As a Fridge subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.
Fridge Horror:
- In "Deadly Decadence", the nightmare starts collapsing once you get the ring, and the Gold Watchers REALLY go nuts. What exactly happens to them when the nightmare collapses? Bierce makes it clear that you have to get out of there, so...
- Also, this happens in the OTHER nightmares as well! No wonder the monsters go nuts!
- Bierce seems to become unduly annoyed when you discover secrets, even saying she hopes the player chokes on them. At first, it might seem like this is just because you're doing something besides gathering soul shards, but collecting secrets contributes to an S rank, which unlocks pages of Bierce's diary where, among other things, she admits to sacrificing a child.
- While certainly not the most horrifying thing in the game, in "Deadly Decadence", you can hear a wolf howling in the distance. It's just to add atmosphere, but everything we come across in these nightmares is either a hellish monster or a trapped soul writhing in agony (Bierce comments on tiny screams coming from the Soul Shards), so that begs the question, which category does the wolf fit into?
- According to one of the secret notes in Bearly Buried, Doug's mother was prone to abusing him when he was young, likely inspiring some of his past life issues. Considering this fact - and due to the implications of her death - it's very likely she's now one of many souls comprising Mama Bear, especially since she's an amalgamation of abusive mothers.
- In one of E's notes, she mentions walking towards Mama Bear in a trance. This is a horrific implication in itself, but if she really is Doug's wife, that is very telling about her relationship with their daughter.
- Speaking of E, she must have tried to make a deal with Bierce if she ended up in the "ballroom" as well. Assuming she is Elise, what exactly could she have wanted? The opportunity to get rid of her husband, perhaps?
- The Chef Monkeys also have another layer of horror in their notes. They're said to utter "the most violent of wishes." All the Murder Monkeys are made from the souls of violent murderers, so what the hell could the Chef Monkey possibly have done to be worse than that?
- And it's not just the Monkeys, the other common monsters and the boss monsters are in a similar situation. It makes you wonder how and why some of these certain enemies are far stronger and more dangerous than their normal counterparts.
- The game mentions that all of the soul shards are pieces of the souls lost to the dark dimension. So, inevitably, when you collect all of the shards and give them to Bierce, what exactly is going to happen to them? Will granting Doug's wish (or, if Bierce is tricking him, granting her more power) erase them from existence?
- Maybe that might be a mercy, considering what they've gone through.
- In Bearly Buried, its revealed that the Teddies have rotten humanlike faces under the fabric of the bear heads, and those faces are disproportionately too large for such a small body. Is it possible that, once the Teddies get finished eating the remains of a victim, that Mama Bear takes the leftover head and uses it to create new "babies"? Which would mean that all of the Teddies are human souls brought back from the dead, trapped there against their will and forced to love (and even die for) their new "Mama"?
- Considering both the fact that they are animatronics and that they are supernatural entities who serve Malak, its highly unlikely that any member of the Joy Joy Gang actually needs to eat to survive. Which means Hangry's "hunger" is just another form of sadism. He doesn't need to eat someone, he just wants to and has developed an addiction to doing so.
Fridge Brilliance
- With the Enhanced Edition adding extra context to the monsters that can be found in the scenery and the letters left by the mysterious E, we can see that each portal is tied to one of Dante's Nine Layers of Hell and the monsters inside them are manifestations of sin.
- The Murder Monkeys were all murderers in real life and sacrificed their humanity to become beasts, thus representing Violence.
- Agatha is the maid's daughter that Bierce sacrificed for her ritual. Her spirit became corrupted by anger and hatred and became the representation of Wrath.
- The Gold Watchers were people who pursued wealth and fortune to the exclusion of all else. So much that in the afterlife they sacrificed their humanity to a demonic smelter only leaving the hollow gold shell as a statue while their souls burn eternally in the wealth they coveted, thus representing Greed.
- The Dread Duckies are the souls of liars and con artists who now inhabit sewers as rotten and disgusting waterfowls that are just as loathsome as their souls were in real life, representing Fraud; their main strategy is fooling the player by hiding among fake Duckies.
- The Clown Gremlins are small and vile cowards who played mean pranks and trolled people in real life to revel in the misery of others, thus representing Heresy.
- The Reaper Nurses are all young, attractive, and flirtatious women and the entrance to their domain would appear as a twisted cross between a hospital and a strip club, but at the same time, they have an uncontrollable desire to maim and torture any man foolish enough to enter their hospital, thus representing Lust.
- The Joy Joy Gang are all obsessed with something: Lucky with winning, Hangry with food, and Penny with her appearance and Doug himself, thus representing Gluttony.note
- Mama Bear is comprised of the souls of abusive mothers who destroyed and sabotaged the lives of their children with their twisted idea of love, thus representing Treachery.
- In the 15th QnA, Vincent Livings mentioned how Dark Deception is meant to be a celebration of the horror genre. It's clear from the level designs and enemy concepts that he isn’t kidding.
- Monkey Business takes place in a hotel full of Murder Monkeys, seemingly a reference to Psycho and/or The Shining.
- Elementary Evil is set in a school inhabited by Agatha, a demonic little girl. This seems to pay homage to Japanese video games which center around a haunted school, usually by a female spirit of some kind.
- Deadly Decadence has Doug face-off against the Gold Watchers, living statues that only move when they're unobserved. This could bring to mind the infamous Weeping Angels from Doctor Who.
- Stranger Sewers is an Absurdly Spacious Sewer inhabited by Dread Duckies. The setting as well as the taking of something innocent and making it horrifying could be alluding to It, complete with a direct reference to Pennywise's catchphrase in a secret room, one of Bierce's death quotes, and one of the achievements. The fact that the enemies are giant rubber ducks only adds to this.You'll float too.
- Crazy Carnevil has a circus full of Clown Gremlins. This is a reference to the ever-popular Monster Clown trope.
- Torment Therapy was straight-up confirmed to be a reference to horror media that either take place in a hospital or feature a hospital at some point such as Outlast. However, the Reaper Nurses are meant to be a subversion of the Mad Doctor trope that tends to come with hospitals in horror media, being multiple female nurses instead of a single male doctor.
- Mascot Mayhem takes place in a dreary amusement park run by the Joy Joy Gang, a trio of animatronics modeled after anthropomorphic animals. Although one may immediately think of Five Nights at Freddy's, the concept of the Joy Joy Gang had already existed long before the first FNAF game. A more likely reference may be to the Subverted Kids' Show trope popular in creepypastas such as Abandoned by Disney.
- Bearly Buried features a log cabin owned by Mama Bear, who lives with her Trigger Teddies. They all seem to be a clear reference to the Killer Teddy Bear trope, while their place of residence seems to pay homage to the classic "cabin in the woods" trope seen in horror stories.
- In Celtic mythology, ducks are seen as symbols of honesty and the Dread Duckies resemble rubber ducks that contain the souls of liars and deceivers.
- How is The Nameless Spirit able to remove the mark that Malak used to hijack Doug's mind? Well, the hijacking process involves forcefully extracting all of the victim's worst memories, culminating in summoning an apparition that embodies their regret. The Nameless Spirit is none other than Tammy Houser. Of course she - the one who appears in apparition form as the embodiment of Doug's regret - would be able to break a bond forged from regret.
- Why are the murderers under Malak's thrall turned into monkeys of all things? They're so savage, they've regressed into humanity's less civilized cousins. It also doubles as a reference to the "monkey business" that Doug got up to in places like this with the women he cheated on his wife with.
- Mama Bear's final attempt at attacking Doug when he escapes the tunnels is using her monster-arm to chase him through a narrow passageway, chomping endlessly towards him until he escapes. It's essentially a Perspective Flip of the game that this one is inspired by.
- Bierce comments on the irony that the games MacGuffin is called the Riddle of Heaven, as it contains and is connected to the power of a demon. However, consider the biblical origin of both Satan and several other demons- they were Fallen Angels. The Riddle of Heaven may in fact be why an Angel would fall.
