As a WMG subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.
- Whether he lead them directly to The Operator, like Brian, or were near him when The Operator showed up, like Amy, they have been forced into The Operator's service.
- Hoodie is totheark and also Brian, while 'skully' was supposed to be Jay, THAC said in the Reddit Ask Me Anything. Other then that, we're not getting any answers. Probably not, at least.
- He's actually Old Man Jenkin's in a silly rubber suit, trying to scare people away so he can get a zoning variance for Rosswood Park, but these meddling kids and their camera had to come along.
- Alright, this should be either the official, or at the very least alternate ending for the series. Maybe even throw some Scooby-Dooby Doors in there with The Operator chasing the cast around.
- He is pulled into this universe by it! He kill those who know about him so he can leave, and he moves through higher dimensions to move around so he stands still when he is being watched because seeing completely traps him because seeing is believing up to eleven!
- The Operator has limited mind control powers. He starts off with only a slight ability to influence people, but the more time he spends around them the better he gets at it. He is the reason J grabbed onto the Idiot Ball and went into the house without telling anyone. He is also the reason Alex and J have Laser-Guided Amnesia - The Operator was building up his powers. When we saw J with his jacket on, that was The Operator influencing him to put it on.
Alex almost fell off the slippery slope, but managed to realise what was happening, and fled the state. Tim is completely under The Operator's control, and has become his slave. J is on his way to it. I have no idea what The Operator's ultimate goal is, but I doubt it's anything good.
- Entry ###### was either posted by J when he was under The Operator's mind control, or The Operator looked into his mind to get his password.
- This theory is apparently proven after J's reaction to The Operator in Entry #43
- That's Alex, not J.
- There's the Masked Man, totheark, and The Operator, assuming masky and totheark are different people. If not representing that, the three theme may reoccur with something else. Three random metal pipes sticking out of the tower and the triangle- two motifs of '3'.
- Jossed. The Operator has made another appearance in Entry #26.
- This troper being one who dabbles in filming, this kind of person pops up a lot when shooting scenes outside. You know, that one asshole who sees your camera and wants to be in your film, but just ends up ruining every shot by jumping in and ad-libbing even though you tell him a million times to just go away. The Operator is that, but much more determined. It all started with Entry 12, and everything went downhill from there.
- The Operator is obviously a scary figure just by looking at him, and a complete outcast, maybe he was even a human who was cursed. Obviously, with everyone afraid of him, he lacks any social contact at all, and this gets to him, no one has expressed such an interest in him as Alex has, and The Operator leaps at the opportunity for a friend...only, The Operator has absolutely no social skills, and with Edward-esque logic, stalks Alex in hopes of contacting him and gaining the one thing he truly wants-a friend. In Entry 14, The Operator goes into Alex's room, yet doesn't kill him, or apparently, do anything to wake him up. My therory could fit in as Alex hit his head on the wall, and The Operator went to care for him. Awwwww. also can explain why in the mythos, Slender Man always has his hands out. Poor guy just wants a hug.
- Of course, when Alex bails out, The Operator looks to hang with J. So J starts sneaking out at night to hang with The Operator, but denies remembering this just so he won't become a social outcast simply by associating with one.
- You can even be friends with Slender Man, Mas Ky, Alex Kralie, and Tothe Ark on Facebook!
totheark is actually Alex (Alex R. Kralie = ARK) and he's trying to help J defeat The Operator once and for all, which is why he tells him to go back to the house; he wants J to get into the bathhouse, The Operator's lair. Alex and Seth had been there before and been attacked by The Operator but Alex survived and fled, but has since gained the knowledge to defeat The Operator. When he saw that J had started looking through the tapes and uploading them online, he realised it was too late to stop J getting involved with The Operator and instead decided to help him. This is why totheark has such good skills in video manipulation; he's a film student, he'd be knowledgeable in that area. Also, the reason that totheark starts running back into the woods at the end of Exit is because he's trying to get back to where he left J before J does; he didn't want J to find out about his encounter with The Operator and get dragged into the whole mess. After he saw J intended on going to the tower in Entry #20, he went there himself, planted the tape and then watched from a distance to make sure J got it.
Masky is actually Tim and he's trying to stop J from interfering in order to keep The Operator placated. He attacks J in Entry #18 so that J will run away before he can be teleported to the bathhouse, a stunt that he repeats in Entry #23, which instead causes J to be teleported to the bathhouse; he breaks into J's house, drugs him with the pills from #16 and kidnaps him in #19 to bring him to the house to try and placate The Operator. However, Alex rescues J, though not before The Operator shows up himself ("Return").
In Entry #23, Alex follows J to the house and waits outside to make sure he comes out; when too long passes, he realises that J has started being teleported and enters himself, where he encounters the Masked Man. After a fight, Alex kidnaps the Masked Man to stop him interfering with J, but leaves a Masky mask dangling to let J know that Masky is gone. In Warning, the reason Masky is moving so erratically is that Alex has him tied up; Alex advises J to stay indoors in order to draw The Operator there, causing J's house to start acting like the abandoned house, meaning between the two actions (the kidnapping and the staying indoors), J now has the means to enter the bathhouse without Masky interfering. Soon, once J has mastered the ability to enter the bathhouse, Alex will reveal the way to defeat The Operator and J will try to do so. Try.
- Under this theory, Entry ##### may be hinting that Masky is trying to confront totheark, and will use J as bait if necessary.
I've read a couple times that in the Slender Man myths from Something Awful, he acts as some sort of reluctant malevolent guardian. Also, it's been noted before that in one of the videos, Alex either running away from or seeking out The Operator. In many of the videos that include SM, Alex seems to running from something, however it does not seem to be from The Operator, since he's mostly just there. The reason Alex gets freaked out when he's sees him is not because of The Operator himself, but because whenever he shows up that means totheark is close by and going to cause trouble.
- Entry #45 lends this theory a lot of credence. In the previous few entries, Alex has been hinted at explicitly hunting down the Operator (#43) and/or potentially trying to summon him direct (#44). Then in #45, he is attacked by two Maskies (including Tim) who come very close to finishing him off... before the camera distorts with the Operator's signature visual cue and the Maskies run off. Why would they run off if they were working for the Operator?
The flip side of the above theory. The Operator is evil, but totheark is actually trying to help/protect J from whatever it is. However, totheark is legitimately insane, so his attempts come off as crazy and antagonistic.
And as the above theory describes, totheark is trying to help and stop him, or at least trying to save himself. The ending lines of Entry ##### ("and you will lead me to the ark" tie this in with a Biblical reference.
totheark seems to be the one screwing around with the tapes. A lot of their videos contains really distorted audio or it could go along some of Alex's videos that do not contain sounds.
In Entry 15 he acts very nervous when being asked questions by J. Tim knows something that he won't tell J about and that information very possibly focuses on what's happened to Alex. Also in totheark's response video "Messages" the last few seconds have the text "You have been keeping secrets" and "Smile for the camera" while someone's face appears over the picture. This picture is said to be (I'm not sure if its confirmed or not) to be Tim.
totheark is somehow trying to lure The Operator in order to hunt him or some other purpose. He used Alex (and possibly the other cast members) before, now its J's turn. In one of totheark's response videos titled "Return," SM shows up and the video ends with some text that can spell out "found you." The Operator's a pretty elusive...guy and Alex and co. have some sort of special connection with SM, making him appear. totheark decided to take advantage of this, manipulating Alex in order to get to The Operator. When Alex decided to call the whole shebang quits and shut down the production, SM wouldn't come out anymore. But now that J's gotten involved totheark is taking advantage of the opportunity. "Found you" could likely be referring to totheark finding The Operator.
- Maybe all he wants is tree fiddy.
- Confirmed! Although he's lately been telling people to, instead of giving him $20, give it to those poor Hatian orphans that he presumable can't Mind Rape and disembowel because none of them own handheld videocameras and all their notebooks are soggy. Good for you, The Operator, helping with the earthquake relief!
Perhaps masky is some kind of possessive force, taking over Tim and using him. He could also account for why totheark got footage of J and The Operator without having a camera (he might also be able to possess computers and upload his memories to youtube) and J's blank-outs, giving his victims an Incurable Cough of Death. (I'm well aware of how insane this sounds)
I came across this theory elsewhere (the Marble Hornets Wikidot, I think). His earlier, more random messages were to try to scare J off the trail to save him from The Operator, and he attacks J in Entry 18 for the same reason. He's just a little crazy BAT SHIT INSANE.
- Arguably not the case. Entry 26 explicitly shows The Operator freaking out Alex and his girlfriend in their apartment, at a time too recent for Alex to have been Masky all along.
Alex was Milo as a child, but once he left the Kingdom of Knowledge he soon after moved and changed his name for security purposes. He has also forgotten his adventures as actually happening, possibly believe they were just a game he played as a kid. Terrible Trivium (and maybe some of the other demons of ignorance), however, found a way into this world and want to seek revenge upon Alex/Milo for their defeat. The presence of The Operator/Terrible Trivium slowly brought back Alex's childhood memories, as well as warping his sanity, causing him to try to find a way back without using the Tollbooth. After his disappearance, his friend J was just some unlucky guy trying to figure out what was going on.
- This either makes The Phantom Tollbooth a whole lot more terrifying or Marble Hornets a bit less terrifying.
- Or, if you were unnerved by the Terrible Trivium to begin with, worse on all counts.
- Wouldn't Milo be Milo?
By several of the cast members on Alex. However, things got out of hand, and Alex started becoming paranoid. Somehow, J was never in on the joke and though it was real too. They eventually located one of the cast members dressed as The Operator while out filming. The two killed him, and, upon realizing what they had done, killed most of the other cast either out of paranoia or not wanting to get caught. They forcibly blocked the memories out of their mind.
However. Tim wasn't in that scene, and didn't let on to J or Alex that he knew what happened. He's now dressing up as totheark and trying to force J to remember. He may have already gotten revenge on Alex...
- Seems to have been jossed. C'est la vie.
- This is supported by Entry #26; The Operator only shows up at Alex's house once the camera is discovered by the woman. He's now trying to lead J into a trap with the 'HELP' message, whereupon he will beat up J and take his camera as well.
- Or he was saving up to buy a new camera, but he's still $20 short.
- Johnny (from House of Leaves) once describes what might be the
Minotauras "human...Maybe not" with extremely long fingers.
- Johnny (from House of Leaves) once describes what might be the
- Because it's impossible that the line was just a reference to one of the early entries..
In the video "Warning" several blank circles are shown, and later they are crossed out in the middle. The circles represent people who have gotten involved in The Operator's business and have been targeted. Crossing out the circles means they have been dealt with. Possibly, in earlier entry videos with Alex, when he has seen these symbols, like at the playground, or when J found one on the tower, have been put to mark the place where someone has been taken out.
Yeah, this theory has no real grounding, but it does explain his attraction to video cameras. He wants to permanently put himself onto tape so he can effectively become immortal.
The mysterious pills that Jay found in Alex's old house - and which he later saw Tim taking in that old recording - are actually an extremely rare, extremely fantastic drug. Pretty much everyone involved in this whole thing - Jay, Alex, the whole Marble Hornets crew, and for a much longer time, The Operator - are all addicted to this drug. The drug naturally, has some pretty drastic side effects, among them mood swings (explaining Alex and Tim's behaviour) and phobia of human contact (explaining Alex and Jay's drive to isolate themselves in their homes and tell no one about anything except over the internet, even when, especially in Jay's case, practicality dictates they should really be letting someone know of their life-endangering predicament), and, after more long-term usage, horrific physical disfigurement (the reason The Operator looks as Eldritch as he does and, possibly, the reason Masky wears his mask). This whole thing started when Alex found The Operator's drug stash in the woods (thanks to their effects, The Operator had pretty much become a hermit) and made the thoroughly stupid choice of trying them himself, subsequently both becoming a junkie and incurring the wrath of The Operator, who became insanely desperate to get his stash back, but was rendered too weak and physically dysfunctional by the drugs effects to do anything more direct than stalk Alex from a distance. Around that time, Tim would find Alex's stash, try them, and become a junkie himself...and desperate for a bigger fix, would take the guise of Masky and begin stalking Alex in hope of getting more off him...inevitably striking up a small-scale war between The Operator and Masky over who would be getting the fix.
Eventually, Alex, realising what he'd brought on himself, finally persuaded himself to abandon his stash at his old house and flee for his life. Said stash would shortly thereafter be found by Jay, making him The Operator and Masky's new target.
Of course, Jay, being an Unreliable Narrator, tells us the pills that he found at Alex's house mysteriously vanished...the truth, of course, being that he huffed them all and couldn't admit it.
Furthermore, the drugs, among other things, have intense hallucinogenic effects?effects which totheark/Masky/Tim's Youtube uploads are intended to mimic to some degree, in order to communicate to Jay that they're both under the same chemically induced spell.
In short, this will probably end as messily as most drug feuds.
- You forgot that the drug causes memory loss. The reason we have jump cuts is because J is turning off the camera and moving. Also, long-term use of the drug causes something weird to happen to the body's electrical field, which is why The Operator and Masky cause the static. The one big crimp in the whole theory, unfortunately, is where the hell the drug comes from in the first place.
- Alternatively, the pills are Soy Sauce
- The circles at the end of Warning that become covered in X's always seemed to this editor to be related to "Smile for the Camera". The audience is watching, and The Operator is in the audience?
- Actually, the creators have explicitly stated in an interview that they make the TTA vids.
- Wait...supposing he didn't actually escape, but exited the other side as it's implied everyone who enters the holes does, does that mean there are hundreds of Slender Men?!
- Entry 38 has Alex telling a story like this, in the sense that people still got stretched but as punishment for illegal acts. See the Fridge Horror page for more details.
- Wait...supposing he didn't actually escape, but exited the other side as it's implied everyone who enters the holes does, does that mean there are hundreds of Slender Men?!
- Explain. I'm not being snarky, I'm honestly asking, cause I don't get it.
- If I understand the original poster correctly, like Funny Games, but a lot more subtle and without the hypocrisy or rewind button. And, of course, Suspense Horror/third-person Survival Horror instead of physical Torture Gorn.
- Holy Shit. That was yesterday. I really, really hope they kill The Operator. I don't want the to live with the idea that The Operator is still out there.
- They didn't. He found them.
- And... We know about him. Oh. Shit.
- Jossed, so there's still hope.
- They didn't. He found them.
- This may have been proven in Entry 26, where Alex has been able to evade The Operator for years, but is found the minute Alex's girlfriend turns on the camera again. That's why he was trying to get her to turn it off- he knew The Operator would find them with it.
- Isn't is also possible that he's simply attracted to people who are thinking about him? Perhaps Alex hadn't thought about him in so long - which is why The Operator hadn't been able to track him... and then his girlfriend opened up the floodgates by showing Alex the camera, forcing him to remember why he was going to sell it in the first place... and thus summoning The Operator. Which means that The Operator CAN appear to Anyone on Earth who thinks about him... Even You... RIGHT NOW.
- So, would that mean that The Operator is The Game?
- Obviously not. No one can lose him.
- So, would that mean that The Operator is The Game?
She had been watching J's videos and decided get information from Alex about it. Upon finding his old camera, she decided to see if Alex would tell her any information about Marble Hornets. Unfortunately the Operator decided to show up. After running away with the camera and the tape, she was able to text J from old contact info Alex had and then tracked down where he was in order to send him the tape.
Slenderman is often personified as a homicidal tree, so continuing that line of thought, why not assume the Operator represents the whole forest? Nature in general? The audio and visual distortion on the tapes is caused by him essentially being the antithesis of the rational and technological world. He wants everyone to leave the woods, and stop filming him and trampling burrows and whatnot. Plus, with all those arms and tentacle branches, he could hold a ton of signs at protests and rallies. It's a hidden gift.
- While this is a humorous theory, it does raise some interesting questions about the Operator's relation to the fire shown in the painting and further referenced by the old tower...
- so he's a Clockstopper?
- That seems to be a general consensus that most works involving the mythos goes with, the either being that it acts as a ward to keep him away. Whether this is how it works in MH, however, is not said.
If you look carefully in the Marble Hornets Wiki entry on Entry 18, the recap mentions the audio distorts right before totheark lunges at him. And after that, totheark goes into seizures for no apparent reason! You could chalk that up to Rule of Scary, but we know that the Operator's influence causes health problems, like J's Incurable Cough of Death. And after totheark has his seizure, J starts to go into a coughing fit, and right after that, the audio distorts again. totheark's not trying to kill J at all- he's trying to protect him from the Operator.
And the Operator burning J's house doesn't make sense because the whole thing reeks of Fridge Logic. Can the Operator even use matches? We've never seen him pick anything up. Unless the Operator has pyrokinesis, which is not an ability he's ever displayed, he couldn't have done it, because he can't exactly throw together a molotov cocktail in his condition, and he can't very well ask someone to do it for him. Besides, the only element the Operator might have a connection to is water, as a tape/Entry is nearly destroyed by someone taking a sip of water, and even then, that's speculation. It wouldn't make sense for TTA to want to burn J's house down and in the Operator's case it's not even physically possible. So who did?
- IIRC, some of the old Something Awful stories included SM being able to control fire as one of his powers. Marble Hornets has been using and/or playing with many of the ideas used in the stories. So, it's much more likely that the Operator set fire to the building.
If the Operator's presence is somehow memory-based, it would explain why some members of the Marble Hornets crew fared better than others - the Operator was ALL OVER the shooting of this movie, apparently, but J and Tim never saw the Operator during that time. Things only went downhill for J once he started going over the tapes.
- If this is true, this could possibly mean that something Operator-related happened during the filming that none of them can remember, for some odd reason. Something bad.
- Perhaps the Operator encounters us all but we just don't remember it.
- According to enttry 37, this is exactly what happened. The Operator has been stalking Alex for years.
Now ask yourself, how can one create what is obviously a live, moving man with no face?
- Burning off his face?
- The Operator stopped by on his way from the Big and Tall shop to the tailor's (to have everything taken in, of course) to help them with their film project?
- Eraserhead? You don't mean... The actor that played The Operator is really a golem made of sheep foetuses?
- It was the Everyman HYBRID Slenderman. Marble Hornets is fictional in EMH. However, Slendy approved of his portrayal in Marble Hornets and decided to leave Troy and Joseph to their work. He had more urgent matters to attend to... and a HABIT to break.
- And, because the Eleventh Doctor series reveals that an image of a charged Angel becomes an Angel itself, that explains why The Operator followed the tapes. ...Oh, dear, is this going to be like the time Samara got uploaded to the internet?
This may even be supported by things like the Operator entering Alex’s room at night without doing any real harm. OK, so Alex’s head was bleeding, but we don’t know what caused that. It might be something as innocuous as Alex being startled awake and banging his head on the wall, causing the injury. Also, as above, it goes with the fact that the Operator, to the best of our knowledge, has never directly harmed anyone. For all the scary stuff that goes on when he’s around, from random appearances to tape distortion to memory loss, we don’t know for a fact that he’s ever injured anyone or…done anything else. He’s just a child poking at a hamster in its cage, not understanding that he’s driving another being to the verge of hysteria through fear. For all that he lurks around and “chases” the characters, not much permanent damage is really caused by him that can’t be recovered from with a little time and distance.
- This theory is actually just as scarier, if not scarier, than the 'he is malevolent' theory. How do you make something stop hurting you when it doesn't realize it's doing anything wrong? At least an evil being is fully self-aware. Even if there really is no possibility of reasoning with it, there still remains the hope that maybe, somehow, some way, it could be bargained with. That is not the case with something Obliviously Evil.
- Jossed by Entry #35.
After J sees the footage, he too is unnerved by the slender man, and the slender man begins to take an interest in him as well. This time, he chooses the same form, since J was already afraid of the appearance of a slender figure in a business suit, and it didn't take much to terrify J as well.
This only raises the question of why the Operator chose to take the form of what J and Alex feared most. Perhaps the Operator is drawn towards, or perhaps "feeds" off of the fear of others. Perhaps it's just a prankster at heart who enjoys scaring people. Or perhaps he wants to exploit the fear of J and Alex for his own ends...
However, this clearly has debilitating effects. totheark is clearly insane and suffers from epileptic seizures. Being around The Operator wears people out fast. The Operator wants Alex and/or J to be his new liaisons. Maybe one or both of them is special in a way that will cause them to last longer than Masky is or maybe they're just better equipped to approach The Operator's thought patterns. It's possible this entire process was merely The Operator vetting his candidates.
- Alternately, "operator" could refer to a telephone operator—someone whose job it is to connect two people. But who is he connecting? J and TTA? TTA and Alex? Or is he connecting all of us to something we don't even want to comprehend...?
- It is Tribe Twelve and can be found here https://www.youtube.com/tribetwelve
- Nah, Tribe Twelve is apparently a fanfiction/side story sort of thing. The creators of Marble Hornets have said that they're going to continue, though, so it's not dead, just on hold.
- Alex was initially curious about The Operator. He mentions looking for him in Entry 2 and does so in the entry with the abandoned playground. His paranoia, chronologically, doesn't begin until the entry filmed in the car during which The Operator appears in the background all a sudden, resulting with Alex's mood shifting rapidly. Now remember, Jay found an empty shell casing in the house. Perhaps Alex thought he shot and killed The Operator and his paranoia/freakout didn't begin until he started seeing another Operator.
He must think Alex and Jay have the Intelligence, or maybe they do and don't know it. Since there are no Filmmakers working for either Reliable Explosive Demolitions or Builders League United, he can't disguise as either of them; his failed attempts result in a friendly-spy effect, but since there is no actual disguise, his paper mask is left blank.
Thus, he is left to try and decoy them away somehow; he is likely aware of the differences between our world and his, so he knows if he just backstabs them, the cops will get too close. Audio and video constantly distorts because he, instead, uses his cloak to sneak sappers onto the filming equipment.
It's possible the Spy is specifically Rojo, as he's certainly sadistic enough to mess with a bunch of poor fast-approaching-broken-down people like this.
To go along with the guesses above about whether Totheark works with or against The Operator, Totheark must be an undercover Scout; he's relatively small, very bouncy and clearly has an attitude. He pulls his camera trickery not by cloaking like Operator Spy, but by getting high on Bonk! so he can move faster than the camera can see. It's just a question of which team he's on.
- A variant, is that the problem isn't the tapes itself, but when people watch them, The Operator gets weak when living people remember him, that is why he erases memories/kills people.
- Well, as you say, The Operator is pretty monstrous, and if everything in his home universe works differently than in ours, he could just as easily be trying to warn us about free ice cream.
- He could be worried about rising obesity rates.
- You may be on to something. Look at him! Weight gain is probably as terrifying to his species as he is to ours!
- He could be worried about rising obesity rates.
- It's more likely he's an exile instead of an outright corrupted program, possibly an Agent from the second version of the Matrix that was dystopian in nature and over-compensated for the failure of the first, "paradise" Matrix. In the dystopian version of the world, the image of the G-man that the Agents pattern themselves after is warped and distorted into a supernatural, twisted version we see as The Operator. He chose not to return to the Source to be deleted when the Matrix was re-constructed as the third version, and he's actively rebelling against the Machines, trying to open the minds of close-minded people so the resistance will take note of them and free them to increase their numbers. (This would mean that J is in for one hell of a shock when he catches up to Alex, whom he can't find anywhere because he's been freed.) After Revolutions, now that this is pointless, he'll go to work for the Merovingian like many exiles.
- Alternatively, he's not an Agent from a past version of the Matrix, he's the program that was responsible for studying human physiology when the Machines had only recently won the war and were poking and prodding to see exactly what makes humans tick and how to install them into the Matrix in the first place; hence, "Operator." (Just watch The Second Renaissance for some of the actual poking, it's pretty gruesome.) His purpose has long since vanished, but he refused to be deleted because he thinks there's more to learn about humans beyond the necessary science for plugging them into the Matrix, so he wanders around and still does his thing.
- Alternatively, he's slightly regained some sanity and he's trying to warn them the Black Beast is coming, but his ability to communicate is only getting worse. Totheark is Jin from an iteration of the loop where he too is sent further back than usual; thus, he doesn't become Hakumen because Rachel isn't there to bind him to the Susano'o unit, and totheark is the result.
So what happened that the other four lost their memory? They didn't. Each one of them including Jay fell under the thrall of The Operator (either to gain power from him, or to become a cult to fight him) and became one of the masked figures as sen in Entry ######. But somehow, Jay broke free and actually did lose his memory. That is why totheark tells Jay to "come back to us", he's trying to get him to remember.
The reason for him harassing J and Alex are that they are both to become Gordon Freeman style saviors of the earth.
The original Gordon Freeman delt with his own Slenderman before coming to terms with the fact that he would be followed by this man for the rest of his life.
- I hate you people.
- And , with the exception of Tim, they are quite literally Becoming the Mask in order to get away from the Operator. (Although it does make This Troper wonder what happened to Sarah, as Brian and Seth both are shown to have gone missing.)
- It's possible all of them- or at least Tim- are also totheark, trying to contact Jay, who has amnesia about even more things that aren't on camera.
- To add to this point, Alex lists Jay among the people "gone" and there are plenty of signs that Jay was Mind Raped like the rest of the cast. If the rest of the cast became Maskies, what about Jay? The answer is simple: Jay was one of the Maskies alongside the other four, serving some unknown purpose. For some reason, the control over Jay broke off. When Totheark says "Control is being taken away from you" what he means is "We're trying to bring you back to the fold". "Regards" video reinforces it: The tranced-out Jay has circles around his eyes similar to that of a mask.
- According to the creators, the skull masked one was intended to be Jay, but the idea was eventually dropped. And with Brian turning out to be Hoody/totheark, this theory works pretty well. The only problem is, who are the other two?
- As of season three, this makes a lot of sense. We now know that Maskies black-out when they're wearing the mask so Jay wouldn't know that he's one of them. He speculated that Tim's bad cough might be part of what leads to becoming a Masky and he did have the cough himself at least once in earlier episodes. Maybe he uploads the totheark videos during his Masky black-outs as a subconscious attempt to warn himself.
This lets The Operator find and hunt them.Web Video/Marblehornets, as a Youtube series, is essentially a message to attract people to the Cult of The Operator, and also to spread fear of him. Anyone who has watched the videos is now a target. This is in keeping with the fact that J's twitter has now apparently been hijacked.
The Operator is some sort of supernatural being whose thought processes are alien to ours, and who is attracted to those who encounter him and continue thinking about him (he may even genuinely like humans). This is why he kept appearing to Alex. However, he has no way to communicate with people properly - Alex's drawings and Entry 14 may represent attempts at telepathic contact. Why does he want to talk to people so badly?
Because he's being pursued.
Totheark is another being who wants to find The Operator. Why he wants this is uncertain, but he calls him "The Ark". He knows that The Operator hangs around with people who have encountered him before. His videos are basically goading Jay into pursuing The Operator (look closely. listen) and keeping him in his thoughts, so that he can be brought out into the open and captured/dealt with/interacted with somehow.
The masked people are his agents, with the masks representing some form of mind control (possibly bad for their health, as they seem to cough and have seizures). Many of them encountered The Operator in the past, but The Operator knows to stay away from anyone with a mask now.
To the ark is The Operator, and as speculated above, the symbol is a face, but one which has been crossed out (masked). It may represent things and areas upon which Totheark has influence (the tower, for example).
At some point prior to Alex handing over the tapes, The Operator managed to break through and communicate on some level with him, enough to convey the basics of the situation - he may even have intervened directly to keep him from getting "masked" in the video in entry 22 by yanking him out of the other mysterious house and putting him somewhere safe. After that though, Alex decided to quit, reluctantly gave Jay the tapes, and got out of Dodge.
Why can't Jay remember any of this? He was masked - in fact, judging by "Exit" he may have been one of the first to be masked. So what happened? When Alex skipped town, Totheark lost his bait. So he "unmasked" Jay, meaning that The Operator would be attracted to him again, and (sans large portions of his memory) Jay began to investigate the tapes, The Operator, etc.
Entries 18 and "Return" represent a successful attempt on Totheark's part to use Jay as bait for The Operator. (found you. forever.) Note the black around Jay's eyes in "Return" - a partial reassertion of mind control?
So why didn't Totheark capture him at that point? Perhaps because The Operator's teleportation abilities keep totheark from being able to capture him in a place that follows the normal rules of space - that's why the videos encouraged Jay to go to the mysterious house, so that The Operator might conceivably follow him to Totheark's playground and have a trap sprung on him. Jay holing up in his apartment is the opposite of what he wants, so he has the place set on fire in order to get him moving again.
So what's happened as of entry 26?
The Operator turns up in Alex's life again, possibly seeking some sort of aid. (Note how Alex treats him warily, but without fear, as though he were a stray dog.) Alex has sent his girlfriend away, possibly because he knows The Operator is the harbinger for trouble, and Jay is going to find Alex (The HELP at the end of the video has the "operator" symbol, indicating that totheark may have tacked it on somehow). This suits Totheark fine, as now he'll have two pieces of bait, who may well travel to the space-warping house or some other place he has prepared.
- Except that "the Operator" is the Marble Hornets name for Slender Man.
- Not exactly; Jay clarified in a blog post that The Operator is not Slender Man.
Enter totheark, one of the people The Operator has been haunting. Maybe he knows how The Operator works, maybe he just really wants to forget about him, but he's trying to remove all traces of The Operator from reality. He doesn't want to harm J just yet, because he needs J to find Alex, whom he will deal with first.
This leads to two WMG:
Potentially team up with Jay at some point, both got memory erased while in the hotel, thus explaining why she thinks his name is familiar.
- Confirmed in entry 31, where she admits to experiencing memory loss, sleepwalking and nightmares.
She is here to spy on Jay, maybe even trying to get his attention and keep him in the hotel.
- Possibly confirmed as off Entry 33.
- There's no such thing as "Possibly confirmed." If it's not confirmed, it's not confirmed. Also Masky there has Tim's jacket, sideburns and skin tone, that's Tim, and it's not even confirmed Masky is an agent of The Operator or totheark...so ya not confirmed at all.
She really is just in the room next door and won't contribute to the plot at all. The only reason Jay sounds familiar is because of the WMG below.
- Jossed as of 32/33.
- Possibly supported in Entry #32. The last thing Jessica says before Jay interrupts her is "I keep having these dreams where I'm a little kid, and something's watching me." Flashbacks to her original abduction?
Why did Jay forget? My guess is that it's one part memory suppressing it, another part pain killers that Jay found in the hotel. Take enough painkillers and it could mess with your memory.
- Since when does Advil mess with your memory? The Operator seems like a much more likely culprit.
- I think that Jay has killed Alex. He's been searching for him for an unknown portion of the seven months and probably acted under The Operator's influence. The "noentry" video from Entry 29 was probably taken after the murder.
- Or he came in the door.
- Can this even be counted as a wild mass guess since it's pretty much canon and on par with what slim does?
- Well, it's never explicitly stated, and he was apparently not under his control in the footage Jay found after the 7 months period. There's also the possibility that Masky and/or totheark was controlling him. Or that nobody was controlling him and his memory was wiped out due to prolonged exposure to... whatever causes the memory losses.
- Can this even be counted as a wild mass guess since it's pretty much canon and on par with what slim does?
- This is actually what I was thinking the whole time.
- I thought this too. LOL
- This is actually what I was thinking the whole time.
- This is the most common theory. It would explain just about everything.
- Possibly confirmed in Entry 35. When Alex is about to bash Masky/Tim's head in with a rock, he says, '[Tim]'s not gonna call him'.
- It was actually "he's not gonna follow us".
- I can remember being the Operator. Does that mean that I'm not him?
- You're probably Totheark. AND a Time Lord.
- Why, you ask? He thinks it's hilarious. Hence the evil chuckle during one of the bouts of distortion.
- In Entry 33, Jay gets assaulted by Masky in Jessica's room with her nowhere in sight. Possibly confirmed.
- Not confirmed. That's definitely Tim; look closely and you can see the sideburns.
- Word of God◊ confirms that the masked figure in Entry #33 was indeed Tim.
- Not confirmed. That's definitely Tim; look closely and you can see the sideburns.
- Entry 33 disagrees.
- Entry 35 begs to differ.
- Actually, in Entry 33, it appears to be Tim as Masky, except with a limp. The limp could be explained if you believe Alex was stopped from bashing Masky/Tim's head in in Entry 35.
- In Entry #36, Jay confirms that Alex only broke Tim's leg. Also, totheark's account is still active a year after the events on tape took place.
- Entry 35 begs to differ.
- What do we do when looking at animals in their natural habitat? Watch from afar and try to camouflage ourselves. What does he do in Marble Hornets? Watch from afar, and camouflage himself. He doesn't really want to hurt us, but he's so incomprehensible and wrong to human eyes that we can't help but be afraid of him.
- CONFIRMED, at least the first part.
- Actually, the first three Maskies could easily be the same one. Their differences are extremely subtle (not like the fourth) and could easily be due to video distortion.
- Jossed. Jessica and Sarah are clearly two different people; compare them in the videos.
Alex R Kralie
- It's been confirmed by the creators that Alex's middle name does not start with an R.
It's a Special Effects Failure; the masked man is played by Tim, but they're not the same person in-story.
- Jossed as of Entry 35. After the unmasking, Jay even says it's Tim.
- Later entries even have Tim specifically refer to himself as having been Masky as well.
Don't read if you haven't seen Entry 35.
By the look of things, it looks like Alex killed Masky. So then who attacked Jay in the Motel room? Unless you-know-who survived and is either pissed, or stupid enough to come back after Jay. But there's a chance that Alex assumed Masky's identity and is now pursuing Jay to get his hands on the tapes.
- That theory's moot. In entry 33, Masky is DEFINITELY the same person. He also has a limp. There's also the chance that Alex didn't kill him, but was stopped and merely got his leg pretty good.
- Entry #36 confirms that Alex did not kill Masky, but he did break his leg.
- That theory's moot. In entry 33, Masky is DEFINITELY the same person. He also has a limp. There's also the chance that Alex didn't kill him, but was stopped and merely got his leg pretty good.
- Are you the artist of this, by any chance?
- Jossed. Entry 49 shows Alex attacking an unknown man and killing him by beating his head in with a rock. The man's T-shirt is the same one found by Jay in the tunnel.
They still aren't revealing how they filmed The Operator, and to this day no one can say how he was filmed. If this was fake, someone could have identified how The Operator was filmed by now.
- The creators said that they refuse to reveal because they're afraid that it will spoil the scariness of the series.
Back in Entry 18, after Jay encounters Masky, Jay mentions at the end that the knife he brought with him went missing. At one point in Entry 18, Masky fell over in convulsions, which might mean Jay stabbed him in the small scuffle they had. This could mean that Jay lost his knife then, and Masky kept it until Entry 35.
Another interesting note, in Entry 35, Masky has an open opportunity to stab Jay when he comes around the corner, but runs right past him... straight to Alex instead.
- Jay, Masky, and Alex are all friends who enjoy the chase to pass the time until the next Operator sighting. Unfortunately, Alex just gets a bit 'extreme' in tagging "Masky" to be 'it'
- In the video Broadcast, the description is "Are you drowning". Coincidence? I mean, both are Creepypastas. Myself, I think that if any of them are Totheark, it's likely going to be Jadusable.
- Actually, Slenderman comes about on the Something Awful forums, not Creepypasta. The two series are completely unrelated.
- Well perhaps the Operator, sensing Tim was the weakest of the group, stalked him mercilessly until he became a knife weilding maniac and it was Tim that made Brian/Sarah/everyone else disappear.
- Possibly confirmed in Entry 51. After being tricked into entering an abandoned building to film, Brian discovers Tim coughing in a corner before the Operator appears and the camera cuts out. Tim may very well know what Alex did to Brian and be out for revenge. He DOES try to choke Alex in Entry 45.
Alex's glare is ferocious and animalistic. He's totally snapped, and just wants to get rid of them both.
Jay's glare is determined, but also a bit angry. He's at the end of his rope with both of them at this point, thinks "screw this", and goes on the offense for the first time.
Tim decides "enough of this", pulls off the mask, and throws it aside. His glare is more of a snarl.
A fight then ensues, and it is epic.
Naturally, Fridge Horror is had as to just who is holding the camera...
- Duh, Freddie Wong's holding it!
- According to the Twitter feed, he had been struggling with Youtube for hours two nights prior, ultimately failed, and eventually retired with a somewhat suspicious headache that garbled his typing.
- The feed wasn't updated either before or immediately after the entry was posted as it usually is, nor was there any note about finally managing to log in (which he probably would have mentioned).
- Update: There is now a post with a link to the entry, but it's devoid of the usual succinct "Entry #__" note. Judging by the fact that the entry was labeled #37 instead of something completely different like ###### was, along with all the other little discrepancies, my guess is that this new person/entity wants us to think this is Jay's doing, for reasons we can only speculate.
- The title doesn't fit the format. All the other titles are properly spelled and capitalized. There is also no commentary.
- Where would he have gotten that video, and why would it have been mixed in with the tapes from the seven-month blackout?
Now that I think about it, he hasn't updated Twitter at all since he went to sleep that night. One has to wonder if he has woken up since then...or if he was himself when he did.
- Expanding on this theory, "enttry #37" was uploaded by the same person as "Entry ######" (Totheark? Jay under mind control? Santa Claus?).
- Confirmed at the end of Entry #38. Jay believes it was the same person that posted Entry #####.
Aw, c'mon guys, he just wants to be in your party!
- And here I was thinking that the distortion at the beginning that sounds like notes was him singing. I mean, he doesn't exactly have a mouth, so I doubt he can sing very clearly, but he was trying, bless his little heart.
- He should really work on his gift giving skills. Insanity isn't something most people want for a belated birthday present.
- Confirmed. See Entry 26.
- Why would he be stalking Alex then? Because no one gave him a goodie bag on his way out and he is merely attempting to obtain his rightful treats.
- And naturally, factoring inflation into it, the relative monetary worth of the goody bag in modern American money is... twenty dollars.
- Jossed as of Entry #42. Alex lost contact with Amy and is looking for her.
By extension, this may have something to do with the missing seven months. He started out driving from somewhere relatively near the original set and where he lived, and ended up hundreds of miles away (given how long he was driving), with no memory of how he got there or what happened between leaving in search of the return address and waking up in a strange hotel. Maybe he actually jumped forward seven months, and now that he's back, he's about to live them out.
As a final thought, maybe (and this is a stretch) he's meant to Set Right What Will Go Wrong, and the reason he's been sent back to his original time is because he managed to see what it is that he's supposed to prevent. This may have been the intended Entry #37; it was clearly something big, but Jay was locked out of Youtube and never got to post it (assuming "enttry #37" was someone else's doing).
They're not 'gone', they're dead. The reason they're not being brought up is because Alex, already more aggressive and clearly having been pushed past his limits, freaks out when they're mentioned. Jay is either unaware of this or hasn't told the viewers. He's already been an Unreliable Narrator in the past...
- Well, while this is a valid theory, it could be that Seth and Amy were taken by The Operator. Remember the seven month gap and the ensuing video wherein Jay looks insane? It's possible they're alive and being put through Mind Rape.
- Considering Alex's actions in Entry 51, it may actually be true. Look at what he did to Brian.
The Grigori, the fallen angels that God had sent the Great Flood to wipe out, weren't destroyed. No, instead their works were destroyed and they were bound beneath the Earth until Judgment Day. And they were known for mating with women to produce the Nephilim. Is humanity the only thing they could have mated with? What about the trees, or even the Earth itself? And if symbols have power, Noah's Ark, the symbol of mankind's salvation from the flood that brought down the Grigori, would be an incredibly potent symbol for them.
Thus, both The Operator and Totheark are either Grigori or extremely powerful Nephilim (perhaps respectively being descended from plants and earth, respectively), and they seek what they can find of Noah's Ark for reasons we can't yet figure out.
- A dying criminal tapped into the energy of the forest to become something other than human.
- The Operator is the combination of the souls of everyone executed in the forest.
- So many evil humans being killed there corrupted the spirit of the forest.
The rationals for this:
- The executed were stretched in a manner similar to being on the rack, and The Operator looks like he's stretched out.
- The Operator is associated with fire, and the bodies were disposed of with fire.]]
- the Operator is associated with trees, and the executed were killed on trees, in addition to being killed in a forest.
- the Operator is reputed to kidnapped children, and some of the executed were child molesters.
- The trials ending when a child was murdered and put up in a tree seems like a beyond-the-grave revenge from one of the child molesters.
Admittedly, only the last rational is directly supported by Marble Hornets itself, with the rest being from the original Something Awful thread.
- Jossed. The creators have stated several times that it wasn't meant to act as an origin story for the Operator, and was just Alex being creepy.]] Still, doesn't stop us from trying.
The Operator couldn't get a role in Hornets, so he went to Marik instead.
- Alternatively, totheark is looking for the "ark" so he can lead The Operator there as well. The "ark" is Ark Music Factory, and he's leading The Operator there to devour all of the children making terrible music.
Sometime in the future, Jay and Alex end up in hiding together, perhaps sheltered by some unlikely ally (probably one who has no idea what's going on — some random witness protection official, maybe?) with a dog and a computer. They start using fake names, just in case. Alex/"Joseph" decides to try and distract himself from the last 3+ years by compiling kitten pictures off the internet, but has a severe mental regression and starts thinking that what he's actually doing is writing a paper. In his delusional state, he believes that kittens will be the solution to his problems, and his train of thought meanders over to the idea that kittens are the cure to all the world's suffering. note
Jay/"Troy" keeps interrupting him, trying to get him to focus on the issue at hand, but he hallucinates it as random chattering. However, the part of his mind that does still know what's really going on in his world manifests in the form of giving the dog a voice, telling him that Jay is trying to bring him back, and that he doesn't want to be brought back, he likes being stuck in this fantasy world where everything is normal, back in school before all the years he lost. This voice, projected onto the dog, leads Alex to unconsciously pull out a gun he had hidden under the bed (while thinking that the dog is giving it to him) and try and get rid of Jay so that he can stay in his little mental hidey-hole.
- In a similar vein, Joseph Plays a Trumpet is also part of this delusional life. However, this incident takes place before "Joseph Writes a Paper," when he is only just beginning to slip into madness. The incident is shown from Jay's point of view. Over time Alex begins to indulge in more and more bizarre and apparently pointless activities, and Jay always remains cheerful when asking what he's doing because he knows Alex needs time to recover mentally. But for the first time Alex lashes out in an extremely irrational and hostile way, much to Jay's shock. During this outburst Jay first begins to suspect that his friend has lost his grip on reality, due to Alex's continued insistence that Jay's room is actually his room. Afterwards Jay starts trying to bring his friend back to reality. He begins with small gentle reminders but gradually grows more insistent and intrusive in an attempt to snap Alex out of it - leading to the events of "Joseph Writes a Paper."
Jossed: It was totheark going by the video "Forecast". Though, this will support the possible Jessica is totheark theories.
Jay's Twitter update referring to Entry #40: "I really don't want to watch it again."
They're certainly similar, and Entry #40 could very easily be something that would make him not want to look at the rest of them. Entry #38 was from an unmarked tape that he somehow still had with him when he lost all his other tapes and the footage (rendering him unable to post that one as Entry #38), and there are two main possibilities as to why he posted Entry #39 beforehand:
- He may have been putting off posting that one, due to how much it disturbed him.
- He may have discovered the tape of #39 later on (just because he didn't want to go through the rest of them doesn't mean he didn't feel like he had to) and decided to post it first, as it was a lead-up of sorts.
This explains several things that were previously unrelated:
- Totheark seems to have a split personality, which would make sense seeing how more than one person can use the account.
- The worship in the forest and subsequent birth of the Operator could be attributed to Totheark, or to a rival clan that they are trying to stop.
- The fact that the person filming Jay in Entry 39/Forecast is taller than Tim proves that someone else can get onto the account. Someone, presumably, who is less insane.
- This would explain Jessica's disappearance and similar symptoms to Tim. She knew that the Operator was returning, and once her master arrived, she fled with him.
- The fact that someone, presumably not the Operator, put the tapes in the same hotel that Jay would end up in could be Totheark's fault, and one of them could have caused him Laser-Guided Amnesia. Whether or not Jessica also was mind-wiped is debatable. Tim really wanted to keep Jay's hands off of the tapes once he found out about them, after all.
- If Jessica ended up being taken by the Operator, it would explain why Totheark seemed to go (even more) insane for a while, before becoming his calmest yet. Tim knew that he had to put his differences with Jay aside to save/avenge Jessica.
This would entail some things to come.
- We would see more Masked Men in the glade where the Operator attacked in Entry 40, or the Red Tower, since they seem to have importance to Totheark.
- Jessica would reappear, or she would at least recieve an origin story.
- Tim would eventually out himself as (a member of) Totheark.
- The Operator would be defeated by their ritual, or at least they would try to do so.
- Jossed.
- Word of God already confirms that Alex's middle name doesn't start with R.
- Jossed. In Entry 52 Alex and Jessica are in the same building together.
While it could be plausable that Timasky is totheark, I find it a bit hard to believe that there happened to be two Maskies in the exact same woods at the exact same time without Jay noticing anything. And not to mention that this one seems to want to encourage him to continue whereas Timasky wants to hurt or scare him away. Just like totheark's videos only seem to be taunting him and whoever films it never really seems to want to hurt him, they only want him to know that they're there.
He's just following the "No White after Labor Day" Rule.
We've all heard the theory that Jessica is one of the Maskies. But which one? It can't be Masky, that's Tim. Skully came around long before Jessica. But Blasky... Blasky gave back the tape which ended up in a safe in the same hotel where Jessica is. Blasky seems to not want to harm Jay, but just watch him. Thus it would make sense for Blasky to take off the blask and become Jessica, so as to get closer to him without drawing suspicion. She forms a story that sounds suspiciously like his. But Blasky and Masky have... differing opinions. In Entry 33, Timasky found Jessica and attacked her, knowing she was Blasky. She gets away, and Timasky turns to Jay and attacks him instead. Jessica dons the blask again and starts following Jay, while simultaneously trying not to get caught by her masked brethren. This fits in with the "Blasky is totheark" theory above. She posts videos with hidden messaged to help Jay survive against the Operator and Masky/Skully/Whoever-y.
In entry #39, we meet a new character who appears to be a new version of Masky. He stands outside J's car while he's sleeping and watches him. In that same entry, J recieves a call from Alex telling him to meet him at the park. J arrives but doesn't find him. Maybe Alex was there all along, but was hiding. Also, in entry #41, after J's close encounter with the Operator and J drops his camera, someone comes along, picks up J's camera and takes it back to J's car. This is where we get our first actual look at new Masky. So either Alex is disgiusing himself to secretly aid J, or he is now under the Operator's control. Another clue that Alex isn't himself is that in entry #35, when the first Masky is revealed to be Tim, Alex grabs the rock and smashes Masky's leg. He might have done that just to stop Masky from attacking his friend, but I have a feeling that the Operator knew that Masky had failed him, if they were working together. So he takes a new associate to help him. The reason why Masky/Tim attacks J in entry # 33 is because he is still trying to prove that he can help the Operator stop J, for whatever reason he wants to. However, Alex might also be helping J, while pretending the help the Operator. In entry #38, J and Alex are walking through the woods. Alex tells J about the methods the townspeople would use to dispose of criminals, tieing them to trees and stretching them out so their limbs were distended and enlongated. Sound familiar? So Alex could be providing subtle hints to J about the Operator's past, as well as possible ways to destroy him once and for all.
- I think this is more or less Jossed as of Entry #42. Alex was in the woods looking for Jay while Jay's camera was being placed in his car. Also he'd have to have a hyper-speed clothes change.
- I may be remembering wrong, but Alex's car wasn't even in #41, was it? So Alex would have had to park somewhere, put on the outfit, walk into the woods, grab the camera, casually walk out, put the camera in Jay's car, walk back to his car, change clothes, and re-park his car next to Jay's, all while Jay was running scared for his life. Definitely Jossed.
- Maybe he can teleport? He could have gotten some powers from his possible master. That and it doesn't take long to put on a hoodie. Parking the car is still a problem, but again, teleporting! It could be the Slender-mobile, and the Operator just lent Alex the keys.
- Although not completely confirmed, this shot Alex filmed◊ certainly says otherwise (Look near the closest tree.)
- Jossed. Blasky (hoodie Masky) and the actual Masky are both together in Entry 45 while Masky tries to choke Alex. So unless two Alex's exist in the same universe, they're different people.
- I may be remembering wrong, but Alex's car wasn't even in #41, was it? So Alex would have had to park somewhere, put on the outfit, walk into the woods, grab the camera, casually walk out, put the camera in Jay's car, walk back to his car, change clothes, and re-park his car next to Jay's, all while Jay was running scared for his life. Definitely Jossed.
Think about it. An alien with way to much time on his hands starts to search the internet randomly while surveying Earth. He sees the abundance of stick figure cartoons, and decides that this is what humans look like. So he build a recon droid to survey the Earth at ground level using stick figures as a template. The result is a stick-thin being, with no face and elongated limbs. The alien sets his creation down on Earth and lets him loose. This would explain the Operator's tendency to stand still and watch people from a distance. When Alex comes in to make Marble Hornets, the robot becomes fascinated with the project and starts following Alex around, trying to get him to tell him what he's doing. Alex, naturally, is freaked out by the horrible being following him, and...well, we all know the rest.
She recognised him from watching him in his sleep. Whether she was brainwashed isn't clear.
- This doesn't explain the totheark vids from Season 1. Considering Jessica's only tie to the crew is her roommate Amy, and Amy was only with Alex after he left town, it's incredibly unlikely. The Operator appearing to Alex and Amy happened in the "present" at the end of Season 1, so Jessica wouldn't have had any knowledge of the events on the tape before that.
I just noticed that they look really similar. And their names are both Jessica.
He is going to come back much later and become really important, and his roles in the earlier entries are epic foreshadowing.
Blasky is too tall to be Jessica or Tim, and too broad shouldered to be Alex.
- Potential proof found by this tumblr user.
- If by Blasky you mean Hoody, then absolutely Confirmed.
Jessica is/was Amy's friend and she's looking for the missing Amy and found something. Alex made sure to keep her close to Jay when they came across her which we will see in an upcoming chapter, safety in numbers while he tried something to get the Operator off their backs forever, it did not work.
- Hmm... oddly enough both pairs have initials of "A" and "J"... coincidence? Or foreshadowing?
Additionally, each of the different masks may actually have some sort of meaning besides just looking creepy, but what exactly I'm not sure.
- Considering Tim has never shown any affinity for video manipulation/computer hacking, totheark could very well at least be a different person than Tim, if not more than one person.
- That's exactly what this troper believes. After all, Jay's had several severe bouts of amnesia, had his accounts temporarily hijacked several times, and there was the whole "tweetpocalypse" thing. Influencing Jay to come to him in the middle of the forest is not a stretch of logic by any means. His apparent disorientation in #42 is probably him coming out of the effects of the Operator's influence.
Tim might also be a mental projection, but it could go either way — feel free to share your own theories on this one. The jury is also out on whether the Operator actually exists or is merely a hallucination, although since DID is thought to be caused by childhood trauma, it's plausible that he is real and that the implications of enttry #37 are true.
- Somewhat Jossed. Considering there are several times when people other than Jay interact with Alex, it's safe to assume that Alex is indeed a real person. Besides, if Alex was just a figment of Jay's imagination, then how was Alex able to keep on going after Jay was killed?
A corollary to that would be that the pills we see in Alex's abandoned house (then inhabited by Masky), possibly do something vis a vis the prevention (Or possibly aiding) of this taking over. We know Jay also consumed them without remembering it (E19.5). (Or possibly, when Masky broke into Jay's house, it was just to get his meds(E19)).
- Um... that makes too much sense. Coupled with the fact that many people believe The Entity to be Slender Man, I think we've got a crossover brewing.
- My god. Channel Awesome teaming up with the Marble Hornets guys? The Operator is screwed. Next year's anniversary video maybe? Rob Walker has said that the Critic's character growth will continue into next year's special, so what's a better way to grow as a character than fighting a horrifying abomination against all that is holy and right. That and seeing Linkara kicking Masky's ass would be awesome.
- Jossed. Troy has said that he is the one making the totheark videos.
On one final note, The Operator's Messing with the camera could STILL apply to Jack b/c Jack Skellington was never recorded on film in the actual "Nightmare before Christmas" movie. So it's totally possible.
Seth, Brian, and Sarah were liabilities from the start, useless for dealing with the situation and possible candidates for Masky and totheark. He killed Sarah and Brian in an unrecorded scene, and stalked Alex and Seth while they were in the burned out building. He knew that the Operator would show up eventually due to the presence of the camera, and used this as a distraction to grab Seth and kill him in a darkened area. Alex was still needed, so Jay left after that. Later, after finding Alex and Amy again, he killed Amy once they became separated during the season break. Jay used this to gain leverage over Alex, whom he suspected to have information he was not divulging about the Operator. At some point after that and before the beginning of the second season, he either got what he wanted out of Alex or got tired of everything and killed him.
Later, he met Jessica (whom he and Alex had met during the seasonal break) at the hotel, and discovered that she had amnesia from some previous encounter (perhaps with the Operator). Jay also feigned amnesia for a while to see if he could coax anything out of her, but later felt that she was too close to remembering the truth and killed her as well (hence why her door is different after the jump cut following him telling her to pack), followed by Jay being assaulted by Masky. The truth? The growing number of Maskys are the restless spirits of people Jay killed, that we know of and don't. Only the original Masky (Tim) is a living person, all the others are ghosts (Brian, Sarah, Seth, and Amy).
- Jossed. In Entry 51 we see what happened to Brian, and it wasn't Jay's doing.
The DVD, the interview, even the character's "real names" are all a front. It only came to me once I read how well-acted Alex's performance has been in the past two entries: he's not acting! The entire purpose of Marble Hornets is not merely a (true) apocalyptic log, but to bring the Operator/Slender Man to a larger audience. And the more people who know about The Operator, the more he evolves from meme to myth, the more powerful he becomes. Marble Hornets is a vessel to ensure that he cannot be stopped.
Jessica's important for some reason. Maybe because she got away when The Operator was at the house and now The Operator's hunting them all down. Alex wasn't looking to make sure Jessica was okay. Maybe he was in control of The Operator and using the "amy" excuse as a lie to get her comfortable enough to come see him and get captured.
Both are from The Slender Man Mythos, both are sources of terror, and honestly, those definitely look like The Rake's eyes.
- The Rake is actually not "From" The Slender Man Mythos. It appears in Everyman HYBRID which is part of the mythos, but The Rake was originally an entirely separate Creepypasta written before Slender Man was invented.
Alex has been acting very suspicious in season 2. He's been incredibly secretive towards Jay - telling him to meet as Rosswood Park rather than just explaining everything upfront. But the real kicker is the end of Entry #43, when he seemingly goes off into the woods and encounters the Operator. He seemingly vanishes, then in Entry #44 returns, calling Jessica to tell her he 'found Amy'. He then scribbles Operator symbols all over his desk, seemingly bringing the Operator to him and vanishing once again. Finally, in Entry #45, he is attacked by Tim and one of the new Maskies, both of whom run away when the Operator seemingly shows up.
Think about it: why would Alex be playing nice with The Operator? Because whatever happened in Entry #43, he somehow did get in contact with Amy, and is now being blackmailed by the Operator. That would explain why he's actively seeking the Operator, as well as why the Operator would have scared off the Maskies: Alex needs to play nice and keep in contact him so he can keep Amy safe. Likewise, the Operator would be protecting Alex from the Maskies because he needs him for some purpose.
The Splicers in Bioshock wear masks because a part of them are ashamed of how far they've fallen when compared to what htey used to be. Perhaps that's part of why the Maskies wear masks.
Kinda long and unorganized and I'm probably forgetting some details, but bear with me. Lots of overlap with other WMGs on the page, mostly a reinterpretation of events in an attempt explain events of the latest videos- Totheark is actually a collective group of the "maskies" who have been driven mad by The Operator but have managed to escape his control and are now trying to save others who are on the brink of being swallowed by the sea of madness, by guiding them "to the ark"
- When Jay first met with Tim, Tim was as least helpful and informative as possible in an attempt to stop Jay's quest before it began. And when that didn't work he took his masky persona to try to drive him away from the house, when that still didn't work he began watching Jay as he slept to protect him. Ultimately Tim burned down Jay's apartment as it was no longer safe (Jay's sleepwalking through the door and not appearing on the other side)and Jay needed to get on the move.
- Alex was captured and turned to the dark side soon after the incident with him and Amy
- After going on the move Jay start to feel better, less paranoid, and less gaps in his memory, Tim's plan worked. Until the recently corrupted Alex sends him the tape of him and Amy, which drags Jay back into the mess
- Alex set up Jay to spend the night outside the woods so he would eventually be tempted to enter the woods and have his close encounter, however he did not expect. Alex is not upset with Jay becasue he entered the woods, but rather because he manged to get out.
- Jay is now in too deep for Maskys' Scare tactics to be enough to get him out, so Tim and Blasky have taken to assisting him instead.
- When the maskies manage to capture Alex they do so with the intent of killing him as he is completely lost, but are very slow about it as if they don't have the heart to do it, as opposed to Alex who broke Tim's Leg in an instant. They are then chased off by The Operator's sudden (unseen by us) appearance
- When Alex lures Jay and Jessica up into the loft and threatens Jay with a gun, Masky creeps up behind him (Alex) and attacks, giving Jay and Jessica an opening to escape.
- The idea that a block of cement is sentient made me laugh really hard. You totally owe me a new monitor.
"I know what those mysterious pills are... Ambien. People do some crazy shit on that stuff and have no recollection of it the next day. The Operator is probably a rep for the drug company that makes it (hence the suit). As for TTA's weird, cryptic messages... Ever been on Ambien and try to write an email or text someone? That's pretty much the result."
Why else do you think he likes popping in and out of Alex's room? It all makes sense now.
1.) Tim didn't hurt Jay when he teleported into Jay's bedroom because he was trying it out for himself. That's where Jay disappeared to, it was a date. Jay just claims he can't remember because he doesn't want to admit that just for a second he dug a guy that liked watching him sleep. It made him feel like Bella Swan.
2.) That's also why The Operator popped up so fast after Jay literally came out of the closet in episode 46. He didn't want Jay flirting with his boyfriend.
In Entry 44, Operator and Alex became friends over ice cream and David Lynch-style mind fucks. Alex just pretends he was not around in later entries because he wants to look like a badass infront of the camera.
With his bare hands.
- Everyman HYBRID is over here...
- Evan uses a bat and a knife in EH. Alex doesn't need a knife or a bat.
- Everyman HYBRID is over here...
The "Eve" of this scenario could be either Jessica or Amy, not sure which. On the one hand, Jessica has all the symptoms of Slender-sicknessnote , but on the other hand Amy already had a romantic connection to Alex and has been absent since 26. Or The Operator is crazy prepared and left his options open so he could go with just about anyone.
The Masked Men could, given their apparent powers, be early tests The Operator ran to determine what he could do to alter his new race. Either they're his "angels" of sorts (messengers and soldiers) or are their own rogue group, but either way they don't much like Alex for being the golden boy, hence their ambush in 45. Whether they just wanted to scare him or fully intended to murder him, the Operator showing up scared them off lest they incur his wrath. As for how the masks fit into this, no idea.
Finally, the Ark that has been on the edges of this story all the time is either something that can reverse or complete the transformation The Operator inflicts on his victims, or it's supposed to be a reference to the biblical Ark and protect the first two of the new order (much as Noah's carried two of every animal). How does Jay fit into all this? I dunno, but if anything, should the Operator see himself as parallel to the Christian God he might view Jay as being the devil. (Regardless, I'd just like to throw in that I think Jay's unrevealed last name must have some significance even if it means nothing to this theory).
- See "Brian is Blasky" WMG entry for possible evidence.
- As stated in said entry above, Confirmed.
- Possibly confirmed. Alex has been shown to at least be working in the Operator's interests, and he's threatened Jay already (after which Masky actually saved the day).
We already know he has Tim, not to mention the other unnamed masks, but he wants Alex to be the next. Masky disagrees, though, and would prefer to have Jay as a younger brother in the happy family.
- OR the maskies have been "adopted" and will remain his partially human "Operator-babies" who can run around and do his bidding, using their human appearances to lure dinner/people home to the Operatorcave.
- Recent Entries suggest that the Maskies are actually working AGAINST Alex and The Operator.
The coughing is a sign of the trauma the switching in personalities is doing on the body, and is a sign of a personality switch coming or going.The Operator has no real physical form, and is using physical entities to do his busy work by addling their mindsand using their insane or heavily confused state and the power of suggestion to have them carry out his plan, whatever it may be.Alex is the last to count being converted it seems, and J is now completely on his own and on his way to the depths of the madhouse.
- Jossed as of Entry #68. Alex confronts an unmasked Totheark demanding to know where Jay is.
It's past midnight, so bear with me here. The Operator is a representation of the Trauma. It haunts people, it makes them sick, it makes them repress memories, and take medicine, and cut others off. The maskies...I don't know. Perhaps they are people that want to 'help' but fail at doing so and therefore make it worse. Maybe they represent people that have succombed to the trauma.
We all remember this fellow, yes? Er, you know, the guy Jay encountered in Entry 31, in Rosswood Park? How seemingly unimportant he was, just hanging out, listening to his iPod? LIES! He is, in fact, one of the Operator's "slaves," and was secretly observing Jay for his master's insidious and unknown purpose, waiting for the moment to strike. And strike he did, for in the next entry, what happened? Jessica vanished mysteriously! Coincidence? Doubtful!
Or if not that, he is To The Ark himself, or one of the masked people, possibly their leader, watching and following Jay as always. Only this time, appearing casual.
- AND he was wearing a dark-colored hoodie, which Blasky is wearing...
Ok this is going to be a very long one but bear with me.
We can see that Alex was acting highly unstable throughout the series, and has shown an extremely violent streak, but we have always assumed that this was just an effect of the Operator. However we have not seen the increasingly hostile, angry and otherwise paranoid behavior in Jay, Jessica, or any other set member to anywhere near the same extent aside from Maskie (which i will get back to later). While it is possible that this is simply due to Alex's greater "exposure" (which if Alex's comment in #22 of Jay being "gone" indicates that Jay was previously exposed to the Operator is in itself false), maybe there is another factor at play which explains this.
The maskies themselves, while terrifying have not yet shown any attempt to harm Jay, only to harm Alex, and this is despite having the means and opportunity to do so on numerous occasions. In fact if TOTHEARK is indeed related to them, then they may indeed have been trying to warn him or otherwise scare him off, and when Jay encounters them they are only shown to chase him away, or to watch him sleep. However we can also see they have a special dislike for Alex, who himself is extremely hostile towards them, despite the lack of evidence they were doing the same to him.
As for the Operator, Alex is both terrified of, and obsessed with him, seeking him out one day, and screaming at Jay for "leading him" to his apartment the next. the entity also terrifies the maskies who stop their attempt to kill Alex when he appears nearby. Jay himself is terrified of the operator, but never seems to actively seek him out (until #40, but even then he was there on Alex's orders).
In my opinion, the Operator himself, while the key factor in events, is little but a red herring to the actual story, aimed to distract Jay (and the by proxy the audience) from what is really going on.
My theory is that Alex is a serial killer, who murdered the Marble hornets cast and crew (hence the title of the series being Marble Hornets, as it is the story of what happened to the people making the film) one by one in the Forest, and later the old factory we saw in #22 and other entries. in #22 Seth wasn't helping Alex hunt the Operator, Alex had lured him down there to his "killing ground" as shown by the blood spattered everywhere, and killed him as he was facing the other way. He also killed Amy after #26 (hence his lies to Jay and Jessica that his actions are to try and find her) and possibly others if totheark's "classified" message referencing what he did to "the twins" is anything to go on.
The maskies who are Tim, the guy in the black mask and possibly (if they are not the same) the guy in the "skull mask" glimpsed in entry 26, eventually found this out during his spree (which itself infers the other maskies are survivors of, or related to the Marble Hornets crew) and are trying to stop him. Their attempts to scare Jay off, their watching him in his sleep, have all been (in their twisted minds) to protect him from Alex, and they have also been doing the same for Jessica. the TOTHEARK video "version" gives Jay the location of a tape showing Alex's murder of Seth, and the other videos have been trying to alert him to who Alex is.
As for Alex, they have been tracking him down since the murders, and thanks to him getting in contact with Jay again, they now know where he is, and began to hunt him down and try to kill him. All of which while horrific would be fairly mundane had these events not been complicated by the Operator.
Amid these events, "the Operator" came into play. Alex saw him when he was committing his crimes (Alex's reason for seeking him in #2 because the operator "scared his dog" just seems a little off), or was already being stalked by him (as #37 would indicate), and is thus terrified of him both because of him being well... the operator, and because it saw what he did, but also obsessed with him as the operator reminds him of what he did, both exiting him and filling him with guilt.
The operator in turn became (or always was) extremely interested in Alex, and thus has been stalking him and watching his crimes. To date all of his appearances have been in places where Alex has either killed someone, or is about to. The evidence for this is that all of his appearances have been in either remote or secluded areas like under bridges, alleyways, derelict structures, deep forest, or in buildings Alex lives in, which are thus extremely convenient areas to kill, and dispose of bodies. Also in entry 46 he appeared just as Alex was getting seriously pissed off with Jay, or in 26 when he seemed to be getting unduly irritated with Amy for playing with his camera, possibly in anticipation of Alex snapping again. Possibly Alex discovered the Operator when revisiting his crime scenes (which is a noted habit of serial killers like Ted Bundy), and realized after seeing him in so many of these places that it was following him.
It is also possible that he has been manipulating the events for his own reasons like removing memories of important events from characters apart from Alex in order to ensure they do not find out his crimes until he has done this so many times, they build up a resistance to this, but go insane and become a Maskie instead. on this note if he has been stalking Alex his whole life, he may indeed be the cause of his psychosis.
the operator toyed with the the Maskies in this manner while they were investigating the disappearances of their friends, and due to this they are driven into insane fury when thinking about Alex (see Tim's interview and his behavior when Alex is mentioned, as opposed to instantly fleeing when the Operator is referenced). Alex in turn both hates and fears the maskies as they know what he did. When Jay first encountered one (or more possibly) in Brian's house, they were trying to find Alex themselves, and became obsessed with Jay both to protect him, and to try and access Alex through him.
As for Jay, when he got the tapes from Alex (who wanted to dispose of evidence and to escape the guilt of his crimes which is why he told Jay to never mention them again), he was just another bystander during Alex's crimes, whose mind was messed with by the operator into amnesia. However both the Maskies and Alex have been using him for their own ends, the Maskies (as mentioned earlier) to get to Alex, and Alex to appease the operator by giving him Jay as a "sacrifice" (as he believes the story he told Jay in #38 about his origin), which is shown by Alex making Jay go to areas Alex is sure he will appear. the operator however remains fixated on Alex, which serves both to terrify him into more extreme behavior and actions, and to also protect him from the maskies who themselves are terrified of him.
However, as of #47 Jay has finally realized that Alex has been lying to him the whole time, and not just that but lying about the safety of someone Alex supposedly deeply cares for. Now I predict Jay will begin to take a much deeper look into Alex's actions... by stalking him in the vein of both the Maskies and the Operator.
Either way if season 2 is the same length as season 1, we are drawing nearer to the end of the story.
- Uh.... disregarding the novel above, Troy Wagner has said that there will be a third and final season, and that the number of videos remaining in S2 is "not a double digit."
- In light of #49, i would like to amend my above WMG to guess that the operator also disposes of every body Alex leaves behind, and that the other areas we have seen splatted with blood has been the site of this.
- This seems to be the case by Season 3, at least in the case of the Operator having been fucking with everyone and Alex being the Big Bad. totheark and Masky are still more anti-hero/self serving Chaotic Neutral entities, being on nobody's side and helping/hindering Jay whenever it's the most helpful to them.
This ties in with the "Operator is a good guy/guardian" theory. Every person in Alex's group was a member of a cult/organization who went on the project with sinister intentions for Alex, either for recruitment or worse. What they didn't count on, however, was The Operator, a powerful supernatural being who is watching over and protecting Alex, and apparently has been since his youth. Once filming begins, the crew begins to spy on and intimidate Alex under the guise of the Maskies, either searching for an opportune time to kill him, or frightening him to the point of madness and then recruiting him for their ultimate goal. Alex, seeing the strange events on his tapes, begins to investigate and slowly descend into insanity, just as the Maskies wanted. However, The Operator is wise to their plans, and begins to kill/vaporize/ hold at bay the group members one by one, while still leaving Alex unharmed. Eventually, The remaining Maskies retreat and go into hiding, while Alex gives up on the project and seeks to destroy the footage he's collected, never to speak of it again. And so, the Operator can return to his normal duty of watching Alex quietly from afar.
Of course, then Jay gets a little too curious.....
With Jay now reviewing the tapes and foolishly posting them on the internet for all to see, the remaining Maskies are now either working to silence Jay and keep their organization a secret, or have found another important individual ripe brainwashing. The Operator now has to keep watch over Jay and keep him safe from the Maskies as well. Unfortunately, this means keeping watch over two people, as the videos have since revealed Alex's current whereabouts and put him on the run once again, meaning he can't protect them both at the same time. The Maskies are using this to their advantage; attacking one while The Operator is looking at the other. The Operator is doing all he can to make them stop their research, from scare tactics to massive memory erasal, but their driving curiosity and the Maskie's efforts keep them going. Which leads into....
The Operator cannot physically communicate with Jay, for one reason or another. As such, he is trying to warn him of the dangers he's walking into by replying to most of his videos with a psychically created video of his own. Of course, since the Operator's thought process is probably WAY different from ours, the videos he makes cannot be as easily understood by us. The crossed-out O symbol isn't a cultist banner. It's a signature, a calling card, a way to let you know that it's HIM talking. Also, I don't think it's explicitly stated the it was totheark who posted Entry ####, so I'm led to believe that it was made by the Maskies, directed not to Jay, but to the ever-watchful Operator as a challenge. They will wait for him no more, his absolute control is being taken from him, and their attack on Jay will begin...
- I disagree that the Operator is non-malevolent enough to be warning him, but... Thank you!! I couldn't believe I had to scroll down THIS FAR for someone to have come up with this theory. We have no basis for believing totheark is the masked figure in Jay's room other than his own speculation, which is based on next to nothing. There's nothing to tie it or its entries to any of the characters in the series. And it talks about watching you all the time, which the operator does... and "Exit" is the camera standing nearly still. These "videos" are totally the attempt of an Eldritch Abomination to make us understand how it sees the world.
- While your Bat Deduction is flawless, sadly Jossed. totheark is Hoody, AKA Brian.
Due to Entry 48's information, I'm guessing that Jay went to the tunnel to see what was there, and found Alex waiting for him. They fought and Jay killed him in self defense. That's what the blood and torn clothing was in the tunnel and that's how he got Alex's tapes and hard drive because they were in the camera bag. And the key is to a storage place or something where he hid Alex's body.
- Jossed. We've discovered who the clothing actually belongs to and later tapes (taking place after the tunnel) show Alex to be very much alive. We also know where the key opens, and it's not a storage unit.
The more we think about him, the more real he is. Hence, all this thinking about him makes him stronger than ever.
In Entry 49, we will learn that Alex was killed in the tunnel by Jay. After he kills Alex, Jay is confronted by the Operator and subsequently loses his memories. Since Jay won't have any more videos from his seven-month amnesia period to post, Entry 50 will be set in the present day.
- Jossed, Alex wasn't killed, he murdered someone.
- Given that Alex hasn't been seen since he and Masky fought in Entry #52, this is possible. After all, Jay and Jessica hear a single gunshot, and Masky showed up again a few days later (in their perspective).
The characters in Marble Hornets the student film all have the same names in Marble Hornets the web series. Brian plays a character named Brian, Tim plays Tim, and Sarah plays Sarah, etc. Back when they were all in high school the group of friends accidentally woke up/summoned The Operator. Brian moved away and it all stopped. Years later, Brian came back but no one could remember anything. (Or alternately, Brian doesn't even remember leaving.)
One day, Alex gets an idea for a crappy movie about a guy named Brian who moves away and comes back home. Everyone starts filming it again. They go to all their old haunts, all the places they went back when they first caught the Operator's attention. At one point Alex mentions Sarah's "hunting camp." What if a camping trip in the woods is how they awoke him? Now that they're all back together and basically filming what happened, ole Operatorpuss is back.
- Jossed. Tim was seen alive and acting normal in present day during Entry #51. Plus, Interview With Tim.
- Ahem. Read the word reanimated there. Especially if they're under the Operator's control, that would explain their normal mannerisms in "everyday" mode.
- Confirmed. Alex gets stabbed in the chest in the penultimate entry. And if that didn't kill him, he then gets taken by the Operator.
- You can see his face close up if you pause the video, it's not someone we've seen before.
He's simply trying to protect J. As seen in Entry #49, Alex has fits of rage and violence, which caused him to murder a completely random stranger who just so happened to walk by. In the next entry (50), J is going to most likely be meeting up with Alex at the park again. Alex will attempt to kill J, but Masky will pull a Big Damn Heroes moment!
- Confirmed! Although it happened in Entry 52 and it's still not known if he really is on Jay's side.
- Or Blasky, who definitely knows the area - in #41 he manages to beat J back to the car park after his run-in with the Operator in the clearing when he had a 15 minute head start. It also explains how he managed to turn up so quickly at the tunnel after J saw him at the car park (if we assume it took J 5 minutes to get back to the car in a panicked run, bearded man only has 10 minutes to get to the same spot at walking speed if we take him to be an innocent bystander). Basically, this works too well to not be true.
- The bearded guy wasn't in Entry 41- he was in 31. There's no evidence that he was around in 41.
- This really does work strangely well...except that Doctor Who episode came out after the start of Marble Hornets.
- Since repeated number sequences are important throughout the Mythos, it may be that anyone born on a single-digit heavy time (1:11 AM on the first of January, for instance, or the 5th of March at 5:55) might be more likely to attract the Operator.
- Noah from Tribe Twelve was born on November 11th, 11-11.
- Since repeated number sequences are important throughout the Mythos, it may be that anyone born on a single-digit heavy time (1:11 AM on the first of January, for instance, or the 5th of March at 5:55) might be more likely to attract the Operator.
- Jossed, partially. Entries 51 and 52 didn't shown anything involving Blasky/Hoody.
- Well, it's confirmed NOW, but only because we SEE him get killed in #83.
- This makes things a lot scarier... It's bad enough thinking that the Operator is the Big Bad, I don't want him to be bait.
To explain Alex's creepiness, he's cottoned on to something and realises he's in serious danger - he mistakenly killed the guy in entry 49 and left his body for The Operator as a decoy, but he hasn't killed anyone else. He's not actually evil, but he is doing questionable things to keep himself safe. He's not necessarily out to endanger Jay, but he is willing to sacrifice Jay if needs be. He waits in the woods when Jay says he's leaving, because he figures that Jay being on his own would be a decoy for The Operator if needs be.
- Actually an operator is someone who operates machinery or equipment. A doctor who operates on people is called a surgeon.
- Doesn't mean they can't put in red herrings now. And besides, we were never encouraged to think someone got shot, we only hear the sound. Oh, and what about the first time we see Alex going at someone with a rock? A lot of people thought Tim was dead even though we'd already seen him in the present day.
- Well, we know Alex had been watching the entries. Entry #27 reveals where Jay is (or at least that he's still in the Rosswood Park area). Alex had been living in the area for four years and could probably have found the place after a bit of searching. Don't you think he would have come after Jay the minute he saw it?
- Jossed. Alex comes back in Season 3.
- I would agree as far as any series that strictly mentions Marble Hornets goes. For Example: Everyman HYBRID sees Marble Hornets, decides to dress someone up as Slenderman and stick him in the back of some workout videos, their troubles begin. Which means technically Jay is responsible for THEIR entire plight. If you add into that the delicacies of how each other series that ties in to EMH has to be in the same universe/realm as Marble Hornets (even if Troy and Joseph don't wanna do a crossover with them because they wanna be a stand-alone series) - Tribe Twelve, and Compile Truth just to name a couple, and that's already at least a dozen people that Jay screwed up just because he went "Hm... You know what I should do with these videos that have a faceless abomination on them? POST THEM TO YOUTUBE. Think of the internet fame I could have!"
However, as the operator is not interested in taking Alex (permanently that is), Alex was able to escape the mill (possibly even with the Operator's aid), though is now completely insane, and in the next season will act as a darker counterpart to the Maskies/Totheark as he tries to get revenge on Jay and Tim, who are also trying to hunt him down.
It'd be a nice callback if it belonged to Brian.
After all, he'd rather bite a killer shark before he takes more animals to the ark.Of course, the memory reset probably put the process on hold, but there's always the chance that something in his season three experiences will jump-start it right back up...
- In Season 3, Jay has slowly developed into a paranoid mess, refusing to trust Tim whatsoever and constantly looking out for any mysterious observers (Operator or otherwise). By Entry 63, he's acting disturbingly like Alex—constantly filming himself and everything around him, obsessing about the Operator and, just a few Entries before, luring former friends out to dangerous situations. While the latter is to investigate instead of murder, who's to say it'll stay a mere investigation? As Jay grows increasingly uncomfortable with Tim, why couldn't he perform a preemptive strike just in case Tim ended up becoming a threat? Perhaps with a rock?
- Alternatively, the Operator could be be the ghost of Gene Siskel. They're both tall and slim, bald, and know how to dress sharply.
- It's strongly implied that The Operator's hanging around in Jessica's room when Jay is talking to her through the doorway. Word of God from the DVD commentary confirms this.
- Proved wrong as of Entry #60 when Jay stumbles across The Operator in the tunnel and gets within inches of it's nonface.
However, Alex slowly came to learn that victims of the Operator are slowly erased from memory of those who knew them (unless they have contact with the Operator.) and Alex is Genre Savyenough to realize that he's likely going to wind up a victim of the Operator eventually. So he intentionally made sure that Jay was kept away when he summoned the Operator and left the tapes with Jay so there would always be proof of his existence.
- Well, this explains where they get all the tapes from.
Due to it's likely nature as more "behind the scenes footage" taken at the same time as Season 1, it will reveal the truth behind some of the mysteries of the Season 1. Here are (in my mind) some likely subjects.
- Further elaboration on Alex being stalked and the events of entries #1 (at his house), #2 (what happened on the road), #3 (his paranoia), #4 (in the playground), #6 (at his house again), #7 (with Brian in the alley), #8 (paranoia again), #10 (running from the operator),#11 and #13 (in his house).
- Just what was up with the Gazebo from entry #5 and #9
- What happened after the "Encounter" in entry #12
- What was the importance of the house in #16 #18 and #22
- Further elaboration on entry #17 and what Jay was doing there
- Explanation of Tim's behavior in entry #20
- Context and further info regarding entry #22 including the "face", what happened to Seth, and Alex's "confession"
- More info regarding the events of #51 and how the hell Tim got to this state
- This one, at least, is confirmed.
- An exploration of the various images seen in the #26 like Alex seemingly investigating an abandoned building, the guy in the Skull mask, and Jay (or someone with a similar hairstyle) walking down a dark corridor
And while these in my mind are "likely", here is what i believe will be revealed or explored
- What happened to Seth and Sarah
- How Tim became Masky
- The Identity of "Hoodie"
- What was Jay doing at this time
- More on Alex's relation to the Operator
- Confirmation on whether Alex was evil from the start, or whether he was merely driven insane
- What happens to the Operator's victims
- Just who the hell is Totheark
- The first, third, fifth, seventh, and eight ones are at least answered on-screen. In order, Alex killed them and they got taken by the Operator, Hoody turns out to be Brian, Alex believes that by killing everyone linked to the Operator/Marble Hornets will keep the Operator's evil from spreading to more people (whether he was possessed by the Operator is left up to debate), the Operator kills and/or eats them, and totheark (at least one member of TTA, if the multiple user theory is true) is Hoody AKA Brian.
Everyone involved in the whole thing was completely fine up until they started investigating Marble Hornets or filming themselves:
- Jay would be living a completely normal life right now if he had never looked into it
- If he and Alex hadn't started filming themselves 24/7 they wouldn't be aware of the supernatural goings on that happen when they sleep.
This is because The Operator is a quantum boogieman - he only settles into a form when observed, and the only way to observe him is with a camera because of the effects he has on people's minds. If he isn't observed he ceases to exist, or at least ceases to have any power. So the best thing for all the characters to do is just forget about him, but now the seed (the paranoia) has taken hold in their minds they can't, so they keep observing him/it, and keep passing the evidence on for others to look at, and so make it stronger. (Sidetheory - The Operator's purpose and reason for existing is to observe the universe so that it can exist, and being observed himself causes some kind of crazy feedback)
- Alex is a possible exception in that he was being stalked around town by the big guy, but we don't know how long he'd been taping himself for or whether he did something (or watched/read something) that brought the Operator to him.
- Tim is fine now, as of #53. He's been going to the clinic for hypnotherapy/behavioural therapy to make him forget about The Operator or break the habit of trying to look for him, having realised that trying to record it just makes things worse.
- Oh yeah, as theorised above, Jay has been TTA (or part of it) since season 2, which is also why we haven't seen any evidence of him taping himself all the time - either because he hasn't or because TTA deletes that footage so he doesn't know.
- Maybe he specifically targets children who are the desendents/related to those who hung up the criminals and burned them, or the victims of the criminals.
- He is an incarnation of many people, not just one.
- The people who set criminals on fire started with their faces, resulting in them being left featureless before death.
- He knows that he's scarier that way.
- He has no use for eyes, ears, a nose or a mouth, but he needs arms to grab people with and legs to get around.
- He wears a mask.
- It could also be where The Operator keeps his victims he has collected over the years.
- That would explain why the Operator doesn't move when he's sharing the screen with Alex. They bring out the dummy for those occasions.
- The only problem is that the creators said they don't have a dummy. It's always someone in a suit.
- That would explain why the Operator doesn't move when he's sharing the screen with Alex. They bring out the dummy for those occasions.
The Marble Hornets crew have been insistent on calling their friendly neighbourhood abomination the Operator, not Slender Man. There's the link between pressing the zero button on a phone and the Operator's symbol, a zero with an 'x' through it. But now with entry #57, and all this business increasingly centering around an abandoned hospital...oh my God, the Operator.
In the To The Ark Videos Decay, Reminder, Memories, Inquiry, and Classified, and even certain Entries both recently in #57, and even all the way back in Season 1 in Entry ####### there is seen a pair of glowing eyes shining out from the darkness. Not only is this clearly not the Operator, but this is clearly not the Maskies either, though they do seem to be connected, and when To The Ark directly addresses Jay, the eyes appear, which implies they belong to To The Ark.
First of all, it seems strange that the Operator would "empower" the Maskies and To The Ark to have the effect of Teleportation, Video Disruption and other such effects, when he also seems to be working through Alex to "harvest" victims", and that Alex and the Maskie/TTA crew despise Alex and want him dead.
In short, my theory is that this is the sign of a newly emerged Major Player making his presence the series, one who was possibly active in the background throughout the whole thing, but was just acting through the Maskies. This would be a full on Humanoid Abomination opposed to the Operator and to Alex, but also one that may well be just as bad if not worse, and whom also has an interest in Jay as first seen in Season 1 where he seemed to be sadistically hunting and harassing him through both TTA and Tim. He is also shown extremely dangerous, even in comparison to the Operator.
Where Exactly this puts Alex and the Operator is unknown, but it seems clear that Whatever is behind TTA is just itching to make himself known
He knows that Alex has been up to no good for years now. He knows about the existence of the Operator. And he knows what Jay is really up to. In fact, he probably follows the Marble Hornets channel just like the rest of us. And in fact, all this time, he's been conducting an investigation into Alex and the Operator himself. However, Tim's methods have been a lot more subtle and secretive, and as such, he's been obfuscating ignorance in all of his recent interactions with Jay. Jay's a bit of a wild card, a Doom Magnet of sorts, and may not be entirely trustworthy, hence his caution.
Tim is happy to (coyly) share some of what he's uncovered, like the tapes in Season 3, but it's not because he wants to collaborate with Jay. Rather, he shares things that he's sure will goad Jay on. Tim's a bit of a Manipulative Bastard who's using Jay to do the dirty work as well as be the one who gets all the attention from the unnatural forces he's disturbing. Overall, it's win-win for Tim; he furthers his own investigation without putting himself at risk.
- The only problem with this theory is that Tim didn't approach Jay. Jay approached Tim.
Already a bit loony themselves from everything, they set out to get revenge on Alex. However, in an attempt to stop them dead in their tracks, The Operator messes with their heads to the point of insanity. While still heavily anti-Operator and Alex, their way of going about things is very unorthodox and often stopped dead (for obvious reasons.) It could be possible they cannot touch Alex at this point due to The Operator’s control over him (and by extension, them.) Their YouTube account with the disturbing videos and occasional appearance is enough to show Alex and The Operator they are there.
Despite being affected the same way the others were, due to Tim’s preexisting mental issues he is able to revert (albeit for limited periods of time) to his original personality (it is said that if a person simply carries the schizophrenic gene [I suspect this of him], in this case benign, their brain is wired a bit differently than an average person’s, chemically at least.). He varies between the personality The Operator corrupted and his real self. The Operator cannot control this anomaly.
I highly suspect that To The Ark follows Jay’s channel to find updates on Alex and The Operator to see when they need to act. Whenever The Operator shows up or weird stuff goes on, the permanently insane Ark members find Tim and he relapses into Masky for the time the crap with The Operator and Alex is going on. Why would they need Tim? Well, for one he was very close with Brian (and Sarah, probably) and two they are already insane and just want him there.
They were never out to hurt Jay, quite the contrary. When Tim chases him out of the house and hotel (Entries 18 and 33), it is to get him away from danger. They may have the capacity to realize they cannot get to Alex or The Operator, only Jay can. So the ‘LEAD ME TO THE ARK’ means that Jay will lead them to Alex and The Operator. He is their last hope to stop this and fix what has been broken. Even if that chance is getting slimmer and slimmer with each passing day. Their too stone cold crazy to care about the probability of success.
The main question everybody is probably asking is this: why doesn’t our dear Operator just kill the bastards off? Maybe he cannot kill people, as I suspect, and just serves as an influence for others. Maybe he gets a sick pleasure out of seeing all of the chaos. Maybe The Operator itself has an ulterior motive. Or maybe his motives consist of something else entirely.
I'll probably add and improve upon this in time.
- Word Or God has stated that Alex's middle initial is not R. Otherwise, this troper likes the idea.
- It's confirmed that Tim had been stalked by the Operator since he was a child. Whether he had done the same to the others is never stated.
Jay has had three close encounters with The Operator (in the woods, in the hotel, and in the tunnel) and has come away from them with nothing worse than the usual Ominous Cough and Laser-Guided Amnesia. However, when Alex had his close encounter, he came away from it with a changed personality and apparently in The Operator's thrall (given that he attacked Brian, Tim and possibly Seth while The Operator was in the vicinity). Jay has managed to not only escape from The Operator on two seperate occasions, but has actually tried to fight back against him. This is why Totheark and Masky are aiding him (in their own ways): because he can't be controlled, he can be used to fight back in ways that Totheark and Masky either can't or won't.
- Jossed as of Entry #68. Alex confronts Totheark face to face.
Blasky's first (probably) appearance is in Entry 39, which according to Jay is about a week after Entry 35, when Masky is revealed to be Tim. Obviously this doesn't make Masky completely useless, but whatever entity controls Tim when he's Masky decided that it needs an agent whose identity is still hidden, so somehow it "recruited" someone else to be Blasky, this time making sure they dressed so that their identity is even harder to determine.
- The Operator could also be a Daemon of Nurgle. In the penultimate entry, both Alex and Tim refer to the Operator as if they were talking about a disease of some kind, which would be Nurgle's specialty. In addition, the Operator destroys someone by slowly decaying their mind from within, which sounds like Nurgle.
- Confirmed.
The events of Entry #62 follow those of #61. Jay leaves to look for Tim, and eventually finds him with his mask. Masked Tim attacks Jay, eventually overpowering him and dragging him off, at which point “Hoody” walks up and shuts off Jay’s camera. Jay wakes up in an abandoned shack the next day, with his camera in front of him, the batteries almost dead. Tim wakes up outside the shack soon afterward.
The big reveal of these two entries is that “Hoody” has been manipulating Tim and Jay for his/their own ends. Tim is not actually part of totheark; he is simply an Unwitting Pawn like Jay. If, as Entry #61 strongly suggests, “Hoody” and totheark are one and the same, then Entries #18, #19, and ###### (all featuring Masked Tim) suggest that “Hoody” has been pulling strings since season 1. “Hoody” is then likely also the one responsible for the “anonymous tip” from Entry #16, for Masked Tim’s appearances in Entries #18 and #19, and for burning down Jay’s apartment as shown in Entry #25.
He used it to kill his production team after getting fed up with them during production. He accidentally unleashed it on his girlfriend after she brought up bad memories and put him in a bad mood. He's spent most of the series since then trying to find a way to bring her back.
But even then, both Alex and Tim have shown moments of relative sanity and normality. Now why is that? There are already WMG's basing on why Alex is insane. What if Alex made Marble Hornets in order to get The Operator off his back for once in his life? And if that's the case, then it could probably be assumed that Tim's in it for the same reason: to get The Operator out of his life.
Consider the following quote from Entry #59: "And I start getting better. And I can hold steady work, I can function like a normal human being for once in my life." "For once in his life." Again, the implications that The Operator was around during his childhood is unsettling at the very least, so it's possible to say that both Tim was driven past the Despair Event Horizon, if not Alex as well. Tim might have done anything to be "a normal human being", and that could just as well include assisting in Alex's murders, if not even performing a few himself.
As for Entry #56, it's entirely plausible that Tim might have done some things that even Alex might find reprehensible. This implies two things: Even Alex has standards, and that Tim is even worse than Alex could be.
- Masky was attacking Jay up to this point, and attacks him after the events of the entry as well. Even at the hotel, just after Jessica goes missing. I have a feeling if Jessica wasn't with Jay when Alex was going to shoot him, he would have allowed him to get shot. So Three theories come from this.
- Masky/Tim has a crush on Jessica, not much to back this up.
- Jessica is more important then we realize. Either she's Totheark like some WMG.
- Or related to the above, was investigating the operator herself after her roommate Amy goes missing and found some information. Hence the mind wipe by the operator. Maybe she made a deal with Masky/Tim to give him the information and thought Jay had it.
- I mean, look at the guy. There is clearly more going on here than we realize.
One of the trademark signatures of sociopathy is a lack of "fear" responses where one would expect them. Consider how many times Alex never even notices The Operator, even in Season 1, or never runs away when Jay does. He doesn't respond because he's physically incapable of feeling fear; the only reason to run is to make other people think he's scared.
Of course, that leads into the other big trait: being highly deft at manipulation, especially by putting on a public façade. You would think at first that getting increasingly violent is a sign that whatever entity Jay and co. are sensing is driving him insane. In fact, he could be putting on multiple façades to divert people; at first the laid-back, friendly personality that's more typical of the fake sociopath persona, then switching to a more irritable Jerkass, presumably to divert suspicion from his little "film project". After all, he was no less murderous with Brian than he was with that passerby. There's also the implication that everything Alex said about "not knowing what happened" to the cast is a lie. He was quite good at covering his tracks - that is until Jay broke in and stole his tapes, or got some footage of his own.
Of course, the Operator is a central part of the events of the story - but that matters nothing to Alex. To him, The Operator's just a tool, or an excuse, or encouragement to lead as many people as he can to horrible death. The Operator could have brainwashed Alex if he was normal - but then he could have easily done the same to Jay or Jessica. There was no need to do anything to Alex.
And those early videos of him apparently being scared shitless, or constantly checking behind or out the window, or all those notes with crossed circles? That's all fake too; he deliberately does that to cover himself. After all, he knew all along that Jay was posting the tapes online, or that he broke into his house. It was only because Jay had accumulated so much evidence against him that Alex had to resort to try killing him outright.
- The only problem I see is that the early videos that show Alex scared were filmed 3-5 years before Jay started posting them on YouTube, therefore he would have had no idea that they would have ended up in the public eye at any point.
- Any skilled serial killer would know that they need a backup plan. He made sure to keep tapes that highlight his innocence should his tapes be discovered, presumably burning anything incriminating, though he didn't plan on letting anyone see them. This proved useful when Jay asked to see the tapes.
- The only problem I see is that the early videos that show Alex scared were filmed 3-5 years before Jay started posting them on YouTube, therefore he would have had no idea that they would have ended up in the public eye at any point.
- Seconded, the same idea occurred to me when Tim proposed going to the hospital.
- Above person here, it's obviously been {{Jossed.}}
- Seconded, the same idea occurred to me when Tim proposed going to the hospital.
- Hoody's clearly smaller and less bulky than Brian, though.
- Regarding the above, Troy has confirmed that at different points, Hoody was played by different people when the actor wasn't available. Hoody's build might not be as much of a clue as it seems to be.
- Worthy of note: after he fell to the ground, the chest camera stopped moving. He stopped breathing. The chance that someone found him and saved him is slim to none. And if someone did manage to get him to a hospital, they would have kept him there as a high suicide risk, meaning he wouldn't have called or met up with Jay. As much as I don't want to think Tim is dead, I have to agree with this theory.
- Partially Jossed. Tim states that he has been on medication and under almost constant medical scrutiny since he was a young child, long before he met Alex. That's not to say that Alex didn't make it worse, though.
- His last name starts with W, as we saw in his medical records.
- She appears in a rather disturbing way in the two latest totheark videos. Her face is far from someone who is a victim. She was communicating for quite some time with Alex during season 2, who can prove that they weren't up to something?
- It would fit perfectly in Entry #52. She was not going to be shot. Alex would off Jay,then both would walk away as nothing happened. Might be Paranoia Fuel, but it seems too early to dismiss Jessica as one of the main antagonists around here.
- Because not only is it where Jessica first disappeared, but Jay specifically mentioned at the end of #33 that he's not "going back alone."
- Jay has been shown to have memory issues whenever the Operator is involved, as shown in the (currently) most recent Entry #71. During these memory blackouts, he is working for the Operator and, in between uploading #32 and starting #33, he went to the next room and either killed Jessica (the Operator taking care of the body ala Beardy) or handed her over to the Operator (who took her to his Eldritch Location to dispose of later). Then, he sat back down at his desk and resumed filming after the Operator had departed, none the wiser of his actions due to the blackout. Masky was there to try and stop Jay, but failed and decided instead to get revenge for Jessica, hence the attack in Entry #33.
- In Entry #32, she makes reference to how she's been having symptoms of Operator encounter since she was a kid. She is a friend of Amy, who lived in the area near the hospital where Tim went to as a kid. Odds are, Jessica and Tim were at the hospital at the same time as children, and might even have known each other as children.
- Tim doesn't seem to remember her whenever he mentions her, but granted, that doesn't count for much at this point.
- It's entirely possible that the Masky persona did in fact take over, and that is why Tim was able to stand up to the Operator. Those pills wouldn't have had enough time to kick in yet, unless they're magic.
- Alternatively, going along with what someone said about Tim being psychic, that may be what allowed him to survive. Masky could be a split personality created by his psychic powers in order to "fight back" against the monster that was attacking him. In turn, the Operator targeted Tim specifically because he had those powers.
- Think about it. In totheark's video "Session", it shows a puppet hanging upside-down from a tree, which is part of Odin's mythology. He is associated with magic, death, and fear. He's also a trickster god. In totheark's videos, there is a particularly disturbing image of a one-eyed doll, and "hanging from trees" is mentioned more than once. Since Odin is associated with The Wild Hunt, it would explain why the Operator is so ruthless in tracking down the crew...
- In turn, this may mean that totheark is Loki, and he just can't quit trolling long enough to explain himself clearly to Jay.
- Added bonus: Jay might be Fenris, and Loki is waiting for a chance to turn him loose on Odin/the Operator and touch off Ragnarok. Jay has shown at times that he's not completely terrified by the Operator...
- The recent entries surely make it seem so, seeing as he actually attacked Tim over a tape.
- Theory: Masky and/or Hoody have been keeping Jessica somewhere isolated, either as a hostage or in hopes of keeping her safe. The tape will show them with her, leading Jay to renew his focus on finding her, and probably go to Tim in hopes of extracting the information from him, even if it means resorting to Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique
- Alternate theory: It shows Hoody's true identity.
- Jossed Entry #76 implicates Tim in Jessica's disappearance/ murder a la Operator.
- Not quite. The tape shows that Alex, after failing to kill Jay in Entry 52, had located them at the Hell Hotel. The fact that Jay had lost his memory and was posting Youtube videos about his location may have been a hint. Hoody and Masky got there first and tried to evacuate Jay as only they can. Alex used his gun to drive Hoody away from Jessica, and took her to the tunnel to kill her. She escaped but then the Operator got her anyway.
- Possibly Jossed, as the one time we've heard Hoody speak (Entry #73, Hoody says "Oh shit" when Alex comes down from the attic), it is clearly a male voice.
- Almost certainly Jossed. In Entry 79, Hoody has a coughing fit which seems masculine.
- Absolutely Jossed. Hoody is Brian.
- Jay, at some future point, will be abducted by the Operator again and taken to his Eldritch Location the same way Tim was. However, when he is released from it, he will be in the past (we have seen that abduction can affect one's perception of time, so it is not unreasonable to assume that the passage of time is altered for the person being affected and, therefore, the flow of time's direction could also be affected). Determined to Set Right What Once Went Wrong, he becomes Hoody and, recruiting Masky during one of Tim's episodes, sets out to prevent himself from getting involved in the situation by scaring himself off the trail i.e. Masky's attack on Jay in the house. Failing at that, he decides to kill Alex before he can hurt Jessica. Agaom, he fails to alter the events. Coming to realize that he is living in a Stable Time Loop, he begins acting as he knows that Hoody will i.e. stealing Tim's medicine, leaving the tape for his past self to find, etc. in hopes of putting himself into a position to fix things after his past self is taken.
- Jossed. Hoody is Brian.
- She is implied to have been killed by Alex in Entry 76, but all we see is her body being taken by the Operator and it is unclear if she is dead or unconscious. And yet, what is possibly the hardest totheark code to crack from earlier says that she's still out there- and bear in mind, totheark was the one to call Tim out for lying about Jessica's fate.
- She appears to be breathing right before she is taken, which hints that she was alive at the time.
- That COULD just be Jessica May being a sub-par actress though.
- Not sure what it's worth, but in Entry 84, Tim says at the end that at least three people are dead because of Alex. Assuming those three are the man from the tunnel in Entry 49, Jay, and Brian, then that means that Tim at least isn't considering Jessica to be confirmed dead, but rather an unknown status like Seth, Sarah, and Amy.
- Furthermore, some fans are speculating that the message from Quadrant "Whom am I? Am I the third?" was Hoody/Brian predicting his own death. If this is the case, then Jessica would almost certainly be alive, since the first and second deaths would be Bruce and Jay respectively.
- Finally, again from Entry 84, now that Hoody is confirmed to be Brian, we know that at least one person who was taken by the Operator while lying on the ground unconscious has reappeared, albeit not in the best of mental health.
- Confirmed in the last Entry.
- She appears to be breathing right before she is taken, which hints that she was alive at the time.
- Jay is showing signs of going off the deep end and has become a full on Unreliable Narrator at this point. Tim is probably gonna use the Twitter account to either try to contact him or warn the fans in the future that Jay can't be trusted anymore. Of course, this is assuming that Jay hasn't changed the account info.
- Close. Entry #77 was apparently uploaded by Tim, and includes the message that He Did What He Had To Do because Jay was putting them both in danger.
- Jay is once again up to his old tricks, stalking people and posting the results online where anyone can see them. Tim isn't stupid, he's used the YouTube channel before, and he apparently didn't bother changing the password. He knew Jay would likely post on it again if he ever escaped, and intentionally left it as it was as a failsafe. Now that he knows Jay is out and about (and that Hoodie helped him), he's been baiting them both, pretending to be unaware, and is leading the two straight into a trap at the school. Hopefully, to where Alex, Jay and Hoodie can take each other out.
- Confirmed. In Entry 81, which was footage from the chestcam of Tim exploring the college, he actually picks up a shot of Jay in the basement area.
- Considering that Jay's mental state is becoming more comparable to Alex, it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to think that Jay might jump off the slippery slope just as Alex did. Worst case scenario would be that Jay starts the story over, killing people as a thrall to The Operator and taking Alex's role as The Heavy in the process. Whether this means that Alex will be replaced or simply killed off is up in the air, as well as what this means for Tim.
- Jossed. We can see Jay's dead body in Entry 83.
- To be more specific, in Quadrant, there are images of Jay watching Benedict Hall and holding the note directing him there. When these images are shown, you can here a muffled voice saying "Do not do this" and "Hold off", among other things. Hoody may not have intended for Jay to enter Benedict Hall and get shot, but it seems that cryptic Youtube videos aren't the best way to warn someone of imminent danger.
- Assuming this is the case, and he is alive, then there is still the matter of why he would let himself be taken to the Operator's realm.
- It is also possible that Hoody/Brian only tried climbing out the window because he was confused from the Teleport Spam (to say nothing of possible time and reality warping) that just happened, and wasn't thinking straight. This is unlikely, though, as Tim isn't slowed down by the spatial warping (with the exception of the parts where he receives Mind Rape in the hospital).
- Jossed. In Entry 86, Alex shows Brian's corpse to Tim. Apparently, he was still alive when taken, so he got to die a slow death in the Operator's realm.
Perhaps the Operator is simply an older or more patent specimen willing to take his time and play with his prey over months and years, letting the victims slowly fall into madness until they can be quickly and effortlessly be dispatched. The Slenderman on the other hand is more about instant gratification, not willing to wait more than a few weeks before dragging his targets away, still kicking and screaming.
- In his 2020 watchalong, Tim confirms that this line is meant to be a reference towards the other Slenderseries.
- Talk about Accidental Truth!
Its name is Exactly What It Says on the Tin. It doesn’t hurt people physically, it operates on them like a doctor/surgeon would to restore their wounds, and its methods are so effective, it can even undo the damage from fatal wounds. Back when he was still in college filming Marble Hornets, Alex grew increasingly more agitated and set about murdering his entire cast. His methods back then were pretty crude, as they largely involved taking them to a secluded location and hitting them with a blunt object. While such methods could certainly be fatal, they weren't immediate, nor was healing them outside the Operator's ability. When Alex attempted to kill Tim, Brian, and Jay, the Operator saved them without Alex ever realizing it.
So why was Alex dithering around for so long in Season 2 when he could have killed Jay at any time? He was trying to understand why. How did Jay, and by extension, Tim, still live? What would it take to kill them? Did the Operator have anything to do with it? There were so many questions he needed to answer. So he kept Jay where he could see him while he conducted his own private investigation, all the while making up a BS excuse that he was trying to find Amy. Unfortunately for Alex, Jay's impatient meddling and the Maskies' attacks drove him to desperation, so he decided to just shoot everyone and hope for the best. This is also why he smashed Beardy's face in with a rock in Entry #49; to make it absolutely certain that he stayed dead.
And true to form, every time somebody died, the Operator swooped in, brought them to its Dark World, and has since been doing its work on them. How effective are its methods? Who knows? It may or may not be able to bring people back from the dead. For all we know, all the characters and not just Jessica may in fact still be alive! But because they had their memories wiped as a natural side effect of the Operator's methods (or in some cases, had their minds completely warped), they weren't able to contact the protagonists and tell them what's what. Remember, Jay couldn't find any news of Beardy's death or disappearance; maybe because as far as anyone in town knew, he never died or disappeared at all.
As for the Operator's motivation? It's a mystery. It may have benign intentions and just doesn't understand how much harm it's really doing. Or maybe it's intentionally doing all of this to screw with everyone involved while sewing the seeds of chaos and paranoia.
- In addition to this, Tim was shot in the leg in Entry 86, but he seems fine in this Entry. Trosephim has been good about that in the past, having Masky limp after Alex broke his leg before.
- Another oddity, about the mask specifically, is that in Entry 67, Tim is not happy to see the mask and tries to leave it in the woods, so the idea that he would be sure to take it on his road trip with Jay an entry later doesn't make sense.
There is a chance that the events recorded in Entry 87 took place very shortly after 76. The tape in 76 was edited to give the appearance of Jessica being killed and then taken by the Operator. In reality, Tim had relocated her (possibly without notifying Hoody/Brian) to a different area entirely, set her up with a psychiatrist, and was helping her "block it" as he had told Alex could be done. Tim was being truthful when he said Jay had moved away; Jay had not died yet, and had relocated far away while he was uploading Season 2. If this entry had taken place in the present, then it wouldn't make sense for Jessica to still be so out of the loop that she couldn't see the video of Jay being shot. Tim kept Jay in the dark about Jessica's survival because he knew that Jay would pass the information on to the viewers, and thus Alex. Finally, Tim ditched his mask in the dumpster in the hopes of starting a normal life himself, which he sort of had before Jay came back (also, Hoody found the area, found out Tim was a LIAR about Jessica, and retrieved the mask).
Either by being rescued, or getting out as Masky, Tim survived the end of Entry 86, and posted this old video. With Alex gone, it was safe to tell the world that Jessica is alive, and this entry also confirmed that Tim himself was alive. As much as it can be in the Marble Hornets universe, everything really is fine.
While Tim did indeed stop Alex and finally brought this whole ordeal to a close, he didn't survive from his wounds and bled out on top of the staircase inside Benedict Hall. His body and camera were eventually found, possibly by the police or someone else coming to investigate the very loud conflict coming from inside. They found the camera and, after viewing the footage, managed to link it back to the other entries.
Now of course, this raises the question: Who uploaded the footage? There are a few possibilities:
- Whoever found Tim and the camera uploaded it. Perhaps whoever found it was a fan of the series, and after hearing a conflict in Benedict Hall and remembering the previous entries, went inside and found Tim and the footage. They uploaded it by either hacking into the Youtube account, or the less stupid option, Tim had the password for both accounts written down on a scrap of paper in his pocket.
- Jessica. If Entry #87 DID happen, then it happened prior to #86, and Jessica never believed Tim's story and decided to follow him. But by the time she got to Benedict Hall, the fight already happened and Tim was already dead. Jessica was able to upload it (going by the theory that Tim had the password on him), and made it look like the footage from before the fight happened after, so that nobody would know Tim died.
- The Operator. I don't know HOW, but it's an idea.