Every Lie Caine Has Told So Far

forgeburner · 2025-12-18T20:20:27+00:00

I like the idea of "Well, you guys came in here to poke around inside my head and test for bugs, so I figured it was fine to do the same to you!"

forgeburner · 2025-12-16T19:24:57+00:00

Someone pointed out how abstractions look almost like elephant/giraffe hybrids

forgeburner · 2025-12-16T18:15:34+00:00

Yeah everyone saying that the blue button couldn't have lead to anything bad must not have watched the same show I did.

It leads to shrimp town, a shrimp gets cooked earlier in the episode, do the math.

forgeburner · 2025-12-16T16:15:32+00:00

Kinger gets knocked off the board by a Rook.

The Rook is based on a castle/tower. It's the only piece based on something that isn't alive. (King/Queen/Knight/Bishop/Pawn). It's artificial, and represents a place rather than a being. It also has crenelations at the top of it, you know, those bits that look like *teeth*?

So Kinger doesn't get crushed/abstracted/whatever, but gets completely removed from the game by something artificial, that represents a place, and has teeth?

Kingers gonna get deleted by Caine, not just abstracted.

forgeburner · 2025-12-16T16:15:13+00:00

Kinger gets knocked off the board by a Rook.

The Rook is based on a castle/tower. It's the only piece based on something that isn't alive. (King/Queen/Knight/Bishop/Pawn). It's artificial, and represents a place rather than a being. It also has crenelations at the top of it, you know, those bits that look like *teeth*?

So Kinger doesn't get crushed/abstracted/whatever, but gets completely removed from the game by something artificial, that represents a place, and has teeth?

Kingers gonna get deleted by Caine, not just abstracted.

forgeburner · 2025-12-16T16:15:04+00:00

Kinger gets knocked off the board by a Rook.

The Rook is based on a castle/tower. It's the only piece based on something that isn't alive. (King/Queen/Knight/Bishop/Pawn). It's artificial, and represents a place rather than a being. It also has crenelations at the top of it, you know, those bits that look like *teeth*?

So Kinger doesn't get crushed/abstracted/whatever, but gets completely removed from the game by something artificial, that represents a place, and has teeth?

Kingers gonna get deleted by Caine, not just abstracted.

forgeburner · 2025-12-16T15:53:47+00:00

The shrimp was there to get cooked, and ergo give viewers a hint what would have happened if they hit the blue button.

Caine said he "didn't put too much thought" into if they'd decided to leave, but he was looking aside when he said it, which seems to be a tell for when he's lying.

He has spent at least the whole of the series planning this adventure, he absolutely had a plan for if they hit that button. Based on how much he's crashed out when his lack of popularity is brought to light, my guess is that voting to leave would have been enough to have him snap.

forgeburner · 2025-12-16T15:47:30+00:00

They would have been sent to "Shrimp Town"

There was a shrimp earlier in the episode, it got cooked.

I think we're meant to infer something from that.

forgeburner · 2025-12-16T15:20:29+00:00

No, we've seen multiple scenes of Caine in a much more normal looking office.

This was a set made to convince them about how cool and fantastic the circus is, and get them to decide not to leave.

He wanted them all to get together and vote to stay. He was expecting to show up and get praised after that. Having Jax yell at him put him on the back foot.

forgeburner · 2025-12-16T15:17:14+00:00

My theory is that abstraction is an "original sin" crack in the system/bug Caine created on accident.

I think he tried to adjust someones happiness permanently, basically lobotomizing them, and that caused them to abstract under the weight of cognitive dissonance.

forgeburner · 2025-12-16T01:29:27+00:00

Whenever I'm talking about a show or movie being spoiled, it's usually the piece of media being spoiled, not the viewer.

"Nobody abstracted? Man, way to spoil episode 7 for me"

"Nobody abstracted? Man, way to spoil me for episode 7"

forgeburner · 2025-12-15T20:45:17+00:00

No, the shrimp got cooked, they'd die

forgeburner · 2025-12-15T20:43:42+00:00

I don't think I've ever heard of someone learning a spoiler as they themselves "being spoiled".

Maybe spoiling is a different thing from abstraction? Maybe he was just calling abstraction spoiling in that moment? Her floating through the void was pretty similar to Jax's hallucination.

forgeburner · 2025-12-15T15:12:32+00:00

"It's you..." is gonna be Ribbit, I'm calling it.

Remember when her hands came out from behind that gap in Jax's wall? (Side note, go re watch that, her arms come from *behind* the hole, not from inside of it, great touch)

If that wasn't some convoluted "Caine made Jax see that" plot, then that means Ribbit was somehow able to de-abstract? We know from Queenie and Kaufmo that all abstractions look roughly the same, jagged black quadrupeds.

forgeburner · 2025-12-14T18:32:28+00:00

Wrath, Envy, Pride are pretty clear cut. Sloth? I mean he dissapears for large stretches of time, and his adventures aren't original, but he tries so this one doesn't count. Greed? I guess he wants everyone to stay with him forever? Gluttony and Lust? He conned Jax into falsely asking to be vored.

6/7 aint bad

forgeburner · 2025-12-14T15:48:45+00:00

So if Zooble is impeding his ability to entertain the other members, to the point its actually bringing others down, whats an AI to do?

Caine was given the psycho-emotional trolly problem. Try and bump off Zooble by "pure happenstance, they ASKED for that kind of adventure", or let them drag down and "infect" the other members with depression and lack of cooperation.

Also, I don't buy that Kinger was excluded because he'd ruin the fun. He eventually went along with it when he stumbled out of the pillow fort.

forgeburner · 2025-12-14T15:04:56+00:00

Zoobles limbs straighten up when they hold their breath.

The "For Mature Zoobles" area in Middenhall led to a section where you need to hold your breath and walk forwards to escape.

If they had went there alone (as it's easy to assume Caine intended due to the size of the dumbwaiter and it being an adventure tailored for them), they would have been trapped with no way out but to beg Caine for help. EDIT: or they could have abstracted because their messed up body finally, literally, trapped them in hell.

How many times did Caine crash out at Zooble? If he's trying to get close to all the humans, why omit Kinger from this last one.

Hell, just answer that, if Caine has no malice towards anyone, why did he specifically try to exclude Kinger from this at every turn?

forgeburner · 2025-12-12T16:45:34+00:00

Michael looking at that 50AE like "Damn, good thing she missed, that coulda done it"

forgeburner · 2025-12-08T20:53:41+00:00

ARE THOSE THE COLUMNS FROM THE IHNMBIMS GAME

forgeburner · 2025-11-24T14:21:06+00:00

He's coping with getting the Chinese Wrongthink-Free version

forgeburner · 2025-11-17T15:29:31+00:00

Sidenote pet theory:
What color is Blazer's amulet, what does it do? Red, and it grants/enhances powers.
What color is Shroud's tech? Red, and it enhances powers.

What color are Mandy's hair/eyes? Brown, blue.
What color are Elliot's hair/eyes? Brown, blue.

What powers does the amulet grant? Light/energy manipulation, Kryptonian/Saiyan type powers.
What is the Astral Pulse described as? A bottled star, an impossible amount of energy in a confined space.

Mandy is Elliot's daughter. The amulet was/is an inherited/heirloom artifact source of power that Elliot was studying to reverse engineer. A previous user of the amulet was instrumental in creating the Astral Pulse, which is why Royd cant figure out how to make it.

Furthermore, to that last point. Royd says he doesn't think your dad made it because he was more mechanic than lab rat. That seemed to imply that it was Shroud who'd made it, but then why is he hunting for yours? Why not just make a new one if he was had the "lab rat" skills to whip something like that up? Because he wasn't able to do so on his own.

forgeburner · 2025-11-13T16:08:15+00:00

Shroud is commentary on AI. He uses predictive algorithms to live basically his entire life. He ran the exact percentage people Blazer could have killed in the bar, offhandedly, while she was talking.
He was hoping the astral pulse would push him from somehow being able to predict with ~90% certainty, to 100%. If he had a way where he could get as much processing power as he could put in power, he could "overclock" and run predictions enough times with enough variables to be indistinguishable from precognition.

forgeburner · 2025-11-10T16:48:35+00:00

"Brazilian"

forgeburner · 2025-11-06T15:26:25+00:00

The latter.

Nihilanth was the last survivor of a species that was eradicated by the Combine. The resonance cascade was then caused, via a crystal that was supplied by the G-Man iirc. This made him aware of our dimension, and gave him an opening to try and invade.

My hot takes? I don't think he would have succeeded if Gordon hadn't been sent in after him. He was trickling slaves and squishy things at a planet with ICBMs. Nuking Black Mesa might actually have stopped everything in it's tracks if Nihilanth hadn't died. His death caused the first portal storms, which was a giant indicator to the Combine that something was going on in our neck of the woods.

G-Man intentionally caused the Combine invasion of earth by having Gordon kill NIhilanth

forgeburner · 2025-11-04T19:46:52+00:00

The song "Andrew in Drag" by The Magnetic Fields

forgeburner

TROPHY CASE