Who is the next Genie?

[Nick]

So after seeing an out of bounds video of ENA, it looks like the Crowd Door might be where the next chapter takes place, since it already has its opening animation.

Here's a link to the video I watched, the animation is at 1:13 :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7mjJ47VP8A&ab_channel=KeksikMaks


Meaning we'll probably be meeting Piero the Genie soon. After playing this game a lot, I started making a lot of connections to who Piero might be. Thought I'd share it here and see what people think. I also talk about Patreon stuff a little bit, since I noticed some connections there too. I won’t bring it up too much since it’s worth checking out yourself, and I don’t want to spoil too much of what’s to come, but I’ll talk about it a little bit. To start off:

Let's talk about the paintings

There's two important paintings in the game. The first one is in the Theater-esque area in the door on the left side of the ship in Uncanny Streets. If you crouch jump behind a pile of ingots behind a false wall, you'll see a portrait:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3463643405


Checking it says that "It's almost dry." You can check the seat too, which says "It's almost warm," meaning whoever painted this was here recently.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3463644467


https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3463644601




The painting is of a pale face with blue and pinkish makeup. There's one character that hasn't gotten any screen time yet, but shares many features with this face. In the announcement of Dream BBQ, near the end, there's this clown character at the end that laughs creepily right at the camera.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3463646627


This floating head, nicknamed 'Clown' by Joel on Patreon, looks the most like this painting. Same blue lips, circle paint on the cheeks, and the eyebrow has a similar color to his hat. Not sure if he was painting himself or it was painted by someone else, but right now I’ll assume that Clown painted this. This is significant with the next painting we see in game.

When you fall into the river in the Core, you get sent to the Lost Village. There are a ton of doors surrounding the perimeter of the area, perfect place for little secrets. One is obviously Nonkey Jong (who is also important to this believe it or not), but the other is Frank's room.

(this is Frank btw)
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3463647780


Frank’s room is a bedroom inside a castle area, and has a large portrait in the back. Inspecting it once tells you that it's Lord Frank.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3463648119


You can kinda see his face if you look at it hard enough, but when you inspect it a second time, it has Piero's signature. I think maybe Piero painted both of these paintings.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3463655917

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3463648529

What does Nonkey Jong have to do with this?

Nonkey Jong has a couple of lines talking about a museum, and a great artist:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3463650456

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3463650877

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3463651007

This great artist is probably Piero, since he made Frank a portrait with his signature on it. Since NJ mentions that the artist is in a museum, we will probably see the museum in Crowd Door as well, along with his artworks. I didn’t think too much about this, until a preview for a track on the Patreon caught my attention.

There is a track made by Oliver Buckland labeled ‘The Museum’. The picture attached is a painted image of this area shown in one of the trailers:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3463649233

So whoever Piero the Genie is, he is a painter and has a museum of his artworks in Crowd Door. He also doesn’t seem to stay within the Crowd Door most of the time like Theodora does in the Lonely Door, if those paintings in the ship were painted recently. With all of this, I assume that either:

1. Clown is Piero, and will be seen in Chapter 2
Or

2. Clown knows Piero, and both had been in the Lonely Door, and left before ENA came in.

For me, I think Clown painted his own portrait in the ship, and that he is Piero. The painting doesn’t have Piero’s signature on it, but I assume that’s because his face is already recognizable enough that he doesn’t need the signature (The Strange Man on The Hub did say that people in Crowd Door are looking for autographs and fame, presumably from Piero, so they might already know what he looks like). The museum then may be in the Crowd Door as well, since that’s where most of his art is. I’m taking a lot of liberty with these connections though, so take them with a grain of salt. What do you think?

[big j money]

I'm fully convinced that Piero is "Clown," as well. I found this post while looking up more information to back this theory, actually. At this point, I'm practically obtaining a PhD in Piero the Genie studies. Anyway, It's pretty undeniable that they're the same person imo, given the amount of inspiration that he seems to take from Japanese culture. Haven't watched either myself, but according to the Ena fandom wiki at least, his appearance is taken from a Japanese movie ("Pastoral: To Die in the Country"), as well as costuming from Japanese Kabuki theater. His silhouette is seen in the first Dream BBQ teaser behind a Japanese-style paper wall. And what is "clown" in Japanese? "Piero." I certainly don't think it's a coincidence that this Japanese clown, or "piero" character is shown in so much of the game's material without even having been shown in the game proper yet, and that Piero the Genie is likewise mentioned by name multiple times within the first chapter without having been yet shown. It's all building up hype for the same character without blatantly giving anything away.

Nor do I think it's a coincidence that both Frank and Piero are the two characters of whom you can find paintings in hidden areas in Dream BBQ. I can't necessarily say for sure that Piero painted his own self-portrait, but it's highly likely. Perhaps he hasn't signed his name because the painting simply isn't done yet, given that it's only almost dry, and that the color on the lips isn't entirely filled in. I find it highly likely for two reasons: first and most simply, the hidden paintings are a somewhat specific storytelling mechanic, and as such, it'd be strange if they were used to bring attention to unrelated characters (I could write another entire essay on what the things I am about to describe may imply about the relationship between Frank and Piero, but I promise that I will go on about just Piero for long enough.) Secondly: I am of the opinion that the ship is Piero's "domain," so to speak. That Piero does, indeed, leave the Crowd Door often, and was likely present within the Lonely Door shortly before, if not during, the events of Chapter One.

Piero has two motifs: entertainment, and water. The Receptionist in Chapter One makes references to four games that can be won in order to win a visit with Piero the Genie, which is reflected in lines ripped from the game's files that reference these games taking place in "the Aquarium." This Aquarium is mentioned multiple times by the yet-unknown speaker of these lines, as most of the lines are more or less an advertisement for it, and Piero is similarly mentioned often. The file names for these voicelines all begin with the phrase "playground_station," which is notable because "The Playground" is a location directly shown in a debugged version of the location in which the broken Theodora is found, which is visible in one of the anamatics for Dream BBQ's Supporter Edition.

This location is grouped with four other named locations, and, given the Playground's dialogue, it is likely that all of these locations will be found in the chapter in which Piero is introduced (widely believed to be Chapter Two.) Two of these are understood to be related to water. The "Keyboard Abyss," in particular, seems to reference a darkened area in which whales made of computer keyboards fly/swim overhead shown in one of the Dream BBQ trailers. Another location, the name of which is only half shown, seems to end in "maze." This, too, correlates with the game's trailer, as it possibly references a maze-like trail of bones which Ena navigates in the trailer using some type of lamp. The lamp, granted, is different between the trailer and what I am about to describe, but... this part of the trailer hearkens back to concept art drawn by Joel G of Ena encountering "Clown" by shining a lamp onto his face in a dark location. This art features bubbles around "Clown" and Ena, indicating that this may be a water level, thus furthering the connection between the aquatic and Piero.

Piero is possibly an aquatic being, or, at the least, frequents aquatic locations, and it is thereby no surprise that, of all places, Piero would stow away on a ship (if it isn't his ship which he somehow crashed into the realm of the Lonely Door in the first place.) As I mentioned before, Piero, along with the aquatic, seems to be heavily associated with entertainment. He dresses as a theater performer, and engages in some sort of shadow theater for Ena in the first Dream BBQ teaser. Steam art for Dream BBQ seems to show a trio of Pieros? performing various instruments (I do not believe that these are separate characters, as he seems to be able to clone himself in that teaser.) He's the Genie of the Crowd Door, ffs- the Door that, as you said, is plagued by entities desperate for autographs and fame.

Along with the ship in the Uncanny Streets being, well, a ship, there is a heavy element of performance found within it. This should be of no surprise to you, given that you've obviously explored the ship for yourself, but within the ships interior, flyers and cardboard cutouts make references to theatrical performances. One of the things which struck me the most while exploring the ship was the sound effects audible continuing past the invisible door in which the painting of Piero is found. If you continue into the blackened area past that wall/door, there are the unmistakable sounds of an audience enjoying some type of performance, followed by screams of terror (which are then followed by more applause lol.) An antagonist character putting on a performance to an adoring crowd... forget what I said about Piero /possibly/ being present on the ship during Chapter One. Unless these sounds are some type of past playback loop, he is almost certainly present on the ship during Chapter One. Meaning he is almost certainly the painter of his self-portrait found not even yet dried on the ship.

All of this is to say that I agree with you.

You may notice that I neglected to mention two of the locations found alongside the Keyboard Abyss and the Playground in that debugged version of the game. One isn't particularly relevant to this conversation.

The other is called, "the Museum."

[Jet Uppercut]

Piero is just the phonetic version of Pierrot, who is the standard representation of the 'sad clown'.

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