Nightmare Fuel / Marble Hornets

We will wait for you no more. Control is being taken away from you.

Moments pages are spoilers off! Read at your own risk.

The Main Series

Season 1

• Hell, look no further than Entry #1. There's no sound, firstly, so you don't know what's going to happen. Then Alex peeks out a window, and we meet our star.
• Entry #2: Alex talks about seeing a weird skinny guy in a business suit who scared his Evil-Detecting Dog, Rocky. Rocky is never heard from or seen again in the entire series. Paranoia Fuel for those of us with pets.
  • It doesn't help that in Entry #15, Tim mentions that somebody had been leaving dead animals in Alex's yard before he moved.
• Entry #4: Alex is at an Abandoned Playground at night, and there's absolutely no audio. The empty swings are moving out of sync with each other. And then the Operator runs by.
• Entry #5: Jump Scare. And then all of us gained a new found fear of audio distortion.
  • In the second part, during the shot where Jay points out the red tower, look near the pine trees in the left. The Operator was there the whole time.
• Entry #6 is one of the briefest, quietest entries in the series, but it gives us our first extended look at the Operator. As if the silent Jump Scare wasn't enough, the Operator has to walk right past the flipping window and stare in at Alex. If the previous entries didn't spook you, then this one sure will.
• Entry #7: At first nothing seems wrong. They're just going over some lines, nothing to be concerned about... until Brian moves his head and the Operator is revealed to have been standing in the background for possibly the whole video. No wonder Alex freaked.
• Entry #10: Running will not save you.
• Entry 11: In true Nothing Is Scarier fashion, there is absolutely no acknowledgment that anything is wrong aside from Jay's comments on the video that "Alex missed something." What he missed was the Operator standing in his house. Alex walked right past him.
• Entry #12: It starts out normal, then there's a sudden burst of distortion. The colors all seem much dimmer and darker than before. Then, at the 46 second mark, the camera turns to show a field. It seems like a Nothing Is Scarier entry, until you realize the Operator has been there the whole time.
• Entry #13: Everything seems normal as Alex just walks around. Then, with only 3 seconds left on the video, Alex turns a corner and runs right into The Operator.
• In Entry #14: A guy walks through a door. A guy with no face walks into someone's bedroom while they're sleeping. Worse, Alex has no idea anything happened until presumably going back through the footage. Also, Alex's face has blood dripping down it. Sweet dreams!
  • It took 4 years to crack, but the code in "Program" consists of four codes that translate to: 'End of medium', 'Start of header', 'Return carriage', and 'Start of header', and they show what happened. End of medium means recording on a tape until it is full, which means Alex recorded the Operator walking into his room. Start of header means starting to record on a new tape, which means Alex recorded whatever happened in the 32 min gap that caused the bleeding. Return carriage means rewinding the tape to the start, meaning Alex rewound the tape after recording the 32 minutes, and Start of header again means Alex recorded over the 32 min gap with footage of him bleeding. Whatever caused him to bleed is cut out not because he didn't record it, but because he deliberately recorded over it to hide what happened.
• Entry #16: The bloody sink. As in, a sink stained with blood.
• Entry #17: Don't look out the window...
  • Jay: I don't remember any of it happening.
• Entry #18: When Jay turns around to see that somebody is sitting on a couch he walked by just a minute ago. Ladies and gentlemen, meet the Masked Man.
  • The white doll is pretty damn scary enough.
• Entry #19:
  • Because staring at someone through a window at night isn't creepy enough for Masky, he has to come into Jay's room and watch him. Then Jay disappears completely for three hours. Again, he remembers none of this.
    • "Return", posted a few days later, very likely shows where Jay went during those three hours.
• Entry #22:
  • Alex is exploring some sort of weird, industrial-looking place with Seth, who is filming. Then there's some serious distortion, and Seth drops the camera. He's never seen alive in the series again. The video cuts to a clip of Alex in his house where he claims that he can't remember what happened to Seth. He then reports that everyone involved in the production of Marble Hornets is "gone." Toward the end of the clip, a shadow passes over him.
  • Entry #56 strongly implies that this boiler room is in the basement of the abandoned hospital where Alex attacked Brian and Tim within the same 24-hour period.
• In Entry #23, things get really, really weird. As in, the house seems to have turned into an Eldritch Location and time and space are warping.
  • Not to mention Masky's little peek-a-boo.
  • The fact that the entire house begins to darken, despite it being daytime, is very unsettling.
  • As Jay is investigating the boiler room, distorted laughter can be heard for a very brief moment.
    Jay: Hello?

Distorted, low-pitched audio: HELLO

• There's also the very quick appearance of The Operator. Following another low-pitched, "HELLO," he can be seen if you pause at just the right moment at the 6:50 mark of the video.

• Entry ######. Apropos of nothing, it becomes apparent that Totheark has the capability to hack into Jay's social media with ease (which, according to Troy, comes from Totheark being "very good at spying on people"). The quote at the top? That's just the first of the threats heard in the video. Shudder.
  • It gets worse. FROM THE START, THIS HAS BEEN A GAME TO US. NOT ANYMORE. I'M COMING FOR YOU. AND YOU WILL LEAD ME... TO THE ARK.
  • In retrospect, this entry is made much worse because it's not a direct threat to Jay, but a warning that Alex is coming already coming for him; Entry ###### is what drives Jay to get out of dodge, but not before becoming aware of his apartment being set on fire in the very next entry, which, given the events of Entry #85, was something that Alex, who, by this point, was not thought to be The Dragon for The Operator, was responsible for. Imagine not knowing that someone who was (somewhat) amicable with you attempting to kill you for what you're uploading before you even know it.
• Entry #26: For starters, it couples random creepy images with more audio distortion. Then it shifts to the main point of the story. The fun begins as soon as the image tears.

Season 2

• Entry #29: The video clip that Jay discovers on the hard drive from the hotel safe, entitled "noentry," is pure Nightmare Fuel: An unseen stranger is frantically running through Rosswood before reaching a large tunnel, where there is fresh blood on the ground as well as a bloodied rock and t-shirt. There are several instances of visual tearing, and then the camera pans up to show the Operator silhouetted at the other end of the tunnel, accompanied by sharp audio distortion. The frame freezes and distorts, then the clip ends. Unlike most entries, this instills horror into unaware viewers because the entirety of the conflicts between the characters and The Operator does not hold mercy towards anyone else who gets thrown into the crossfire, and promptly gets murdered or worse.
• Entry #33:
  • Just when we thought Jay had found someone with the same symptoms as him, Jessica vanishes into thin air seconds before the Masked Man makes his return. What makes it worse is that this leaves Jay on the run and completely alone once again, with no idea what happened to Jessica.
  • And then there's that hand appearing from behind the door and closing it...
• Entry #35: What Alex does to the Masked Man/Tim when he catches and unmasks him is certainly unsettling: After throwing him to the ground and tying him up, Alex asks Jay for the knife that Tim already used to stab him, with the clear intention of killing him. When Jay refuses, Alex picks up a block of cement and attempts to bash Tim's head in. There's a loud scream before the footage cuts to a clip of Jay driving. Alex was completely willing to murder a former friendly acquaintance in cold blood.
• This series of Tweets from 3/22/11, after Jay tries to upload Entry #37 and finds out he's been locked out of his YouTube account:
  I have the worst hheadache right now..
  Keep thnking I'm hearing things.
  .hea'ds poudning.
  sllee pno.w
• enttry #37: Let's just say that this whole thing dates back a bit further than we'd thought....
  • The distorted voice of the person who's singing "Happy Birthday" sounds like the same deep, unnatural one that answered back at Jay in Entry #23. Considering who the latter was implied to belong to...yeah.
  • "As for 'enttry 37'. I did not post it. I don't know where this footage came from".
  • Shortly after this entry appeared, Jay posted on Twitter that he woke up near the red tower, which was a long way away from where he had been.
• Entry #38 has Alex casually mentioning criminals that would be tied up and stretched by rapidly growing trees before they died of dehydration. Imagine you were one of those people. You're charged with a crime you may or may not have committed, and you're tied to a tree that'll stretch you like a rack within a week's time and you're left out in the weather with wild animals, no food or water, not able to...relieve yourself properly and you have no choice but to wait until you finally succumb to dehydration. And then they burn the tree with your body still attached. Now think about that kid that they found. Which is scarier?
  • Just the way he tells the story. There's no real reason for it to be, but his matter-of-fact tone as he walks through the creepy woods to some unknown destination, especially combined with the abrupt ending of the clip, makes the whole thing far more frightening than it should be.
• Entry #39: Jay is waiting for Alex in a parking lot at night. After apparently waiting a while, he decides to go to sleep in his back seat, with the camera facing the back window. Later in the night, the hooded figure walks into the frame, leans his head down to stare at Jay, then walks away. Woah.
• Entry #40: It looks like it is going to be another Nothing Is Scarier entry. Then just slightly past the 4:40 mark, dear sweet God in heaven, it's the Operator, and he ends up mere inches from Jay, and it looks like he might be reaching out for him. Jay, doing perhaps the first sensible thing ever in this series, drops the camera and books it.
  • Just 30 seconds in, you can see off in the distance, somebody is leaning up against the tree off in the distance, likely totheark◊. We later see somebody again, in Entry #42◊, probably the same tree, probably the same guy, but we see him much clearer.]]
• Entry #43 starts off innocently enough, filling in the gaps between entries. Then, with a little less than one minute left, we get our closest look at The Operator yet. The sudden Jump Scare is bad enough, but any hope of sleep disappears when Alex walks towards it.
• Entry #44, unsurprisingly, has its fair share of Nightmare Fuel, what with Alex coughing blood into the sink and scribbling more creepy notes a la season one. Then he leans against his wall, and a shadow passes over him. When he finally goes to sleep, the video distorts, and yes, the Operator is in his room. The video continues to distort and when it goes back to normal, both Alex and the Operator are gone.
• Entry #45. Alex chases and is attacked by not one but two masked people. Masky starts choking him, and the only thing that stops him is when he looks up and sees The Operator (at least, based upon the video distortion). What makes it creepy is how unhinged Alex sounds. Especially at the end, when the distortion hits so it sounds like he has two voices.

  Alex: The next time I see you, I'll kill you!

  • From the very start, the subtle audio and video distortions in 45 prove that Troy and Joseph have successfully created Pavlovian fear responses in their audience.
  • Masky also contemplates for a moment bashing in Alex's head with a rock, perhaps as payback for the damage Alex did to his leg.
  • The freaky way in which Masky and Hoody seemed to be moving in sync when they booked it at the end of the video. That was just... WEIRD. People should not move perfectly in tandem!
• Entry #46; Jay enters Alex's house while he takes out the trash, but is forced to hide when Alex returns. However, he leaves his flashlight on the chair, giving himself away quickly. Alex calls Jay and tells him to reveal himself. Jay exits the closet and the operator is right there in the window staring in. They hide in the darkness of the hallway, with Alex expressing his anger at Jay for leading The Operator back to him. When Jay turns to the window, The Operator is gone. Jay turns around to tell Alex, and we are treated to the biggest Jump Scare in the series history.
  • And, to make matters worse, Alex is specifically said to have not ran when Jay did. Further proof to suggest that Alex did not see the Operator, or did not care. Fantastic.
• Entry #47 is mostly a Breather Episode- no Operator, no Masky, not even any distortion indicating they're nearby. Nevertheless, it's still unsettling, simply because Alex is acting so violent and unstable that it seems like Jay is in real danger.
  • Alex's chilling Death Glare is pretty unsettling, coupled with the static sound the camera makes whenever Alex gets close to it.
    • Finally, the episode ends off with the chilling line: "In hindsight, I never should have called her." Yikes.
  • This one is much scarier after a couple more entries, when Alex kills some random passerby, apparently mistaking him for Jay. He easily could have killed Jay at any moment in that parking lot.
  • Plus, there's the way that Jay keeps leaning forward and back during the phone call, meaning that savvy viewers will likely spend the whole scene on edge waiting for Slendy to appear in the background the next time his head moves.
• While Entry #48 is fairly low-key, its concept is unnerving: Jay has been stalking Alex, and casually introduces the video with this revelation. Considering the series premise, this is not a good sign.
  • There is also an incredibly brief appearance by the Operator. The creepiest part is how he just shows up for a second and then is gone for the rest of the video. The fact that Jay doesn't seem to notice does not help.
• And now, in Entry #49, we find out where the blood way back in 29 came from. From a random stranger, who, for all we know, was just seeing if a crouched-down and seething Alex was okay. What does Alex do? He beats his head in with a rock!
  • Alex got driven insane by the Operator to the point of murdering someone he didn't even know. That's some serious mind rape right there. Oh, and speaking of, savvy viewers were not let down when the video distortion clued them into the presence of our tall antagonist. Slendy pops up at around five minutes, looms over the corpse for a moment, and disappears, taking it with him. Oh, and at the end of the video Alex calls Jay, asking him to come to Rosswood Park the following day...
  • Apparently, Jay edited out some of the more disturbing things Alex did, just telling us what happened in the interim. Somehow that's just so much worse.
  • After about a week, Jay updated his twitter to declare that after searching for the identity of Alex's victim via missing persons reports, he has come up with nothing. This either means that the man was not from the area, which could hint at him being someone else trying to find out about the Operator, or more sinisterly the Operator was able to remove him from the memories of others when he took his body
  • As Alex was beating the guy, we get the signature sound and picture distortion. So, does that mean that Slendy is there, that Slendy is controlling Alex, or that Alex is becoming one of Slendy's agents?
  • Look at Alex as he stands over the body. The angle of the camera gives the illusion of elongated limbs and increased height. Yes. He looks like Slendy.
• Entry #50: First the Nothing Is Scarier segment when Jay has to walk back alone through the woods, and then later when he shouts after Masky — the combination of the tunnel's echo and being out of breath lends his voice a quality very similar to Alex's Sanity Slippage episodes in later entries.
  • Given what happened in the previous episode, it's hard not to think that Alex wants to lure Jay and Jessica out into the woods, or perhaps a specific spot like the tunnel, so he can kill them.
• Entry #51. It's hinted that Alex lured everyone of the original set of Marble Hornets to the Operator to...do whatever he wanted with them. Made worse by Jay wondering if he knew what he was doing the whole time, and faked "forgetting" about it.
  • There's also the camera freezing on an image of the Operator in the background, followed by a split-second of him suddenly being right in our face before it cuts to blackness.
  • And for once, the Operator's appearance didn't make a sound. Everything was silent. That is until he found Tim and Brian.
  • Plus, we see Tim with a very bad cough. Could the coughing be part of the process of turning into a Masky?
  • There is also the horrible thought that the events of this entry directly precede Entries #56 and #57, which ends with Tim hiding in the hospital in order to hide from Alex and the Operator; imagine how Brian felt when he found his best friend, who, unaware to him, was almost killed by the person whom Brian is presently next to, looking miserable as he tries to hide from his assailants... who promptly gang up on both him and Brian. It's no wonder that Brian became Hoody.
• Entry #52 First off, it continues the events of Entry 48, with Jay and Jessica going to meet with Alex at Rosswood Park. He takes them to an abandoned building and leads them upstairs. He tells Jay that what he wants to show them is across the room, so Jay walks over, sees nothing and turns around to find Alex holding him at gunpoint, shouting that he knows everything Jay has been doing while Jessica screams for him to stop. It gets even better when Masky appears from behind some rubble and very slowly approaches Alex. He then tackles him, and Jay takes the opportunity to grab Jessica and run. As they are leaving, a single shot is fired. We do not see who pulled the trigger, or who, if anyone, got hit. And that's just the first part of the video.
  • Then you have Jessica screaming in the middle of the night, Jay running to her aid and tackling the Operator with her seemingly not there, and dropping to the floor and not moving for some time... which they then wake up from just fine, if amnesiac. The Operator erased seven months in just one night.
    • During the static, we have a terrible Freeze-Frame Bonus where it looks like totheark is there as well. ^{To find it}  If you want to find it, pause at 10:43.

Season 3

• Entry 54: The power goes out, and Tim goes to find the breaker box. As the lights come back on for a brief moment, we're greeted with a pan around the room in which we see The Operator standing in the corner. Then the power goes back out.
  • At the very end of the clip, there's some audio distortion and a glimpse of the Operator's leg.
• Entry 56: Exploring the abandoned hospital is bad enough, but then Alex attacks Tim with a metal pipe, and the Operator appears shortly after.
  • Then there's the increasingly sinister nature of the hospital now that it's hinted to be the same location that is shown in Entries #22 and #23. Alex even seems to be wearing the same hat from Entry #22 and mentions going in with Seth later that day and Brian the next day, implying that the events of this entry, Entry #51, and Entry #22 all happened within 24 hours of each other. It gets even worse when Entry #58 reveals that the hospital is located on the outskirts of Rosswood Park.
• Entry 57: After he is attacked by Alex, Tim aimlessly wanders through the abandoned hospital at night. Alex is searching for him with a flashlight and a metal pipe, and Tim can't seem to stop coughing. At the end of the clip, the video tears.
• Entry #59: Tim's tales of his amnesia are quite frightening, particularly his experience of waking up in his car in an unknown location, covered in blood and with a broken leg, with no idea how any of it happened or how he got there. It doesn't help that this sort of thing apparently happens a lot.
• Entry #60:
  • The underground maintenance tunnel Jay crawls through is extremely uncomfortable to begin with. At the end of it, Jay comes face to face with the Operator, who not only manages to fit down there but can also crawl at a ridiculously fast pace. It's undeniably one of the biggest Jump Scares of the series.
  • The Operator doll from Entry #18 makes a reappearance in the tunnel.
• Entry #61/entry:
  • That it was originally uploaded as "entry," presumably by Totheark, makes it creepy on its own. (It contains elements of Totheark's distinct style as well, overlaid with the text, "WHERE COULD HE HAVE GONE" and "THIS IS YOUR ONLY CHANCE".)
  • Hoody steals Tim's medication, then watches from the closet while Tim has a horrific seizure. At the end of the entry, Tim staggers off, trance-like, to Rosswood Park... with his Masky persona back in control.
• Entry #62:
  • After a few minutes of wandering around aimlessly through the pitch dark forest, Jay swivels the camera around at a noise. He finds nothing. Then he turns back around to continue and finds Tim/Masky standing right there.
  • Jay getting blindsided by Tim/Masky before he's dragged off kicking and screaming is sudden and terrifying.
  • There's a cameo of the freaky baby doll from "Indicator" in the shack where Jay wakes up. It's no less disturbing in daylight.
• Entry #64:
  • Tim and Jay look for the shack from Entry #62, only to discover that it may have vanished off the face of the earth since the last time they were there.
  • Jay gets a call from an unknown number. It's Alex, and all he says before hanging up is, "Leave. Now.". Directly after, Tim goes into a coughing fit, and as Jay goes to help him up, the Operator appears right in front of them and slowly gets closer each time the camera pans up. Jay is inevitably forced to leave Tim behind and save himself.
  • When Jay gets out of the woods, he finds Tim already sitting in his car with Creepy Shadowed Undereyes. Looking carefully at the reflection in the car window, Jay's eyes appear to have this as well. A similar effect was seen on him in Totheark's video Return.
• Entry #65 is easily the most terrifying installment from the series in months (and arguably the most horrific Mind Rape in the mythos thus far). To wit:
  • The footage takes place from Tim's POV, and it is disturbingly glitched up.
  • We get to see glimpses of what the Operator does to Tim. It involves him being dragged, kicking and screaming, to god knows where. Wherever it is at one point let us see the still fresh body of Beardy. Including a split-second image of the damage Alex did with the rock.
  • Tim gets drowned at one point. When he recovers, he coughs up blood.
  • We get to see where he went after driving off: back to the abandoned hospital. He then starts screaming, clawing at the walls, and reacting to something that isn't there, including pointing towards a door (which look like the kind that lead to an Operating room) and crying out "It came from there!". By the end of this, he's bursting into tears and overdosing on drugs in order to calm himself.
  • The audio, in particular, is terrifying.
• Entry #66: There's some hidden nightmare fuel when you understand that the Operator may have been following Tim around for his entire life.
  • When Tim shouts "What if I'm RIGHT?!" the audio distorts. It probably wouldn't be that scary in itself but, by this point, the audience has been programmed to fear exactly that sound.
• Entry #67: The distorted contents of the damaged tape Jay found. Totheark is hiding in the hospital, watching Alex as he hunts for Tim. After a few minutes of stalking, Totheark runs up and knocks Alex out with a lead pipe. Cut to Alex now bound in a chair while Tim, in his Masky persona, beats the crap out of him. Totheark then takes Alex's gun and is about to kill him, but is scared off by the Operator. At the end of the video, we see Tim wake up in a field, confused as to what happened, and pick up his mask. This seems to take place immediately after the events of Entry #65.
  • There's the fact that Alex was stalking Tim after he escaped the Operator's realm, with the probable intention of murdering him given the gun he had on him. As if the nightmarish Eldritch Abomination stalking them and fucking with their minds wasn't bad enough, Jay and Tim have an honest to god psychopath hunting them down. Secondly given Alex's little smirk when ToTheArk/Hoodie was about to shoot him, its almost certain he knows the Operator is protecting him, and is thus pretty much untouchable.
    • In tweets over the next two weeks after this entry, Jay revealed he indeed is terrified of Alex finding him, and that he has been having nightmares of Alex going full Humanoid Abomination and hunting him down.
• Entry #67.5 is a Breather Episode for the most part, but it does reveal that Jay and Tim have fled their residence and Alex is actively seeking them out.
  • It also has an uncomfortably suspenseful atmosphere similar to No Country for Old Men given that Jay and Tim are fleeing their motel in the dead of night from a psychopath hunting them down, and this ratchets up the Paranoia Fuel as well as the scariness.
  • The fact that the beginning of the entry heavily resembles season 1 in tone and presentation, with the dark room, grainy footage and soundtrack of ambient noises does not help.
• Entry #68 is a video shot from the point of view of Hoodie/Totheark. It's not that scary until suddenly Alex comes right the hell out of nowhere and attacks. And he sounds even more deranged.
  • This entry also has some rather unsettling parallels and subsequent implications about Hoodie/totheark, as he is shown to be living in the aforementioned shack in the woods in a manner similar to how Tim/Masky seemed to be living in Brian's house in season 1, and filming footage out the windows as well as himself at possibly every moment much like Alex in the Season 1 tapes. No matter how unnerving and supernatural he may seem he is just as vulnerable to the Operator as the rest of the cast.
    • You are trapped => WE are trapped
  • Something else that's creepy is that as a Freeze-Frame Bonus, there's a creepy discolored unidentified face a few seconds after the 1:25 mark.
  • Also note that this video was apparently uploaded earlier as "68" by Hoodie, who got into Jay's account. Again.
• Entry #69 is a Breather Episode for the most part, but while Jay and Tim were visiting the red tower from season 1, Jay saw somebody watching him. Neither Tim nor the viewers saw anything. Even creepier, Jay caught a glimpse of whatever it was on their way to the tower.
  • They also found what appears to be tapes containing unseen raw footage from Marble Hornets that Alex tried to burn.
  • When Jay falls down, there is an all too familiar burst of distortion.
• Entry 70: The first of the burned tapes that Jay and Tim found. It begins innocently enough, with Alex driving at night when his phone rings. After chatting for a bit with Amy, Alex pulls over and starts walking around the same park from way back in Entry 4. Once Alex reaches the playground, the camera tears and the Operator appears behind Alex. Unafraid, Alex demands to know what the Operator wants and tries to attack it, only for the Operator to teleport ''onscreen'' and make Alex stumble. In the closing narrative, Jay suspects that Alex wanted to burn these tapes because they are connected with Amy.]]
  • About a minute before Alex's encounter with the Operator, the screen tears and everything seems to be glowing crimson for a few seconds.
  • Watch closely when Alex runs at the Operator. The Operator reaches out for him.
• Entry 71: It starts out normally enough, with Alex packing his things to move somewhere else. Then Jay shows up and we see where all this started for Jay: he asked for the videotapes and after arguing with Alex for a while, he agreed and gave him them, under the condition he never speak of them again. Then we find out there was more to this story than Jay remembers: while he's putting the tapes in his car, Alex runs out and attacks him. We don't see much of the struggle, but we come back to Jay laying face down in the grass with that all-too-familiar burst of static. Alex then walks away, and Jay informs us that he doesn't remember Alex attacking him and wonders what else he's remembering wrongly.
• Entry 72: It starts out normally again, with Tim and Jay checking out Alex's old house from the previous entry. It's entirely empty, not all that creepy, until Jay finds some more marker drawings on a high shelf in one of the empty bedrooms. They spend a while more examining another room, when Jay freaks out at something outside. When Tim doubts that he really saw anything, Jay tries to prove it by rewinding the footage on his camera and finds nothing. A short time later, however, Jay sets down the camera to help Tim with a jammed closet door, giving us a brief glimpse out the window... where we see the Operator standing just a few hundred yards away.
  • The real terror doesn't begin until Tim and Jay decide to check out the basement. After the pair have a brief look around, Tim notices that it's gone completely dark outside; when Jay looks out the window, it's night (a stark contrast to the late afternoon of just a few minutes earlier). And then they turn around and come face to face with the Operator. Both men escape through the back door, but Jay is unable to follow Tim. Tim escapes through a field and, after catching his breath, goes back to the house to rescue Jay. The Operator is waiting for him, and Tim slowly staggers towards him, coughing violently as distortion swallows the screen....
    • When Tim approaches the Operator, watch his head. He turns to look at him, tilting his head slightly as he watches Tim stand up to him. Just like in Entry #1, that simple movement is creepy on its own.
    • On a more subtle level, there's Jay's declining mental health. As Tim notes, this is the second time Jay has claimed to see something when there was nothing there; he's displaying the same symptoms Tim showed as a child when the Operator began stalking him personally.
    • Almost a month later, Tim tweeted (having been given the password by Jay) that Jay has still been rather out of it ever since this entry.
• entry #73: Another hack. It starts with Hoody having a coughing fit, then desperately searching for some medicine to help him recover. He then breaks into Tim's house and steals medicine from his bathroom and leaving with a tape. This paints his stealing of Tim's meds in a whole new light.
  • Not to mention, Alex was in the house at the time.
  • There's also the Totheark-like message that pops up around 1:54, You are a failure.
  • Worst of all, in its way, is the fact that the "entry 73" title-screen suffers from some static interference. Since those are added in post-production, they shouldn't be subject to The Operator's influence - unless The Operator was in the house with Hoody when Hoody uploaded it.
• Entry #74 is a Breather Episode for the most part, but contains subtle signs that things are about to get much worse. It starts with Tim buying a few groceries and driving back to the hotel, to see that Jay has finally recovered from the attack in Entry #72, or at least enough to think clearly. Tim recounts the events of Entry #72, as well as the mysterious uploading of entry #73. He then explains that he's been sharing his pills with Jay, in hopes that they would protect him. Jay snaps at Tim for drugging him. The real horror is when Tim explains that he's almost out of medicine and refills. The only place they can get more is Tim's house, where Alex is hiding in the attic, and they know it.
• Entry #75 takes an unexpected turn. Jay and Tim return to the latter's house to confront Alex only to find that he's gone. They decide to look around for clues. Suddenly, Jay attacks Tim and steals a tape from him. Tim insists that he hid the tape because Jay isn't ready to watch it. Jay quickly runs away, coughing up a fit while the screen begins to distort. Jay added no narration in light of what happened, not even attempting to explain or justify it.
  • Jay's sudden outburst and warning at Tim not to follow him is eerily reminiscent of Alex's prior behaviour. Considering what he ends up doing, it's clear to see him going downhill.
• Entry #76 reveals the contents of the tape Jay stole from Tim. It turns out that Jessica (appears to be) dead, murdered by Alex. The Operator then takes her body in the same fashion as the white-shirted man in Entry #49. And Masky was involved.
  • And at 9:01, Alex and The Operator's images merge, possibly cementing the relationship of Alex being The Operator's Dragon.
  • Additionally, it's clear from Jay's commentary that Jay is missing out on the obvious facts that A) Hoody and Masky were trying to protect Jessica, and B) Tim wasn't himself at the time; he was Masky, which means that Tim wasn't involved in it. A clear sign that he's starting to go off the deep end.
• Entry #77 starts with Jay approaching Tim's house with a knife ready. He knocks on the door and tells Tim that he just wants to talk. Tim doesn't fall for it, however, and manages to subdue Jay before pointing out the latter's irrational thinking in accusing the former of being responsible for Jessica's disappearance despite being brain-washed at the time. It ends with Tim walking away, leaving Decoy Protagonist Jay as a psychotic wreck tied down on the floor, angrily begging for his camera. Tim is officially the new protagonist.
• Entry #78: Hoody arrives at the house where Jay is tied up and searches for a knife while the latter shouts "What are you doing?" He ends up tossing him the knife so he can get free and leaves another camera behind. Jay starts coughing up a storm with the camera repeatedly losing focus and searches for more of the medicine with no avail. He leaves the house, passing by a mirror where Hoody wrote "LAST CHANCE". The end titles read "I'm going to find Tim. Then I'm going to find Alex and end this."
• Entry #79: Jay decides to stalk Tim for the majority of the entry. Bad part is that Jay is getting better at sneaking. Along the way, Jay runs into Hoody in one of the abandoned college buildings, in the middle of a coughing fit. Hoody's response? Try to attack Jay with a nearby wrench and run off when it fails. Afterwards, Jay finds the room where Alex was being kept along with various photos and a scalpel, possibly used to torture Alex. Jay, now more AxCrazy than before, takes the scalpel and waits in the building for Tim to return. He's finally caught up with Alex, and Jay is willing to end this... one way or another.
  • Seeing the hooded masked man like act like a cornered animal was unsettling, and the way he just disappeared like that made it worse.
• Entry #80: Jay is likely dead. Alex comes out of nowhere and shoots him, then the Operator takes him.
  • The bloody handprint on the floor. It's the only thing left of Jay in this world.
  • Usually, the Operator just stands there looking creepy. This time, his arm lunges right at the camera before he, Jay, and Alex disappear.
  • Right before the Operator's arm lunges at the camera, pay attention to his head. He tilts it slightly while observing Jay, almost quizzically. It's a rare, inscrutable sign of intelligence, and it's extremely creepy.
  • Now Tim is truly alone. No friends, no allies, no family. The one person he thought of as a partner and friend is now gone. He tried to chase Hoody, yelling how he set it up and that he wouldn't get away again, but he did. He informs us that he left Jay at his house so that something like this wouldn't happen, but it did. He doesn't know what to do anymore.
  • We already knew how low Alex had fallen, but seeing him shoot his former best friend with hardly any hesitation and without even saying a word to him is still very unsettling.
  • The first person to pick up the camera is Alex, who aims it right at the bloody handprint to make sure we all see it. Then, he just puts it back down for Tim to find later. It's almost like Alex wants to make sure that we all understand what just happened there...
• Entry #81: A recap of Entry #80 from Tim's perspective. Having to climb through some tunnels to access Benedict Hall can irk some of the more claustrophobic, but the real horror starts when Tim realizes he isn't alone in the tunnels. Hoody's there as well, but then Tim's coughing starts up as Alex shows up again. Tim is able to make it to the car as soon as Jay gets shot, but he blacks out afterwards. The worst part would have to be the fact that Tim has no more meds left and Alex is on the loose again.
  • If you look closely, you can see that right as Tim is leaving Benedict Hall, the Operator's reflection can be seen in the door. The camera goes haywire when Tim walks to the approximate location as the Operator was seen, though.
  • The moment when Tim finds the maintenance man is oddly creepy, if only because the world of Marble Hornets always seems so empty and bereft of human life.
• Entry #82: Tim's out of medicine, but finds some footage Jay left on his laptop. Before attacking Tim, Jay goes to Rosswood. After passing through the tunnel, the Operator briefly appears. Jay calls Tim, gets his voice mail, and leaves a message saying that Rosswood park has changed its layout since the last time they were there. Okay, creepy enough. Then Jay has a coughing fit, begins having a seizure, and the Operator appears next to him, watching. The rest of the video is corrupted. To top it off, Tim claims he doesn't remember ever receiving the call.
  • Jay was all set to reconcile with Tim and resume their mission, but the Operator did...something...to him that led him to believe that attacking him was the best solution to his problems.
  • There's more Operator head movement in this entry than in most others, which may indicate that it was talking to Jay, or communicating in some way. Think about that: we may have just seen the Operator openly communicating with someone for the first time on camera.
  • Don't forget about the Jump Scare the Operator hands us. Jay's just looking around and suddenly the Operator's there for a second before disappearing. And when Jay reaches the shack, he looks around with his camera and fails to notice the Operator standing amongst the trees yards away from him.
  • He also tells Tim in the call that he is seeing things that are not there. So he might not even have failed to spot the Operator but actively ignored the danger because he thought he couldn't trust his senses.
• Entry #83: It starts out with Tim in the school again, having the occasional coughing fit. Not too far in, though, he has a rather nasty one, as he finds Hoody, and not long after, The Operator. As Tim gets up to run away, he starts literally teleporting to several different locations against his will. He eventually winds up back at his house, with several pieces of paper with the Operator symbol and "Your Fault" written on them, along with Jay's dead body. He sees Hoody in the same room, and gives chase, teleporting back to the school before he does manage to take out Hoody with a pipe. He goes to examine Hoody's body, only to run into and flee from the Operator again, ending up in the forest with Hoody's body there. Just as Tim goes to examine the body again, the shot cuts to a scene of him lying down in a field, before getting up to go get the camera.
  • What really sells this particular entry is the fact that it might have the largest amount of distortion in the series to date. Special mention goes to Tim managing to pull off Hoody's mask in the tunnel... only for the face to be heavily obscured by a bright light. In fact, with all that distortion, it's more amazing that the camera didn't just out and out break. Also, Jay's body alone is enough to be considered this.
• Entry #84: Other than the fact Tim's house has somehow reverted to its state from Entry 78, with Jay's zip ties and the knife Hoody freed him with still on the floor, Jay's corpse and the numerous creepy drawings and messages all absent, and the mirror still saying "LAST CHANCE" instead of "YOUR FAULT", this episode is largely a Breather Episode. It shows the contents of the tape Tim found: Alex's audition footage for Marble Hornets. Brian shows up to give his audition, followed by his friend, Tim himself. A little bit of a Tear Jerker comes into play when it is made clear that the Brian that Alex practically killed in the abandoned hospital was Tim's best friend before everything started happening.
  • Then, after the audition footage. Alex is outside at night with his camera to get some shots, when the camera acts weird and the Operator is briefly visible, just watching Alex. Major Fridge Horror sets in when it is then implied that Alex truly was doomed from the start. Then, of course, there's the text at the end, where Tim basically challenges Alex to come find him.
• Entry #85 starts off with Tim meandering around his house in a plaintive manner waiting for Alex to come find him so they can finish this. When Alex finally comes around, how does he try to finish this? By setting Tim's house on fire, all the while blaming Tim for everything that went wrong throughout the series, from the coming of The Operator to the deaths of the cast and crew. While Tim does make it out alive, it really does show how much Alex has fallen, as well as spin a glorious shitheap of Fridge Horror on Tim's connection to The Operator.
• Entry #86. Tim and Alex finally fight each other. The entire match, The Operator is warping Tim and Alex around the various locales that Jay and Tim searched through. Also during the fight, Brian is confirmed to be dead through one of Alex's Kick the Dog moments. Tim tries to reason with Alex the entire fight, but the latter's too far gone. Tim finally gets an upper hand and brutally stabs Alex repeatedly. Tim walks away from a bloodied Alex heavily wounded... and Alex disappears, taken by The Operator. Tim collapses and drops the camera. End video. One of the most violent entries thus far, if not the most violent. Not to mention, the ending raises a question; if Tim's dead, and Alex is dead, and everyone else who knows or cares about the Entries or the original film project are dead, who uploaded the video?
  • Tim isn't necessarily dead. We last see him fall to the ground, unconscious. It's possible he merely passed out for a while. If he is dead, why didn't The Operator take him, after chasing him for so long?
    • Debatable. It's not made clear if Entry #87 was filmed after Entry #86 or not...
• Entry #87. Everything Is Fine.
  • The fact that Jessica still being alive is not treated as a big reveal or explained at all messes with your head. It's like she was always still alive, and everybody knew that. Everybody except you. Besides the obvious Mind Screw elements at play, it makes you wonder what else you thought you knew might be wrong. Is it possible that the Operator is now altering your own memory of watching the series?
  • Tim finds Jessica in this entry, begins to have a coughing fit accompanied by heavy distortion, and then we cut to him driving away with the sound of sirens. At the end of the previous entry, Alex instructed him to kill any survivors and then himself. Think about what he might have done during the cut, and after he uploaded this. This entry is Nothing Is Scarier personified.

Totheark

• Addition, which only needs two words: SEE YOU.
• Return, where we see what might have happened during the 3 missing hours of entry 19...
  • found you. forever.
• Warning: Smile for Death.
• Every video has at least some kind of variation of Nothing Is Scarier, with a healthy dosage of Mind Screw and Fridge Horror when combined with the entry they are responding to (especially in the case of Exit, Return, and Addition).
• Admission IS the trope Nothing Is Scarier.
• Fragments you are broken. you cannot be fixed.
• Broadcast. The description is creepy enough. are you drowning. Couple it with the weird, possibly underwater footage and that deep warped voice. And the figure(s) staring down into the water the whole time.
  • Somebody took the trouble to make out what's said in the video: Enjoying watching you suffer. Do you know me? I will always know you.
• Forecast. First, there's that... thing at the start of the video. (Which, by the way, is footage from 1940 documentary Experiments in the Revival of Organisms featuring an animal lung powered by machines.) Then, we have totheark speaking unnaturally straightforward. And then, we have the actual video footage towards the end.
  • SEE YOU SAW YOU
  • And the best thing? When the video was first posted, there were reports of viewers being unable to mute the video...
• Intermission. Again, Totheark is disturbingly coherent, and a horrific picture of... someone lying in a clearing. Then we find out that the random distortion in Entry 40 as Jay was walking through the woods was caused by someone else with a camera...
• Indicator. Creepy Doll does this video no justice. It looks like it just crawled out of a Death Metal music video, but instead of ugly Scandinavians bellowing words that start with de-, we get audio that may sound like they came from Rlyeh.
  • And the eyes? Gone. One has been replaced with an operator key.
• Memories. Glowing Eyes of Doom, creepy distortion, Mind Screwy messages? Yeah, this is an average ToTheArk episode and- wait, is that Alex's porch?
• Inquiry. Super creepy images, super creepy soundtrack, and it's all in grainy black and white.
  • On the twitter, someone pointed out this◊ is embedded in the audio and can only be found when viewed in a spectrographing program. It says DO I HELP OR DO I KILL
    You are who you are.
    You are you.
    Who are you?
    Who are you?
    WHO ARE YOU?
• He/She/They have kept quiet for a while now, since Inquiry was posted. Seeing as every time this happens, serious Wham Episodes tend to follow, it has the same affect as Nothing Is Scarier.
• He/She/they are back. And according to a translation of the numbers, with a message reading I KNOW YOU'RE THERE, THE TWINS, DO YOU KNOW WHAT HE DID, I SAW IT which only add to the growing suspicion of Alex being far more sinister than he seems.
  • What may be the most terrifying bit is that Jay hasn't acknowledged it. Nothing on his twitter feed about it.
• Sidenote. Loud, creepy noises. And just what is that guy saying?
  • He's saying: "You've done nothing but make things worse." Echoing Alex from Entry 47 (it may even be using the same voice clip, just heavily distorted). Doesn't make things any better.
  • The description "remainseated iwillfindyou" sounds really foreboding.
  • Unlike season 2 totheark entries, this one came out fast; less than a day after Entry 48.
  • Even worse: the video says "this is the best part". Masky is eager for Jay to view the next tape.
    • It gets worse. On September 2nd 2011, Jay claims to have finished going through the footage on his Twitter account. And he does not want to share what he has seen! It's time to be afraid.
    • In light of Entry 49, "remainseated iwillfindyou" comes off as more relieving. TTA knows shit is about to go down, and is not gonna let Jay die (by Alex's hand anyway). TTA will probably stay cryptic as long as possible, and work behind the scenes, but will, if nothing else, keep Alex from bashing Jay's head in.
• Extraction. Limping Masky? Oh yes. Limping down an empty road, full of purpose, straight at the camera? Ohhh yeah. Not to mention those spliced-in clips of... something. And of course the question totheark poses: HOW MUCH DO YOU HATE? IT IS NOT ENOUGH
• Reminder. The first totheark video of the new season. Jay was being watched. Worst of all, it makes you realize Jay was being watched all the time he was twittering about his experiences around the antique shop.
  Do you remember me? I have not forgotten.
  • Some Fridge Horror also strikes when you realize the video was taken in daytime... which means it is likely that Tim/Masky would have been spotted had they been filming, and thus it was someone else who filmed, and TTA is also someone else
    • Also, just to add to the creepy factor, at about 10 seconds in a nightmare face flashes across the screen, and also the audio in the last few seconds of the video was taken from the earlier totheark video "Operator"
• Decay. You will never be forgiven. He will lead me to you. Always watching.
  • Not to mention the Jump Scare of... someone with glowing eyes.
    • Today is your last birthday
• Session. A lot of black and white clips that look eerily like home movies. And the video doesn't focus on any of the Marble Hornets members, or even Slendy himself. It focuses on children.
  • he's watching
• Reference. Seems simple enough at first. A video showing an eerie, dark hallway with the loud, hard-to-understand sounds of Tim's outburst from the latest entry. It gets worse at the end when Masky's face slowly emerges from the far end of the hallway.
  • Almost a freeze-frame bonus, but in the static at the start is the phrase "Look to the Origins". Whatever that is supposed to mean with Totheark, we're not sure yet.
• observation. A very creepy, jerky, and black-and-white video showing someone spying on an unhealthy and unhappy looking Tim. At the end, it shows Tim standing at the window, only his silhouette visible, as the video seems to back off.
  • Worse, about 13 seconds in, the Operator symbol appears on his head for a frame, as does an image of his mask at the 0:37 mark.
• Someone just about decoded the audio in Advocate, which screams 'flee now'... Incidentally, this is exactly what Alex did after they'd finished the shot.
• Isolation. First we have that scene with the eye darting wildly around through the hole of the shack from Entry #62. Then we fade out to a scene of the hooded man staring at us over the text "Meet again soon." But the most foreboding part is the end where for a few frames, a still shot of the Operator appears with the following caption: "Follows all."
  • It's not just one eye. Watch carefully: the image flickers between (what looks like) Jay's eye, Tim's eye, and the Masky mask.
• Display. Remember. You abandoned him. I saw. He is searching. Alex is searching for you. Watch. Death.
  • We're also treated to several frames of Tim's warped, screaming face. Complete with [[GlowingEyesOfDoom fiery, glowing eyes.]]
  • Take a close look on the right at the 0:26 mark. My god. It's Jessica.
• Surveillance. Sees. Now. Permanence.
  • 0:21 mark. There's a flicker of movement in the background and you realize Hoody's been sitting there in plain sight the whole time.
  • At 0:33, one of the TVs turns on. A few seconds later, it turns off and Hoody's reflection can be seen on the screen. He wasn't there before.
  • 0:31 mark. Creepy looking Jessica, and a person holding the TV over their face.
• Decline A dementedly cheerful verse superimposed over brooding, nightmarish imagery implies dire things about Hoody's mental state.
• Conversion is creepy enough in its own right, with the freaky animated head in the corner. The video itself implies that either Jay or Tim (or both) are not being particularly honest.
• File. Another failure. You are not trusted.
• Quadrant. Who am I? Am I the third? And then there's the audio overlapping with footage of Jay staking out in Benedict Hall. The audio in question? "DO NOT DO THIS"
  • This becomes Harsher in Hindsight as Entry #84 comes around: "At least three people would still be here if it wasn't for Alex." It was as if Hoody/Brian knew he was going to die.
  • "Am I the third" was specifically a reference to the song that was playing throughout the video, a distorted "three blind mice". This may be Hoody's admission that, for all his taunting, he's been groping in the dark just as much as Tim and Jay.
• Null plays out like a surreal farewell letter from Brian/Hoodie, which is fitting considering it's the last update posted to the channel. But even then, its stark minimalism compared to the other responses bring in a strong sense of absence. No more loud noises, no more violent special effects, nothing. What makes it worse is the messages, where To The Ark effectively asks Tim what he will see in the end. The gradually changing sentences do not help, nor does the "ARK AWAITS" near the end.

  DO YOU KNOW
  I HAVE FOR YEARS

Other

• At one point, the Marble Hornets site was just an empty black screen with one small caption: "Pending investigation, this site is not available."
• Someone made an instrumental song named after and based around the Operator that manages to perfectly capture the atmospheric horror and ambiguity of the character.
  • They also made a song dedicated to Totheark that is similarly freaky atmospherically and aesthetically.

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