Headscratchers / Hello Neighbor

• In the Alpha 2, the protagonist is apparently thrown out of his own house by the Neighbor, who quickly makes it his own, and is forced to take up residence in the house across the street. One wonders why he didn't just call the police and tell them his house has been stolen.
  • The same reason the Neighbour didn't call the police when the protagonist invaded his house?
    • The Neighbour has something to hide. You don't.
    • But how do we know that?
    • Yeah, plus the protagonist has committed a crime: Trespassing. Why doesn't the neighbour call the police the protagonist?
    • Because then, the police would have to potentially look through his house. And the Neighbour really seems to hate people going in his house.
  • Perhaps the beginning sequence is a dream? Notice that when you first enter the house the basement door doesn't have its locks and boards.
  • Judging by the ending in Alpha 4 and intro in the E3 Beta Reveal, the protagonist has been evicted from his apartment in town. He also grew up in the house now owned by his neighbor.
• When it comes to the ending of Alpha 3... why is the Neighbor crying?
  • The final game implies that his wife has just died in a car accident.
• Why doesn't the protagonist call the police? I know that The Neighbor has a right to privacy, but come on! "Hello? Police? I think that my neighbor is hiding something illegal in his basement. I have been watching from my house across the street, and he has boarded up the basement door, and outfitted it with a keycard lock. I tried to think nothing of it, but he's impossible. If I even try to go over and introduce myself, he freaks out and forces me back to my side of the street. If he even catches me on his side of the street, he'll chase after me and force me back to my side. I have done nothing to him, and he treats me like I'm a criminal. He must be hiding something illegal." This is just going off of the Alpha 2 version. This goes double for the Alpha 3 version where he throws bottles of glue at you, and triple for the pre-Alpha and Alpha 1 versions where he throws tomatoes and beartraps at you. Keep in mind that he can act this way without you giving him any reason to. If you so much as go over and ring his doorbell, he will come after you, and assuming you used the sleep feature in the pre-alpha version and waited until morning to go over to his house, and didn't do anything more in either that version or in Alphas 1, 2, and 3 than ring the doorbell when you first went over (and assuming you managed to get out of his house after the cutscene of him boarding up the door in Alpha 2 without him seeing you, thus leaving him with no knowledge of the fact that you saw him boarding up the door or that you snuck in his house), this would be well before you did anything to antagonize him. I think boarding up a basement, using a keycard lock on it, refusing to let anyone on your side of the street, and throwing things at people warrants a call to the police.
  • Same reason why the Neighbor never calls the police and sends them towards the player, who is repeatedly breaking and entering into the Neighbor's house. And this does not count the fact that the player can steal whatever property the Neighbor has lying around on his yard or inside the house. It's likely that the police is either incompetent in whatever location the game takes place in or that they have specific laws set that say that allow homeowners to do whatever is necessary to remove intruders.
    • I don't know. If he really is hiding something, that'd be a pretty good reason for him to be more reluctant to call the police than the player should be.
  • Because then he'd have to explain why he's been breaking into and robbing his neighbours house. He also wants to solve the mystery for himself.
• Does The Neighbor not have a job? Why doesn't the protagonist ever go over when he's at work? What about when he has to go get groceries?
  • Maybe he works from home?
  • A creepy neighbor who never seems to leave his house, doesn't seem to have friends of any kind, never buys groceries, or even sleeps for any extended length of time. How very ominous. But probably nothing unless we here whatever is in the basement asking to be fed...
  • He's been implied to be, or have been, a clown.
• What the hell happens in the ending? I watched it and it just blows my fucking mind. What was in the basement? What was going on? What happened to the neighbor and his house? There better be an explanation for all of this. I didn't wait a year to not have my questions answered.
  • This video does a fantastic job of making things clear from the Car Accident to the final boss. If not it's an excellent piece of fridge to say the least. Some of the humor may be offensive though so click at your own risk. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=leBsSGhxJ1s
• What the hell is the meaning of those posters that read "simming"? That's not even a word. Is it supposed to be missing? Why the hell doesn't it say that than?
  • Yes, it's "missing" posters. The game uses Simlish, not real English, but kept the letters involved the same so that any normal person would be able to tell what they mean at a glance.
  • My personal headcanon is that it's also a joke on the word "sinning", making it a "Sinning Child" poster instead. And considering that one of the children killed the other...
• Was the whole game a fucking dream? Someone explain this to me.
  • It's minimal on the storytelling, but what I took away from it was that a little boy (the player) went to investigate the Neighbor after seeing evidence he was keeping a child prisoner in the basement. After breaking into the basement, he indeed discovered things indicating the neighbor was keeping someone imprisoned there for whatever reason, but the neighbor locked him up too. The little boy escaped (possibly with the help of whoever the neighbor was keeping there, who may have been the one to unlock the door) and eventually he grew up and moved away, but continued to dream about the traumatizing experience. One day, after being evicted, he moves back to his childhood home. His past trauma and suspicious surroundings (the figure outside the house, the burned down Neighbor's house, etc) caused him to have another horrible nightmare about the Neighbor, but in it he confronts his demons once and for all. Finally at peace with his scary childhood, the player character wakes up and starts moving back in to his old home.
• So why are you even doing this sneaking-in business? So, the Neighbor is up to something odd. Instead of just bursting into the basement unprepared, why not gather more evidence outside? Or better yet, why go through this at all? There's no personal stake for you. Just let the man have his privacy.
  • In the main game, you initially start sneaking in because you think the neighbor has someone captive in his house. You're also a kid, so the more reasonable option to leave it alone or take some other course of action (like telling an adult) might not have occurred to you.
• At the end of Act 1, the player gets kidnapped by the Neighbor, right? And he escapes. Yet the Neighbor doesn't seem to get in trouble for this. I mean, shouldn't the player character have called the police after escaping? Or if he didn't know to, he could have told his parents who kidnapped him, and THEY could have called the police! Sure, they'd probably investigate the man first instead of immediately arresting him, but unless all of the captives escaped WITH the player character, which I find unlikely, they would have investigated the basement and found them.
  • Considering all appearances of the neighbor in the rest of the Acts are part of a dream (at least, it looks that way) it's possible that the kid really did tell on the neighbor and he was dealt with.
• Why is the neighbor so aggressive with the protagonist? He could have handled the protagonist a number of ways instead of being hostile to him right off the bat, especially considering that the protagonist is just a kid at the start.

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