader, bringing everyone together, so he was always looking for new possibilities and saw the big picture, so vision—he was the one on the team who first saw Helmut's potential as a psychic. Otto was always making things and dealt more with the physical side of psychic stuff, so very good with his hands. Compton could talk to animals, so a mouth is kinda literal. Bobby talked to plants, but unlike animals plants aren't vocal, so he had to listen to them in order to understand, plus since he was the quiet one he listened more than spoke. Cassie as a nose may seem weird, but the process of actually identifying smells means that you have to sort them out in order to distinguish one, Cassie applied the same logic to her brain, sorting out individual personalities in her life.
  • The pairing also makes sense, smell and taste are intertwined in the brain so if you lose your sense of smell, your sense of taste will also be affected; similar to how Compton couldn't function without Cassie. Them being indecisive about food also makes sense for their character, Cassie couldn't decide on an identity, and making choices stressed out Compton. Hearing and touch both rely on vibrations in order to function.
  • The fact Bob represents hearing also reflects just how important he is to Helmut, as what's a more important sense to a musician then sound?
  • There's also the possibility that all the Psychic Six really did perform in a band together on the side during their psychic experiments in the Heptadome, especially once Helmut joined.
• If it was so easy for Raz to bring Ford's fractured psyche back together, why didn't anybody try to do it before? Well, firstly, Ford's mind was broken early in the Psychonauts history, so methods and understanding of psychic therapy were probably in their infancy; nobody back then knew how to do it. And secondly, even after the methods were developed, Ford subconsciously had a very good reason to want his mind to remain fractured. But after the last game, subconsciously recognizing Augustus and realizing who Raz was, the realization that Lucrecia was near the Motherlobe might have made him unconsciously stop resisting attempts to bring him back together.
  • Ford mentions that his fragments had driven "Greater psychics than (Raz) to insanity" if you try to use the door on him in the first game, why is it so easy for Raz to do here? Raz is effectively Ford's apprentice after the end of the first game, there's a massive level of personal empathy and connection between the two, probably even more whenever Ford realized that Raz was an Aquato. Even at his most shattered, there may have been enough fondness for Raz that he may have been restraining the mind-breakingly awful parts of his psyche, since we see all over the game that "heart" is something that can remain even if the mind is affected.
• In all three levels surrounding the split personalities of Ford Cruller, not once is he represented as a human. In "Ford's Follicles" he appears as a sentient lighthouse watching over the islands, In "Strike City" he stands as a tower-sized bowling pin overlooking the city, and in "Cruller's Correspondence" he is a giant robot operating the post-office. All three aspects of Ford go about their business no matter what goes on around them so all three aspects could be seen as literal machines going about their days... much like what Ford's personalities do in the real world. All of his personalities do their particular role and absolutely refuse to budge from it, no matter the situation or what people ask them to do outside of it. His personalities in Psychonauts 1 stay at their posts even as Whispering Rock's children were in danger and the teachers disappear, refusing to help Raz in any way beyond selling him stuff.
  • It could also be the way he views himself in those situations, he was unwilling or unable to do anything, content to stay at the Valley until the situation got out of control. So he literally can't move or do anything in the situation but observe.
    • It would make sense that he would be unwilling to do anything outside of his mundane routines. Given what happened last time he took decisive action, he may now be too scared to do anything or else he just doesn't trust his own judgement anymore. Given his inability to think clearly in most contexts and considering that he's been this way for 20 years, it could also contribute to him being unable to act, making his various rote jobs the only things he's capable of anymore.
• You might have heard the very beginning of the overworld theme of Bob's Bottles before... it's from a very famous sea shanty appropriately called Drunken Sailor. It's especially telling since that song is about corporal punishment, and Bob is self-flagellating.
• Bob Zanotto's main drink of choice while holed away in his greenhouse was a brew made from fermented mushrooms. As it turns out, Bob's husband Helmut hates mushrooms; when Helmut himself points this out, Bob's only response is "I know." Making a brew out of something Helmut hates was probably a way Bob would punish himself for (seemingly) being unable to protect him.
• Why do we meet the Writer archetype first in Cassie's mind when the Librarian is clearly in charge of her mindscape? Because Raz immediately identifies her as the author of Mindswarm upon her removing the wooden mask she's wearing, and can ask her to sign his copy of her book right before he enters her mind, so she immediately switches over to that personality since she's in a situation "needing" her literary persona. Raz' projection spawns inside the Writer's space in Cassie's mind as a result, completely skipping the steps needed to find the Writer and retrieve their mental book for the Librarian.
• Cassie's life was ruined by the Dirty Cops that decided to squeeze her boss for money instead of arrest her. Fittingly in the memory vaults the officers look like a pair of snakes, stereotyped as being shifty and untrustworthy, but in her mindscape proper, only one cop is a snake, the others are a turtle and an elephant. This probably represents Cassie's more nuanced view of the officers in hindsight after she joined a government/law enforcement organization - while one was corrupt, it's possible the others may have just been too slow to act in giving her protection, hence a turtle, and the elephant is the Token Good Teammate and the odd one out (Elephants don't generally have many negative stereotypes associated with them), who may have wanted to get Cassie help and bust Fanny, but was sequestered by the rest of his department wanting an easy payday.
• Why does Ford kill himself multiple times in his mind once Raz starts learning the truth about Maligula? It's likely that is Ford burying his split personalities and/or assimilating them back into his mind.
  • Or it could just be that he still can't handle the truth even after all those years and is trying to run away again like he did before.
    • If Ford had tried to run from the truth again, he wouldn't have revealed just who and where Maligula is. He also showed him the way to the Heptadome, where Nona had gone to.
• The seafaring aspect to the theme of Bob's mind not only fits with his alcoholism and depressive isolation (liquid surrounding and separating desert islands; the idea of ships in bottles), but could be seen as reflecting the Helmut's deep and lasting influence on him, or at least that his loss was the particular catalyst for Bob ending up in the state he's in, given the man's Viking aesthetic.
• "Ford's Follicles" doesn't really make sense as a part of Ford's memories. It mostly serves as exposition, explaining the Deluge of Grulovia with a T-rated re-telling that uses lice as a stand in for in for human lives. Later we learn the actual Deluge was an accident. Ford has actively tried to empathize with Lucy, constructing a situation that would justify an intentional act of mass murder, reducing "peaceful protesters" to parasitic lice. He still can't approve of the action, and even though it was an accident, Ford doesn't know that. The mindscape isn't a memory, but how Ford processed somebody he loved doing something unapologetically evil.
• “Drag Me Down” is the song playing in the bowling alley where Ford is, yet it also ends up being rather appropriate thematically, given how much he tried in the past to remove Lucy from his life, but she’s so intertwined with who he is that even when his mind is shattered (coincidentally because he tried to remove her from his mind via Astrolathe), she still affects and “drags him down”.
  • It's also interesting to note that the other two times we've seen the song associated with people, it was with Oleander (it's his favorite song), and Loboto (he has the song on his computer). And all of them have had poor relationships that ultimately played a big part in "dragging them down" on a mental level. Ford with Lucrecia, Oleander and his Father/the Military, and Loboto with his parents.

The Delugionist Mastermind

• "Nick Johnsmith" is the sort of name a clueless foreigner might pick to sound American.
• The state of the hotel room at the Lady Lucktopus casino makes sense when you learn that the mole is actually the former prince of Grulovia i.e. exactly the sort of Spoiled Brat who never learned to clean up after himself due to being waited on hand and foot by servants back in his homeland. The rotting caviar also makes more sense in hindsight; it would take a particularly committed hoarder to suffer through the smell of rotting fish, but Malik loves the stuff and probably is long since used to the smell of decomposing caviar.
• The game actually spoils that "Truman" is an imposter as using Clairvoyance on him at that point will show he sees Raz as some peasant, which would be odd even not knowing anything about Grulovia or the Tsar or anything about Raz's past. Why would Truman view Raz as a peasant, instead of a baby, a junior agent, or anything else the other Psychonaut employees view him as? That combined with the psychic plants starving around the head of a psychic organization would indicate something is really wrong. Rewatch Bonus will make these hints far more obvious.
• The "Nick the Mailman" statue inside the final mind is solid gold, but it's hidden underneath a common plaster bust of Truman Zanotto. Given Gristol is puppeting Truman's body around at this time, it's Five-Second Foreshadowing of who The Mole is, and also a clue as to Gristol's massive narcissism - the exiled, nearly forgotten prince of a small European country is, in Gristol's own mind, clearly worth far, far more than the leader of the internationally (mostly) applauded team of psychic agents that have repeatedly saved the world. However, the fact that it's surprisingly easily shattered (Lili only kicked the podium it was on, not the statue itself, and while Lili is quoting her father calling Nick an "obsequious little lickspittle" for that matter) is actually very fitting; gold is not only a very soft metal, but this detail also shows just how fragile Gristol's ego really is.
• The name "Fatherland Follies" for Gristol's mental world is fitting for multiple reasons. Aside from his obvious delusions about his homeland, it's also set inside the body of Lili's father (and initially assumed to be his mind), making it a literal "Father Land", while Gristol himself has major daddy issues.
• Gristol's mind is a Potemkin facade, which reflects his distorted view of his homeland.
• The ride breaking down and how distorted it gets later on just enforces how desperately Gristol clings to his own delusions. For such an extravagant facade it’s easy to pick apart. It's also indicative of how thorough his plan actually is; his history and motivation are very well defined in his mind, he's got a definite goal and has plotted the steps to get there... and then he has literally nothing in mind for after he gets Maligula, since he believes things will just magically work out once she's on retainer again. The ride malfunctions and falls apart at the seams because it's also got nothing to base itself on.
• Why is there a gift shop in Gristol’s mind selling little Truman dolls? It’s likely the spoiled prince giving himself a mental high-five for impersonating Truman.
• Mixed with a funny moment, but Gristol's mind being so straightforward makes a lot of sense, given just how shallow his reasoning for his actions really are and how single-minded he is about achieving his goal. Being a spoiled, bratty, former Grulovian Noble lacking any capacity for self-reflection or humility and being utterly willing to do whatever it took to get his throne back, it's no wonder that his mind would reflect this lack of depth.
  • It's also a good sort of Dark Reprise of the actual ride it's based on. ""it's a small world"" may be annoying, kitschy, and oversimplified but it's still about keeping an open mind and being empathetic. This version shows what such a concept would look like from someone with a total Lack of Empathy.
  • Returning to his mind after the climax will have Raz basically doing a mental Face Palm at the fact that Gristol still hasn't given up his delusions.
• The Genius Bonus reference to the René Magritte painting 'The Interpretation of Dreams' in Gristol Malik's mind seems quite fitting as reference to be made as Psychonauts 2 was the game where the 'mental connection' power debuts. The power involves connecting concepts to grapple across the levels, and the painting refers to the way which the connections between words and real world objects are all entirely mental. The section where it shows up even comes up after a section which requires the mental connection power to get there.
• Why does Gristol have so much control over his mind if he himself has no psychic ability whatsoever? Well consider that the existence of psychics is a very well known, common and accepted fact to the point there's even technology specifically designed to discover psychics in high security areas. In a world like that, leadership figures would be idiots to not get at least a remedial crash course in mental self-defense to keep from getting brainjacked by unscrupulous or criminal psychics, or to at least mentally hold the line until bodyguards or friendly psychics deal with the intruder. As the son of an (unpopular) leader of a country, it's likely he received lessons in how to counter psychic invasions in his own mind. Heck, it might have even been pre-Maligula Lucy who taught him as an ally of the Maliks^note the same woman who just came from the Psychic Six, who were experimenting with previously-unknown psychic mechanics and knows more on the subject than most at this time, which would go a long way to explaining how easily he captures Raz; he wasn't just taught mental defense, he could have been taught it by one of the seven strongest psychics in the world.
• Gristol's brainless mutterings in the mail room actually foreshadow his role, but manage to hide themselves by also doubling as mail related jargon. "Pony?" Could be mentioning the Pony Express, or it could be the words of a Spoiled Brat who can ask for a Pony and get one easily. "Flat Rate?" Could be talking about mail pricing, or could be talking about financial stability as a prince expected to take the throne would need to know about one day. "First Class" could refer to first class mail, or it could refer to someone so rich they've always been able to afford to ride first class in whatever transport or vacation they've ever been on. The odd-one out is if you hit him - he threatens to tell his dad in the tone of a bratty child who just got scolded, extremely unlike the kind and smart man that Nick supposedly is.
• The placement of Gristol's Emotional Baggage and the tags for it might also have some symbolism behind it. The baggage is typically in plain view of the rides, while the tags needed to sort them are all hidden away, deep enough in his mind that even his obnoxious music can't reach them. In a way, Gristol's mind shows off his emotional issues on display, but the ability to actually deal with it are so deep, blocked and intentionally constructed to not be found, indicating an active refusal to sort out his problems. Possibly because it's more convenient for his narcissistic self to just put them in display for pity points, or possibly because he just refuses to admit that they're problems that need solving at all.
• Gristol's mind takes the form of a "It's a Small Ride" that basically serves to dish out propaganda on how he views the world and backed by a song he's shown singing to himself... it's a literal ego trip.
• You first meet Gristol-in-Truman's Body after Hollis tells you that it's not a Psychonaut's job to fix people, and that they're there to help people fight their demons. Truman saying that Raz needs to fix Ford is a dead giveaway that something's up— Hollis likely learned that lesson from Truman after she tried to "fix" her boss and drove him insane, so seeing Truman say that he needs a child psychic to fix someone else is a clear sign he's an imposter.
• His mind shows a lot of narcissism if you pay attention. He has displays for things that haven't even been 24 hours old, all built up to show off his "genius". Given how the mental construct is all part of a show in his honor, it means he is/was already gloating despite having not won yet. Also the way he shows off the most basic manipulations as some masterstroke stratagem shows how much he thinks of himself when really he glosses over the impressive parts; tricking his way into the Psychonauts and getting himself liked by most people most likely by acting humble and subservient, to celebrate his "victory" of getting Maligula back that, again, hasn't happened yet. He doesn't care about this feat of infiltration because those people aren't praising him for his royal blood or obeying him, and he views the friendship they have with his mailman persona as worthless.

The Aquato Family

• Throughout all of the games, Raz is constantly being attacked by the Hand of Galochio. While at first it's framed as a curse placed upon their family by the hydrokinetic psychic Maligula, the reveal that Maligula was Raz's great-aunt (having been planted into his family by Ford as his grandmother) also reveals that the "curse" is actually just Raz's psychic powers acting upon his belief in that curse. In hindsight, this means that his relation to Maligula was foreshadowed since the first game, as whether he knew it or not, he was performing Maligula's signature psychic power.
  • Something else to consider is that Raz states that Lili is better at pyrokinesis that he is (he gets it to work well enough, but he notices that it's not easy for him), while Augustus, Raz's father, is repeatedly shown having trouble even using it throughout 2. While the latter is arguably more from lack of training and psychic atrophy than anything else, it can also be that both Raz and Augustus struggling with pyrokinesis because they are using the element opposite of their natural affinity.
• So Raz's family comments on how his muscles are lacking and he's not as flexible as before. While this may be a case of an Informed Flaw, since he's been away from them for days and considering that he was using acrobatics in the summer camp, consider this: a lot of his acrobatics were done in the minds of others, and his own. Also he spent a good portion trapped in a chair in an underwater laboratory. By their standards, he's been avoiding his daily practice and they can tell that his (quite good by normal standards) athleticism has fallen off.
• Given how it's clear the Aquatos are Grulovian refugees that came over in the post-coup crisis, it gives truth to Augustus' warning that his family has many enemies. As people who fled what was essentially a collapsing state, Grulovian refugees in general are likely targets of the Deluginist movement and other Malik loyalists who view any refugees as "traitors" who abandoned their Gzar, so the Aquatos are already in the crosshairs of some very bad people. Add to that Augustus, and later his son, were psychics? The Deluginists would likely want them as materials to make a replacement Maligula for a counter-revolution. In fact, this was actually smarter than even he realized, as he was unknowingly carrying the amnesiac Maligula with him - the Deluginists would tear the country apart to get their hands on Nona, the actual Maligula in the flesh.
  • This also goes the other way entirely, in that any survivors of the Grulovian atrocities or anyone related to those who were killed by Maligula would naturally want vengeance for the fallen. Any neighboring governments around Grulovia that are nervous about a psychic hydrokinetic powerhouse ever returning would also be interested in making sure she's definitely dead, if the idea of her survival ever gained enough traction for investigation. How would any of these people treat a group of Grulovians that are apparently sheltering her for some unknown purpose with a "cover story" of a circus troupe? The Aquatos really did need to fly under the radar and not call attention to themselves, especially not through any psychic tells.
  • Now add to that that the circus troupe have extremely powerful psychics who are descended from Maligula herself. The Powers That Be have reason to be worried about the Aquato family.
• In this game, the original theme to "Meat Circus" from the first game starts playing when the whole Aquato family finds themselves at the Motherlobe, albeit a more upbeat version. Later, the same theme is used as the background music to the Flea Circus, the mental construct Ford made in Nona's mind based around her life in her family's circus. In the first game, the music was tempo'd very differently, done as a means of putting the player on edge as a Circus of Fear would. With the music reappearing in Nona's mind and inside the family's big top, it's very likely that this is music that plays In-Universe when the family are performing. Is the music in "Meat Circus" so off-putting because the player has developed a pavlovian response to the level's infamous difficulty spike, or could it be that it causes so much anxiety because that's a pavlovian response Raz has to the music? In the first game, he was more than willing to stay away from the circus due to his family's hatred of psychics, so he associates anything to do with the circus, like its opening theme song, with stress and anxiety. So when we hear the music in his mind, it's keyed in such a way that induces those same emotions.
• Raz's mother Donatella calls him "Pootie". It's intended as an Embarrassing Nickname based on the second syllable in his full first name, and the reasons why it would be one are probably obvious (and emphasized by such things as Frazie calling him "Pooter"), but Donatella's name and accent imply she's Italian. "Putto" is Italian for "cherub", with "putti" being the plural form, making it an actually pretty unsurprising nickname for a mother to give her child, even if Donatella is the less-affectionate of the Aquato parents overall.

Grulovia and Maligula

• Loboto is Grulovian. Gristol knew who he was and forced him to be his agent, and he's kept in line by the threat of Maligula, and most tellingly he was given a lobotomy when his parents found out he was psychic — remember why and how an anti-psychic bias developed in Grulovians.
  • Furthermore, in his attempts to resist the probing at the start of 2, he says that most of all, he's trying to protect himself from whatever would hurt him if he caved to the interrogations. His most iconic piece of clothing, not counting his pepper shaker arm, is his shower cap, an item designed to protect you from the damage that too much water can do to your hair. Likely a paranoid ward against the horrors of what Maligula is capable of.
  • And even more hinting: both Raz's family and Bobby Zilch have the same tattered clothing in 1, if one subscribes to the theory Bobby is Loboto's son.
• Many people have questioned how Gristol's father Theodore knew that Maligula wasn't dead when he seemingly fled before he could have seen Ford mindwipe her. Except that if you recall that in the hidden room of the Lady Luctopus, one of the things Raz finds is a newspaper clipping of Maligula's body having been stolen. Chances are, some of the Delugeionists are loyal followers of the Gzar, so when they dug up Maligula's grave, but found the body of their strongest weapon missing, they alerted the former Gzar about it.
• In Lucrecia's mind, you can see the dam holding back Maligula is a wall of luggage chained together, and it toppling over causes all five pieces of Emotional Baggage to fall out of the dam. Lucrecia had so much Emotional Baggage that Ford used it to try and repress Maligula.
  • Also, the tags for that baggage are all found in the earlier sections of the level which represent the happy memories she made with her family, symbolizing how the love and support of her family and coping mechanisms can help her deal with her issues.
• The "final blow" which defeats Maligula is Nona cutting the cloth she's clinging to with a pair of scissors. Lucy, not being an acrobat, contributed to the circus by making the costumes, and the Nona's Quilts section of her mind proves sewing is a hobby she enjoys. Nona literally uses her coping mechanism to send her darker impulses packing.

Fridge Horror

• Hollis Forsythe is seen in a memory vault reading a book about how to change minds with Mental Connection before meeting the Psychonauts. The mere fact that this is available to the public is terrifying, since as we see it's functionally Mind Rape that can easily turn a normal person into a screaming mess; one can only hope that book was very, very illegal, but Hollis was still recruited rather than arrested...
  • May not be as bad as you think, Mindswarm was also a best-selling book about psychic mind techniques and is still renowned 20 years later. Chances are that the mind connections book could be similar to that, techniques that can help both psychics and regular people organize their minds, but Hollis took it to an extreme degree in her desperation.
• The timeline has some unfortunate implications regarding Razputin's parents. Maligula's defeat happened 20 years ago, Augustus is of a vague age but visibly no older than 9. This puts him at 29 at the oldest, with teenaged children who could be anywhere from 14 to 18. The most charitable conclusion could come to is that Augustus was 15 when Dion was born. Imagine being teen parents, trapped in poverty, needing to look after a senile mother with a few screws loose, and believed to be cursed that you and your entire family will die if you so much as look at a swimming pool. It's no wonder Augustus developed such a fear of psychics, and his wife hates them so much.
  • Well, as much as I understand your point, Augustus was 17 when he had meet Donatella for a first time, and she was 18.
• Otto in the post-game ruminates selling miniature home versions of the Astralathe. He thinks people could use it to make "cosmetic changes" to their minds but what can be listed as "cosmetic changes?" Ford broke his mind when he used the original on himself, and he was an experienced psychic. Someone without his experience could destroy their sanity, or worse, their own mind if they mess up.
  • It’s possible Otto might design weaker versions of the device to sell but that could still lead to permanent brain damage in some way shape or form. We see that even use of certain powers incorrectly can lead to harmful chain reactions such as with Hollis.
• Following the reveal that what was inside the locked box was Truman's brain during the events of this game, Truman was more than likely MOMENTS away from being condemned to a horrific death in the depths of a Psilirium-filled sea, possibly in a Psychic-proof container, while his body remained in control of his captor.
• Here's one for the general series: since Psychonauts 2 is set directly after the events of Rhombus of Ruin which were set directly after the events of Psychonauts 1... then chronologically speaking, if we high ball the time, everything Raz went through over the course of the last three games happened in LESS THAN A WEEK. Think about it, all the trauma he had to fight through, all the conspiracies he got caught in the middle of, finding out that nearly everything he knew about his family was a lie, and all the near death experiences occurred only in the span of a few short days. The only reason Raz isn't suffering from PTSD is that he hasn't even had time to let all the trauma properly sink in with how much he's had to deal with!
• It was Ford's fault that Helmut's brain had been lost for 20 years. He had saved it in Grulovia after Helmut ejected his brain out of the ice, but never bothered to tell any of his friends or even give them a hint that Helmut was still alive before he shattered his own mind. It was lucky that Otto found his brain in the Heptadome or else Helmut would have been truly dead.
• The Otto construct in Bob's mind says the others never liked Bob, and only tolerated his presence because Helmut brought him along. But looking at one of Helmut's memory vaults reveals that he was actually the last person to meet up with the group—Bob can be seen on the edge of the group, and later sitting in the audience, with the other Psychic Six members. One of the figments you can find in Helmut's mind also depicts the Fullbear-Zanotto wedding, and everyone looks happy for Bob and Helmut, Otto included. It speaks volumes to Bob's self-loathing that his mind not only turns his friends against him, but twists the very timeline around so as to make him look like a burden and an annoyance.
  • A bit of Fridge Heartwarming: not only does this say a lot about Bob's insecurities, but also how much he loves and respects Helmut as a husband/fellow Psychonaut.
• Augustus Aquato has a noticeable scar above his right eye. The "flea circus" level reveals that in addition to acrobatics, the one of their (likely former), acts was knife throwing, with him as the target...
• Compton's Cookoff has a moment of Black Comedy where a pig is eager to be chopped by the Pork Chopper, who is disturbed because the pig is their grandchild. There's an additional bit of dialogue where the pig refers to the Pork Chopper as "the most famous member of [their] family". Given how Compton is Sam and Dogen's famous grandfather, this raises disturbing parallels.
• Ford's mind was shattered everywhere... except in one place - his private sanctuary in Whispering Rock near the Psitanium Motherlode. If it could bring all of his personalities together back to sane Ford, there's every possibility it would also bring all his memories back too. Every time he had to return to his hidden HQ, he could have been forced to remember and relive the battle against his own loved one and the fate he subjected her, Augustus and himself to, knowing it would all slip away again seconds after he left. The years where he was leading Sasha and Milla from the shadows must have been hell for him mentally.
• Some of the locations of the Dark Thoughts within the minds of characters can raise some uncomfortable questions.
  • The first place you're likely to encounter them, before you get the upgrade that allows you to traverse them, is in Hollis's mind, in the maternity ward; it leads to some emotional baggage. Did Hollis have an experience with losing a child at some point, or is she just afraid she wouldn't be a good mother because she's afraid of repeating what happened with Dr. Potts on her own children?
  • Compton has a trail of dark thoughts that lead to a figment of honey behind the Ram It Down set. Is he imagining the worst of what's happened to Cassie?
  • Helmut's brain has a trail of dark thoughts in the area where you meet Audie O. and Dr. Touch; while there's no real significance to the figments here, these thoughts appear on the way to meeting Helmut's mental version of his own husband (Audie O), who Helmut thinks is dead at that point in the level. Furthermore, Helmut knows he was in Dr. Touch/Otto Mentalis's brain storage; does he think that Otto forgot about him?
  • Bob has more Dark Thoughts than anyone else in the game; one of the trails leads to a figment of a rope, implying that Bob has contemplated suicide in the past.

Fridge Logic

• Why don't the Psychonauts have any kind of forensics experts? The Mole of the second game in particular could've been found out extremely early if they'd had the ability to search the untidy apartment that Nick had access to with all the plans he had scribbled on the walls. In fact why didn't anyone have a camera to take photos of the evidence?
  • Keep in mind that the game is supposed to take place around the '90s, and it takes time to analyze evidence - and that, as immature as he is, Gristol is genuinely intelligent and cautious, so he would have taken care to avoid leaving evidence he was the postmaster, especially after his scheme was in operation. The only reason anyone even knew about the casino was his true body being found early, and given how the game takes place over a couple days while Gristol is in a perfect spot to subtly interfere, it's likely they didn't have time to notice and analyze the subtler evidence.
• Do the Psychonauts vet their employees? Despite having the means to inspect the minds of candidates directly, they allowed a megalomaniac with a grudge against their organization to work in their headquarters.
  • For that matter, Oleander could have conquered the world in the previous game, yet his problems were able to be solved by an inexperienced preteen and his even less experienced civilian dad once discovered. It seems like a round of consensual but mandatory psychic therapy would be a good first step in the hiring process.
    • As stated on the original Psychonauts fridge page, Oleander went crazy because of prolonged exposure to psitanium at Whispering Rock, he was perfectly sane when they hired him. As for later years, Oleander is one of the top psychics and knows how the other agents operate, he could have just hidden his plans/instability behind something they already checked until it got out of control. Knowing how they operate is also how he got the drop on them so that Raz had to save them. Also considering that he talks about making killer death robots out of pancakes on a normal day, everyone may have just thought his strange behavior was more of that.
  • As for Nick/Gristol, he's not a psychic at all, and HQ may not have thought he'd be any sort of trouble in a place where minds can be read. Plus we've seen that he has enough mental control to create whole rooms that cover his true personality. He could have created a "Nick room" similar to his "Truman room" for the interview and no one would have bothered to check again, especially if he wowed the inspector with how "genuinely" nice he was.
• Why in the world did Gristol mail his brainless body back to the Psychonauts? All it did was alert them that something fishy was going on with him.
  • It might have been an attempt to throw them off the trail that didn't fully work. After all, during one of the cutscenes, Raz did initially defuse the idea that Nick was the suspect due to his body being brainless (and thus bringing into question how he could have been the mole). It was just that he clearly didn't think everything through with his penthouse key being on his body.
  • It's rather possible that he always intended to recover his body from the mail package and return his brain to it once his work with Truman was done and he'd gotten Maligula's location, given he presumably wouldn't want to spend the rest of his life in another man's body. The package was mailed to 'Truman', so if all had gone well he'd have been able to recover it and slip out undetected. Plus, he's clearly shocked when he sees his body being piloted by Helmut's brain, so he wasn't planning on it being discovered, hence why he kept such a valuable clue on his person. On the other hand, if Nick was missing, then there would have been nobody around to sort the mail, and thus hiding his brainless body inside the mail sorting packages was a means of hiding a needle in the haystack, whilst keeping it close by for when he needed to recover it. The one thing he didn't plan on was Raz getting assigned as his Mentee, and sorting out the packages well enough to unearth the one that contained his body.
    • Absolutely he wanted to recover and reclaim his body, but you'd think having it sit inside a box for a few days 'unpiloted' as it were would not leave it in great shape to reoccupy. I know the game plays being brainless for laughs ("Tee... vee?") but you'd think he'd at least want to have someone around to give it a drink now and then. Come to think of it, were there even airholes in that box?
    • Definitely played for laughs. I think it also was another good showing of Gristol as a smart person who doesn't think his plans through, like failing to realize that'd held no control over Maligula. It was a genius idea to kidnap Truman, put his own brain inside the man's body, and his own body in the Motherlobe's mail system. What he failed to consider was that his body likely wouldn't survive.
    • Gristol was defeated by not using a sturdy box, and even stupider, keeping distinctive hotel keys on himself. He is smart, but he's also extremely dumb in all the ways that matter.
• Why did no one notice that Ford Cruller, a Psychonaut that was supposedly written off from the organization, was running around the Motherlobe despite having not been there for decades? I get he was mostly seen 3 relatively empty areas, but someone should have noticed this oddity.
  • Several generic agents hanging outside those areas do notice, and react in conversations with each other with mild irritation as if Ford were a favorite great-uncle that one has to humor in his eccentricities.
  • In addition, Ford's mind being broken is famous — it's in one of the True Psychic Tales. It's not a secret Ford was at Whispering Rock, and they probably knew he was doing simultaneous jobs there. What they didn't know was that he was more sane spending time in his private HQ.
  • Ford is adept at teleportation, so he doesn't really need to walk anywhere. It would make him a bit harder to notice than if he was wandering around in full view. He mostly just zips between his jobs in various corners of the place and quietly goes about his business. Additionally, younger members of the organization just may not recognise him since he hasn't been an active agent in 20 years. Most of the original Psychic Seven look a lot different than their prominent depictions within the organization taken from their heyday (Helmut perhaps notwithstanding depending on the preservative nature of ice in this setting)
• How did Gristol brainwash Loboto? He doesn't have psychic powers. Did a psychic person help him? Did he do it in the mundane way through a combination of mental and physical torture?
  • It seems likely, also falling under Horror, that being the son of a dictator, Gristol is familiar with Cold-Blooded Torture. Combined with the posters littered through Loboto's mind and the way he outright whimpers about protecting himself...
  • In addition, Gristol threatened him with Maligula's wrath.
  • In addition to what's said above. One can only assume that game is implying that the brainwashing Loboto experienced is a form of indoctrination that was commonly used by the Soviets in the Eastern Bloc. In the real life, you can manipulate someone's perception of reality and their way of life by controlling what they think. If you're confused. Try and think about what Nineteen Eighty-Four tried to convey to the audience through the idea of 2 + Torture = 5, then you'll have your answer.
• With all the psychic detectors around the Motherlobe, did no one think to investigate the sightings of the "Green Needle Witch"? The humanoid bee swarms alone must have given off some psychic energy.
  • The whole area where the Motherlobe is located gives off psychic energy, due to all the Psitanium buried everywhere. Any place with Psitanium in the ground is full of strange anomalies, like the psychic wildlife of Whispering Oaks Summer Camp or the Questionable Area's inverted waterfall, and some strange bees wouldn't be very notable in the scheme of things. The Witch is also considered local folklore believed only by teenagers and the young... and the Witch stays in the Green Needle Gulch, a place deliberately ignored by the Psychonauts out of respect for what happened there.
  • Hollis and other agents know it's Cassie — she's the one who is suppling honey to the Motherlobe — but leave her alone since she's not hurting anyone and she's a respected Broken Bird that is coping with her PTSD in her own way. As for Interns making an Urban Legend out of her? They likely don't care and let them think that so they stay out of Cassie's way.
• In the first game, it was shown that Raz's father was a fairly experienced psychic — he used them to follow Raz to the camp, he was the only one able to enter Raz's mind, he delivered the finishing blow to the Butcher, and he was able to use his powers to supercharge Raz for the final battle — he just kept his powers hidden. Then in 2 it seems like he's totally untrained in his powers and barely able to use them.... what happened? Early-Installment Weirdness, Characterization Marches On, or did I miss something in the first game?
  • He likely has a lot of raw psychic potential, which translates naturally to the mental world (and makes for easy power transfer), but has trouble using his mental power in the real world due to years of him trying to bury his own psychic abilities for the sake of his family, and convincing his children to do the same. He only very recently started doing any sort of psychic activities again (keep in mind 2 doesn't even take place a WEEK after 1), and his family is still pretty unapproving of psychics, despite accepting that Raz and Augustus are open about it now. So there's probably a lot of mental hurdles he has to overcome regarding his personal conditioning before he can tap into that psychic power all the time.
  • He did indeed get into Raz' mind where the Whispering Rock teachers failed... all of once, since they didn't try to get in again after the first time. Augustus also takes a (relatively speaking) very long time to get through his son's mental shields, resulting in the initially-spooky psychic imprint of him ("RAAAAAAZputin!") seemingly chasing his son through the Meat Circus. It's not his hidden "experience" letting him get through Raz' mental shields, it's the desperation of a father trying to save his son by any means necessary (remember, his son's body is wandering around in the real world, and his brain is apparently stuck fighting another one in a burnt-out tank) and literally throwing himself at a wall until he finally smashes through. Augustus certainly provides power to Raz, but it's also how he's disproving Raz' psychic nightmare of him just by showing that he loves his young son.
    • There might also be something to say about the actual powers used: in the Meat Circus, Augustus is only shown using Psyblast (apparently a pretty basic power), and his signature "mind armor mecha thingy". These might come pretty naturally to him, while other powers would need more training, just like Raz' hydrokynesis naturally and subconsciously manifests as the hands of Galochio, but he still has to train if he wants to use other powers.
    • I would see it as akin to the old trope of a mother lifting a car off of her child. When Augustus is practicing in the Questionable Area?, it's just for fun. At the end of the first game he could have been mustering every bit of mental fortitude and focus he had because his son was in grave danger and he was the only one who could help him.
• We all know that Bob Zanotto is Truman's uncle, but... how? In Bob's mind, we only see him and his mom in family photos.
  • It's possible that his father and mother separated and his father took custody of Bob's sibling. If we assume that Bob's father died sometime before the first image in Bob's memory vault, then perhaps his mother remarried later in life and just didn't end up having as close of a relationship with her second child as she did with her first-born son. Keep in mind that a significant amount of time has passed from the images of Bob's childhood to the images of Bob on the day of his mother's funeral.
    • Considering Truman's age (at least in his 40s, you get to run the Psychonauts without experience) it's more likely that Bob's sibling was older than him and had already moved out when the memories took place.
  • It's also possible Bob and his sibling weren't close. Just because there's no depiction of them in Bob's mind doesn't mean they didn't exist, just that it wasn't a significant enough relationship for Bob to have prominent memories of. His mother's drinking and neglect made much more of an impact on him, so that's where all the memories of his childhood are focused. It's possible he had an older sibling that was much more independent than him and just not around much during his formative years.
• Why has seemingly no one tried to go through Compton's mind to help him before Raz? Ford's elaborated on above, Cassie and Bob were intentionally isolating themselves (the former actively driving people away from the forest by playing into the Green Needle Witch myth), but what about Compton, who's apparently still part of the Psychonauts? Admittedly, his social anxiety and insecurity would probably keep him from seeking help from another person, and him spending most of his time in the psychoisolation chamber would make it harder to go to him to help (not to mention that when Raz 'does' go into his mind, Compton's in a state where he'd most want help and be least able to consciously resist it... which sounds pretty bad when phrased like that), but still.
  • He checked himself into the psychoisolation chamber. He could leave anytime he wanted. He was comfortable alone there, and as a legendary Psychonaut, Hollis and the others respected his privacy and let him self-medicate until he felt he needed outside help. Raz didn't need him to leave the chamber — he just wanted his bowling membership card.
  • Any therapist will tell you that you can't help someone who doesn't want help. Compton refuses to cooperate with Raz unless Raz can help him with the thing he actually wants help with: finding Cassie. It's only when Compton is overwhelmed by the thoughts of multiple bees and sent into a catatonic panic that Raz even has the opportunity to delve into his mind to fix things, and even then he does the proper thing and asks his permission. It's really only out of desperation at that point that Compton agrees.
• Admittedly, this is a bit nit-picky. In the original Psychonauts, all of Raz's merit badge certificates are signed by Ford Cruller, who is the nominal head of Whispering Rock Psychic Summer Camp. (We only see this during the "New Badge Earned" videos.) In 2, the certificates and badges are transferred into Raz's Intern Paperwork, and we can see the signatures whenever we want, except now, of those powers that transferred from the original game, some of the signatures are different: the Melee badge (which was Basic Braining in the original game) is now signed by Coach Oleander, and Levitation is now signed by Milla Vodello. Both make sense, considering Raz got the badges by completing their respective mental levels. But Ford's signature is on the rest of them. This isn't surprising for Pyrokinesis and Telekinesis, given that Raz received those direct from Ford. Less fitting is Clairvoyance, which technically was given to you by Boyd during the Milkman Conspiracy (then again, Boyd's an asylum inmate, not a camp staffer.) Finally, what makes the least sense: Marksmanship, aka Psi Blast, is still signed by Ford, when it should be signed by Sasha Nein, who was the agent who trained Raz how to shoot.
  • A hilarious possibility for the discrepancy in signature is because Sasha wasn't supposed to teach Raz Psi Blast. Something that's entirely understandable given how much havoc any other kid could've caused with the ability. He's just hiding behind Ford to 'Cover his ass.'
• What was Gristol's plan to actually find Maligula? In the end she only appeared because of the Aquato family circus visiting, which he didn't know about. Was he assuming that a healed Ford would restore her to being an engine of destruction just Because?
  • As stated elsewhere, Gristol isn't really someone who thinks too far ahead, he just knows Maligula was the greatest weapon his family ever wielded and figures she's his best shot at taking back his kingdom. His plan boils down to, Step 1: Find/resurrect Maligula. Step 2: ??? Step 3: Rule over Grulovia! As for his plans for Ford, he knew he'd need him mentally intact to find out what actually happened to her, and was possibly planning to torture him the way he did Loboto. Which would again show his lack of planning since a fully restored Ford Cruller could not only resist anything Gristol threw at him, but would probably kick his ass to boot.

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