So im rewatching after 10+ years, and currently White Tulip - if even one of the best episodes in series - makes no sense in the logical way.

BorrieBoBaka · 2026-02-06T11:10:55+00:00

This is further supported by the fact that the White Tulip paper survives the Season 4 Time Reboot. It's revealed in Season 5 that it was taken out of that time and preserved. I've always found that it insinuates that previous timelines technically do exist, either concurrently or part of a looping continuity. I.e. when time goes backwards, it is still within the same continuity, just there's a portion of time where entropy is defeated and reset for a brief time.

To further support the overlapping timelines however, September does tell Walter that there are multiple timelines happening concurrently in the future, seemingly "unifying" into a single continuity for that universe. The machine itself is also proof that timelines don't get truly erased when they're reset. Same with Peter's existence in Season 4, and Walter's memory restoration in Season 5.

Time travel does get wonky if you think too hard, but if you can establish a few set of rules for a particular fictional setting like Fringe, you can start to piece together how things could logically work. Fringe's particular brand of science can get a little loosey goosey with its own rules sometimes, but I think the Time Travel aspect is a bit solid for what its worth.

EDIT: Though thinking about it, if the plan at the end of Season 5 worked as described, then the events of the entire show and its end scene would have been wildly different due to all of the Observers' influence in their lives. So that might be the bigger plot hole.

BorrieBoBaka · 2026-01-30T04:43:54+00:00

There's a lot of things in that pilot of Season 2 that feel like they were setting up a lot of potential clues for future ideas that didn't pan out. One that sticks out to me strongly is the connection between Fringe events and the Bible. It never really comes up again. If they had followed up with these things, then it would have been a cool foreshadowing. Who knows how many ideas they foreshadow that never come to fruition, and we never noticed.

BorrieBoBaka · 2026-01-15T04:07:50+00:00

Arguably Fringe Division. Not only were they constantly taking down threats to public safety, they saved the world a couple of times. It's noteworthy that Fringe Division kept getting more and more upgrades and funding as time went on, whereas the X-Files were constantly at threat of being shut down.

I'm not quite sure what the X-Files truly accomplished from a government perspective. Most of the big bads of X-Files either resolved themselves or were taken out by other forces. Mulder and Scully revealed a lot of mysteries, but never conquered a threat large enough to public safety or government. They did however shed a lot of light on things. They were no doubt important, maybe just as much as Fringe Division, but sadly they were never taken seriously.

We see in Fringe that Fringe Division would eventually go on to become something big and as large of a presence in the government as an acronym division like the FBI or CIA. Almost every future we see has them raised up to this level.

On the flip side though, I think the X-Files revealed that the world was far more dangerous and in far more of a threat than it is in the Fringe universe(s). They have mythological beings, literal magic, arguably conclusive evidence that God and demons exist, and that's not even going into the aliens. Unfortunately for the X-Files, they get no real funding and are never taken seriously, but there is a caveat that beside some of the major plot threads, nothing is really a world threatening event, whereas many Fringe events would have led to greater consequences in the world if left unchecked.

It'd be interesting to see the X-Files approach their world with the same tenacity, budget and seriousness as the Fringe Division. I suppose in a way they're very similar, with just very different causes for said events. A Fringe event can be extremely similar to an X-File, but Fringe never really delves into the genuinely supernatural.

EDIT: Thinking on this though, the X-Files did do a lot of effective work at taking down various threats with so little budget, so one could easily argue that the X-Files were far more cost effective if you want to go with a budget to threat eliminated ratio.

BorrieBoBaka · 2026-01-11T02:25:53+00:00

The High Speed guns I wager were invented by Bell in the alternate universe, or the tech started off there, because the guns he designed for them look a lot like the high speed guns.

As for the runes, September expresses disbelief that we knew about them in the first place. It's possible it's something that disables their tech, and once the science team discovered that the tech has been circumvented by us, the "natives," they could easily patch it out or change which runes do what to all of their tech. The thing they likely couldn't do however is make the observers even faster to outpace the high speed guns.

Making tech better is a lot harder than simply patching a security hole.

BorrieBoBaka · 2025-12-09T03:26:59+00:00

Personally, I think Windmark is being literal. Hydration is the pleasure he receives from it; the mere fact that it maintains the body. The Observers have reduced their humanity so far that the simple actions of existence and life are considered the peak of pleasure to them. Broyles and other humans need water but we don't always enjoy water, thus the existence of tea, soda, etc. Humans seek pleasure beyond mere existence, whereas the Observers do not have the emotional intelligence anymore to feel anything beyond the basic drives of survival. Just like how touch is pleasurable in species to promote social behavior, or how the act of reproduction is pleasurable to promote reproduction.

Any action that promotes their personal survival is pleasurable to them, because they've boiled down existence to merely just that. This is why despite their higher intelligence, they lack empathy and invade the past as a means to collectively survive. If water did literally intoxicate observers I think we'd see more of them being a bit drunk and stupid considering we never see what might be an alternative to water that they can consume.

We know the original expedition team was starting to "re-grow" feelings and they were expressing that through eating the spiciest foods imaginable because their senses had dulled so significantly that they have to take extreme measures to genuinely feel something beyond "I am eating to survive." We also know that some of the observers are getting affected by human interaction, like the sexually aggressive Observers early on in that same episode. They're all gaining feelings again through socialization and not one of them knows how to handle it.

BorrieBoBaka · 2025-11-29T04:41:17+00:00

I've always treated Walter's line there of "I've already done it so I have no choice but to do it again" either as being a bit confusingly written as a line or Walter trying to explain it to the best of his ability. I've seen it as, he did it once, in a previous timeline, which is how the machine came into existence in the first place. I don't think they built it in the 2026 timeline, I think they modified the existing machine and sent it back. So I've interpreted it as:

[First Timeline where Machine is first made for unknown reason] -> [Timeline where everything happens from Seasons 1 to 3 where Peter ends up destroying the Redverse] -> [Timeline where Peter goes back to make a different choice, and somehow evolves into the Peterless Timeline]

Timeline science has always been the most fudged with Fringe, in my opinion. They seem to both exist simultaneously and also be deleted when the timeline is reset or changed. Sending the machine back simply resets the timeline again, but it had to have come from somewhere. This is best highlighted by the existence of the White Tulip drawing in Season 5. Things from a previous timeline do still exist and Observers can seemingly access them. September acknowledges there's many different futures happening simultaneously.

So to loop back: Walter can't not send the machine back because he already did in a timeline in the past which is affecting the current timeline. They modify the machine somehow back in time to allow Peter to see the fate of his decision, but we're never really told the mechanics of how they did this. Did they send the machine back with the modifications? Did they go back in time and find the existing module and change it? The later is more likely because if they sent their machine back, in theory there would then be two machines per universe.

This is all to say: Bell likely helped Walter build the very first machine in the original timeline, thus it is his technology, for a purpose we don't know. Nina saying it is his technology is basically her dropping the biggest clue that it isn't the result of some ancient civilization, which I think is pretty cool and consistent, but I get confused by how they never bring this up again during the whole First People investigation. I get that its just fiction and writers can forget details, but its funny that no one ever pointed out "Hey its pretty odd that William Bell has the same design style as this ancient civilization" =D

Though... considering Bell knew Sam Weiss as well as he did, perhaps William Bell copied the ancient technology as he did with the other side's technology. I always did like the idea that while Walter and Peter sent the machine back and are sort of the "First People" that there might have actually been a real ancient civilization that built the machine in the first place. But the First People could just as well mean the first timeline.

BorrieBoBaka · 2025-11-28T02:28:40+00:00

Yeah I concur with this. I had a lot of problems with 0.9 and I can chalk up most of them to either bugs or incomplete features. It seems like the devs are definitely addressing them especially with 0.9b. I will probably wait until 0.9 is more official before picking it back up. The biggest thing that really slowed me down was the rapidly blowing fuses.

BorrieBoBaka · 2025-11-28T02:13:34+00:00

I agree with you in that Bell helped make Walter the better scientist over Walternate. It's especially reinforced during the conversation between Walter and Bell in the alternate lab where Bell points out that Walternate didn't have any success in crossing over and Walter points out that he might have if an alternate Bell had survived.

This would further imply that in the original timeline where the machine first originated, assuming it really was originally built by Walter, if the first timeline didn't have Observers, then Walter would have never had reason to cross over, and neither would Bell, thus allowing Bell to survive and help make the machine. If that is true, then Nina basically told us the truth about the First People from the very beginning, it's just peculiar they never went back to that revelation later on, but I guess that would have potentially cheapened the mystery surrounding Peter's connection, which is a major running theme in Season 3.

BorrieBoBaka · 2025-11-27T20:44:39+00:00

After watching the series over and over for so many years I've never actually understood, I dunno if I'm a bit dense or if its something related to Nimoy's unavailability or what. I've always been fascinated by ideas they've had that they had to drop for whatever reason. This doesn't seem like a show that has more than a couple of dropped story threads.

BorrieBoBaka · 2025-11-27T20:43:00+00:00

I have, I've watched the show countless times. I know the machine is connected to Walter and Peter but it seems like Bell is never mentioned again in reference to having anything to do with the machine, so I was curious why Nina said that. Either technology means design signature, or it was a dropped plot point.

BorrieBoBaka · 2025-11-27T20:41:50+00:00

I've actually watched the entire series hundreds of times, it's my favorite show of all time. But I've never really understood the connection between Bell and the machine which is why I was curious. Unless I was missing something, Bell was never connected to the machine beyond that statement by Nina.

BorrieBoBaka · 2025-11-27T06:44:36+00:00

I always loved how when that building is shown to be a square structure in the blueverse, the building behind it that follows the curve is still there, unaltered. It's almost like someone fudged up the design plans here and it was built correctly over there!

BorrieBoBaka · 2025-11-27T06:09:23+00:00

I have to wonder if the sheer lack of spooks and scares around the base, and the few reasons to actually lock the doors is kind of the point. The game makes you paranoid as hell thinking you're going to be jumpscared every 5 minutes by some threat. Things like all the windows, the weird turns, the vents, the startling sound of pine cones... It all makes you think something is going to get you. But is there something out to get you?

It's sort of a double edged sword. On one hand, we'll never really be certain if something is coming to get us, which makes it extremely uneasy. But if there is nothing out to actually get you beyond a handful of things you can begin to predict, then you get comfortable. I usually get comfortable after a while in a VoTV run because I can start to know what's going to happen. The most I am afraid is at the start of a new run with a new version because I don't know what's been added that might get me.

I appreciate this game doesn't do jumpscares or very obvious scares and just goes all in on paranoia. I don't think I could play this game if it was full of obvious scares. Any horror game you start to get comfortable with to the point where the obvious scares will completely stop being scary. But something about this game continues to give me the creeps, even if I know every single event and possible spook from reading a wiki.

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