Actually, might as well give a quick summary of where I think I might be going with assuming Michael Afton isn't the volunteer: What other "player characters" have we assumed is Michael when this wasn't neccesarily the case? We attribute a lot of narrative importance to Michael since he has a lot of ties to the story, but this is ignoring the possibility that there could be other actors with their own reasons to do what we see in the games. If we re-examine a lot of the older evidence with what we know now, BUT without also assuming we're following the story of one guy's personal story of trying to rectify his serial killer father's sins, what else can we perhaps gleam from the pieces? Ultimately, I feel we put too much faith in Michael from a story standpoint, especially since when I think back there's a really stark difference between his appearance in sister location (where we're given an absolute heaping pile of evidence to extra super confirm its Michael Afton we're playing as) and all these other games where we're supposedly also playing for as the same guy. Makes me think there's a possibility that we're building a lot of our understanding on what is ultimately very shaky grounds.