Follow TV Tropes

Following

WMG / Neverending Nightmares

Go To

Thomas is either already a serial murderer, or about to become one.
His first victim being his sister (who he had incestuous feelings for, but whether she reciprocated them we'll never know), either literally, or he thinks her death is his fault somehow. He's reliving her death in increasingly violent ways either in his mind alone or on women who remind him of his sister (generally long-haired brunettes).

Thomas has been institutionalized in the past, or at least has some experience with asylums.
With the Thomas of "Broken Dreams" suffering from suicidal depression and tendencies toward self-harm, it's not unlikely for him to have been committed to a mental hospital - and he might actually still be there, given that his hospital room in the ending is almost identical to the wards encountered in the nightmare asylum. Plus, if the suicide attempt that put him in a coma occurred at the asylum, it might also cast his nightmare of Gabriella as an unsympathetic psychiatrist in a much harsher light: both the dream and the attempt could have been inspired by the fear that Gabby might start to hate him ,or abandon him out of shame.

The Thomas of "Wayward Dreamer" probably hasn't been committed, given that he's a) a kid, and b) nowhere near as troubled as the other two versions. However, it's possible that he ended up paying a visit to one at some point when he was younger: maybe a relative of his was institutionalized, or maybe his father worked there as a doctor and brought young Thomas along for a visit - Gabby later incorporating some of the experience into the games she played with Thomas, hence the scene where one of Gabby's dolls is encountered sitting at a psychiatrist's desk. Or, perhaps Gabby herself was brought to the asylum in order to be treated for catatonia.

"Final Descent" Thomas probably hasn't been committed either, given that he's encountered recovering from the depression in his own house, so it's possible that the asylum scenes were just Thomas's interpretation of his wife's increasingly frustrated attempts to snap him out of his depression.

Adult Thomas' background
There is one scene in the game where Thomas wakes up, horrified that he's sleeping with his sister, only for Gabby to clarify that she's his wife. The way Thomas immediately calms down, this suggests this sort of mistake might have been a common occurrence after every time he has nightmare. The reason behind this is because when they were younger, Thomas and Gabby used to hang out with each other so much her parents practically considered Thomas an actual son, as seen in one of the portraits with Thomas looking conspicuously out of place with the rest of the family. Taking this into account, it could explain a few things. Thomas' birth parents might have been abusive and/or neglectful of Thomas, causing him to gravitate more towards Gabby's family. Unfortunately, this caused some negative effects to his psyche, as he would feel intense guilt and disgust with himself whenever he had feelings of attraction towards Gabby despite knowing full well they were not related at all. Gabby often calling herself his "little sister" probably did not help matters in the slightest.

Thomas might have gotten over it as the two grew up and eventually married, but sometimes he relapse back into that thinking to where Gabby had to vocally remind him he never even had a sister. It might have been frequent enough that Gabby treats it as a minor annoyance.

  • The house where you move around as child Thomas has two childrens' rooms, with a common bathroom inbetween. It's possible that while he was never formally adopted, Thomas was taken by Gabby's parents to live with them, or at least that he stayed with them so often they had a bedroom set up for him.

For a game riddled with symbolism, each and every thing is tied closely to Thomas and Gabby, so this troper has been looking closely into the symbolism, and trying to connect any dots, and the result is something rather unexpected.

The path for the game is fairly linear for half of the story, and once you reach the branch, all of the decisions seem fairly miniscule. (For example, the decision that puts you into either Broken Dreams or Final Descent is a matter of falling off the ledge or going back inside the hospital.) This has led this troper to speculate that perhaps all three endings hold some truth to them.

Given the nature of the game, it's not a far stretch to assume that each ending could possibly be another nightmare, or that every single sequence of the game is a nightmare, with all three endings revealing the true nature of Thomas and Gabby's relationship.

  • "Wayward Dreamer" Thomas is a child, and Gabby is his sister. This ending would come first of the three. Gabby and Thomas were siblings (with Thomas possibly being adopted into Gabby's family), and Thomas developed feelings for his sister. He was quite protective of her, even as a child, and this ending would start the descent into the more romantic aspects of their relationship.
  • "Final Descent" Thomas is much older, and this ending establishes his relationship with Gabby as her husband. Thomas eventually mustered up the courage to tell Gabby that he loved her (as more than a sister), and she seemingly reciprocated these feelings. Sometime along the way, the two married. However, the two tried to have children, with most of the children either being born prematurely with birth defects or simply dying in utero. This has put a constant strain on Thomas's mind, and as such, he asked Gabby to pretend that they weren't related. That way, he could feel more confident trying to have a child. This symbolism fits into the aspect of the giant baby monsters that he faces, as well as the womb that Thomas ends up in near the end. During this ending, it implies that Thomas had been institutionalized, and the final shot solidifies why. The two had a daughter, named after Gabby, that had survived much longer than any of their other children had. They had had enough time to bond with her, but, unfortunately, due to the true relationship of her parents, she fell ill to a birth defect and died. Thomas took her death particularly close to home, and this was potentially the start of his descent into madness. This ties into the doll enemies (as they symbolize the relationship he never got to have with his daughter), as well as giving better context to the younger Gabby enemies you face (as well as the Gabby enemies you face throughout the game in general). (However, dependent on the ending path, some of the Gabby enemies might also be manifestations of Gabby as Thomas's sister.) Gabby noticed that he was starting to refuse to spend time with her, and she eventually decides to leave him, because she wants him to move on.
  • "Broken Dreams" Thomas is the last in the sequence, with him having attempted suicide, to the dismay of Gabby. In this ending, the relationship between the two is never specified. Thomas is in a hospital, and the level leading to this ending has him falling off the edge of the land of the hospital, implying that he slipped over the edge and decided to attempt suicide. He was more than likely a client there, as the effect of his daughter's death had already taken its toll on his psyche. He faces other patients because he fears that he is just like one of them. He also faces an evil version of himself, because he sees himself as the reason why his daughter died and Gabby left him. All of these things finally take their toll, and he attempts to kill himself. Gabby's sobbing implies that she still cares about Thomas, although whether she is choosing to stay his sister or she still has romantic feelings for him is left up in the air.

Long story short, the relationship between Gabby and Thomas is preserved throughout all three endings of the game. The deformed babies Thomas faces are manifestations of the previous children they had lost, the dolls are manifestations of the relationship Thomas never got to have with his daughter, the younger Gabby enemies are manifestations of his daughter haunting him (or manifestations of his past relationship with his wife), the asylum patients are manifestations of Thomas's fear of going insane, and the Thomas doppelgangers are manifestations of his guilt over his daughter's death and his divorce/separation from his wife. The kiss on the cheek he gives Gabby in "Wayward Dreamer" symbolizes the start of his romantic feelings for her, the womb he ends up inside of in "Final Descent" is a delusion of Gabby's womb (as part of his guilt for the deaths of their previous children) and symbolizes the start of his descent into depression and madness, and his apparent suicide attempt is the only non-symbolic part of the endings (as he has literally become a depressed shell of a man, due to constantly fearing becoming a monster through insanity or letting Gabby down again).

Thomas has lost multiple loved ones and finally snapped
As a child, Thomas accidentally killed his sister, Gabby, leading to his institutionalization, and the trauma from this experience followed him into adulthood in the form of recurring nightmares. He married a woman, coincidentally also named Gabrielle, in part because she reminded him of his sister, and the two either had a daughter or were going to. Either while in utero or sometime after the fact, their daughter died, and this exacerbated Thomas' PTSD, leading to the nightmares becoming worse and more frequent. As he was unable to move on from their daughter's death, Gabrielle left him, and this was when Thomas hit his breaking point and began increasingly extreme acts of self-harm, which ultimately led to his hospitalization. Gabrielle received the news of what happened and rushed to his side, where she found him unconscious from shock and blood loss and begged him to wake up, which Thomas heard as whispers while his unconscious mind took him through yet more nightmares. After finally making peace with everything that's happened, he eventually wakes up to see her at his side.

Top