Alright now, since this is a documentary of our real investigation of our real situation, um, I wanted to put this in here, I wanted to put this in this video and, uh, explain to whoever might be watching this at the end that... that um, I personally think that it's bullshit how we're just sitting here waiting and just beating around the bush about this shit. Clearly this is not just some dickhole messing with us, clearly this is not just some man in a suit. This is something soooo much worse.
A series of Youtube videos based around The Slender Man Mythos. Three guys; Vince, Evan and Jeff set up a fitness and exercise video-blog, in which they discuss the best ways to exercise, the best things to eat and the best ways to defend yourself from anyone who attacks you. Vince and Evan do the talking, Jeff's their camerman. But while they're filming, there seems to be a weird gentleman, a bit on the tall side—and as events escalate, a young Princeton student finds herself swept up into their situation as well...Anyone new to Everyman HYBRID should use this timeline to guide them through the story, since the full story is spread across two YouTube channels, Two Twitter feeds, Twitpic pictures, some archived live webcats, a blog, a forum, and even a few YouTube posts on unrelated channels. And take a look at the game's wiki, which has useful things like transcripts of the videos.If you want to do an Archive Binge without any guidance:
A basement in an abandoned house in the woods in the middle of the day leads to below a pier in the middle of the night.
"77of76.avi" reveals that the guys were apparently trapped wandering around the woods, no matter what direction they took they ended up at a large tree in the middle of a dead field of grass, a short walk away from the abandoned house. They couldn't reach the house, of course.
The basement somehow is connected to the crawlspace of Alex's and Jeff's house. The connection was one way (to the basement), and vanished two days later.
"The property" contains a mix-and-match area of the main characters' houses, including: Jeff's pantry, Vinny's bathroom, Evan's basement, Vinny's basement, Steph's apartment and more, and that is just the start of the weirdness.
Alternate Reality Game: Fan interaction and investigation are much bigger in this story than any of the other Slenderblogs.
Always a Bigger Fish/Big Damn Villains: From a Corenthal Report found in one of the Boxes. "Apparently the Reverend didn't know the Man doesn't share."
Anachronic Order: The aftermath of "Episode 6: Healthy Eating" is posted before the video showing the event. The rest of the "hidden" videos continue this.
Anyone Can Die: Started off with side characters and worked its way up. The only known survivors are Corenthal, Vinnie and Evan, who wants to die but no longer can - though considering some of the hints dropped in previous "hidden" episodes and documents found by ARGers, the rest may not have been Killed Off for Real.
Apocalyptic Log: Doctor Corenthal's reports - and the series itself, especially once HABIT takes off the kid gloves.
Ax Crazy: Evan pulls it here, although we don't know for sure if it's canon. What is canon is Evan trying to clobber Slendy with a bat. Which is probably even crazier, though awesome.
Evan. He’s charged at Slenderman with a baseball bat and a knife before. He's also survived a close encounter with the Rake right as it was attacking after whispering its mantra AND thrown The Rake out of a fucking second story window.
Rabbit #052 (AKA FullRoundAction) was unable to participate in Trial #6 due to his hometown outlawing protests. However, he also possess the next box to advance the story. He'll only open it if he's let through to Trial #7.
Itworked. HABIT was thoroughly unamused. Still no word on the box's contents though.
The truth? 052 never had the box to begin with. HABIT allowed the other Rabbits to vote on whether he'd remain, and he was voted out 6 to 1for cheating his way through. The backlash to FRA's actions on Unfiction was so immense that Out-of-game Jeff had to post about it, outraged at their behavior. Jeff actually applauded FRA for making things interesting.
Black Screen of Death: One of the effects caused by otherworldly occurrences. It happens a lot in "Alex" and also covers up the majority of what happened during "The Hidden Videos".
A Day in the Life. Nothing happens except for a pleasant hike through the woods, and a brief exploration of an abandoned house... until we see short clips of extra footage spliced into later videos, that start adding a more sinister flavor to the day. Then there's the larger chunk of footage from the thumb-drive found in the episode "Jeff."
"In which I assume the role of a 13 year old MySpace girl" should be one, but it's plagued with video and audio distortions.
A Day with Green Feathers, excepting the last minute.
Brown Note: "The Hidden Videos." It becomes clear that the hybrids are really not meant to see them.
Car Fu: Attempted in "Ashen Waste". It doesn't work.
The Call Knows Where You Live: The girlfriend of one of the characters has gone missing, sparking a road trip in search of her.
Cerebus Callback: "A Day In The Life" was a Breather Episode of sorts, until hidden clips in future videos paint a more sinister tone on the whole day.
Cerebus Rollercoaster: The first half of the series bounces between lighthearted and dark. The first few episodes are funny and lighthearted, but then a sinister shadow makes an appearance in "Upper Body and Arms", and then the first of the "hidden" videos shows up before "Healthy Eating" sees the Slender Man make his first real appearance...and then they blow off his appearance as a break-in and remain lighthearted... until "Joke's Over", where the series plunges facefirst into the dark.
Chekhovs Classroom: Fan speculation has it that the lesson on how to fight off an attacker with a knife is one of these. Like, perhaps Evan himself. Possibly pays off in "Slender Man." Whether or not this is in canon however is another question entirely.
Chekhov's Gift/It May Help You on Your Quest: On Christmas Alex gives Jeff an air-horn, much to everyone's bemusement. The next episode, he uses it to scare off an attacker.
The Corruption: Evan's forearm gets clawed by the Rake in "One Step Forward, Two Steps Back." In every video since, the bandages begin to cover more and more of his arm. In "Noah," the bandages cover from wrist to shoulder. Unknown if this is an infection, psychological compulsion, or just Evan making a fashion statement.
In "Cops Checked, No Body" the Rake makes a prominent appearance. It has since been shown to be harassing Jeff's brother Alex.
A letter was found indicating a young Vince may have watched Candle Cove, and the group's attempt to watch the videos hidden from them caused them to revert to a child like state, talking to a black video screen about how they wanted to find the hidden treasure. The fans have taken to calling the dimension with the Alien Geometries noted above as "The Candleverse", in refrence to Candle Cove.
Furthermore, the letter indicates new answers may be found in Centralia.
Elsewhere in the Slenderverse, Noah received an envelope with purple duct tape. Its contents included a burned letter not unlike the Corenthal reports mentioning Milo, a burned Polaroid of "Milo, Mary, and Dr. C," a postcard with "Not an Observer" written in vaguely HABIT-like handwriting, and what may be another part of the Centralia note.
According to the actor of Noah and many youtubers, Noah also made an unintentional appearance in Rabbit #84's Trial 4 video. Adam Rosner later confirmed this was in character Noah, presumably to simplify things.
Evan made an appearance seemingly as himself in the TJA Projects as well when the two main characters get lost in Jersey and ask a tank-enamored Evan for directions.
In the video "Noah," not only does Noah make an appearence, but so does the current trio of Dark Harvest.
Danger Takes A Back Seat: Slenderman appears in the back seat of Evan's car, but the boys don't realize it's not Daniel, their fake Slendy.
Vince: Is that Daniel in the backseat of Evan's car, dude?
In Jessie, Evan goes toe to toe with the Rake, (mostly off-screen, unfortunately) THRASHES it, and finally throws it out of a second story window.
Don't Go in the Woods: There is much tree symbolism. After the episode "Joke's Over", the crew has hopefully learned their lesson. In a later episode, The Call proved to be too strong and they went back out in the woods anyway. The results were mixed.
The non-canon video "Slender Man" shows Evan reaching this point, but by "Welcome to the Ark" he's normal again. These two are entries to a horror contest and probably non-canon, but still should be considered part of the overall theme.
Evan even more so in "Ryan & the SEVENTRIALSOFHABIT" He's talking to nothing just like in Slender Man, however, it's a lot more vicious and it seems to be coming from another personality. He even goes after Jeff at the end with a giant knife. Being the target of HABIT's possession and murdering Jeff while possessed didn't help things, eventually driving him to suicide via taking on the Rake.
End of the World as We Know It: "Welcome to the ARK" suggests that this may eventually happen. Although the video appears to be non-canon.
Foreshadowing: Evan's dream lab entry towards the events of "Joke's Over." Specifically, his nightmare of following voices into the woods and finding 'bags.'
Four-Man Band: Various clues in the series, such as the notes in the copy of "Everyman" that they found, hint that there is an explicit one.
The Hero/The Chick: Vince, possibly, being the most interested in recording what happens and continuing the series, as well as holding the group together.
The Smart Guy: Jeff, doing the detective work and trying the hardest to figure things out.
The Big Guy: Evan, for being the first to fight, as well as being unusually strong and experienced with martial arts.
The Chick?: Steph is presumably part of the group (there being a Steph in the original Mining Town Four), but she doesn't easily fit into the tropes above. She could be argued to be The Chick due to her close emotional bond with Evan and the fact that her nickname is "Damsel."
Gallows Humor: In "December & early January," the Damsel rather soberingly says that she doesn't think the Slender Man has any weaknesses to exploit. This prompts Evan to make a crack about how Ramming Always Works provided you attach knives to the front of the car with bats spinning around and Alex doing a handstand on top.
Genre Savvy: 'You could always wait in the car; that always ends up well right?', 'Noo, fuck no.'
Gilligan Cut: When the Rake is discovered to be lurking in someone's closet, the protagonists briefly consider piling things in front of the door as a barricade. A loud snarling voice starts issuring from the closet, scaring the hell out of all of them. One jump cut later, the door is CHAINED SHUT.
One forum poster questioned why there would be a "Free Drink Refills" sign in a mental ward, leading another to suggest that was the name of the hospital's band. Guess what we learn in the Hospital Fire sound file.
Haunted Technology: Seriously, what is up with the creepy tape Alex has of his mother's voice in 'One step forward, two steps back'? The Slendy-esque distortion and ambience in the background doesn't help make it any less unsettling.
Later, the same applies to the real one. Big example in "I'm Okay", where he's quite literally on the other side of the grille, and Jeff looks right past him.
Some of the videos and edits in the series were not uploaded by the gang, and are somehow invisible to them. They at first think viewers are trolling them about their existence. When they get a fan to send them the collected "hidden" videos it doesn't end well.
The guys abducting the Damsel from her mental hospital, taping the whole thing, and posting it online. Then she tells them that she was going to be released later that day anyway.
Vince in "Not dead yet", oh so much. To clarify: he decides to check Evan's house after Jeff's been missing for a week, being last seen there. Evan is obviously evil by then, but he refuses to take any weapons with him, giving the viewers some bullshit "didn't feel right taking weapons with me" excuse. He also goes to the house at night for some inexplicable reason, and once inside refuses to turn on any lights he comes by. He then freaks out at seeing the bloodied chain and Jeff's shoe, and decides to "get out of there" immediately, which was seemingly the first smart decision he'd had that day. And he almost follows through with it, but then, mere feet away from the door to the outside, he hears some noise in one of the rooms... and of course he charges in, yelling "Evan!" as he does so. Well, at least he uncovered a ton of information the fans had no way of knowing before, like Jeff probably being not that well.
Infant Immortality: Horribly averted when Evan recalls HABIT eating his and Steph's baby.
It Won't Turn Off: In "Isolation", Evan's car radio keeps playing "I've Got You Under My Skin" no matter what he does.
Jerk Ass: In "Isolation" HABIT keeps turning the radio in Evan's car back on.
Kill 'em All: Has a considerably higher body count than other Slender Man fare. Noted in the description of "Twenty-four months" listing everyone they lost in the last two years.
The Slender Man is represented with the standard audio/video distortion, although this series seems to define it more rigidly than other Slendervlogs; for example, in Marble Hornets and Tribe Twelve, it seems to signal some sort of malevolent presence in general, but watching Everyman HYBRID would imply that the distortions mean that Slendy is definitely there and close by. For example, in one video, He's right behind Vinny, but the video and audio only distort when His face is in the shot.
Lighter and Softer: Make no mistake, this is a dark series, but in comparison to Jay's solo quest to find answers, the HYBRIDs have teamwork and numbers going for them, and there are a few glimpses of hope every now and then, despite their many nemeses' interference. But it still gets very, verydark, before throwing off the trope entirely by ":D" at the very latest.
The episode "Jeff". At 0:34, they knock on the door to Jeff's house, while some funny coloured bars start to appear on the screen. Then the door opens, showing Jeff shrouded in darkness, with what seems to be purple tape on his mouth and a second figure shrouded in darkness behind him. Then, a distorted sound plays, the screen goes static-y and the video seems to have gone back to 0:33; they knock again, but Jeff's brother answers this time.
The ending of the episode "The Corenthal Connection (Jessie's Back)". It's fair to say that EverymanHYBRID is one of the screwier Slender Man vlogs out there.
This and this; both are entries to a horror contest, so they're probably not canon, but it doesn't make them less pants-wettinglyOh terrifying.
In "The property", Vinnie's travels through the various homes of the characters. In order he goes from Baldpate —>to Jeff's pantry which is joined with his own half bathroom —> Jeff's basement to which he walks to Jeff's upstairs bathroom —> Vinnie's upstairs bathroom —> Evan's upstairs hallway —> wakes up in his basement —>Steph's apartment —> Evan's basement —> Evan's upstairs hallway again —> a sanctuary that Corenthal created —> Evan's upstairs again and finally Baldpate.
Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: In "Damsel" the Everyman HYBRID crew breaks Damsel out of the mental ward... on the day she was going to be released. Also counts as an Unwanted Rescue and possibly a Crowning Moment of Funny. Subverted in that as far as anyone working there remembers, she was released days before the rescue, and the guard they fought died in a freak accident before the event as well.
The actors actively interact with the viewers, and often leave clues (in the real world) which are designed for the viewer to access and put online themselves.
The ninja tweets from our ALLCAPS pal HABIT. They're getting increasingly more directed at us
During the meet up on 11/21 they revealed they're aware of everything, including the forums, IG. Think about that for a minute...
Taken up to eleven on 1/5. HABIT tweeted that he is aware of certain IRC rooms run by Hybrids, more specifically the Rabbits from the Seven Trials. (Specifically, he is aware of certain people mocking him in these rooms, the wisdom of this course of action notwithstanding.)
In "Reunion," there's one shot in which you can see Slendy behind Vince while he reads out the poem. He sticks in the background for a while, causing distortion... then the camera leaves Vince and comes back and Slendy's missing. This is one of the more worrying parts of the video.
"Not dead yet" is a pretty intense one. Vince goes to Jeff's house - at night, which is never a good idea - armed only with a camera and a flashlight. The entire entry is spent waiting for either an Ax Crazy Evan to pop out or The Rake to attack, but nothing happens. At least, until the very end, when we see Slendy poking his head around a corner.
Notice This: In a non-video-game example, purple tape is often used to draw attention to some things.
"Alex", when the Rake growls after Evan says nothing's there
Fans tend to do this whenever a video opens with Vince being teary or shaken.
Only Sane Man: Vince is portrayed as this at first, with Jeff running off and Evan being... Evan. Later, Evan points out that he's the only one who realizes that they're dealing with the real Slendy, not some fake.
Police Are Useless: Apparently, the cops provided zero help in looking for Jess.
The Power of Friendship: The HYBRID team credits this as well as their fanbase for keeping them sane throughout all this crap.
Precision F-Strike: "What the fuck was that?" Said after a particularly Mind Screwey moment in "The Corenthal Connection"
Reality Is Unrealistic: "Damsel" has been the shark-jumper for a handful of viewers based on how the mental institution is obviously a school instead of a hospital and Jeff's ability to tackle a security guard unhindered. In fact, many mental institutions look exactly like what we see in the film, some are actually built into schools, and many security guards aren't well trained, if at all, to defend themselves up close. Regardless of training, self-defense also doesn't tend to work well when the attacker charges full-speed before being spotted.
Red Eyes, Take Warning: In the "Slender man" video, Evan has rather eerie red eye when he's talking to apparently nobody as well as when he attacks Vince.
Red Oni, Blue Oni: The Rake and the Slender Man respectively come across as this. Compared to Slendy's more drawn out and subtle M.O., the Rake so far seems to prefer taking out people fairly quickly with physical harm over chipping away at sanity, and its presence apparently doesn't ruin audiovisual fidelity. It does cause Black Screens of Death though. This describes HABIT and Slender Man even better, made even more apparent by the tweets between the two. HABIT is openly Ax Crazy, where as the Slender Man comes off as quite reserved.
Reincarnation: The single most popular theory of what the central plot actually is, titled by fans as "The Iteration Theory", is that Steph, Vince, Jeff, and Evan are incarnations of four individuals of the same name and personalities shown to have existed at least as far back as in the 70s. These four have some unexplained connection to the supernatural and are in a continuous conflict with the monsters in the series. The main four were also shown to reside in a "Candleverse" as archetypal characters (evidence suggesting names such as the Firebrand, Voyeur, and Guardian) who retain all the memories, presumably existing between reincarnations and before being reborn and starting the whole thing over again.
Resurrective Immortality: A subset of this theory (the "Death Iteration Theory") is that throughout the series, the main characters have died multiple times, only to be saved or instantly restored (several times the characters looked to have been doomed only to inexplicably be perfectly fine the next moment, coupled with intense disorientation, teleportation, and time shifts) via Time Travel or the creation of an Alternate Universe. In a sense, the same as the Iteration Theory but on a smaller scale in addition to the generational cycles.
Room Full of Crazy: In "Sleep Deprivation," someone managed to cover a back room with scribbled-on pictures and purple duct tape in a ten-minute interval while no one was in there.
Rule of Scary: Lampshaded when they open the store locker in 'The Corenthal Connection' and find a kid's rocking horse in the corner. Everyone points out that it has no reason to be there other than looking creepy.
There's a running joke amongst the fandom that Unfiction Forumer Doc Jowles is actually Jeff in disguise. He isn't. Probably.
Every video has several comments impatiently asking when they're going to start doing exercise videos again. One would assume they're jokes, but with Youtube comments you can't be too sure.
Inevitably, all of the crew are losing their grip at various speeds and in subtly different ways. However, see Angst? What Angst?. Most apparent in "A Day with Green Feathers" (as well as pretty much every tweet after "Alex"), it seems as though the crew has become desensitized to Tall Dark and Faceless; even Evan seems stable as long as Slenderman isn't standing right there.
Alex has gone this way ever since his parents died. In 'One Step Forward, Two Steps Back', when Jeff suggests Alex comes to the library with the crew, Alex says he'll 'go ask mom' for permission. He comes back with a tape player which has a very creepy recording of his mother's voice. After the Rake kills his dog, he begins pretending a sock puppet is his dead dog. Even Vinnie tells Jeff this is well beyond the grieving process and something is definitely wrong with Alex.
In Ryan & the SEVENTRIALSOFHABIT, Evan appears to still be sliding down the slippery slope of madness as some spliced in clips show what appear to be Evan talking to himself and saying some pretty disturbing shit while brandishing his knife before Jeff interrupts him.
Shirtless Scene: Evan is pretty much in the whole OUTSIDE HELP video shirtless, just with bandages.
Like a few other works in the Mythos, this series contains one to House of Leaves in the form of a copy of the book, found in Jeff's room and containing a couple of cryptic clues to his whereabouts. The same book also appears in the background of Vinnie's opening narrations.
While exploring a burned down building in "Reunion" Vince asks if Jeff found evidence in "this suspiciously Silent Hill-looking room." Silent Hill receives a second shout-out in "Centralia." The graffiti on the ground contains lyrics from Silent Hill 3's theme song.
In addition, there's a rather Slendy-like mannequin/doll behind Vincent in some of the opening narrations; it looks remarkably like the doll in Marble Hornets.
Since that was there since the beginning, one would assume that is somehow tied to their Slender Man series. You know, the one they were trying to make before the real Slender Man showed up.
Jeff's brother is clearly playing the song The Poet and the Muse from the game Alan Wake when the characters first explore his room. While not too similar, Everyman HYBRID and Alan Wake both deal with daytime horror, eldritch abominations, and eponymous everymen who fight them, not to mention that in both, a major character is held captive by the eldritch abominations.
The twitter feed is shared by all three protagonists, who sign off each tweet with the first letter of their names to show who wrote each one. This means that Jeff's are signed as "J," and he was even on the road at the time, like J at the end of Marble Hornets season 1. As if this wasn't blatant enough, Jeff's brother's name is Alex.
Jeff's slideshow set to the Death Cab For Cutie song "I'll Follow You into the Dark" has the song cutting and distorting at seemingly random places. The last line is warped into "I'll follow you into the ark."
And then Evan's follow-up of Jeff's slide show looks like a sendup of the usual wacky video-responses usually posted on You Tube.
When Evan goes after Vince with his knife in "Slender man," the mute video suddenly erupts with sound in the form of a siren that sounds like the one from Silent Hill.
In One step forward, two steps back, the boys are playing Scrabble and Evan plays the word "Wifin". An action that costs $20 dollars for doing it in the club.
In Episode 4, Evan holds up a Creepy Doll that looks like the ones from the House in Marble Hornets, which he claims a little girl gave to him. (They later admit that this was part of their "Fake Slendy" hoax at the beginning of the series.)
Smash Cut: In "Alex," after Evan investigates the room. Cut to the three of them after they've finished barricading the thing in there. Also doubles as a Gilligan Cut; there's a little humor in it after the scare is over.
Soundtrack Dissonance: Twenty-four months has a montage of past events with up-beat swing music playing over it. Since the lyrics of the song say "the best is yet to come", it is slightly ominous though.
Split Personality: Evan shows signs of this in "Ryan & the SEVENTRIALSOFHABIT", before he's shown being out and out possessed by HABIT.
Status Quo Is God: Much to the cast's disappointment but ultimately not to their surprise, "December & early january" establishes that Damsel does not have any reveals about Slender Man for them, and she, in fact, didn't know anything more than they do.
While in text and not an audible voice, via one half of an unsigned twitter conversation Everyman HYBRID has managed to give The Slender Man dialog without sacrificing any creepiness. He's the non-allcaps one. (the allcaps are by HABIT) Indeed, it's not how strange he types, but how normally he types. You can read the conversation here.
There has been quite a bit of speculation saying that the normally-typed tweets aren't from the big man himself (and even then, since he's never been given a voice before, it's unlikely that it was Slendy in the first place), but rather from Doctor Corenthal. He does refer to the HYBRIDs as his "children," after all.
Thousand Yard Stare: Some of the footage hidden from the gang is recorded through the eyes of creatures which are said to have this expression by Candleverse!Jeff.
TV Tropes Will Ruin Your Life: During the 11/26 Ustream Jeff mentions that you'll waste hours here when it's mentioned in a question.
Unconventional Formatting: The participants in the unsigned Twitter conversations can be determined by the fact that one TYPES IN ALL CAPS and the other uses perfect grammar. (ALL CAPS is HABIT; proper capitalization is believed to be Slender himself)
"Cops Checked, No Body" tops both, with a quick recap, the revelation of Jesse being Corenthal's niece, and of course the first appearance of The Rake.
"The Hidden Videos." The Hybrids attempt to watch a DVD someone sent them with the hidden videos on it. The effect it has on them is... unsettling.
In OUTSIDE HELP, Evan reveals that he was assaulted by Nick for no discernible reason and killed him. Oh, and someone planted spy cameras in his house.
The two-part Jim Thorpe and Jessie has Jessie getting killed by The Rake
":D", in which Evan, possessed by HABIT, tortures and kills Jeff.
Isolation, in which Vince finds a hard drive holding a video of Evan striding into the forest to die fighting the Rake.
Damsel: I would be fucking stoked if they weren't releasing me today.
And in "One Step Forward, Two Steps Back"
Alex: It's back.
At the end of "Intermission"
Vinny: Alex isn't okay.
The description of ":D"
YUP. HE'S DEAD.
The final line of "Next"
BEGIN FINAL ACT
In "March 21st," Vince reveals that he plans to summon HABIT.
What Could Have Been: In-universe example. Jeff reveals in "HospitalFire.wav" that while they were planning the series, the guys flirted with using an audio-only podcast format, which was dropped, because a fitness series without video is a bit pointless. This implies that the guys originally planned for nothing but a fitness series and that the fake Slender Man easter eggs were a last-minute-shits-and-giggles addition to the final version of the series they decided on, since there'd be nearly no way for the Slender Man's presence to be demonstrated in pure audio if he wasn't visually introduced first. You've probably guessed by now that there audio distortions on the file.
What the Hell, Hero?: Evan makes it clear that he disagrees with Jeff sending the police after Damsel; and seriously lets him have it for, due to his obsession with finding Jessa, not noticing that Alex was injured. The Fandom was rather fond of calling Jeff out. To the point they started a twitter hashtag for that sole purpose.
to guide them through the story, since the full story is spread across two YouTube channels, Two Twitter feeds, Twitpic pictures, some archived live webcats, a blog, a forum, and even a few YouTube posts on unrelated channels. And take a look at the game's wiki
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