Who's Jessica?

[ErzPaladin]

see pic:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2915025510
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2915025536

That's a grave north of Carlo's Hideout. Is there some deeper meaning behind this grave?

[Mr. Mysterious]

Nothing that I've found in game or from online searching. I wonder if it has something to do with Carlos and his life before.

[ErzPaladin]

Maybe this is far-fetched, idk:

When I googled for "Jessica April 8 - July 10", this wikipedia-entry was shown

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Jessica_Heeringa

...death on 26th april? Maybe 2+6? But then again... why July 10? That's what kinda breaks the logic.
The only point where I could think which speaks for July 10 is... the timeline of that incident:

April 26, 2013
10:55 pm: The last transaction, a cigarette lighter, was recorded on Heeringa's register.

But well, maybe it's a bit too far-fetched?

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The point "Jessica's Law" sounds kinda interesting, too. It must've been a pretty big case. But if so, then you should think Days Gone was already mentioned under "popular culture".

[Frakbait]

Is that not the name of Boozer's wife...

[ErzPaladin]

Originally posted by Frakbait:

Is that not the name of Boozer's wife...

That was my first thought as well, but then I thought about the date and that time frame doesn't make sense. That would only make sense if Jessica was a 93 days-old baby.

And when I googled, the only other references to this grave was... that people claimed it was an easter egg. If so... for what?

[jfh2112]

I think this is just some environmental storytelling. Jessica is probably just an infant that died and her mother or parents buried her there. There's a lot of things like this, if you look around - I've found a dog house that has a bloody trail leading away from it (I have a screenshot of it), and across the yard is a child's bicycle with the same. I've come across a couple of small grave sites with 3-5 graves, all unmarked except for stick crosses.

[simon.pete15]

Originally posted by jfh2112:

I think this is just some environmental storytelling. Jessica is probably just an infant that died and her mother or parents buried her there. There's a lot of things like this, if you look around - I've found a dog house that has a bloody trail leading away from it (I have a screenshot of it), and across the yard is a child's bicycle with the same. I've come across a couple of small grave sites with 3-5 graves, all unmarked except for stick crosses.

I think so too.
As you say, there are quite a few small grave sites, usually near homesteads. Just wooden crosses and a few mementos and flowers.
Jessicas grave is probably 'just' another one.

[ErzPaladin]

Originally posted by simon.pete15:

I think so too.
As you say, there are quite a few small grave sites, usually near homesteads. Just wooden crosses and a few mementos and flowers.
Jessicas grave is probably 'just' another one.

Well, it could be just decoration, but wouldn't you normally place decoration where everyone sees it? If it was just background-decoration, then you'd see far more like this on routes which you permanently take on your paths to the camps or to the story-related quests.
I'm not saying that you're wrong. It just feels kinda off.

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Another way of seeing this time frame is... from April 2008 to July 2010. That's a bit more than 2 years.
And... the Days Gone-Storyline starts after 751 days after the first story incident. And that's when Deacon's Girlfriend Sarah gets evacuated by that helicopter.
But that's not the beginning of the outbreak - the freaker pandemy. SPOILER!

The Pandemy starts with the work which Deacon's girlfriend Sarah did for that company (don't remember whether it was Nero). She worked in a lab with high security measures and from one day to another they changed the lab's scientific orientation. Which implies they experimented with that "Freaker-Virus", cause seemingly it was mentioned in a story-quest that Sarah's lab assistent tried to warn her and she implied that this lab assistent might've been Patient-Zero and spread that virus on a (medicinal- or scientific) conference. From then on she claimed it was only days till the virus was spread around the globe.

So considering all this...

it must've been a time frame about 751 days + some days or some weeks or even some months.

So... the time frame around 2 years (April 08 - July 10) could fill that or even the entire story of Days Gone - if you don't need to collect materials for your recipes and such crap.

...just thinking.

[ErzPaladin]

The next idea would be...

It's Carlos' grave. In some way that would make sense, too. Even though it doesn't explain April 08 - July 10

[simon.pete15]

Ah!
The game itself was released in May 19 (2019) I think, definitely in 2019.
That make April 2008 - July 2010 unlikely, for a game released in 2019, to me.
As grave dates are usually birth to death, I'd guess those are day dates, not year dates.
So the dates are April 8th to July 10th, of the same year. The year isn't there, so it'll never be "out of date" dates.
From information supplied in the game, we know that people below puberty and over 60 (ish) didn't survive initial infection, because the virus is so aggressive it overwhelms the under-developed immune systems of the younger, and us old folk just can't survive it.
A baby, born on April 8th, becomes infected, and dies July 10th fits that.

Why is this the only grave marker like this, in the game? Or at least the only one like this which has been found and remarked on, I've no idea. I certainly haven't even noticed this one, and I'm on my 4th play through. Although I haven't been looking for things like this anyway.
A possibility/speculation. Could it be a "real" grave marker? Possibly Jessica was the child of one of the original devs. This was put into the game as a remembrance?

[OAN]

I think it's listing years because nobody writes the zero in the day column unless they're filling out a form. Supposed to think they couldn't even be bothered to write the year, but they took the time to add that superfluous zero before the eight?

Nah, those are years, remembrance of a 2 year old. Possible a dev's kid.

[simon.pete15]

Originally posted by OAN:

I think it's listing years because nobody writes the zero in the day column unless they're filling out a form. Supposed to think they couldn't even be bothered to write the year, but they took the time to add that superfluous zero before the eight?

Nah, those are years, remembrance of a 2 year old. Possible a dev's kid.

That seems pretty reasonable too.
In the UK, we always write a date as day/month/year. I know in the USA it's normally month/day/year, which was also part of my thinking it was month/day dates.

[JØK3RZ]

https://daysgone.fandom.com/wiki/Jessica#:~:text=Jessica%20is%20an%20unseen%20character,months%20and%202%20days%20old.

A young baby born after the Freakers time, die at 2-3 years old.. rip