As a WMG subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.
- The main shot in the foot for the German offensive into Russia wasn't a lack of manpower, but a lack of resources, most notably oil. And secondly a shambolic and understaffed industry. Despite being much more competent in this timeline, the invasion still failed and was turned back for the same reasons it was in our history. Furthermore, it's a reasonable assumption that the Americans still provided lend-lease, and that Japan didn't invade the Russian Far East.
The mysterious "V-Meat" hawked by Uncle Jack is suspicious enough, but Arthur can find samples of "Strange Meat" that "tastes like pork" in the game. This strongly implies that the Wastrels, or even the rest of Wellington Wells, have turned to cannibalizing the dead (or worse, the living) to survive. It's not like people mind when they're hiked up on Joy.
- Likely Confirmed: a side-mission you can do for the butcher has you delivering a very human-shaped package to a cart at the back door. If you choose to go further and help process it, the butcher's dialogue all-but confirms it's a human corpse.
- Partially Confirmed. While Reginald Cutty, the butcher in the sidequest, is serving human flesh as V-Meat, it's still illegal, and the sidequest ends with you telling a Bobby about it, who reacts with the appropriate amount of horror and arrests Cutty.
- Partially Confirmed, partially Jossed. The precise ending above doesn't happen. But, all three of the default player characters have a Bittersweet Ending in which they successfully escape from Wellington Wells, with the world seemingly being in much better shape outside; the Wellies are left to rot under the influence of Joy, but at least our protagonists get to have happy lives. Ollie's ending is arguably even an outright Happy Ending, as he gets to fly away from Wellington Wells in a hot-air balloon, screaming profanities at the Wellies below and urinating on them as he is carried away.
- Confirmed. Victoria's DLC ends with her destroying the Joy production facilities.
And this ties in to Wellington Wells as a German rump state. The Very Bad Thing was somehow related to collaborationism. The guilt comes from the fact that while the rest of the United Kingdom finally managed to throw off the German yoke, the Wellies just submissively went along with the Germans until the Empire was defeated and a cabal of power-hungry opportunists seized control of Wellington Wells' meagre territory. The government plays up the guilt angle to keep the Wellies dependent on Joy, but they might even be Downers themselves.
- Possibly confirmed. Germany is mentioned to be in fine shape while Wellington Wells is essentially in third-world country shape. Canada and Spain are mentioned as vacation spots, but nothing solid is known about them. The Britannia outside of Wellington Wells seems to be in normal shape too, with Arthur coming across a relatively normal boy some ways away from the border.
- Or it could be both. Having all the children die and then in your desperation to forget accidentally ensuring that you can't have any more would be pretty bad.
- It's stated that Wellies go into psychotic violent outbreaks when they see children or pregnant women, as a newspaper article in-game mentions "Breeder Riots", so... technically jossed, but also, in a way, confirmed in spirit.
- Confirmed.
- Of all the counties in Britain, Wellington Wells was one of the few weak-willed and scared enough to do The Very Bad Thing so the Germans would stop breathing down their backs. From here, it's clear that Wellington Wells' decision has devolved them into a complete nuthouse with Wellies and Downers killing each other with smiles painted on their souls, all while those actually in charge - General Byng and Doctor Verloc - are miserable, barely in control, and constantly looking for new ways to lobotomize the population without turning them into suicidal gerbils. In the ending, Britain is still standing in some form, but no effort has been made to help or even purge Wellington Wells. You'd think that a whole island of lunatics with a functioning bridge to the mainland would be something of a priority, let alone lunatics with advanced technology. But here, nobody makes a peep. It's implied that Britain is intentionally monitoring and silencing the population to ensure the mind-control technologies developed there will eventually bear fruit and be mass-produced for the rest of the world. As for the Germans, maybe their plans were to take the children and make their own version of Wellington Wells from the direct descendants of people who seem to be genetically disposed to weak-wills... but those plans were cut short when all the subjects went off the rails. Literally.
For starters, one ending could have the player attempting to rebuild society, though they'd eventually end up failing.
Another could include the player making it out, but losing their brother.
Or, one could end in the player arriving on Nazi occupied Europe's shores, and getting captured for an interrogation on what precisely is going on in Britain.
- Technically confirmed. The first alternate ending is if you have Arthur take his Joy at the beginning, and after completing all three stories, you can either have Arthur move on with his life and continue into Britannia or return to taking Joy and go back to Wellington Wells. The ending where he accepts his misdeeds and goes on to Britain is the best and happiest ending.
During his "Happy Hour" broadcast, Jack reads a joke from someone who compares an injured Downer to a puppy. He then trails off, sighing about how he misses his dog. In an attempt to play it off, he laughs and takes a Joy-pill... or rather pretends to, because those familiar with stage magicians will notice that he's actually doing a sleight of hand trick, and that the pill never really enters his mouth. After that, he looks shaken as he takes the next letter. (If you want to watch it, here is the link with the timestamp
).
Furthermore, Uncle Jack's bedtime stories are incredibly grim. You'd think that a man trying to keep the population of his town happy would choose something more lighthearted to read, or at least the versions of those stories that end well. But what I think he's actually doing is trying to send a hidden message.
The original story of Little Red Riding Hood only involved the wolf eating the mother and then disguising himself as her to lure Little Red Riding Hood closer in order to eat her. In Jack's version, the wolf doesn't eat the mother in one go, but rather saves some pieces of meat and a bottle of her blood. Later, he tricks Little Red Riding Hood into eating the meat and drinking the blood by telling her it's wine and ham respectively, while a cat and a mouse warn her about the true contents. The wolf tells her they're lying, and orders her to throw her shoes at them, which she does. This is very similar to the opening scene with Arthur, where his coworkers smash and eat a rat, thinking it's a pinata, while Arthur - who's off his Joy at this point - sees the truth and is then chased away for it.
The story of the Pied Piper of Hamlyn is actually even darker in Jack's version. In the original, after the town refuses to pay him, the Piper takes only the children with him (which again, eerily familiar to what actually happened in the history of the game). In this version, he takes everyone in town. The only one left behind was the smith, who had a bad leg and couldn't keep up, and who committed suicide after a year.
It's also worth noting that Jack sometimes falters during his bedtime stories, and genuinely looks like he's about to throw up.
- It might have to do with the fact that he had a daughter of his own. Talking to people like they're children when you've lost your own horrifically will break anyone.
- Semi-jossed. Jack wasn't off his Joy in the broadcasts. He broke through his drug-filled haze after seeing a reminder of his daughter, and was presumably killed right after.
- Without going into spoiler territory, in the DLC Roger sees a very, very big portal, two years before the events of the game. To this troper, that portal looked an awful lot like those doodles of eyes we see riddled all over the garden district. Sometime between the events of the first DLC and the main game, all of Wellington Wells managed to see the portal as well, and it is one more memory that Joy is being used to suppress.
- Implicitly confirmed; We know that the Very Bad Thing was capitulating in the first place, so it being avoidable in the first place and not an ugly necessity would certainly be more poignant, and make Wellington Wells' reactions more believable.
- Consider this: entire areas around Wellington Wells are dilapidated and filled with "downers" who are roaming around in rags and starving. One possibility of this state is that much of these areas along with industries and farms had to be torched to deny resources to the Germans other than Urban Warfare and La Résistance. Nuclear weapons might be a speculation but no mention of radiation poisoning. Although they managed to win the war, much of the country might have been devastated to the point that Britain has become an After the End wasteland.
- Jossed.
- Uncle Jack's bedtime story of the Pied Piper of Hamlin. The people willing to do anything to defeat the invading rats, even consorting with measures beyond the limitations of warfare. By targeting the entire German populace, they end the war with one fell swoop like the nuclear bombs in the Atlantic AND the Pacific, though immeasurably greater in evil. The citizens, sickened, choose to kill the perpetrators and implement the Wellington society. Joy to take away the horror that comes with committing mass genocide.
- Couple this with the German conscription, the current lack of children, and that even remembering children at all sets off wellies... and you have a recipe for A Very Bad Thing indeed...
- Jossed
- More or less confirmed.
The overgrown ruins look quite old, and the people seem to have very immature mannerisms and quirks that you wouldn't find in an adult. The very title of the event, "Very Bad Thing" sounds just like what a toddler would say while confessing a misdemeanor to a parent. A loss of intelligence is not a side affect of Joy; it muddles your thoughts and alters perceptions, but that's not the same as intellect.
The influence of guilt on Wellington society is also unusual; no matter how bad the atrocity was, there would have been at least a few people capable of coping with it, if only because there are always psychopaths, sadists, and amoral individuals in any sufficiently large population. Even then, those are just the extreme cases who are hard-wired against empathy; Plenty of average Joes simply have the knack for handling and managing emotional turmoil, yet the guilt seems fairly universal in this game's world.
The final clue is that Percy, as seen in the photo, is noticeably older (or at least taller) than Arthur, yet still sounded fairly young during Arthur's audio flashback a moment later. As this is the memory Arthur leaps to the moment the Joy begins to wear off, we can guess he's remembering the day when the V.B.T. happened. He was very young at the time, he's still around, and Percy isn't.
Analysis; The V.B.T. targeted a specific age group, an entire generation was orphaned without exception, and there weren't enough (sane) adults to consul or instruct the surviving children on how to deal with grief in a healthy manner. The "Joy" solution may have resulted from the ignorance of how to properly deal with remorse rather than the severity of the remorse itself.
- Jossed. Jack, at least, was old enough to have a daughter.
- Perhaps he was one of the few surviving adults(if not the only one). But was left broken by the loss of his daughter and began treating the remaining children as his own, projecting his daughter onto them. This could be why he keeps treating them like children, and encouraging them to act as such, even after they've grown up—he doesn't want to lose any more children in any way, shape, or form.
- Partially Confirmed: The V.B.T. happened 17 years ago, and only kids under a certain age were taken.
- Jossed. Jack, at least, was old enough to have a daughter.
With the German invasion a success, the only logical next step the Nazis would do is take the Holocaust to Britain and start rounding up "undesirables". Perhaps as a sort of black mail British people can stay out of the war and remain a basic puppet state as long as they give up every "undesirable" fearing for their lives the people of England and especially Wellington Wells made it their mission to round up many "undesirables" the Nazis wanted, while the Nazis stayed out of their lives. Realizing what they were doing to their own countrymen and women the the whole state fell into a phase of shock. The main character's brother was a physically/mentally handicapped who was sold out by their parents. The cries that the main character hears when hes off his Joy is his brother desperately pleading for help while trying to resist Nazi officers who would have surely shipped him off to an Extermination Camp. You even hear a train roaring, dogs barking, and Germans yelling.
- Partially Confirmed. The children were sent away on a train, but we have no idea where it was going or why they were taken; the one man who was involved in organizing the whole mess, General Robert Bryng, states that he knew they were being taken for "some project", but what that was, he doesn't know — only Colonel von Stauffenberg knew.
- Jossed.
- Close. They took kids under a certain age. Arthur was supposed to be taken, but he pulled an identity switch with Percy.
- Jossed
- Jossed
Obviously the war against Russia was a terrible thing, possibly even worse than the one in our reality. Of course, such a decision would create a terrible tsunami of guilt across England, but it would also drive out the Germans. So, almost literally, they threw the babies out with the bathwater.
- Partially Jossed, Partially Confirmed. The Very Bad Thing did involve the deaths of all the children taken, but it wasn't the English who killed them; Wellington Wells' taken children were killed when the train taking them away was derailed.
The Germans were taking whoever they could to fight, including children. Similar to the Outer Limits episode "Feasibility Study", the inhabitants of Wellington Wells realized that the Germans wouldn't stop until they had taken everything that Britain had to offer. So, to convince the Germans that remaining was more dangerous than leaving, they started infecting their children with something horrific, probably some sort of bioweapon, which would start spreading through the German lines once they arrived to start fighting. And just like in "Feasibility Study", they knew the Germans wouldn't stop unless they knew they couldn't get anything from any of them...
- Jossed
- Confirmed
In this timeline, Hitler listened to his military advisers and launched a ground invasion of England while his air bombers focused on striking only military targets instead of focusing most of his efforts on London to cow the population. Without the London blitz to unite the British people together in a show of solidarity, they instead desperately united under Churchill as he became something of a cult of personality. A savior to bow to and revere, as opposed to a leader to strengthen their resolve to fight the Germans.
After Churchill and the British military did the Very Bad Thing to drive out the Nazis, the citizens of the United States were so disgusted with the actions of the British, that Franklin D. Roosevelt's reputation was utterly ruined for his involvement in the Lend-Lease Act. There was a sudden renewed push for isolationism, since after the Very Bad Thing the American people saw Great Britain as almost as bad if not worse than Nazi Germany. The change in public sentiment swept Robert A. Taft to the top of the Republican presidential primary where he defeated the scandal-stricken FDR by a massive landslide to become the 33rd President of the United States. The Republican Party moved to strengthen the Neutrality Acts and to close the loopholes that FDR and the disgraced Interventionists used to pass the Lend-Lease Act.
Thus the United States abandoned Western Europe to its fate until the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor in 1941, resulting in Congress declaring war on the Japanese Empire and kick-starting the Great Pacific War.
Without the fear of Hitler and Nazi Germany (since America just saw Hitler as Europe's problem) to motivate the invention of the Atomic Bomb, the war with Japan was far longer and bloodier. The United States eventually won with massive help from the USSR under Stalin, the newly restored Nationalist Party in China under Chiang Kai-shek, a violent anti-japanese uprising in Korea led by Kim Kyung-cheon and a united anti-japanese uprising in Indochina led by the combined forces of the Viet Minh, the Khmer Issarak and the Pathet Lao.
After the Great Pacific War, an intergovernmental military alliance (known as Pacific Ocean Treaty Organization or "POTO") was formed after the Pacific Ocean Treaty was signed by United States, The Soviet Union, China, The United Republic of Korea under Kim Kyung-cheon (with the US and the Soviets as staunch allies in this timeline, Korea was never split), The United Protectorates of Issarak (Formerly French Indochina), the newly independent countries of Philippines, Indonesia & Malaysia and the People's Republic of Japan (A weakened and broken Japan with a Chinese puppet government installed).
From that day forward, the US and Russia enjoyed strong and friendly relations akin to the relations the US enjoys with the UK and other NATO nations in our timeline.
After the conclusion of the war in Europe, Great Britain won. But without the aid of the US and Canada, there was no D-Day, leaving Western and Central Europe a war-torn and desolate wasteland by the time Great Britain, Russia and Spain finally managed to wipe out Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy years after the European theater was meant to end in our timeline.
With Hitler and Mussolini out of the picture, the British people's fanatical devotion to Churchill reaching a fever pitch and with Joy pills in full use throughout the British Empire, Churchill uses this opportunity to refuse to dissolve the Churchill War Ministry. He makes his coalition government a permanent fixture in Parliament with himself installed as its permanent leader. With near limitless power at his fingertips, Churchill commands the British Military to immediately move forward with Operation Unthinkable, turning on the formerly Allied Soviets and declaring war on Moscow.
Russia, in its war against Great British Empire and its European allies, enlists the help of its POTO allies to defend itself, which included the United States. Thus setting up the British and Russian war taking place in the background of We Happy Few. :p
- Jossed. The game lore reveals that in this alternate timeline, Franklin D. Roosevelt is assassinated by an unemployed bricklayer in 1933, allowing Senator Huey Long to become President where he continued America's isolation policy. Without material support and help from the United States, Germany successfully invaded Britain in Operation Sea Lion.
- However, it's a rather good read. Might I suggest you make it a story of your own?
When you think of all the atrocities that humanity has committed across the ages, it can be difficult to think why the "Very Bad Thing" would be so different, and so horrible that it would severely depress someone from just knowing about it. So one has to think what the "Very Bad Thing" would have to do that has never been accomplished in human history. The answer: The End of the World as We Know It.
Whatever was done to stop the Nazi advance, the fallout from it was so widespread and catastrophic that it has put an expiration date on humanity as a whole. Maybe everyone's been rendered sterile, or maybe the world's about to be engulfed by some equivalent of a Nuclear Winter. Whatever the reason, everyone's days are numbered, and Joy is the one thing that's stopping everyone from thinking about their inevitable extinction.
Not to mention, if Joy (or some other insane means of coping) isn't worldwide, why hasn't anyone from another country come to help / loot / eradicate Wellington Wells? The two most likely explanations are that all the other major countries don't have the resources / intel to help... or that they're all dead / doomed / barely surviving.
And consider the title. "We happy FEW" indeed.
- Jossed. The world seems to be fine on its own. Germany is mentioned to be in much better shape than Wellington Wells, and Spain and Canada are mentioned as places that some people want to visit for vacation.
In a well-meaning attempt to end the war, the citizens of Wellington Wells turned the village into a cult that promised salvation in the form of the summoning of an ancient, long-forgotten Celtic god. They follow through with the rituals, something was summoned, and it did unspeakable things to the Germans, then followed up with the rest of the world. The entity is related to sadness and other negative thoughts, which is why Wellington Wells came up with Joy pills as a way to hide from the abomination, but also to hide from the crippling guilt that comes from ending the world in the most terrible way possible.
Beta footage confirms there are some eldritch cults in Wellington Wells, but that could mean anything.
- Jossed.
Uncle Jack is played by a real-life actor. This makes it unlikely that he'd also have a CG-Model that you run into in-game. However, it's also unlikely we'll never "meet him" given that he seems to be the Big Bad. So, instead they'll probably have a reveal where you run up to his studio and find that he's just a computer generated video and not a human being.
- Jossed. He's a real person, but in Ollie's story, you go to his studio and discover he's been dead for a while and his tapes were pre-recorded before he died.
Such as being married or being siblings, or perhaps just very close friends. The E3 2018 trailer shows them speaking seemingly in secret in a way which shows they are close (For instance, Victoria does not report Ollie to the police for very obviously complaining about Joy and the state of the world.) So it think it will be revealed they have some relationship.
- They're just close friends, or at least used to be. And Victoria does attempt to report him to the police after their conversation, and she does offscreen after the mission.
- This video has the player meeting a fellow soldier in Second World War attire. Consider that the player knew him well along with possibility one of their comrades, he may be a soldier who took part against Nazi invasion in Britain.
- Supported by the E3 2016 trailer shown during the Xbox conference. The player character looks old enough to have been conscripted into the Army.
- Possibly jossed - Alpha footage shows that the main character kicks the bucket on Joy due to seeing a headline about himself and his brother, showing they were High School students in 1947, but due to the Alternate History nature of the game we're not certain.
- Actually, confirmed. There are three player characters. The veteran NPC that Arthur meets is actually Ollie, one of the other player characters.
- The latter is confirmed. Near the end of Arthur's story, you find her corpse in the Motilene mines. Additional information about her is given in Ollie's story when he goes to the Byng household if you look through Victoria's stuff.
As in, The Very Bad Thing is actually most of the above (and below), and Joy is being used to marginalize all these horrible things simultaneously occurring (and being directly responsible for all of the above) into a single thing, which the Wellies can then ignore entirely.
Both games are set in the 1960s, set in a city that's falling apart with people addicted to a substance commonly dispensed everywhere. Their governments are run in a Orwellian style Police State that controls its population through chemical means, and keeps them from knowing the truth that their society is crumbling to nothing. With their technology sharing the same 50s like aesthetics.
There's Joy in the water and in most of the food. Which means you're constantly under mild effects even when you aren't taking pills. The fact that you can see crumbling buildings and dead rats when you quit the hard stuff is the least of it - things are really nightmarish behind the vague fuzz.
The Germans (or whatever government is running the place) are using Wellington as a long-term experiment to create a drug that makes people happy even in slavery. And since people can break out, it's now being used to invent the new mask. It's imperative that as many people break out as possible to warn the world.
- Confirmed.
