WMG / Don't Hug Me I'm Scared

aka: This Is It

Morals of DHMIS

The series is about the fear of growing up

Both Notepad and Tony the Clock treat the puppets like children, and in both of the instalments, the puppets grow up "wrong", first by being seemingly driven insane by the 'Creativity explosion', the second time their age is sped up significantly so they physically rot alive. Both times, the puppets seemingly survive the ordeal. The fact this happens makes me wonder if the puppets represent children being molded by their Abusive Parents (Tony and Paige) and learning what they want them to learn (about creativity and time), but the way they are being taught and the way the 'parents' treat them causes them to grow up wrong, only for it to Snap Back at the end like nothing happened, hinting that the events that happen both times are either not real or haven't happened yet, but the puppets secretly fear will.

• The third installment also has the puppets (or rather just Yellow Guy) grow up wrong, as his loneliness and feeling unloved makes him susceptible to the brainwashing of The Love Cultists.
• The fourth instalment also has the puppets growing up wrong, as they are mesmerized by the computer and become addicted to the point that they forget about the real world.

The Money Monster kidnapping was another "lesson" with a "moral" behind it.

The moral? That you need money to survive.

The series will turn out to be a metaphor for the ways in which the school system can stifle children's minds.

The behaviors of both Tony and Notepad are easily read as the behaviors of bad teachers:

• Notepad is the patronizingly cheerful art teacher who wants you to be creative, but only in the ways she thinks are valid (according to her own bizarre and apparently arbitrary rules). Trying anything else will result in putdowns and punishment, and she ends up smothering her students' creativity far more than nurturing it.
• Tony is likely a history teacher, given the obsession with time. He sadistically abuses his position of power and cares less about his students' education than teaching them what he says is right, even though it becomes increasingly clear that he either has no idea what he's talking about or is intentionally giving out misinformation For the Evulz. However, if you question him, disobey him, or disagree with him, you will be insulted, screamed at, or receive some other Disproportionate Retribution. As a result, his students end up traumatized and soured towards the subject entirely.

Thus, the other installments in the series will cover the other "core subjects" (i.e. math, reading, etc.) and the ways in which they can be mishandled.

• Odds are, the next installment is going to be about Money (To show how our beloved Puppets got away from Tremaine/Groucho/The Fascist Monster Terrorist), and he could easily represent an "Abusive" Teacher; the kind of Teacher that demands perfection or else scolds you and calls you a lost cause, similar to the Teacher in The Wall.
  • Jossed so far. Round 3 related to "love" (biology?) and Round 4 related to Technology (maybe math? they do mention code a lot...)
    • Some schools have computer science classes.
  • And round 5 is health
  • Round 6 could be Psychology, due to the concept of "Dreams", Red Guy being an social outcast for not thinking like the other Red Guys, and the emotional scarring of Yellow Guy.

Episode 3 is about religious fundamentalism

• The Story of Michael is basically a parody of biblical stories that, while still retold and held up to have a moral, simply aren't applicable to modern sensibilities. Compare to the Book of Job, where Job is continuously tortured and humiliated by God, only to keep his faith, all just because God and Satan had a bet.
• The Yellow Guy tries to express love on his own terms, but is shot down by the Butterfly, saying that he is "doing it wrong". This is much like how while Judeo-Christian religions often profess loving one another, when approached by a type of love they don't agree with (e.g., homosexuality) they lash out and claim it is wrong.
• Malcolm is said to be a "King of Love", but his worshipers fear his rage if they fail to placate, similar to how God is held up to be the ultimate good, but his worshipers fear what may happen if they fail to worship him or anger him in any way.
• At the end, The Yellow Guy is being indoctrinated by the cult, claiming he must "change his name and clean his brain" if he is to join, much like how some religious practitioners have sacrificed their identities in the name of the church. This could also follow how religious parents force their children to follow their beliefs rather than decide for themselves what they want.
• The Gopher claims to want platonic love, but clearly has sexual urges buried underneath, much like how priests and nuns are told to stay chaste, but act on their primal urges.

Episode 3 was actually about sex

• When Yellow Guy starts listing the things he loves, Shrignold stops him. Why? Because those things he listed don't reproduce the same way an animal would, therefore he can't love them
• Michael's special one is himself, AKA masturbation
• Malcolm represents how love is depicted, where guys are expected to shower their love with gifts (Gravel), in hopes of pleasing their girlfriends. They're expected to change their name (Getting married), clean their brain (Start conforming to what they want), and forget about anything they ever knew (Forsake former relations for their lovelife)
• The reason it has a lot of references to religion is that a lot of issues nowadays regarding sex has roots in religion (Same-sex marriage, faith and fidelity, abortion, etc.)

"Love" is about Yellow Guy's internal romantic struggle

The entire thing is All Just a Dream, so it's extremely likely that the episode is about some form of internal struggle or turmoil. He doesn't understand the existence of platonic love, and the Love Cultists (his mind) are telling him that that's not how love works (even though it is) and that he has to only love this odd personification of what he thinks his romantic partner has to be. He worries about things like having to change his name or change himself to please his partner, he also gets anxious about the prospects of marriage and might think that a relationship has to go that way immediately. The Story of Michael might represent how people tell him he'll find a special one soon, but he doesn't believe them (by the fact that Shrignold and crew act like Michael got a happy ending even though he didn't). Red Guy and Duck coming back to him and apologizing might symbolize that his friends will support him and whatever decision he chooses to make, and will always be by his side no matter what happens.

Episode 4's teacher

is supposed to be a lazy-ass negligent teacher who causes the student to become lazy as well. Episode 4 not being shown yet even though the episodes after #3 are to be shown once every three weeks are intentional.

• Confirmed. The computer refuses to actually answer the question he's asked, and instead asks a bunch of questions without paying attention to their answers. Later, he traps them in a digital world where they can't do anything except open doors over and over again.

Episode 4's Ending is a Comment on Personal Privacy

After Red Thing decides he doesn't want to be in the digital world anymore, he walks out of the room and finds himself on a film set where crude renditions of his friends and himself are being filmed. The whole time the three were being mesmerised by the computer, it was demanding their information, then showing them a lot of meaningless distractions. Internet security is a major cause of concern right now, with government spies and computer hackers trying to find out personal details and the episodes have been getting increasingly topical since the creators started crowdfunding for faster production.

Episode 5 is About the Dangers of Fad Diets

• There's more than one teacher in this one, signifying the conflicting advice people get about healthy foods.
• Duck Puppet and Yellow Puppet are told that they should only eat colourless foods, most of which are heavily processed, while avoiding foods that are actually nutritional. This could be seen as major food companies trying to get consumers to eat their products using Insane Troll Logic.
• The video ends with Yellow Puppet now overweight from eating what he was told and sitting in his kitchen confused and alone. Eating foods that lack nutrients can affect a person's disposition, making them prone to depression. People who rely on fad diets also tend to be reliant on what the media tells them instead of finding the results themselves, with the lack of nutrition making them mentally lazy.

"Health" is about eating disorders

The Healthy Band encourages the puppets to only eat around four different foods (five if you count Duck's organs) and cut out every other food from their diet. Anorexic people will typically limit themselves to small portions and cut out many different foods from their diet in order to lose weight. And the end when Yellow Guy is force-fed Duck's organs and is left sitting in the kitchen looking somber is similar to Binge Eating Disorder, where a person will binge on large amounts of food and spend long periods of time in a state of sadness and guilt.

Roy is sending the puppets through the Groundhog Day Loop as a form of punishment

Episode 3 has nothing to do with religion.

It has nothing to do with gay marriage or why Christians (like myself) are "evil." Instead, the Love Cult represents the media. Their hypocrisy comes from suggesting the existence of platonic love, then immediantly implying that love is only a romantic thing and that everyone has to get married if they "love" someone/something.

Theory created by a friend: http://niftynautilus.deviantart.com/journal/Don-t-Hug-Me-I-m-Scared-3-EXPLAINED-494945771

The overall moral of the series is to think for yourself.

The reason the creators, Becky and Joe, will not divulge any information on what the series and individual episodes are about is because this would go against the moral of the series. The viewers are being invited to think for themselves and come up with their own theories and explanations.

The series is a metaphor for wanting to be a kid again.

As an adult, one might want to recapture that wonder they had as a little kid watching Sesame Street or what have you, but that innocence is gone and you can't get it back. "Creativity" represents all the "rules" about creation that adults can't unlearn, unlike a child who truly draws or crafts whatever they fancy. "Time" is about how an innocuous lesson about something like time could be very distressing once you're old enough to comprehend just how scary your limited time is. And so on.

The series is a metaphor for autism and the struggles autistic kids face in the school system and in life.

The trio represent autistic kids and the many ways autism can manifest. Red Guy has trouble expressing his emotions, has no filter, and stims by tapping his feet, rubbing his hands, humming under his breath, rubbing his neck, waving his arms, and playing with his strands of hair. He speaks in a monotone, likes routine, and struggles with fitting in. Yellow Guy is socially awkward with extremely high emotional empathy, misunderstands many things, has special interests such as art and music, is sensitive to sound, and repeats things others say. Duck Guy has a fixation for rules, often exaggerates his tone, and has trouble focusing on details. Now for the actual story.

- Sketchbook/Paige is an art teacher who has no idea how to deal with special needs kids, and can be very demanding and forceful at times. She tries to push the trio into her (extremely restrictive) idea of creativity, such as only giving them five colors to choose from and destroying Yellow Guy's drawing, but they have trouble understanding her lesson. She eventually relents and lets them do whatever they want, but then they decide to do exactly that, revealing the morbid nature of their imaginations.- Tony is a Jerkass history teacher whose anger often scares his students. He makes several mistakes in his lessons, and frequently overwhelms them and ignores their questions. He eventually resorts to Corporal Punishment when the kids disrupt his lesson, leaving them with quite a lot of trauma.- Episode 3 is more metaphorical. Shrignold represents how predators often prey on kids with learning disabilities. He finds Yellow Guy when he's lonely, and isolates him from his friends, trying to teach him a shallow idea of "love". 'Michael' represents how Yellow Guy is bullied by his peers, and him waking up represents him reconciling with his friends and escaping the predator.- Gilbert the Globe is a Cool Teacher who cares a lot for the students, but his class isn't on most days, the class on most days is Computer Science. Colin the Computer is also...kind of a jerk. He often asks too many questions, confusing the trio. The computer class has a lot of restricted websites, the only approved ones being a math site they do all their work on, a flash game site, and a music maker.- Health is not in a class, it's the media, and see the other WMG entry about how Episode 5 is about the dangers of fad diets.- Episode 6 represents the group becoming teens. They struggle to fit in, especially Red Guy, and Yellow Guy learns that his father is abusive. The reset, where they're all their favorite colors represents them finally escaping their bad childhoods.

Theories of DHMIS

Shrignold is related to a bee and a butterfly.

His father was a pigeon, his mother was a pigeon... But his mother's mother is a bee and his father's brother is a butterfly.

Yellow Puppet's real name starts with a "D".

In DHMIS 2, Yellow Puppet's father, Roy, is wearing a pair of overalls with an "R" on them. Likewise, Yellow Puppet's overalls have a "D" on them. Given the link between Roy's clothes and his name, it seems likely that Yellow Puppet's name starts with a "D".

• Agreed. I think his name would be/will be Danny or Don.
• Some parts of the fandom think his name is Doi because Becky uses the word a lot.

If the Kickstarter is successful, Tony will be the one to rescue the puppets and Sketchbook.

In DHMIS 2, it's demonstrated that he has the ability to rapidly age people and things. Tony will find Sketchbook, the puppets, and the monster. He will then create some kind of time/reality warp and age the monster until he dies, while leaving Sketchbook and the puppets unscathed. Then, Tony will untie the puppets, take Sketchbook down from the wall, and everything will be back to normal. (Of course, the latter part of the plan depends on the fanon theory of Tony killing anything he touches to be wrong... .)

• While this is jossed in the official canon, something like that happened in the Tony and Sketchbook Adventures Ask Blog, where Tony does free the puppets and Sketchbook, but knocked out Money Monster with a breefcase.

Alternative to the above: if the kickstarter is successful, Yellow Guy's dad will save them.

• Confirmed, though he just helped with donations.

Another alternative: If the kickstarter funding succeeds the monster will be crushed to death by all the money they made

The Monsters name is Groucho

He's a Green loving Furry Monster who likes to live in squalid Conditions, and is also prone to anger. So his name is Groucho.

• Why would he be called Groucho? He wants to be richer than other people. Doesn't seem very Marxist to me.
  • It's a reference to Oscar the Grouch, not Groucho Marx.
    • To quote Rainier Wolfcastle, 'that's the'... and you know the rest.

Michael became Malcolm

The Story of Michael comes out of no where, and basically says "Michael, the Ugliest boy in town, went underground forever." It isn't helpful at all and doesn't really tie into the story, but is used as justification for the Cult's definition of Love. Shortly afterward, the Cult shows their god, Malcolm, who's really just a Stone Head that eats Gravel. I have a feeling that Malcolm is really Michael. Anyone who lived underground for all of his life would develop unhealthy habits (Eating Rocks, for example), and since we don't know what Michael's hobbies where before hand, he could have been a puppet maker for all we know. He's also a very lonely child, so wouldn't it make sense that he'd want to use his Puppetry skills to make friends? He can't show himself because he's so ungodly ugly, but if he could build a large puppet head that acted like a God, he could very easily make friends that way! Loyal friends that would believe every word he said, including his unhelpful, unfinished story. Basically, Michael is pulling The Wizard of Oz on his cult friends!

• To go further with this Michael is the guy who lit Malcolm on fire. After the horrors that occurred with the Yellow Puppet, Michael felt awful about the cult he had created, so he decided to pull a Heel–Face Turn during the end credits. The reason why his face is hidden is because of his ugliness.
• Further supporting this, "Michael" is Hebrew for "Who Is Like God?", and the Cult treats Malcolm like a god.

The Monster was the good guy all along

In the credits of Don't Hug Me I'm Scared 3, Malcolm gets burned to the ground with a tank of gas and a lighter. On said tank of gas is the Nazi-like symbol of the Monster. A reference to the Kickstarter video, or something more...?

The Monster/Money Man is not alone

He could probably be cooperating with a second character, or be working as part of a larger group. That figure that burns down Malcolm during the credits of DHMIS 3? It might not have been Money Man, but it could've been a partner or someone working for said group.

The Monster/Money Man isn't a teacher

Pay attention to his character design. Not only is he a human filled suit (the only others of which we've seen are Red Guy and those people at the end of Four), but unlike the other teachers, he isn't representative of an actual creature or item. Again, like Red Guy. Keeping in mind that we have never heard that the three puppets are the only ones to receive lessons, and suddenly things start making a lot more sense. The monster used to just be a normal person, but when a teacher came along focused on money, he went insane and, unlike in DHMIS, never recovered. After all, he doesn't seem to be teaching the puppets anything, right?

• Sorry but "he's not a puppet" is no longer criteria for non-teacher status thanks to steak guy.

DHMIS 6 will be released on June 19, 2016.

This one is pretty obvious. Given the release pattern and the apparent significance of the date, it's bound to happen.

• I'd bet that SOMETHING will happen related to the series on June 19th, but given their general pattern of about 3 months between videos, it doesn't seem likely that they'd wait so long to release the 6th. (Of course, it could just be that this troper is impatient and would rather not have to wait that long...)

• Confirmed!

Red and Yellow Guy are siblings kidnapped

with Reggie taken as well as an old man who could call the cops to give a discription on the kidnapper.

The entire DHMIS series literally takes place within the same day

More specifically, June 19th. Assuming the first three are in proper chronological order, the puppets wake up for breakfast and get a song about creativity out of nowhere. After that, they go into the other room to catch their favorite morning show, only to be interrupted by a lesson about time. Wanting to get out of the house after these events, they decide on a picnic for lunch that day and leave. They decide to play a board game once they return. By the time dinner rolls around, red guy has seemingly vanished and the lesson on nutrition begins in the kitchen. Finally, there's episode 6 taking place at the end of the day with yellow guy trying to sleep.

• Seems confirmed, the episode's ending has the calendar change to the 20th.

The teacher machine originally kicked in immediately prior to the creativity explosion.

The one teacher who doesn't seem to be associated with the machine in DHMIS 6 is Sketchbook. Compared to the other teachers, Sketchbook's lesson (while abrasive and stifling) was really quite benign, and only derailed when the creativity got out of control at the end. But immediately before that happened, the shot briefly turned to computer graphics, and panned around to show that the scene was being watched from the outside. That was the point when the machine began to influence the series' course of events.

The show is about education versus indoctrination.

From the first episode onward a common theme that exists in the series is about the idea of being taught something versus being forced into a certain mold of thinking. The first one is essentially the least subtle, assuming to show that creativity is but shutting down things that go down certain paths. In each subsequent episode they talk about a variety of topics but it keeps pointing to different ways of control in indoctrination. Time deals with fear, when people point out things that are different from the lesson they experience death and extreme aging. With the story of love it's about what they are allowed to feel and for who, they can't love those different than them (his 'ideal' was a yellow being like him). The indoctrination aspect was loneliness and isolation, that if yo want to be part of a group that you have to abandon yourself to their ideals and beliefs. The fourth about computers and data shows how the group wants to learn and understand, but instead the computer distracts them, ignores questions and tries to keep them focused on what it views as important, ignoring and evading anything else. For indoctrination this would be restriction of useful information. The fifth one is somewhat about food but also about intimidation. Note that a lot of what is said uses threats, either of what will happen if you eat the wrong things or what happens to 'bad rude food that has useless information' and the body form gets stomped. In this case intimidating people that try to say something is wrong or arguing with what's going on. The sixth episode is tricky but as best I can figure it's about the end results. Red guy resisted and he can function but he's also still somewhat isolated from the rest of the world. The reset may be him trying to make a better way the next time, to try to educate instead of indoctrinate.

• It's actually very easy to see how episode 6 plays with the concept - the Red Guy land, with the boring monotonous routine everyone that adheres to by instinct and reacts badly to attempts at changing. Red Guy pulling the plug on what was basically the indoctrination machine even allows time to progress and cause the main protagonists to assume the colors they found creative - even green, which was previously rejected.

The puppets are actually mentally unstable and Roy is the hero.

In the first lesson, Sketchbook was just an honest teacher trying to help the trio discover their creativity, but the "creativity explosion" was so disturbing and the puppets clearly too unstable that Sketchbook went to Roy for help in dulling the puppets' minds in fear of them causing more havoc, hence the themes of not thinking for yourself and conforming to others' standards. This could explain why the teachers always irritably shoot down any idea the puppets have; they're trying to keep them on course. In "Computers", Red Guy discovers the plan and manages to escape, but is inserted into a world as monotone as he is, a form of punishment. In "Health", Duck, after becoming enraged because he's finally had enough, is captured and fed to the Cans, who are eaten by Yellow Guy, again as punishment for not conforming. Yellow Guy, the most innocent of the trio, obviously trusts his father, whether it be out of naivete or because he's family, but in "Dreams" he's naturally become weakened by the lessons, the assault by the multiple teachers towards the end fully breaking him. When Red Guy escapes his prison and finds the teacher machine, Roy tries to stop him from abusing it, as he feels he's saving the trio. This culminates when Red Guy finally unplugs the machine and we see the trio, together again, as their favorite colors. It leaves the ending to interpretation as to whether they've been fully broken and dulled, or are still as psychopathic as ever, perhaps more so now that they've realized what Roy has done, and this interpretation continues when Sketchbook returns. Has the therapy begun anew? Or are the trio planning something darker...?

The series is a critique on the education system and how it fails children

Roy is an adult who run the school system. He doesn't care about helping the children learn and only wants to make a profit and for the students to do what he says. Red Guy is a young adult, frustrated with school and uninterested because he has nothing left to be taught and only wants to get out. Duck is a teenager. He tries to go along with what the teachers say, but he wants to learn more and asks questions that don't get answered. Yellow Guy is a child who doesn't understand how school works and often makes mistakes. Because his father isn't around he never learns proper social etiquette and the teachers only tell him off instead of helping him.

In the first episode, Sketchbook is trying to teach them about creativity. Red Guy has already been taught this before and Duck tries to get her to explain everything clearer, but she keeps going. When Yellow Guy tries to do something himself, she shuts him down and takes control, showing them that she's in charge and stifling their creativity. However, her students don't take kindly to this and rebel against her completely, causing the lesson to take a wild turn and leaving her completely powerless and unable to stop them. Unused to being able to do what they want, the trio go completely overboard and destroy the art she was making them do, showing Sketchbook that they wouldn't let her stifle their creativity. When the class is finished, Sketchbook is disturbed by the realisation that she is powerless and can't force her pupils to do what she wants anymore, and because she doesn't retaliate harshly against her students, she has no other options but to leave them alone.

Tony is next, and he isn't messing around. Roy doesn't want the students having any freedom, and so Tony is much more assertive, acting joking at first to make the students think that he's their friend, and then the lesson begins. He forces them to clean up and follow Roy's rules and then he teaches them, showing the outside world as a dangerous place where you can grow old and rot away, showing them that Roy and his false happiness is the best way to go, that they should stay away from the outside world and listen to him. He gives them chocolates and even tries to brainwash them, but it doesn't work. Duck brings up a theory about time, hoping to hear what Tony thinks about it. However, Tony starts screaming in anger and zones in on Yellow Guy, who doesn't realise that he should cover his ears to avoid getting hurt. Tony rots them to death, showing them what happens when they disobey Roy — they get punished.

In the kidnapping videos, Roy is behind them all. He lets his students leave and explore the real world and kidnaps them, hoping to get the message that the outside world is dangerous and that only he can save them through their heads. He also decides that he can make a profit from it, to get better teachers in. The money is made and the trio are released back into Roy's care, Red Guy still uncaring, Duck a bit more cautious, and Yellow Guy grateful to see his father again.

Because Roy's lesson still hasn't gotten through to them, he hires Shrignold and his cult (who are his former students) to be the next set of teachers. Shrignold lures Yellow Guy away and promises him that he can be happy with Malcolm. However, Shrignold's lesson is teaching the good of Malcolm and how he is the only saviour, and that goes against what Roy wants, so he steps in and exposes the Cult for what it really is. Shrignold finally makes his move on Yellow Guy in an act of desperation, and Roy shuts the lesson down, leaving Yellow Guy with a maggot in an egg. If Yellow Guy chooses the maggot, he accepts Shrignold's offer and will join the Cult and if he doesn't, he stays with Roy. Duck, believing the outside world to be a dangerous place, destroys the maggot, trapping Yellow Guy back in Roy's world.

Colin is the next teacher, and he doesn't care at all. Rather than trying to teach, Colin just has his students go on computers. By this point, Red Guy is sick of it all and doesn't even try to go along with the lesson. Duck, who doesn't want to learn anymore because he can't learn what he wants to know, instead turns to social media, a never-ending stream of selfies, trying to look good and get noticed, eventually distorting how he views himself until all he can do is scream. Yellow Guy goes on educational sites and plays all the "educational" games on them, eventually realizing that they hold nothing for them. However, Colin refuses to let them go. Red Guy is alone, the teacher isn't paying any attention to him, and he sees what he never saw before — he can leave. He's old enough and he has enough knowledge to leave school and get a real job. He does so, and when he arrives in the real world, he sees that he knows nothing about the real world, his education is a joke, and his mind is blown.

By the time the next episode comes around, Duck has realised that he'll have to leave soon, and that he doesn't have any abilities that could help him in the outside world. He realizes how disorderly the lessons are, the teachers incoherent and rambling, the songs vague and dull, and is terrified by what this means for him. He constantly tries to get the teachers to teach something useful, or even find another teacher that can help him, but he keeps being pulled back inside the lesson as Red Guy tries to find a way of warning him about what he's going to find. Eventually, Duck gets kicked out for causing too much trouble, and has no way to survive in the real world and is torn apart.

In the last episode, Yellow Guy now has the teacher's undivided attention, and still doesn't know how to act in school. The teacher tries as hard as he can to teach him, but gets fed up with his misbehaviour and drowns him in oil — stifles his creativity. As this happens to Yellow Guy, Red Guy in the real world remembers his schooling and tries to apply it to the real world, only to find that everyone else has already forgotten their schooldays, and comes to the realisation that everything he learned there was all completely useless. He gets drunk to hide his sadness and performs the creativity song, wishing that he could be in school again. Roy's teachings about how the outside world has nothing good have taken effect, and Roy lets Red Guy return. When Red Guy sees the machine, he finally realises how corrupt it is, as Yellow Guy cries, the teachers still trying to break him. When Roy offers to let Red Guy return, he refuses and pulls the plug on the whole thing. The school reopens with a whole new set of students, but Roy isn't in charge anymore, Red Guy is. And now that he's a responsible adult, it's his turn to educate the children.

Roy is an AI of some sort.

The fact that Yellow Guy specifically says "My dad is a computer" seems suspicious. Maybe Roy is the Lotus-Eater Machine itself, and the creepy puppet we see is just an avatar of sorts. Or maybe Yellow Guy, being The Ditz, just thinks a computer is a person who uses technology.

Everything is controlled by pizza and Tony is the pizza's astral projection

Red Guy escapes it and saves everyone

Lesley wants her dead son back.

The mysterious woman living in the attic is implied to be the creator of the world and responsible for everything the guys go through. When Yellow Guy asks to talk with her a little longer, she suddenly shouts "You're not my real son!". Lesley was sane once but lost her family in an accident. She's now imagining her own world trying to recreate her family, but she's so unhinged with such disjointed thoughts that the guys can become self aware.

Red guy will die in a future episode by drowning.

The part where Red Guy's ID card tells him he dies in the lake is foreshadowing for a future episode.

Lesley was a former puppet show host.

She's implied to have created the world as we know it, but once had her own puppet show that was once popular with children. But something such as a brutal accident caused the show to get canceled prematurely, which could explain why she has stitches on her face. The cancelation of her show frustrated her as she had a lot of plans, dreams, and ambitions with it, so she created the puppet world on her own volition. But the trauma still lingers, she still wants to make a children's puppet show but would occasionally slip and vent out the frustration with the sudden gore.

Clayhill/Wakey-Wakey is the real world in DHMIS

Now, hear me out, because this might be stupid:The Web series ran on sense of "Isolation", with the only characters around being Red, Yellow, Duck, Roy, and whatever teacher(s) decided to fuck with them that day. This was likely intentional if we go with the theory that Roy used the show as a means for punishing his son, long hours of loneliness followed by an intruder to torture him would be a good description of hell.

The TV show is less focused on horror and more on dark/surreal comedy, with the new teachers being less malicious and the returning teachers being nicer than they were in the Web Series, along with the cast being more jerks than before, but they were still in a house alone, "Just three of us" after all. This makes sense due to Lesley's control over the dolls being represented by a doll house, a play-thing where she can create all these wacky scenarios and adventures that the three must endure.

But Wakey-Wakey? The puppets are in a town called Clayhill where they sing a song every morning about how they live in a neighborhood filled with people, and the only things that seem out of the ordinary are Grenald's pies, Mayor Pigface abandoning the town to live in the woods, and the fizzy milk party at the end of the episode, with the rest being tied to the Key.

So now we get to the bit you've been waiting for: I believe that, due to Wakey-Wakey being relatively grounded compared to the rest of the series, that Clayhill is the real world...at least to Red, Yellow, and Duck.

Here's how I think it all went down (so far, at least): Roy gets mad at his son Yellow, so he decides to trap him and his friends in a nightmare world where they get interrupted by teachers who give warped-at-best lessons and toy with them all the way. Red guy manages to break out and free his friends, and then they end up in Clayhill where the events of Wakey-Wakey play out. Sometime after that, Lesley, following in Roy's example, manages to trap the trio in yet another nightmare world, even managing to alter their personalities so they'll fight with each other, and possibly giving Yellow some false hope with the book, all for her amusement.

Now here's the kicker, is the real reason Wakey-Wakey never aired outside of Sundance Film Festival was because of creator dissatisfaction...or do Roy/Lesley not want us to think that there is a real world?

Yellow Guy, Red Guy, Duck

The characters are stuck in a "Groundhog Day" Loop.

As has been pointed out, there are many references to the specific date of June 19th and in "TIME", Tony the Clock states that "the past is far behind us, the future doesn't exist". A picture in the same video also indicates the date 19/06/55, with said date also appearing as a time stamp in the Kickstarter video. Still in the same video, no matter what time the crew visits, it's always on a June 19th.

While these details may seem innocuous on their own, when put together I can't help but feel that the characters are all constantly reliving June 19th, 1955 over and over again, with this loop causing time paradoxes which explains how much more recent technology is available in 1955, and possibly every other bizarre event in this universe.

They actually go through this at the end of "Dreams", but this time they're blue, red, and green (Red Guy, Duck, and Yellow Guy's favourite colour respectively) and the date is now June 20th, implying that things may turn out better for them.

The second video may in fact even provide an explanation for what caused the loop: when the puppets are aged, the yellow one yells "MAKE IT STOP!". He got his wish... but not the way he hoped.

The guys are escapees from a cult

At some point the three of them escaped together from a cult, guessing that it was the Red guy who led the charge. They were recovered however, what we see in the kickstarter video is them being held hostage to get money but ultimately the goal is to keep them in the cult. They're hooked up to a brainwashing device, one that will drill them on concepts to make them obedient to the cult, but their minds are still fighting. When they try beign creative, their minds overwhelm the machine, causing strange flashes and images, giving them slight insights into their situation. They all know that they're in trouble but can't fully verbalize it so their brains try to give them clues. Roy is a member of the cult, maybe a leader, he allowed his home to be used for this. The lessons are each about obeying the cults authority and the power that it claims to wield. In the third one we get the most hints, their minds show more of what's wrong because the house isn't imposed on them. The crushing of the larvae crying father is a repeat of Roy forcing his son back into the cult and sending him to 'punish land'. The third one also shows an example of genuine care, his friends trying to find him and help him. The final episode shows red guy, the most well adjusted one of them, he can function in real life but the cults actions have also made him apart from the rest of the word, even if he looks like everyone else he is still affected by what happened, still marked, always seeing Roy in the shadows. When he sees the microphone and boombox become puppet creatures it's him contemplating returning to the cult, even if he knows its bad it was what he knew, but in the end he chooses to try to bring the whole thing down and maybe give himself and his friends one final fresh start.

The newer videos will show the Yellow Guy growing up.

In "Time", Yellow Guy's hair is longer, showing the passing of time. His face and his voice also have differences. In the teaser for "Love", Yellow Guy looks different again. He has a shorter (almost non-existent) mullet, and looks skinnier. My theory (or WMG) is that the videos leading up to the final will show Yellow Guy growing up or aging, at least what we've seen so far.

• Seems to be inverted. Yellow Guy is more childish in "Love" than in "Time" or "Creativity".

Birdman is a duck

In Don't Hug Me I'm Scared 4, Red Guy wanders into a room where a live action film crew is making a live action DHMIS (with quotes from multiple videos, including one we haven't heard yet.) Red Guy is reresented as a mop, Yellow Guy a mannequin,and Birdman a duck.

• Makes sense; his head is green and his beak is yellow, very similar to a mallard duck (which just happens to be the type of duck in the scene).
  • Confirmed, one of the staff members referred to him as "Duck Guy".

Red Guy is dead

In every other episode we've seen, most of the grotesque and horrifying things that happen to the main characters usually revert back to normal by the end of the episode. Ex. In DHMIS 1, the characters become human and start going all crazy. By the end, they're all back to their normal Puppet selves. In DHMIS 2, they all age rapidly and deteriorate, but by the end, they're all okay. In DHMIS 3, Yellow Guy has his skull opened up and his brain about to be dissected, but he's alright by the end. Fortunately, all three characters are back to normal by the end of DHMIS 4, right? Wrong, Yellow Guy and Green Bird are still inside the computer by the end, and Red Guy's head explodes.

• Possible, but seeing as the series has a Negative Continuity, it's unlikely. Then again, this is the only episode to actually reference the previous ones (Auto-tune Bird looks frightened when Colin mentions "time" and they all expected something to come to life and sing to them).
  • We have no actual evidence of Negative Continuity in the series.
    • Seems to be confirmed, due to him being absent for Episode 5, aside from one shot about four minutes in and in the end credits.
  • Jossed. Episode 6 shows he's still alive, but he escaped from the lessons and is now in a world where everyone is like him.

Red Guy's full name is "Great News Dontouchme"

• No offense, but I don't think that a weird nickname like that would be his name....
  • I feel like it's "Dreads" because in 4 you can hear him say "Dr-" when trying to state his name before Colin cuts back in. And since his head is a bunch of matted hair, similar to dreadlocks, it's possible.
• Jossed. In the fourth episode, Red Guy says "Well my name is dr-" before Colin cuts him off.

The next episode will focus on Autotuned Bird

The third one focused on Yellow Guy, the fourth one focused on Red Thing, it only seems natural that Autotuned Bird should probably get his turn to be tortured next.

• Confirmed, actually!

Red Thing is still alive, but the whole head exploding thing will be referenced in the next episode

He'll perhaps have a bandage over his head and be complaining about having a big headache.

• Confirmed. He's absent for the fifth and sixth lessons, but he's shown alive in both videos.

The reason behind the final scene of Don't Hug Me, I'm Scared 5

Why was Red Guy trying to call from a phone booth? Why did he have a trenchcoat and a suitcase? And why did he not have an actual appearance until the end? Because he wanted to leave. At this point, the Red Guy has had enough of all the chaos that he and his friends go through on a daily basis. He's tired of learning Broken Aesops from creepy, untrustworthy teachers and practically dying in every scenario (having his head pop like a balloon was the final straw). Ultimately, he decides to leave for good. This is why he kept calling throughout 5; he wanted to say goodbye to his friends before he left.

• Of course, one question remains: if Red Guy left, then why can he be seen in the microwave, in the food, and in the shot where Duck knocks over the camera? While the latter is yet to be explained, there may be a solid reason for the former. At the very beginning, Duck and Yellow realize that something is missing (that something being Red Guy), then idiotically assume that it's the talking slice of bread. However, it is possible that the plate of spaghetti reminds Yellow of Red, and thus, he imagines seeing his face on it (either that, or he does indeed remember Red partway through the song, then imagines seeing his face everywhere because he misses him).
  • In Episode 6, when the machine is on the fritz and causing a bunch of different teachers to appear, there is a split second shot of Red Guy on the machine's screen, even though he is clearly outside of the machine. This implies that the machine is capable of making copies of the main trio, and likely made a copy of Red Guy in Episode 5 for the sake of psychological torture.
  • Red Guy making a quick appearance in the show is probably some sort of his projection, trying to warn his friends and help them escape. Look closely, he only appears whenever Duck answers the phone. After Duck is killed, he doesn't appear anymore, and the last phone call is not answered. Conclusion, Red Guy is dead in the "show" but not in real life, he's still out there somewhere trying to help his friends.

When the students "die", they escape the lessons forever.

The Red Guy's head is shown to explode at the end of "Computers", but he's free and apparently trying to help in "Health". Perhaps Duck will be alive and well in 6, despite seemingly being eaten by Yellow Guy. Being dismembered and eaten was the final trial.

Red Guy is the universe's God/Jesus.

When Duck is being eaten and microwaved, we see a red gas; the spaghetti-like food is Red Guy's hair; we see his legs in the kitchen briefly; and during the credits, he is walking away from a phone booth, presumably after calling his friends to try to convince them to escape. Add to that his blatant insults toward Sketchpad, his refusal to go along with Tony's lesson about time, his genuine concern for Yellow Guy, his refusal to enter the digital world, and his escape from the universe itself, and it's pretty safe to say that he just might be some sort of God.

The first four installments were a game played by the puppets.

This is intended to go with the "fear of growing up" theory above. The puppets are actually a group of kids who like to imagine that they are actually talking animals and Cartoon Creatures. The Mind Screwy and often excessively gory nature of the videos is because of the kids having very strange and violent imaginations. The kids are at an age where they dislike having to follow any kind of rules so they cast authority figures like teachers as the villains in their stories. Each game subconsciously represents a way in which they might fear they would grow up wrong, but they always have it end with finding out it's not real as a kind of self-reassurance. The fourth installment was made when "Red Guy" was about to move away shortly as a kind of sendoff to the character, which is why it's the only one to not end with the implication that what happened wasn't real. I think the fifth installment is an exception to this for the following reasons:

• 1. Red Guy is still making (cameo) appearances despite his sendoff.
• 2. The first four installments all represent tangible fears that someone might have-going insane, aging, joining a cult, and getting sucked into a virtual world (it is a group of children's imagination)-but the fifth one takes the Mind Screw to the point that it's not really clear what happens.
• 3. It doesn't fit with the pattern of the game. Duck seems to be immediately terrified of the Healthy Band, in contrast to the reactions of the puppets to Sketchbook, Tony, Shrignold, and Collin, where nobody realized they were evil until it was too late. This could be because the first four teachers are their friends in real life, but they actually did not know the Healthy Band. It's also the only installment to have more than one Big Bad.
• My thought is that the fifth is a nightmare that "Duck" and/or "Yellow Guy" had that was loosely based on the game, hence why it's so bizarre even by the standards of the series.

Yellow Guy will die in DHMIS 6 and will reunite with his friends.

• Jossed.

Yellow Guy, Duck, and Red Guy have been in a simulation controlled by Roy the whole time.

In "Creativity", none of the puppets question that anything out of the ordinary is happening. Part of the simulation is the puppets being unaware that they're even in a simulation, and each "lesson" is an attempt to condition them into doing something that we're not quite aware of yet, leading up to some important, climactic end result. Whenever one of the puppets gives their own opinion, instead of just going along with whatever nonsense the teachers try to drill into them, the teacher reacts violently. This is to make the puppets stop thinking for themselves and resign themselves to fall deeper into the simulation's conditioning. However, the simulation fails to strip the puppets completely of their free will. This starts to come to a head in "Computers", when Red Guy doesn't get sucked into Colin's digital world. Instead, he wanders off into another room full of Stylistic Suck. In other words, he's finally seeing the holes in the simulation, but now He Knows Too Much. Before the Red Guy's head explodes, a voice says "You're not invited to the party"; he's not dead, but instead was ejected from the simulation and somehow escaped being disposed of. He then tries to contact Duck and Yellow Guy from the real world, resulting in Duck also beginning to see through the simulation in "Health". He is also ejected from the simulation, albeit in a much grislier way than Red Guy was; this leaves just the Yellow Guy, and even he's noticed at least slightly that something's up. Meanwhile the reason Roy keeps appearing in the background is because he's one of the people in charge of the simulation. He's making sure everything goes smoothly, and when they don't, he makes sure any troublemakers are removed (notice how he's in the room with Red Guy when he resists Colin's digital world, and how he's looming over the "set" when Duck knocks over the camera).

• Confirmed. Maybe.

The end of DHMIS 6...

Was actually a happy ending. Going along with the Groundhog Day theory, it's possible that the trio was stuck in July 19th for who knows how long, and therefore, their torment at the hands of the teachers would never end. By pulling the plug on that mysterious teacher machine, Red Guy not only reset the timeline, he unfroze it, which explains the date changing to the 20th at the end. And with the influence of the teachers completely shut down, the trio, now reunited, has finally achieved their creative freedom. This is why they now sport their favorite colors, they're free to express their own individuality and creativity. As for the Notepad returning? It's a bit of a stretch, but perhaps she's changed for the better and will now give them a positive lesson about creativity. Keep in mind that she wasn't present when the teachers were spawning, so it's possible that she had no affiliation with the machine whatsoever. All in all, the trio can finally live a happy life together, away from the corruptive influence of the media.

Roy isn't Yellow Guy's dad, he's an older Yellow Guy.

The fact that the tons of teachers at the end of "Dreams" starts to make Yellow Guy look like Roy has already been established, and several aspects of the episode indicate some kind of loop. Roy is the first Yellow Guy to experience the events, and when he did Red Guy didn't notice the plug, or at least didn't until it was too late and one of the teachers killed the now insane Yellow Guy. In this universe, dying sends you to some other dimension; like Red Guy was sent to the world of Red Guys, Yellow Guy was sent to the world with the computer, which is clearly a very powerful computer. The fact that it was able to remake Duck for a moment shows its ability to create the puppets themselves if the one using it so desires.

Two possible ways for the theory to go from here;

1. Yellow Guy, mentally broken beyond repair and now with access to a world dimension altering computer, recreates the events that happened to him over and over with different teachers, hoping to one day find the combination of teachers and events that'll lead to a happy ending, occasionally using the power of the computer to insert himself into the events (including Red Guy's world). The particular sequence of events we saw wasn't working out, so he had to direct Red Guy's attention so he'd find the plug that resets everything, as he does every time things go bad (hence why he just touches him and then does nothing). The reason Yellow Guy thinks he's his father is because that's one of the different variables he entered this time to try and change the outcome of events; a fourth reoccurring figure, and a parental figure for one of them (unfortunately an insane guy doesn't make a particularly good parent).

2. Yellow Guy likes his new situation. He's nuts and he's seen some terrible things, but he's practically omnipotent with that computer. He knows if another Yellow Guy is allowed to finish the sequence of events by dying, they'll take his place, so he always gets Red Guy to pull the plug so the events restart instead of someone taking his position.

This is also why the characters never get names. Outright calling the Yellow Guy Roy would give it away, and the other two having names but not him would draw more attention to the question of what his is.

Alternatively, there are multiple Yellow Guys, just as there are multiple Red Guys

The difference is that the Yellow Guys are Legacy Characters—one Yellow Guy is always in charge of the "lessons" and has to force another to be in charge after him. In order to do that, one Yellow Guy has to torture the other with lessons until the other Yellow Guy is so completely broken that he'll be either willing to inflict the same torture on others or just stop caring. Roy was the previous victim, tortured to madness by his own father. He then tried to do the same to our Yellow Guy, but he started to become more aware thanks to Red Guy and Duck, hence why Roy tried to get those two out of the picture.

Duck was a part of the lessons all along

Notice how he appears among the teachers in the simulation while Yellow Guy is actually real and Red Guy has escaped into the real world. Duck is himself a simulation, just of a student and not a teacher, and was created for the lessons presumably as a counterpoint to Red Guy and Yellow Guy. However, Duck started to become more aware of things and eventually decided that he wanted the madness to stop. When he said "I don't want to do this anymore!", what he really meant was that he no longer wanted to be a part of the simulation and contribute to Yellow Guy's torture. Roy decided to punish him by destroying him completely, in a torturous manner.

Alternatively, Duck was supposed to be a teacher.

Basically, this theory is similar to theory above, except Duck was actually a program created by Roy made to torture his son, just like rest of the teachers. However, something happened and Duck decided to disobey him, unlike rest of the teachers. So, Roy turned Duck into one of the students, as a revenge for disobeying him. I am assuming that Duck was meant to teach about animals or something (he is the only animal puppet in the entire series, unless you count Shrignold and some members of Love Cult of Malcolm). That could explain why he is The Smart Guy and Cloudcuckoolander — he still has instincts of a teacher. That would also explain his painful death — Roy wanted to punish him for betraying him and hard.

Duck has schizophrenia

Red Guy appearing during the lesson in 5 was a hallucination caused by his subconscious trying to get him to remember.

It's all Yellow Guy's fault

Roy claims in an interview that he'll send his son to "punishment land" for "allowing his eyes to grow arrogant and rude." Now, Yellow Guy isn't exactly smart, but he's hardly arrogant, much less rude...except at the beginning of episode 1. Keep in mind, that until Yellow Guy decided to paint a picture of a clown out of nowhere, the sketchpad had been acting like an ordinary teacher would, hardly malicious at all. But here, he not only distracted himself from the lesson, but interrupted it. Had he just let her keep singing, nothing bad would've happened. Disproportionate Retribution, perhaps, but Roy clearly isn't winning any father of the year awards here.

The puppets are victims of a Mystery Science Theater 3000 kind of experiment

Except instead of how many bad movies can a person take before they go insane, it's how much messed-up children's television can they take before they go insane. And just like Joel, they may have escaped, but others have taken their place.

The characters' favorite colors are a Shout-Out to Eddsworld

Being another British web series that relies on tons of Black Comedy, it could be possible that the favorite colors of the characters are meant to connect them with Eddsworld characters associated with those colors and the personalities that match them. Red Guy's favorite color being blue connects him with Tom, being a Deadpan Snarker who barely raises his voice. Duck's favorite color being red connects him with Tord, being loudmouthed and having violent tendencies. Yellow Guy's favorite color being green connects him with Edd, being a Kindhearted Simpleton. There's also potential validation for this with Tom being a Special Guest on Don't Hug Me I'm Scared, voicing the Magnet in the final episode of the web series. Admittedly, the lack of a parallel to Matt is a bit puzzling, but it can be easily overlooked.

The Former Teachers

The Notepad and the Clock are the same entity.

Neither were shown active at the same time because they're actually a spirit that inhabits inanimate objects, come to life and start a song that ends with delivering a Hard Truth Aesop.

• Ahem.
  • But it isn't speaking or even animated at all, so the spirit has moved on to the clock.
• Notice when Tony says "scrub, scrub, scrub till the water's brown", how it doesn't rhyme with the previous line? Know what would have rhymed? Green. This makes sense if they have the same notions of creativity. Both also cause the puppets to age several decades in a few minutes.
• Strongly implied in the sixth, which shows that all the teachers are actually simulations apparently created and controlled by Roy, and can all be turned into each other by pressing buttons on the machine that creates them. However, Sketchbook is the only teacher who doesn't show up when Red hits random buttons on the machine, so they may be an exception.

The Clock is a Time Lord

A demented, insane Time Lord.

• Jossed. If the Doctor is correct that "you look Time Lord" (and he would know), time lords and humans look identical. Tony looks like a clock.
  • Maybe Tony's a sentient AI who was invented by Time Lords but went rogue because A.I. Is a Crapshoot.

There will be a third installment...

And in it, Tony and Notepad will team up. They probably won't hook up though. Oh, and Red Thing will decide to bail before it gets ugly, making him the only one to escape the inevitable torture.

• If Red Thing does decide to leave, he'll come back when things start turning really bad for Yellow Thing and Green Bird — he cares too much for them to let them suffer alone. Either that, or he'll be dragged back in by the antagonist(s).
• Alternatively, the antagonist will be a padlock.
• With a Kickstarter for at least 4 more episodes, that has recently succeeded, we will indeed see a 3rd Episode, so... Confirmed!
• It won't primarily be a team-up, however. Each of the four remaining episodes will introduce another Teacher.
  • The third teacher is a bee.
  • Butterfly...

Sketchpad is not evil, nor are they responsible for what happens in the first short.

They really do just want to teach the other puppets about creativity. What happens afterwards is either a Through the Eyes of Madness sequence representing the cast going insane with self-expression, or reality itself breaking down for some reason.Sketchpad may actually have seen the horror coming and been trying to stop it when they told the yellow puppet to "slow down".

Episodes 1 and 2 were cases of extreme Disproportionate Retribution

If watches DHMIS 1 and 2, you'll notice that the main puppet trio, at the very least, said or did something that pissed off the teachers at some point, which could possibly mean that they weren't bending reality and putting the puppets through hell simply For the Evulz.

1. For Sketchbook, Red Guy said that expressing herself with her hair was "boring". Notice that A) after he says it, Sketchbook repeats herself with a hint of anger in her voice, and B) this occurs before she starts putting down Yellow Guy's attempts at being "creative" (of course, this does bring up the question of why she's taking her anger out on Yellow Guy instead of Red Guy).
2. For Tony the Talking Clock, there's Red Guy saying that he and his friends don't want to go on a journey through time and miss the show they were going to watch (Tony outright says "Don't be stupid"), Duck ignoring the song and making a card pyramid (which Tony perceives as "mucking around"), and then all three puppets questioning time (which Tony responds to with his ear-piercing "Meh, meh, MEH" chant).

The Butterfly raped Yellow Guy

And that "Maggot" at the end of the Video? That's a Rape Baby that the Butterfly had. Why else would it call Yellow Guy "Father"?

• But both the Yellow Guy and the Butterfly are male, and it was All Just a Dream. How could they have a baby?
  • Shrignold the Butterfly has not been confirmed male. Plus, even if it was All Just a Dream does not mean it did not happen, as evident by the dislodged eye near the mouse hole in DHMIS 2. Shrignold very easily could've raped Yellow guy in his dream, resulting in a real Caterpillar Baby that considers Yellow guy his dad, because Shrignold would be the mother.

Shrignold hates the Other Love Cult Members.

Yellow Guy said he loved the tree, but Shrignold said he shouldn't love the tree and that isn't how it works, even though the tree is not diry and can talk. He's also a member of the cult. Considering he tells him that you can't love anyone else unless that is your wife, he might think that his friends don't even exist.

The first three teachers weren’t exactly evil.

In the first video, it’s possible that Sketchbook didn’t even mean to make that creativity horror scene happen, as they weren’t with the puppets while they were...going insane. And there is the final line, “Now let’s all agree…to never be creative again.” They sounded (not to mentioned looked) a bit petrified, and there was quite an awkward moment of silence before Sketch spoke again. Plus, in the second video, you can see Sketch in Red Guy’s room and in a bookshelf (next to Red’s chair) in the living room. So, it is possible to say that the puppets still kept the Sketchbook since they realized their mistake and is probably sorry for it.

For the second video, Tony may have been harsh on the puppets at some points, especially during the “rotting alive” scene. When he is mad at the puppets during those points (smashing Bird Puppet’s card house, making Yellow Guy’s ears bleed, etc.), it was probably because they were mucking around (Bird Puppet was suddenly making a house of cards during the lesson, and the puppets were starting to question time too much). And before the rotting scene starts, there’s the line, “Look at your hair grow. Isn’t it strange? How time makes your appearance change.” I think Tony might have just been demonstrating how your appearance does change as time passes (even when you’re dead/a corpse), and the line, “But eventually, everyone runs out of time”, could be referring to how eventually everyone is going to die sooner or later, and there’s nothing they can do to make it stop. Besides, he at least lets the puppets live.

And lastly, the third video. When the love cult starts to reveal its true colors (when Malcolm is introduced), in the background, when it shows Yellow Guy with almost the whole cult around him, you can see Red Guy, Birdman, and Yellow Guy’s dad with them. And in DHMIS 4, the puppets have a little Malcolm figure on one of the shelves in the room they were playing their game in. My theory about this is that all of Yellow Guy’s friends are Malcolm followers, and Shrignold was only trying to get Yellow Guy to join too.

I’m not so sure about Colin being nice, since this post on tumblr seems to imply that he wanted to take the puppets on that digital journey from the start. Since we’re at the second half of the series, my only guess is that he is just the beginning of an arc where the teachers become more threatening to the puppet trio, considering what happens at the end of DHMIS 4…

• Another thing I'd like to point out is that the first three teachers all referred to the puppet trio as "friends" at one point. Colin and the Kitchen Band never once addressed them as friends.

Gilbert the Globe was a good teacher

In the beginning of the fourth video, after the question "What is the biggest thing in the world?" is asked, a globe on the table comes to life... and immediately has his role of teacher stolen by Colin. Word of God confirms that the globe's name was Gilbert.

My theory is that, had Colin not upstaged him at the last second, Gilbert would have actually been a good teacher. He would've sung a catchy song about the world, nothing would have gone terribly wrong, and nobody would have died. In the end, he would have come to the conclusion that the biggest thing in the world was the puppet's love for one another, and then returned to being a lifeless globe.

Unfortunately, since Status Quo Is God, this couldn't happen, and Gilbert had his role stolen.

Adding onto the "Roy will be the final teacher" theory, Roy is The Man Behind the Man to all of the Teachers and the God-equivalent of the DHMIS universe

• Roy wasn't there for the Time Travel parts of "Time", yet he's shown in both the Victorian-era and Future bits of the video, looking exactly the same, suggesting that he is somehow supernatural.
• Yellow Guy, when kidnapped by the Money Man, assumes that he's in his dad's house, indicating that Roy is a really messed-up dude.
• Roy's computer looks very similar to Collin, and a number of the cans in the fifth have "Roy's [food]" on them.
• The Teachers seem to represent, with varying degrees of comedic/dramatic exaggeration, ways in which authority figures (mainly teachers, but also religious authorities and the media) abuse their power over children and the impressionable, so it would be fitting for the ultimate villain of the series to be a parent.
• The date in every video is June 19th, a. k. a. Father's Day. Roy is the only character known to have a child.
• Roy can be seen in the background after Red Guy escapes from the DHMIS universe in "Computers", suggesting that he can travel in and out of the universe at will.
• Roy can be seen lurking above the set, watching over the puppets as though waiting for something to happen in "Health". Perhaps he was planning Duck's death and wanted to watch it happen to make sure?
• Yellow Guy is the only one who consistently accepts the Teacher's ideas, which makes sense if he was raised to be gullible and vulnerable to brainwashing.
• Yellow Guy is the only one who has not died yet-makes sense if his dad and False Friend is controlling everything.
• Roy worshipping Malcolm in "Love" can be explained if he's God by the simple fact that it was most likely All Just a Dream. It's still entirely possible, though, that in the dream world Roy was the one whose idea it was to bring Yellow Guy into the Cult.
• In an "interview" with the characters, Roy says "My silly boy has allowed his eyes to grow arrogant and rude, for this I will take him to punish land."
• Confirmed, he's controlling all of the teachers, and had many planned to use as well, including a Can of Jam, a Folder, and even a Football.

Gilbert will be a Chekhov's Gunman

• Jossed.

Roy isn't the Big Bad, but a former victim himself

Notice how Yellow Guy starts to slowly look like his dad when he gets more traumatized. This raises the question: Did Roy go through something equally traumatic to become the way he is? It's possible that he did, and thus is now so incredibly insane that he can't articulate his thoughts properly—however, he's not so far gone that he doesn't know what's going on.

So since he can't stop the whole thing himself, he decides to get Red Guy to do it for him. He achieves this by unnerving him badly enough to WANT the whole thing to stop and, in turn, save his son from suffering the same fate he did.

The downside of course, is that it may not have worked.

Gilbert is the only "Good" teacher

Red Guy didn't summon him with the console, which may mean that he's the only teacher who wasn't being controlled.

• Red didn't summon Sketchbook either. They may also not have been controlled.

Building on the above, Gilbert was actually created by Red Guy himself

Red Guy was getting sick of how Roy kept creating the teachers for him, Yellow Guy, and Duck, and how they always ended up making the episode into Nightmare Fuel and Nausea Fuel, so he decided that, for once, he would create his own teacher — namely, Gilbert. After all, Gilbert is the only teacher that the characters themselves cue up, with Red Guy saying, "If only there were more to learn about this...". Also, Gilbert was the only teacher that was promoted before the episode itself was uploaded, so maybe, in a meta way, that image of Gilbert was not uploaded by Becky or Joe but rather Red Guy. Of course, Roy saw this, was like "Well, I'm not having any of this", and turned on the teacher machine just as Gilbert appeared to bring Colin in.

The Saxophone is the only "Good" teacher

How can a sunglasses wearing saxophone that teaches you how to buy a canoe turn out to be evil!?

At least one teacher was accidentally created by a past student like File was

"Hey, uh, wouldn't it be funny if my computer came to life and started singing? Like... 'I'm a computer, I'm a... computery... guy... everything made out of... buttons and wires...'"

Colin the Computer was Roy's punishment for the characters 'invoking' a teacher

The characters were exploiting the system by specifically waiting for the teacher to give them the answer. Roy overrided the normal lesson to stop them from showing this level of self-awareness.

Sketchpad is a younge child

Children are prideful and bossy, being nit picky when they are put in charge of play time. Thanks to her naivety she has a close mind about what she considers creative and get's upset easily when people disagree with her. Also, when the creativity explosion passed she quite while she was ahead showing she is impressionable and easy to scare like children are thought to be.

Money Man is a teacher

His lesson was actually about money (what it is, how to spend it, etc) but for some reason he skipped the early part of the lesson plan and skipped straight to the nightmare portion (kidnapping and holding them for ransom).

Sketchbook isn't a villain

Sketchbook, along with Gilbert, were shown to have no connection with Roy. Notice how Sketchbook never gets overtly malicious with the puppets; the worst thing she does is ruin Yellow Guy's painting (the creative explosion was all them). Sketchbook knew about Roy and her lesson was actually her way of trying to warn them without completely freaking them out (after all, Yellow Guy thinks Roy is his friend, so Sketchbook didn't want to piss him off). Like when she teaches them to take a closer look at things, what she's really saying is "don't trust your eyes, there may be a deeper meaning behind things", the part with the orange is all-but saying "one of you will be food", the "man with a baseball bat" could be the money man, the oddly realistic brain with "using your mind to have a good time" is most likely related to Tony's uncoming lesson, or just in general not to automatically go along with the lessons. "Green is not a creative color" was telling Yellow Guy that Duck (Green) was being targeted for elimination (warning him in advance so he can prepare). And so on. Money Man targeted her because she knew too much. And in "Dreams" Red Guy singing her creativity song wasn't just a Continuity Nod, he was subconsciously remembering the deeper meaning (notice how he's sucked back into the fantasy world).

Future Teachers/Lessons

The Teachers are all working together

Sketchbook appeared briefly in DHMIS 2, and both she and Tony were in 3. Tony didn't appear in 1 because This is It wasn't planning/expecting a sequel at first. As only episodes are out at the moment, there's plenty of opportunities for Sketchbook, Tony, and Shrignold to appear in further episodes, and who's to say that the first three don't have any of the as-yet-unknown teachers hidden in them somewhere, such as the book theory discussed elsewhere on this page?

• Jossed (or confirmed From a Certain Point of View), they're all simulations, but all controlled by the same person.

The colors representing the other four antagonists on the Kickstarter page correspond to their main colors.

Paige and Tony are white and blue respectively. The others are yellow, red, green and unknown, possibly black.

• Jossed. However, the 3rd question mark is Yellow, episode 3 focused more on the Yellow Guy, leading this troper to believe the colours are based not on the antagonists, but the protagonists.
  • Then again, the butterfly does have yellow stripes and wings... His face is blue, but that's taken by by Tony. The rest of his body is black, which may be taken by another character. Therefore, this theory still has merit.
• With the release of 4, it does indeed seem to be protagonists, as 4's protagonist is the red puppet. Therefore, 5 will be about the bird.
  • Confirmed.

The Terrorist Puppet will be the Teacher in Episode 3

And if you thought Tony the Clock was a bad, terrifying Teacher, wait until you see how this guy teaches them the value of Money...

• Jossed, the teacher is a butterfly, a very Affably Evil one in fact.

Alternatively, Money will not be one of the future lessons.

After what the puppets went through, they've probably learned the value of money.

• Confirmed.

A future teacher will be voiced by Kevan Brighting.

And The Stanley Parable will be referenced.

• Jossed, most likely.

The teachers are linked to the Exarchs from Mage: The Awakening.

Each Teacher symbolize how each arcanum could be a tool of Tyranny.This is supported by the last cloud in the first lesson look alike a closed ladder; and the Exarchs have used and destoyed the Celestial Ladder to conquest the universe and prevents others from doing the same.

• Sketchpad is the Unity, Master of Mind, wants to convince the puppets to act with one will, in one direction and to give up their individuality. (All must be "creative" with his standards or maybe he was more subtle and the goal of the whole "lesson" is to discourage the puppets to use creativity/free-will)
• Tony is the Prophet, Master of Time, And wants to prevent puppets to attain enlightenment with constraints of Time : Time passes too slowly when he did not need, and passes too quickly when needed; and people have no influence on Time. ("It is not in his hands" only a few chosen or a higher power affecting Time)
• The next will be Chancelior, Master of Matter, who enslave peoples with material goods if the Nameless Monster is the next teacher; or the Pyschopomp, Master of Death, who enslave peoples with fear of Death (Fear of nothing after death or the fear of eternal punishment) because the second lesson have a quick connection with Death (Looks, a old guy is dead !) like the first with Time (Using you mind to have a good Time !)
• The logo of the final episode looks a little different from the others : the Final Teacher will be Gate, The Lonesome Exarch and the Master of Abyss, the creator or the discoverer of an anti-reality which allows the Fallen World to remain a prison for the mortals, and symbolizes the fear itself : fear of the unknown (nothing is scarier), xenophoby (he is a pariah among other Exarchs), he use the fear of not wanting to believe in unknown things like magic. He will use the fear that the puppets will have of the unknown because of all the unusual and horrible things they have experienced. Normaly, he enforces also the boundaries on the universe, but the "don't overstepping the bounds" thematic is already used in the first lesson.

• Seems to be Jossed by the third instalment.

One of the Teachers will be voiced by Kevin Parker.

Becky and Joe made a music video for his song (Feel's Like We Only Go Backwards), so they could potentially hire him to make a song and be a Teacher for one of the 4 episodes.

The Teachers will alternate between representing internal and external sources of fear.

Paige/Sketchpad represents fear of one's own mind and what it could potentially do and become. Tony represents fear of time, because of humanity's obsession with fear, which may stem from the distinctively human fear of one's own time running out. The remaining teachers may continue to alternate between human components and creations and external forces that influence humans. The sixth and final Teacher may well represent the nature of the cold, uncaring, ultimately meaningless universe itself.

• The third instalment also represents an internal fear, as it's about Yellow Guy's desire for love leading him to join a Religion of Evil.
• And number four is about the effect computers have had on us.
• This goes well with the "six things needed to get through life" theory below
  • Health: External, for obvious reasons.
  • Money: Internal, we've seen in the HELP videos what kind of monster greed can turn you into.
  • Religion: External, representing either the frightening implications of our lives being controlled by another, infinitely more powerful being or the fear that there is no God, the Universe doesn't care about us, and our lives are ultimately meaningless.
    • Too bad that's been Jossed, see below.
• Hmm, let's see:
  • Episode 1: Creativity. Internal.
  • Episode 2: Time. External.
  • Episode 3: Love. Internal.
  • Episode 4: Computers. External.
  • Episode 5: Food. External. Although it coud also be about Health, which is Internal.
  • Episode 6: Although Dreams are Internal, the episode ends up being about DHMIS itself, which is, for the puppets, both Internal AND External.

The sixth and final Teacher will be a horrble, traumatizing twist.

It will initially look like the final Teacher, the Teacher who teaches the true, awful nature of the universe, will be some kind of terrible Cosmic Horror. That will be a fakeout. Then someone else will offer his hand: Roy, the yellow guy's dad. He's the way he is because he knew all along.

• The fourth one lends some credence to this, as the teacher in it is a Computer and after Red Guy escapes the digital world Yellow Guy says "I am the stupid one. I am going to paint a picture of a clown. My dad is a computer., possibly implying that Roy will be a future teacher. Also, Yellow Guy asks "why are we at my dad's house?" when trapped in the BIG BAD MON$Y MAN's house, so there is clearly something disturbing about him.
• Scroll to the bottom of this interview. Welp.
• Jossed - he's not Teacher Six, but it's implied that he has some kind of influence over the lessons, although his motivations are presented in a very ambiguous way.

The 3rd instalment will involve pets

Or at least animals in general. Judging by the props in both previous videos, the puppets have pets: The filled dog bowl in the kitchen and the cage in the living room. Also on the kickstarter they said the next lesson was "Where do dogs live?" so I'm willing to bet that the next theme will be the animal kingdom.

• Jossed. It's about Love, Love and Cults.

The 6th installment will be about either reality or fiction, and will end with all the puppets being Killed Off for Real

The Kickstarter promised that the puppets, if they got enough money, would learn the true nature of the Universe. What this means is that the puppets will learn that not only are they fictional themselves, but that their sole purpose for existing is to be tortured by demented psychopaths, then be saved at the last minute just so they can be brought back for more pain. This knowledge will lead them to go insane, and the final teacher will put them out of their misery, but not before putting them in more pain than ever first.

• The fourth one actually lends a lot of credence to this theory: Red guy opens a door to see a crude mock up of the first DHMIS, which is being recorded. When somebody calls "Cut!", Red guy's head explodes; symbolic of how he doesn't exist outside of fiction.
  • And in 5: Bird Guy was eaten alive, and was most likely Killed Off for Real.
  • It's either Confirmed or Jossed depending on how you view the ending of Episode 6, as it can be interpreted as either the characters are either erased from existence and replaced with mis-colored duplicates, or are reborn as said duplicates.

The six episodes will end up corresponding to Marvel's Infinity Gems/Stones

1 is Mind. 2 is Time. 6 will be Reality or, if that is taken, Soul (because of the probable revealation that souls do not exist). That leaves Space (geography?) and Power (politics?).

• 3 is about love, and finding the "one", which would probably fall under Soul.
• 4 is about computers. Distinguishing the digital world from the real one is a central theme, so this could be seen as Reality.
• Jossed-the fifth instalment is about health.

The six lessons correspond to the six things needed to get through life

From here - Creativity, Time, and in no particular order, Health, Relationships, Money and Religion (or otherwise believing in some vaules or other).

• The third one is about love, and finding the "one", so that probably falls under relationships.
  • Then again, the Third one also deals with a Cult, so maybe the episode falls under Religion. Or both Relationships and Religion.
    • I'd expect Religion to be the last episode, the one that deals with the true meaning of the Universe, for the revelation either that God Is Evil or that there is no God and everything is meaningless.
  • Jossed-the fourth installment is about computers.
    • Not quite. Episode 3 falls under both Relationships and Religion, adding Computers, giving that to Episode 4, and the rest, Money and Health, go to either 5 or 6.
  • The fifth instalment is about Health, which means the last one will be about Money. Alternatively, going with the above on Religion, the third is Relationships, the HELP videos are Money and the final one is Religion.

One of the future teachers will be a book

During the Brainwash scene in the sequel, many futuristic objects flash by on the bird's screen. Pause at the right time and you'll see the book with a DHMIS teacher face.◊

• Jossed.

Benny the Butterfly gave his lesson to only one of the puppets; the next two videos will follow that pattern, and then the last video will bring the puppets back together as a group.

The first two videos consisted of Sketchbook and Tony giving lessons about creativity and time to all three puppets, but the third video broke that pattern and focused more on the yellow puppet. Maybe this is going to set a new pattern in the videos: the next video will have a new teacher giving a lesson to either the green puppet or the red one, and the video after that will focus on the other puppet. We got to know the puppets as a group before we focused on them individually, and then we'll see them regroup at the end.

• The Butterfly's name is Shrignold. The other stuff seems confirmed so far.
• Jossed. Colin in the fourth gives a lesson to all the puppets, though the episode focuses more on Red Guy.

Each puppet will get their own lesson based on their personalities.

The yellow puppet is the nicest and most childlike of the three, so it makes sense to give the loving one a lesson about love and how you can take it too far, right? We know that the green bird is the smartest puppet, and the red guy is unexcited about basically everything, so maybe the next videos will focus their lessons on those personality aspects. Maybe the green bird pursues knowledge, but then he's taught that there are a lot of things you're better off not knowing? I'm not sure about the red guy, but maybe his lesson will have to do with trying to do something exciting with your life and then realizing that the mundane is safer.

• Alternative theory: The puppets will get a lesson not just based on their general personalities, but on their most problematic attribute.
  • Yellow Guy is the most gullible and easily manipulated of the three: Whereas Red Guy outright calls Sketchbook's ideas boring, and Duck questions whether or not time is real, Yellow Guy accepts the ideas of every teacher so far. In "Love", this enables the Love Cultists to easily convince him that his friends hate him and that their home is where he truly belongs.
  • Red Guy tends to cause problems through his apathy; Paige starts to get angry with the puppets after he says expressing yourself through your hair sounds really boring, and Tony does the same after he says he doesn't want to journey through time because he's going to miss a TV show. In his episode, the teacher will be genuinely well-intentioned, but allow him to leave when he wants to. This will cause trouble for him that could have been avoided if he had listened to the teacher.
  • Semi-Confirmed, Semi-Jossed: The Teacher (A Computer) is sort of Well-Intentioned and Red Guy does leave which causes him problems, but the Teacher also gets angry, doesn't focus on the subject at hand, manipulates the other two, and Red Guy just wants to leave to not be stuck in an infinite loop that is deteriorating.
  • Maybe not jossed at all; we can't know the computer's intentions, but given the very end of the 5th video, it seems that maybe he WAS allowed to leave whatever weird reality the puppets are in. In fact, it's his overcoming his apathy and expressing care for his friends' well-being in the first place that leads to him eventually getting out; perhaps he was rewarded for overcoming a character flaw, then?
  • Duck is a little bit harder to pin down in terms of his flaws, but the closest thing might be his inability to keep his thoughts to himself: he, like, Red Guy, tells Sketchbook outright that her ideas are boring (although she doesn't seem to get mad at him), Tony becomes violent after he questions the reality of time, and the first thing we see the BIG BAD MON$Y MAN do is tape his mouth shut. In his own episode, the teacher will initially intend to give his lesson to all three puppets, but an offhand remark by Duck will cause him to single out Duck for special punishment.
  • Confirmed; Duck knocking over the camera in "Health" causes the Healthy Band to get Yellow Guy and the Cans to eat him alive. However, with Red Guy now in an unknown location outside of where the lessons are and Duck apparently dead, it looks like they won't be all back together for the finale.
  • To tie this into what happened to the red guy: the Bird's main flaw was his speaking out of turn and not keeping his thoughts to himself, but it should also be noted that he was the most logical out of all the puppets, and the fifth video seemed like it was designed specifically to try his patience by surrounding him with nonsense. Unlike the red guy, who overcame his apathy when the situation called for it, the bird couldn't overcome his flaws in the end. That may be why he likely suffered a worse fate.
  • They'll all come back together for the world of pain that is the series finale.

The last 3 will mirror the first 3, except that each will end with a puppet being Killed Off for Real

More specifically:

• Red Guy died for real in 4 and will not return for the last 2 instalments.
• The fourth instalment is quite similar to the first instalment, with the teacher being a jerk but never confirmed to have intentionally caused the Bad Stuff, and the Bad Stuff being more reminiscent of a Disney Acid Sequence like in 1 than more concrete horrors like the rotting alive in 2 or the cult scene in 3. Furthermore, Red Guy was the one who dismissed all of Sketchbook's ideas in 1, and he is the one who is killed by the computer in 4. Furthermore, both the first and fourth teachers are also both negatively effected by the Bad Stuff along with the puppets: just like Notepad was seemingly also horrified by the CREATIVITY EXPLOSION, the Computer also got trapped in the time loop.
• The fifth episode's teacher will be much more clearly evil and sadistic than the Computer, just as Tony was much more clearly evil than Sketchbook. He will unambiguously be responsible for and unaffected by the bad sStuff, and he will kill Duck since Duck was the one who suggested that time wasn't real in "Time".
• The sixth instalment, much like the third, will focus on Yellow Guy, though this time due to the other puppets being dead rather than him leaving them. The teacher here will be a more personal and downplayed kind of evil, using emotional manipulation similar to The Love Cultists rather than reality warping, and will take Yellow Guy into a Crapsaccharine World (more than the normal DHMIS world) before killing him when he does something that he/she/it deems sinful, or alternatively manipulating Yellow Guy into killing himself.
• Supporting this idea is the fact that the fourth instalment has a number of references to the first two, implying that the series will start to enforce some sense of continuity. Also, Tony's statement that "I'm sure you'll be fine, but eventually everyone runs out of time" could be Foreshadowing this.
• Red Guy didn't appear in "Health" (bar a single cameo and the end credits) and by the looks of things Duck is dead as well. Looking to be confirmed so far.
• Jossed. The teacher doesn't kill Yellow Guy in the sixth.

The theme of the final lesson will be Death.

• It's been an undercurrent of the videos. 1 had the Bird Puppet write "DEATH", Time had "Eventually, everyone runs out of time", 3, had the tombstones, and 4 had Red Guy seem to be Killed Off for Real after discovering reality. Going off of the previous theory, if the Yellow Puppet is the only one left, then he will die at the end after the episode's teacher sings about death itself. Also, what better way to end the six life lessons than with a lesson about the end of life?
• Jossed. It's about dreams... sort of.

Gilbert the Globe will be the next episode's Teacher.

• After being teased the way he was, he might eventually get his own lesson to teach. Also, the puppets' Genre Savvy tendencies being correct suggest that he is a Teacher, Colin just took over.
  • Jossed. It was food.
    • Though he might get a role in episode 6, maybe under the guise of helping the puppets find Red Guy.
    • Jossed now also.

The final teacher will be Yellow Guy

.

• The fates of the puppets are foreshadowed on a refrigerator drawing at 0:27 in "Health". Red Guy is outside, Duck is drawn with cartoonish "X"'s over his eyes, and the Yellow Guy is drawn with an evil grin. By the end of "Computers, Red Guy has escaped "the set". All he can merely do now is watch helplessly as his friends continue to suffer inside. By the end of the video, Duck is slaughtered and presumably fed to Yellow Guy, who, for the majority of the series, has always been the most willing to listen and learn from what the teachers have taught. This is the final test before his enlightenment. In the final episode, we will see what the culmination of five years of unnecessary pain and gratuitous suffering has done to our innocent friend.
  • Jossed. Roy is behind all of it.

Alternatively, the final episode will involve Yellow Guy saving the day

.By the end of episode 5, Yellow Guy seems more aware than he used to be. In episode 6, we'll be led to believe that he's actually going along with what the teacher is saying...until he finds his chance and throws off his Obfuscating Stupidity. He'll then defeat the new teacher and in the process he'll save his friends, bringing them back and they'll all earn their happy ending.

• Jossed. The 6th video ends with a recreation of the first video, on June 20, in a seemingly alternate universe.

The series will have a Bittersweet Ending

• Jossed. It's an infinite loop, ending with the first video in a different universe.
  • Possibly confirmed. Notice that instead of their original colours, the puppets have all become their favourite colour from the first episode. This could possibly indicate that, while they'll still have to deal with people like the teachers, they'll now be able to choose to be what they want to be and won't be forced to follow whatever a teacher tells them. Also, the calendar changes to June 20. This could symbolize that they've finally gained the ability to move forward in life and overcome the villains.

The Teachers all Correspond to Subjects Learned in School

• Notepad/Creativity: Art
• Clock/Time: History
• Butterfly/Love: Religious/Cultural Studies
• Computer: Technology
• Globe: Geography
• Food/Health: Physical Education and Personal Health

That just leaves either English or Science for the final subject.

Now that the final episode is out, all the teachers who do appear correspond more with college education (with a few hands-on subjects learned in school):

• Lamp/Dreams: Psychology
• Solar System/The Universe: Astronomy
• Football: Sports
• Magnet/Attraction: Sales & Marketing
• Shovel: Archaeology
• Saxophone/Buying a Canoe: Using certain skills to your advantage
• File: Business
• Traffic Lights: Driving
• Gel: Consulting

Green Bird isn't coming back.

The puppets are being forced to live in their strange world by the unseen creators of the show, and Roy is helping the creators. The puppets have to go along with the teachers (although they can resist, as shown by Green Bird's scared reaction to the word "time" in the fourth episode) and are subject to the randomness and chaos of the world. However, they can escape by breaking the fourth wall. Although he had at most passively resisted up until that point, Red Guy started to fight against the Internet Lesson, and was transported into the Dark Room where he was alone - a sort of prison warning the puppets that they are not the ones in charge. He stumbled into the room where the creators were, accidentally, and therefore broke the fourth wall and escaped their control. Since he was able to escape by accident, he is still alive and is able to try and permeate the creators' world enough to rescue his friends, as shown in the Hungry Lesson.Green Bird, on the other hand, escaped by violently rebelling. As early as the Time Lesson, he pointed out things that were wrong or introduced contradicting concepts (like "Maybe time's just a construct of human perception...") From the very beginning of the Hungry Lesson, he knew something was wrong and resisted the teachers through the whole lesson. He told the Steak to "Get off of me!" and complained that the part about the body being like a house didn't make any sense. Finally, he screamed "I don't want to do this anymore!" and ran away. His version of the Dark Room, unlike Red Guy's, involved him being eaten by a monstrosity as punishment for rebelling. Since he defied the creators and escaped on purpose, they tricked Yellow Guy into killing and eating Green Bird. His eyes being shown with X marks in the psychedelic sequence shows that he, unlike Red Guy, is dead.

• Confirmed. DHMIS 6 has no sign of Green Bird anywhere minus a temporary reappearance as a simulation, only Red Guy and Yellow Guy.

Roy is as much of a victim as the puppets.

He, like his son, ran afoul of a teacher once. That teacher's lesson: The Importance of Family and Friends.

Roy ended up angering that teacher somehow and his punishment is to see his son and his son's friends be tortured.

• Jossed. Roy seems to be the one controlling the teachers, with him seemingly doing so via a control panel.

Roy wasn't real, Yellow Guy's true father is the simulation machine.

The simulation machine was Yellow Guy's true father all along. Instead of birthing Yellow Guy, it adopted him — the machine transported Yellow Guy inside it to teach him lessons and "raise" him. It roped in Red Guy to be a friend to Yellow Guy during lessons, and digitally created Duck to "make an example of him" later on in case Yellow Guy started needing intimidation to listen to the lessons. The love lesson was the simulation machine trying to explain to Yellow Guy that it loved him, but since it is a computer it doesn't really know how to express love. The computer lesson was supposed to make Yellow Guy think that computers are good and caring things. In the time lesson, Tony points out "look, a computer!" when Yellow Guy mentions the dead man, which was meant to show that a certain computer can distract and comfort him when sad things happen. The whole goal of the food lesson was to end in punishment for the rebelling Duck, but it went very badly, and the simulation machine got distracted from its goal of parenting Yellow Guy and malfunctioned. That's why the Food Band and all the teachers in "Dreams" sing off-key and are not as well-developed as the previous teachers.

Roy was also a digital creation of the machine, so he could be a physical representation of a father and an avatar who makes sure things are going okay. Yellow Guy himself says "My dad is a computer!" Roy is also shown looking at super-pixellated porn. Why would a computer want to look at real human bodies when it could see some well-constructed pixels? (That's kind of silly, I know.) When the simulation machine malfunctioned by getting too concerned with punishing Duck, Roy was able to recognize the malfunction and therefore brought Red Guy — the only other truly living being besides Yellow Guy — back to the machine to unplug and reset it. Having been reset, the machine can now teach happier and better lessons to them all.

The true villains of the series are Becky and Joe

.

Well, we never do see Roy operating the teacher console. Roy could be as much a puppet as the other characters, meaning the true villains are the show's creators Becky and Joe. Notice how the console in episode 6 makes room for two people to operate the different teachers. A similar console appears in episode 2 and has two hands operating it.

• We even see the creators in the fourth episode, when Red Guy walks into a room with two puppeteers making some low-budget version of the show.
  • This is very similar to Becky and Joe's appearance at the end of Craig's Big Day.

The teachers hate Duck

Did you ever notice that, excluding "Love" and "Dreams", the teachers do something either directly or indirectly to pick on Duck? Sketchbook insults him by claiming that green, which is the color of his fur, is not a creative color, Tony makes his Rapid Aging the worst by making him rot and decay almost instantly, Colin makes him temporarily transform into some kind of CGI monstrosity during his "Digital Style!" bit, and the events of "Health" speak for themselves. Why?

Because he's rebelling from the start. He can't see the smiling face on the orange, outright says that time might not be real at all, decides to eat a chicken picnic instead of going after Yellow Guy when Shrignold takes him on a lesson, and gives a nonhelpful, almost sarcastic answer when asked where he lives, as opposed to Yellow Guy's enthusiastic "Spaghetti!" and Red Guy trying to say his name. From the start, Roy or whoever is running the show, sees him as a potential threat and programs the teachers to single him out. Obviously, the lamp doesn't do anything to him because he's dead by that point.

Misc WMG

DHMIS was invented by the god of Cat Soup for the sake of teaching lessons about the universe he made

There is a sort of cynical, nihilistic and depressing approach to life in both, similar to that of the first author of Nekojiru. The god shown in the movie was apathetic to what was going on in the world of the short film, there one moment to perform strange magic, eating the same world the next moment. It would be almost fitting if that god became more interested in a new world and began to take a sage-like role in it by being a teacher but the lessons he teaches end up being depressing, nihilistic and cynical.

DHMIS is meant to be a Take That! towards shows like Sesame Street

Bad Things That Could Happen is somehow part of the DHMIS series

At the very least, it wouldn't be surprising if This Is It threw in a Shout-Out to that video.

One of the last two videos will take place during a party.

The mannequin resembling the Yellow Guy in the fourth video says "I might paint a picture of a clown", which is a line from the first video, and "My dad is a computer", which is a line from the second video. The phrase "You're not invited to the party" is also heard, but is clearly not from any previous video.

• Jossed: 5 takes place in a Kitchen, 6 takes place in a Bedroom along with a Universe full of Red Guys and a Control Panel where all the Teachers are spawned into the DHMIS Universe.

Since the series only has two videos left to go through, it could be that one of them has the three puppets celebrating and the teacher introduces themself by interrupting the party.

• Jossed: the fifth episode is about food and takes place in the kitchen. However, at one point steak man says, "The good food is allowed to stay, for a party!" and goes on to say the bad food is not invited.
  • Un-jossed. There will be six episodes, the sixth could have a party in it.
  • Jossed again. There's no party, just an alternate reality.

Malcolm is Zardoz

A giant talking stone head being worshipped? Yep, sounds like Zardoz.

Don't Hug Me I'm Scared is a children's TV show in an alternate reality/possible future where the UK is a totalitarian state

The more of these things I watch, the more this starts to make sense. In this hypothetical state, it is mandatory for all children to watch the show, and the disturbing bits are the government's way of shocking them into obedience. I say it's probably the UK simply because of the characters' accents, so I suppose there are other possibilities.

• Episode one is meant to teach children that creativity is dangerous if left unchecked. This helps prevent free thinking and thus reduces the possibility of a revolution occurring.
• Episode two is less clear, but this troper theorizes that it teaches kids to forget the past (i.e. the time before this regime took power), but not to look too far forward, either, as death is inevitable. This means many people have very short-term goals and expectations, so they aren't willing to commit to the time and effort it would take to overthrow the government.
• Episode three abhors the existence of special clubs/groups like the featured cult. This discourages the formation of groups who oppose the government.
• Episode four warns of the "dangers" of seeking knowledge; the red puppet becomes so knowledgeable that he sees what's really behind the things that happen in his world, so his head explodes. The less knowledgeable people are, the less likely they will be to realize that what the government is doing is wrong.
• Episode 5 deals with a possible food shortage/limited supply of food. The fact that they keep referring to the same few items as "good", while the rest are all "bad". This could be because the same few items referred to as "good" are from a very limited food supply. Therefore, Children assume that the same few foods they are fed over and over again is good, when in reality it is the ONLY food available to the populace.
• Episode 6 goes one further and 'reveals' though propaganda that as bad as the police state is, the outside world is even worse, a place where everyone is passionless and even more conformic then they are.

The ending is supposed to warn the people not to alter the state or they will just make it worse.Ironically,the loop is supposed to be a happy ending with everyone returned to their 'perfect' position.

DHMIS is a kid's show airing in the same universe as Too Many Cooks.

Too Many Cooks, much like DHMIS, is a satire of television that involves things starting off normally but gets more sinister as time goes on. What if they're from the same universe in which morality is much more scarce and dark stuff like these shows are the norm?

DHMIS 3 takes place last chronologically.

• Jossed due to the universal reset at the end of episode 6.

The show literally takes place in Nineteen Eighty-Four.

I know there's already a theory that it's propaganda for a totalitarian UK Government, but I think we can get more specific than that and say it's actually in Orwell's Oceania. The reason it's in Old Speak is because the characters are "rebels."

There's one key detail that makes me think this: the characters all become their favorite colors at the end. Why would an authoritarian government reward failed rebels by making them their favorite colors?

Because that's exactly what the party does! It intentionally indoctrinates people to rebel, defeats their rebellion, and then incorporates the failed rebels into the Inner Party! The message is "if you rebel and fail, you'll be rewarded for rejoining the Party."

DHMIS Episodes 5 and 6 are based on Seasonal Rot.

The Red Guy is gone in "Health". Most shows that are said to have gone through Seasonal Rot usually get rid of at least one main character, and Duck is killed during the same episode, which follows the same trend. Not to mention both episodes have teachers worse at singing than the other episodes, meaning it could be a take on how shows get worse as they go on. It's not exactly uncommon for DHMIS to criticize children's TV.

• The various new teachers seen when Red Guy operates the teacher machine would also definitely fit with this theme

The episodes are a show directed by Roy and Red Guy.

Straight from Film Theory. First, let's assume that the Real Life segment in Episode 6 is actually a flashback set before the series.

Red Guy was working at a boring desk job and had dreams of making a Children's TV show, but feels like they're getting drowned with such negative opinions, as seen when he tried to sing on an open mic night. Only one patron wasn't booing him, however; Roy. Roy then makes a deal with Red Guy to sponsor his show (proved by his name in the end credits of every episode). But Roy has greedy motives, and the show gets out of hand once Red Guy leaves in Episode 4. As seen in Episode 5, as well as in their interview at It's Nice That, Roy sells grain-based food products (and aspic), which he wastes no time invoking Product Placement on once Red Guy leaves the show.

As for Yellow Guy's relationship with Roy, they really are son and father. As sponsor, Roy is able to get Yellow Guy on stage, though he's no Stage Mom; on the contrary, Yellow Guy being on the show is his "punish land" for his eyes becoming arrogant and rude (probably for catching Roy watching porn or something), explaining his Butt-Monkey status in-universe. Plenty of Yellow Guy's fears are also implemented throughout the show, like horses, eggs, wasps, crabs, meat, and trees. It also explains the calendar's "June 19", which is Father's Day in 2011 (when this show started IRL), 2016 (when the Episode 6 was released); Roy is constantly punishing Yellow Guy and forcing him to respect his authority with a constant reminder of who's in charge.

At least if it wasn't for Red Guy. At the end of Episode 4, Red Guy's head explodes. This might be an interpretation of getting his mind blown, where he realizes that doesn't need Roy to produce his show and that he can make his show on a low budget and publish it online (e.g. YouTube), while Roy believes what one can do in the computer is all superficial consumerism things. In Episode 5, imagery of Red Guy from outside looking in seen throughout the episode represents him seeing the show from an outsider's POV. The phone calls for Duck are him telling his friends that they don't need to sell their souls to Roy. Duck answers and tries to escape, but is captured, canned, and consumed, which can be an allegory of being fired.

All this comes to a head in Episode 6. Red Guy seeing and working the "Show Machine" that creates the characters and scenarios seen in prior episodes is symbolic for the following: Red Guy coming to grips with the show he created and finally seeing the effects it's having on children like Yellow Guy. Roy's extending of his arm and touching Red Guy on the shoulder isn't an act of aggression, but an offering to return to the show, since in a society full of negativity towards Red Guy's ideas, Roy was the only one willing to take a chance on him. Red Guy pulling the plug at the end is him cutting ties with the show and Roy, eager to see what will happen next.

And it works. In the new rendition of the show, the characters are now in their favorite color, the calendar changes its date to June 19 to June 20, symbolizing their freedom from Roy, and there are less props than before since Red Guy's now on a smaller budget.

All the characters from the sixth episode who didn't otherwise feature were based on What Could Have Been

Externally, characters like the saxophone and traffic signal were probably included as being based on ideas that the show's creators considered for earlier episodes in the series but eventually dropped. Internally, they would have eventually been in future episodes.

It's not a kids' show

Assuming that the general theory of Don't Hug Me I'm Scared is a television show, possibly made by Red Guy and sponsored by Roy, then it's not actually meant for children. Instead, it's an [adult swim]-style parody of such shows and at least some of the horrific elements were planned from the beginning, such as the gore and discordant music in the "creativity explosion", and Red Guy was the one who proposed this as the series' selling point. The first episode (and possibly the third) is closest to Red Guy's original concept for the show, but Roy started with his Executive Meddling pretty much right from the beginning, starting small with some relatively minor Take That! moments at Yellow Guy but before long moved on to full-on Mind Rape with the simulation machine until Red Guy left production. The fifth episode was heavily criticized for its product placement, poor acting, and Throw It In! moments where unplanned events interrupted filming, which is why the sixth episode at least tried to go back to the show's roots, but then Red Guy came back and pulled the plug, rebooting the show on his own terms without any sponsorship. The new version would be fundamentally similar, but the horror is directed more at the viewers than the actors (e.g., none of them go through Rapid Aging in the episode on time) for the purposes of humor.

The ending is ultimately a Good Ending.

Why? Because the door is 'green. Ever since green has been established to not be "a creative colour", the has been set to red, yellow and blue. This colour, as far as I'm aware, is one of the extremely rare times when the colour green has actually been used (the spinach can has green, although that may be the only exception), which probably means that creativity is now accepted within the society of DHMIS.

The title "Don't Hug Me I'm Scared" refers to the breakdown of the Yellow Guy's character.

At the beginning, he was optimistic, having fun and singing songs with his friends but these were followed by harsh life lessons that traumatized him each time. Even losing each of his friends in later episode. By episode 6, he's not only completely alone and not only that, withdrawn from all the trauma. Too scared to hug anyone anymore.

The Money Man got Offscreen Karma.

Specifically, he tried to swan-dive in the money DuckTales (1987)-style only to have his bones broken.

The teacher machine was suffering from a virus in the final half of the show

The first three episodes, while messed up, were still fairly tame for the most part because the machine was working properly, creating lessons to teach the puppets and teachers to ensure progress. While it did doll out Disproportionate Retribution (i.e. Rapid Aging for questioning whether or not time is real), the effects were very brief and ultimately everyone was alright. But sometime between the third and fourth episodes, Roy's habit of using it browse sites he shouldn't caught up to it and it caught a terrible virus, and it turned into a downward spiral. Teachers began appearing out of nowhere, the songs became worse and worse, and overall the programming just began to decay. The death/departure of the other two was just Roy trying to fix the problem by trying to erase what he saw as corrupted data (after all, they were actively rebelling against the teachers, something they had never done before then). Eventually though, he realized that the only way to fix the problem was to start all over, hence Red Guy pulling the plug. The last scene is meant to represent the computer having fixed itself, hence the much more pleasant atmosphere.

Roy is not Yellow Guy's dad, he's the original Yellow Guy puppet.

In "Electricity", Lesley is shown to have a drawer full of Duck and Yellow Guy puppets and replaces a broken Duck. She also tells Yellow Guy, "You're not my real son". Maybe Roy's her real son, I.E. the first puppet she made, who's become badly damaged (physically and psychologically) over time and Yellow Guy is the latest in a long line of replacements.

"Wakey Wakey..." / New Videos WMG

The new videos will be about the puppets travelling to a claymotion world

A place called Clayhill indeed, that and the door in the psychedelic pathway of the Wakey Wakey video.

• Jossed. The puppets reveal in the intro that they have always lived in Clay Hill. The psychedelic doorway is just their frondoor about to be opened by Yellow Guy.

Bird will become the dictator mayor of Clayhill

The portrait of the ancient mayor kind of look like him and the bird in the sinister machine seems to be him, maybe he will pretend to be him and/or brainwash the Clayhillians?

• Confirmed, somewhat. Duck does indeed become a crazy dictator as mayor, however this is mainly due to The Key of the City's manipulation.

The new videos will be a more conventional series

The creators seem to have got a partnership, a bigger budget (more varied backgrounds,etc...) and the Wakey Wakey trailer looks a lot more like an adventure series than the original videos.

• Confirmed. The single-episode pilot has a much more story-based structure to it and focuses less on learning and more about the trio's adventures.

The new videos will be a sequel

There are a lot of references to the events of the original videos after all, the puppets are just portrayed with their original colors out of familiarity and aesthetic reasons.

• Jossed. The pilot acts more like a Continuity Reboot.

The pilot will officially be released on June 19, 2020

Duck will be subjected to Unwilling Roboticisation.

That drill in the teaser does not look promising. Perhaps, instead of what the above WMG suggests, he will be the one brainwashed into acting as the mayor or into turning the town into the dictatorship suggested in another shot as part of it.

• Zig-zagged. Duck does become one in his own volition but is mainly manipulated by The Key of the City into doing it.

The new videos will be a Continuity Reboot

While the core themes, subject matter and tone, as well as the three protagonists, are still in there, there's no indication that the series will have anything to do with the original.

• Confirmed. The pilot has no indication that it is a continuation from episode six.

Yellow guy will kill his father.

TV Series WMG

Lesley is Roy's Good Counterpart.

She's not as creepy as him, at least, and the teachers are a lot more manageable in the TV Series. Sometime next season, we'll see a showdown between the two of them.

Yellow Guy is David, and a sort of Frankenstein's Monster revived by Roy and/or Lesley.

The fact that Duck's grave has the name "David" over it is not a simple one-off joke. If you watch back on the episode, you'll notice that Yellow Guy was originally the first person the Coffin thought had died, rather than Duck. Additionally, him having a "D" on his overalls is an indicator that his name begins with D, and Roy, his father, wears overalls that have the letter R on them. The last piece of evidence for this is Yellow Guy having batteries inside of him in "Electricity" that power him, much like how Frankenstein's Monster is powered by electricity. His overall childish mentality could also be explained as a reference to the pop culture interpretation of the Monster as an idiot.

Further, David was Lesley's son, who died in the car accident portrayed in "Transport"'s Trumpton segment, which Lesley narrates. Yellow Guy is her traumatized "replacement", and thus "not [her] real son."

If you look closely at the photos from the family wallet in the Family episode, one features a woman with Lesley's haircut with a young boy. The photos could have all come from when they were all still together and presumably normal people.

The group in "Transport" is not the same group as "Electricity".

The group in "Transport" is still stuck at the dump being attacked by whatever. Yes, we see at the end of the episode Lesley bringing the group back in a car, but as we see, they "always have spares" of all the characters (especially Duck), so it's entirely possible that she just brought out spares of the three and they were brought into the house for "Electricity", leaving the "original" group in "Transport" to rot and die.

These aren't the same puppets from the Web Series

For one thing, they're a lot more violent, especially towards each other. Roy and/or Lesley decided they were a lost cause and started over. Instead, they were left in the rebooted teacher machine, hence the scene at the end of episode six where they've changed colors. Meanwhile, whoever is in charge created that dollhouse and started over.

Todney and Lilly were not supposed to be one of the teachers

Before they are first introduced, an apple is talking to the gang in an attempt to teach them about healthy eating, only for Lilly to take a bite out of him and throw him on the floor, with her and Todney taking over the episode immediately after. Also notable is that unlike the other teachers from the TV series, these two are much more malicious, planning to kidnap Yellow Guy to get a "family-sized" meal for them and their family, while the others were either genuinely nice or at least willing to teach the trio the lesson of the day.

Lesley set up Yellow Guy to fail.

Given her practical omniscience, she had to have known about the whole battery situation to begin with and knows how petty and clueless the other puppets are. When Yellow Guy requested the book, she made it as complex as he was at the time, so that when he would inevitably have his batteries swapped back and become stupid again, there would be no way he could figure out what the book said, therefore keeping him trapped with the others and she can continue to exploit them as much as she wants.

The Youtube series is what happens when Roy is in control, and the TV series is when Lesley is in control.

The title. The TV series is lighter and more humoreous because Lesley is not as messed up and evil as Roy. She's more of a trickster if anything, and she's "playing" with the trio rather than "punishing" them.

Roy was Killed Offscreen by Lesley after "Family".

Essentially, all of "Family" was Roy's attempt at a Hostile Show Takeover. Somehow, after the web series wrapped up, Lesley managed to usurp Roy as whoever's in charge of the show and retooled it. But somehow Roy managed to takeover for the "Family" lesson, hence why the episode is more in line with what'd you see in the web series. But unfortunately for Roy, Lesley found out and made sure he got his just deserts, hence why this was his first and only appearance. The Roy who eats the family was a copy Lesley sent to tie up loose ends.

The Time Child was supposed to teach a Drugs Are Bad lesson.

He would've gotten the three to drink the Space Alcohol and then they'd go on a nightmarish adventure to The 6th Adventure, which would be like Don't Hug Me, I'm Scared's version of The D.A.R.E. Report: The Land of Decisions and Choices and Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue.

Stain Edwards kills the original Duck in "Death".

At the end of "Death", Stain Edwards turns into Duck while the original Duck is dead(ish), and Yellow Guy digs the original Duck up. The group carries on with two Ducks until one of the Ducks is decapitated by the other. It's hard to determine which Duck was killed, but if you look at the pool of blood that spills out of the dead Duck's neck, you'll see some maggots writhing around. Earlier in the episode, the original Duck is shown to have maggots writhing in cuts on his body while chilling inside the Coffin. The presence of maggots shows that the original Duck has been killed, and that Stain Edwards is now the Duck in the later episodes. Furthermore, the urn of ashes that briefly appears in "Electricity" before Red Guy tosses it away in exchange for an electric urn has Duck's face on it.

Lesley is Obliviously Evil.

She doesn't seem as overtly malicious as Roy, and even her ominous conversation with Yellow Guy can come off as more like playful banter. In her mind, she's just playing with her dolls (hence the model set of their house), with no real consequences aside from the occasional broken toy, which she has spares of. She's slightly unhinged, but not actively out to hurt anyone.

The Bigger Red Guy and Duck from "Electricity" are the true masterminds.

Lesley and Roy are creepy, but out of everyone these two seem the most likely to want to put three random people through hell just Forthe Evulz.

Yellow Guy was Obfuscating Stupidity in the end.

He knew Lesley would be keeping an eye on them, so he pretended to be dumb again when they replaced his batteries to throw her off. Assuming the series will be renewed for another season, next season will show him being ever so slightly more aware of the true nature of their reality.

"Transport" takes place after "Electricity".

The couch gag of "Transport" of Yellow Guy's dream could easily describe what happens in "Electricity", smart Yellow Guy appears in his reflection in the car window, and in "Friendship" they mention that invoice day is tomorrow — but they only get an invoice for their power bill in "Electricity". Furthermore, there's actually some evidence that the entire series might be told Back to Front. For instance, the apple that Todney bites in "Family" is in one piece (and in the living room) in "Friendship".

• This could explain why nobody remembers what happened previously.

Warren wasn't a teacher, just a guy who broke into the house

Prior to Warren's appearance in the series, an article in a newspaper can be seen that reads "worm fired for harassment." Additionally, Warren does not act like any of the other teachers. He possesses none of their reality-warping powers, and utterly fails to keep the students under control at all. He actually has no affiliation with Roy or Lesley, he's just an insecure narcissist trying to shill his podcast and get treated to a "restaurant-style meal."

• Actually, the video-pause time-stop could be considered a reality-warping power.

The Time Child is an All-Powerful Bystander

He's just a 6D entity who decided to drop into Lesley's shenanigans for no particular reason.

The Council mentioned by the Lamp in "Death" are the real creators of the show, and the ones in the floor above Lesley

Lesley doesn't seem so certain that she created the show and its universe, and there's another set of stairs above her, indicating an even higher power. In "Death", the Lamp mentions how after you die, you end up having to relive your life as a show for a superspecies known as the Council. Considering the old universe of the web series had effectively been erased by Red Guy in DHMIS 6, this could indicate that the characters are now living a new life after their old universe had been killed off, and the Council are the creators behind this new life, with Lesley acting as their performance artist. Additionally, the Lamp mentions that, "Every time you get it right, you get a pound." This part may potentially be seen at the end of "Jobs" when Briefcase gives Duck a single pound that lands in his eye, which could be an indicator that the three ended up pulling off their performance for the Council that episode perfectly, whereas in every other episode, they've done something incorrectly to not earn a pound.

The darkened room in "Electricity" is the old universe from the web series after Red Guy pulled the plug

It was left completely ambiguous as to what happened in the web series when Red Guy pulled the plug, and the recolored versions of the characters don't seem to hold any significance anymore. Considering that the darkened room is the only place where the old teachers show up, albeit dead, and the reappearing teachers seem like completely different people after a Heel–Face Turn, this dark room could be the remnants of the old universe, killed off due to Red Guy pulling the plug, and a fault in the new universe's electricity caused Red Guy and Duck to temporarily be sprung back into the world they used to live in. Adding to this is the checkerboard pattern on the floor, which looks identical to the floorboards seen in the room where the machine controlling the teachers was.

• This is unlikely, however, as one of the dead teachers was the briefcase from "Jobs."

Characters who talk about "restaurant-style" meals have no affiliation with Lesley or the powers above her

Between the first six episodes, there exist three characters who mention "restaurant-style" meals, being the Vending Machine, the Twins, and Warren. In regards to the Vending Machine, Peterson's and Sons and Friends Bits & Parts Limited seems to have no relevance towards what Lesley is trying to accomplish, and the Briefcase seemingly left the trio there by accident. The Twins only wanted a complete family to get the Grolton family meal, killed the apple who initially seemed to be the teacher of the episode, and they were only stopped through intervention by Roy. And with Warren, everything he ever did was for himself, and it seemed as if Colin was meant to be the teacher occupying them that episode, as it was Computer Day.

The briefcase was trying to help them escape

Sure, he did just wander off and leave them there, but aside from Duck they had a good time. Red Guy got to do what he wanted to do, i.e. nothing, and Yellow Guy even started a family. Even Duck Guy started to enjoy himself after the carehound incident. Perhaps he managed to break free of his programming and led them somewhere with little influence from those two. But of course, Duck had to ruin it, so he had to cut the lesson short.

This is a prequel to the original series.

Roy eventually takes control from Lesley and causes the original series, manipulating events to his liking.

The Briefcase and Mr. Choo Choo are the only actual teachers.

They're the only ones with reality warping abilities up to par with the teachers of the original webshow. The rest aren't affiliated with Lesley.

The next season will feature Duck discovering something about the reality the Guys inhabit.

The webseries ended with Red Guy discovering the machine that made the teachers, and the first season of the TV series features Yellow Guy finding Lesley in the attic. Rule of Three dictates that Duck needs a turn, possibly having to do with that set of stairs that lead to someone above Lesley.

• Maybe the Duck will pull a page out of Grant Morrison's Animal Man's playbook, and will meet Becky Sloan and Joe Pelling themselves.

Yellow Guy has been past Lesley before

In Transport's intro, when he talks about his dream, he mentions a small one on top of that, after mentioning the winding one. As his dream turned out to be a reality in the next episode, Electricity, this may not be that wild a "guess".

Stain Edwards was a plant from Lesley.

And sadly, he killed the original because he saw through it.

The TV series revolves around the Status Quo Is God tendencies of TV shows.

In the original series, what happens in one episode carries over into the rest of the episodes. When Red Guy disappears, he's no longer on the set; when Duck dies, he's also barred from the set. Yellow Guy clearly remembers the previous teachers and what they did to him and his friends.

The TV show has the exact opposite. When Red Guy and Duck are in a dark room, they barely recognize the corpses of their former teachers. When Red Guy tries to leave the house, he's unable to do so without breaking the fabric of their world. Lesley — some sort of higher power in the show — outright says that she replaces every Duck that dies or disappears. This is all compounded in the scene where Yellow Guy, Red Guy, and Duck shred the book of knowledge Lesley gave them. What they think is an act of agency is actually them maintaining the Status Quo all along by potentially destroying the only thing that could have helped them escape the house.

While the original series has a similar style (starts with trio, goes through lesson, states moral at the end), the trio themselves have more agency and are able to act outside of the script.

Lesley was always in control of the puppets, even in the webseries. Roy is actually The Dragon to her.

If you think about it, it's never explicitly said or shown that Roy is controlling everything, only that he's everywhere watching the trio, has products labeled with his name in the house, and reaches out his hand to Red Guy when he's at the machine that's controlling everything. In reality, Roy works for Lesley and watches the puppets to report back to her over what's happening, and his products are a way of demonstrating that. Reaching out to Red Guy was caused by Lesley either telling him to stop Red from pulling the plug on the iteration, or to get him to pull the plug once Lesley realized that things had gone too haywire to continue. Lesley sent Roy to kill the Twins and their family due to them derailing the lesson (or from not being affiliated with it at all, considering they eat the apple that seems like it's going to teach them about nutrition). Lesley simply prefers to control the students from afar without them seeing her, for whatever reason.

The Further Stairs aren't for Yellow Guy, but Lesley.

The house is a coping mechanism for Lesley's grief over the loss of her son David. It's why no matter how bad things get it always resets. But the stairs weren't for Yellow Guy to ascend. Those stairs are for her when she's ready to let go of her grief and will take her out of the house she's created.

Sketchbook was one of Lesley's creations

Her manner of teaching aligns more with the teachers produced for the series, and less with the other teachers from the Web Series. That's why she wasn't summoned by the teacher machine, because Roy didn't create her.

Red Guy is gonna drown, or otherwise get into a bad situation in water, at some point

That's all. The ID card part wasn't just a joke, it was foreshadowing.

Lesley was behind the destruction of Clayhill

Basically, the pilot was another playset Lesley had, and got bored with after a while. Thus, she threw it away, but liked the main three and kept them.

Roy didn't eat the family, but he did kill them

One of them got in his way, so he dismembered the whole family and ate all of the chicken by himself.

The world they live in is Purgatory

Yellow Guy, or David, was Lesley's son and died getting hit by a car, as we saw in his daydream during episode 5. For the sake of this theory, let's say Bird Guy and Red Guy were in the car that hit him and died as well from hitting a post afterwards or something, it's not really important. None of them were terribly bad people, but not particularly virtuous either, so the powers that be put them through this series of events to help them become better people as it were. Hence why no matter what happens to them they still show up good as new next episode, since they're already dead and can't die twice. The last set of stairs leads to heaven. Sadly, they destroyed their ticket out, and will have to endure even more of this before they're ready to move on.

Stain Edwards became one of Duck's "backups."

Remember what Lesley said about how she always keeps backups? Perhaps she, believing Duck Guy to be dead forever and never coming back, created a glob of sentient clay to turn into another Duck to retain the status quo. By the time the original was back, Stain Edwards had become an identical copy of Duck in all means and, for all intents and purposes, would be indistinguishable from the original had he not returned. But Yellow Guy dug the original back up, resulting in there being two Ducks, forcing her to instead kill one of them outright to fix the status quo by having one of the two kill the other.

Duck has abandonment issues.

Heavily assumed by fans in his song from "Family", due to the way it is sung. He is heard singing about not wanting a family but the way it is sung makes it clear that he actually has abandonment issues.

"Peterson" of Peterson's and Sons and Friends Bits & Parts Limited is not a name, but a title

After Duck gets flung into the future, he attends Yellow Guy's retirement party, where he is informed that Mr. Peterson is going to do a speech. "Mr. Peterson" turns out to be none other than Red Guy, who by this point is the head of the company. "Mr. Peterson" is not any individual, it just so happens to be the person in charge of the company at the time.

Lesley is an Avatar of the Stranger

The Stranger is an entity typically associated with the uncanny valley, however in a broader sense it also represents the fears of something that should be familiar that is wrong or strange. Jurgen Leitner himself describes it succinctly as the "familiar made wrong".Lesley, as the metaphorical (and literal) puppetmaster of the series, if she is in control of things, would be a prime candidate to be one. While not typically the Stranger's domain, Don't Hug Me I'm Scared is ultimately a show that takes from the aesthetics and stylings of children's television while being a more surreal horror comedy. The implicit contradiction there, the 'wrongness' and uncanny quality is pretty prime Stranger territory.Considering the use of puppets (a noted 'web' thing) and the repeated instances of futility and lack of control, perhaps she multiclassed a bit into The Web too, but there aren't really any spiders around so I imagine that she's mostly an Avatar of the Stranger.

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