Ending interpretation?

[Baby]

I would like to talk with people who ended game already. (It was amazing, btw!)
Did Fran really kill her parents? If she did, she was mentally unstable, I guess? Was she living in asylum before? (I'm talking about the part with small Fran) Is kitty dead (body in coffin)? :( Why he couldn't talk anymore? Did she die in the ending? Are aunt Grace and dr Oswald dead?
And please, don't say things like "you will have to answer it yourself", my curiosity is hungry for answers :(

[wayzed]

Originally posted by pinkmellow:

Here's my theory.

Ok so Fran has apparently always had issues with psychosis. Her parents sometimes have to have her committed, and they take her to Oswald Asylum because her mom and aunt participated in research with him when they were younger and knew him.

When she was little, her doctor was Leon, who in that one portrait was shown to have been a doctor at the asylum. He was also doctor to other children. The issue was, he himself became psychotic and would share his insane and complex ideas with the children who believed them and incorporated it into their own psychosis. (I get this from his journal)

Anyways eventually Leon dies or whatever and Fran is participating in an experimental treatment for her psychosis. (The new duotine) However she has a really bad reaction to it and her parents want her taken out of the experiment. Her elevated psychosis also meant she was probably going to have to be hospitalized again. This was very upsetting to Fran since she just got her new cat and hated the asylum anyways. It didn't help that she had a love/hate relationship with her parents. (Dad wasn't there, mom didn't care messages first chapter; she was locked up by them a lot and felt betrayed, even though she still loved them)

Enter psychosis, which was much worse due to pills. Remor was one of Leon's characters who she's now adopted to represent sort of the evil side of her illness that makes her do bad things, notice she basically passes out when he shows up and terrible things happen when he does. This is her psychosis, the dangerous side, taking over and "possessing" her. She goes into this psychotic state at this point, and kills her parents in their sleep with a knife from the kitchen (notice she carries a knife with her almost the entire game, which she uses to solve many problems). Then she mutilates their dead bodies, as shown in her vision end game.

She snaps out of her psychosis after a bit and has repressed what happened. She's horrified and runs away with her cat. Eventually she passes out and her cat runs away. She's found and taken back to Oswald. There she is given more experimental pills she also reacts badly to. (Notice on her chart it says she has been given many meds all canceled for negative side effects, which adds evidence to my previous theory of her being on meds before)

She manages to escape, and after finding herself in the lower floor with the really ill patients, who were lobotomized and hears other kids panicking over it she develops this paranoid delusion that the people there want her brain. When she does get out I believe she attacks the guard somehow (because Remor shows up, and that means her bad psychosis is taking over) and escapes.

Once she's lost in the woods with medication that aggravates her psychosis she slips further and further from reality until she's just crazy hallucinating everything based on her memories. (Twins weren't actually sewed together, this can be seen in the twin girls in the asylum, they were lobotomized however, but she's paranoid and imagines this) They're also witches because of the stories of witches she used to read. Mr Midnight is entirely hallucinated as well.

During her psychosis she somehow finds a bike and tries riding back home but bad psychosis takes over and makes her jump off a cliff. She nearly dies, causing her to have near death experience of the Ithersta or whatever where everything is wonderful. But decides she is not ready for death and "loves life" (this chapter has a constant theme of life-also it is titled vegetative state, as in she is half dead) so she survives. (Notice there was water under the bridge, she could have been swept ashore and then walked back up)

She then continues riding her bike back home (hallucinations with Itward occur) before crashing. She goes to her house but is locked out. She hallucinates the doctor showing up and the paranoid theory that they said she was dead. She wanders to the graveyard to visit her parents since she can't get into her house. She digs up their graves and busts them open, hallucinating her own. Somewhere during this process she is caught and brought back to the asylum once more. (Maybe the real Dr Deern shows up and she attacks him-Remor-or someone just noticed a random kid digging up graves idk)

She's really messed up now because of the stress, possible medication withdrawal, and all sorts of things. She's in hell now aka the asylum again. She's restrained because she is dangerous, her aunt tries to calm her down but she her psychosis makes her view her aunt's behavior as sinister. She trips balls, then eventually goes to her regular appointment with Dr Deern, who she hallucinates as being in an electric chair and then jabs him with a syringe with the experimental medication to "wake him up." He starts tripping.

Dr Oswald and her aunt come in. The Dr explains he's been running research on her family and on her for a while now. Her aunt tries to make her feel better about it.

The real Mr Midnight is there. I believe Aunt Grace found him and brought him as a surprise or something for Fran. (He is real here because he can no longer speak) However Fran kills the cat for being a "traitor" aka running away from her after her parents deaths. She hallucinates her aunt doing this though. Then she attacks her aunt because she thinks she killed her cat, almost killing her aunt. Oswald comes in and shoots her to protect Grace, who finally realizes how dangerous and psychotic Fran can be. (I think some of Grace knew Fran killed her parents but was in denial) Fran hallucinates that they're going to steal her brain and possibly attacks them one more time before finally going back to her "happy place" aka the same thing that happened the last time she was on death's door. But now she is ready for death and happily accepts it, rejecting reality completely now that there is nothing left there for her.

Honestly I think dying was a good ending for her. Her suffering was unreal and her brain was even more fried from all those experimental meds they had her on since she was young.

i agree with this theory first and foremost, except i refuse to believe fran killed the real mr. midnight. my view on that might be a little biased becuase of my spiritual connection with cats and my protaganist/player love for fran, but we can safely assume that "mabuka's den" is really the asylum, and how would fran/aunt grace be able to drop him? the asylum floor would catch him, unless they were outside, which makes no sense. in addition, if fran/aunt grace killed him without dropping him (ex. if aunt grace shot him, or if fran stabbed him with her knife) im sure the game would show that. i mean, we saw "queen fran bow" stab him with HER knife in ithersta. fran bow is a dark game, and stabbing or shooting is darker than dropping in this instance, or at least more violent.
imo i dont believe the real mr. midnight died at all, i choose to believe that aunt grace, in an attempt to comfort fran, may have opened his cage and mr. midnight, like any sensible cat, was overwhelmed by all the unfamiliar smells and faces and ran from the room.
you'll notice that up until this point, while fran was upset, she was submissive, attempting to bargain with aunt grace ("my kitty and i can go somewhere where we wont bother you") but as soon as mr. midnight was out of sight, her psychosis kicked in. this further indicates the calm that she feels around mr. midnight, and makes it easy to believe that mr. midnight fleeing could have caused the psychotic episode. aunt grace dropping him was simply a hallucination induced by her mounting fear.
in addition i hate to think that once she died dr.asshat was able to extract her brain, but unfortunately i don't see how she could have found her way out of that, unless the split personality theory is correct, and there are several holes in that theory, as great as it is.
i also believe that fran is not scizophrenic, and her psychotic episodes are the result of her being attacked by ptsd and the experimental medication from her youth, not helped by leon planting his characters from his own psychosis in her impressionable ten-year-old brain.
sorry for kind of spitting all this out, this is my first time theorising so it might look a little messy qwq

[Emi_Luna]

i do belive fran didnt kill her mom and dad she loved them so much if she didnt she would have but no she didnt i think remor or aunt grace or oswald did it and blamed her for it but its just a theory for now

[Shjya]

Welp. Guess I don't need to buy this for the story now- thanks.

[wayzed]

Originally posted by Shjya:

Welp. Guess I don't need to buy this for the story now- thanks.

you're very welcome

[unknown]

Originally posted by Shjya:

Welp. Guess I don't need to buy this for the story now- thanks.

i still bought the game despight having watched the story unfold in a play through...the developer did a good job so i rewarded that

[Barley Groats]

Well, there's 27 pages worth of discussions and theories, but here's my two cents.

There's imho kind of an ambiguity in Fran's scene in the car with Dr. Deern, when she points to him being abused by his father. When he replies in lines with "Who told you that?" I kinda interpreted it:

1) Fran totally had some kind of supernatural insight into doctor's life, so he replies as in there's noone who could have know that, so Fran has some kind of supernatural cards up her sleeve;

2) doctor's being totally dismissive. For example, both my parents are alive and well, but if someone would say that I killed them in cold blood, there's a chance I would reply in something along the lines of "Who said that?" just to whoop their asses;

3) it's absolute lie/ hallucination/ etc, so the doctor tries to discern from where this kind of info comes from as to try to maybe have some kind of method in helping her. He's a doctor working with insane people, trying to know or understand hallucinations might help him as a doctor to cure poor young Fran.

Another thing. In the newspaper Fran was reported being dead. The Oswald Institution wasn't very secretive/ under the radar/ etc, so literally in every audit or police investigation they would find out, that Fran isn't dead. What's the deal here? If Fran would be more secretive test subject, she would've been probably strapped to bed deepest levels of the facilty and strapped so hard, noone real coud've broke free there.

[kawaii]

Originally posted by evenfl0w2:

Here is my view of the story, but I could definitely see other possible interpretations:

Dr. Oswald is obsessed with experimenting on twins, and sewed Mia and Clara together. He was also interested in experimenting on Fran's mother, Lucia, and aunt Grace because they were twins too. Perhaps because of the experimentation on Lucia and Grace, Fran is insane and kills her parents. Grace finds out and has Fran committed to Oswald Asylum. There, Dr. Oswald wants to study/experiment on Fran more so he switches her drugs with something that causes vivid hallucinations. Fran hallucinates that she escapes the asylum and travels to fantasy worlds with Mr. Midnight. At the end, Fran can't tell reality or fantasy apart even without the drug, and she attacks aunt Grace when she comes to visit at the Asylum. Dr. Oswald kills Fran to save Grace and then takes Fran's body to experiment on. As Fran is finally dying, she imagines that she flies away to happiness with Palontras, Itwald, and Mr. Midnight.

i think this is the most logical explanation and the vibe i got, such a sad story... :(

also i am curious about the fact why there was so many dead babies/children
and i think its cos the doctor just experimented on loads of kids too, and dumped them down the well or something?? (im not sure) but one quote got me the most, when the dead baby said this ,

""
my path to life has been denied, I haven't been born but I was alive, I am waiting for a mother to love me
"""


also in that same room this speech comes from the dead baby next to a strange reindeer with a clown head on it, lookint at the baby, after you escape the basement, you can view one door and there is two twins in a room dying (if you pop the pills)

also for sure i think she is depressed and a schizo tbh

[wörm mom]

To be honest, the ending (house of madness) seems to be that Fran's mind has lost control and doesn't know what's happening. Itward is like a guardian angel. I feel like everything that we've played through is just a dream. She is still asleep and hallucinating from the drug. At the very end when she goes off to Ithersta, that might be a metaphor for her leaving reality and dying. Other than that, I do not think she killed her parents. I think that thought comes from Ramone (the demon inside her head). We all have our own demons and hard times, this is one of hers. Her thoughts are dragging her down a rabbit hole. Making her believe that everything is her fault.

[Stigma]

Originally posted by graciexi:

To be honest, the ending (house of madness) seems to be that Fran's mind has lost control and doesn't know what's happening. Itward is like a guardian angel. I feel like everything that we've played through is just a dream. She is still asleep and hallucinating from the drug. At the very end when she goes off to Ithersta, that might be a metaphor for her leaving reality and dying. Other than that, I do not think she killed her parents. I think that thought comes from Ramone (the demon inside her head). We all have our own demons and hard times, this is one of hers. Her thoughts are dragging her down a rabbit hole. Making her believe that everything is her fault.

+1 mostly agree, but she DID kill her parents. Also Remor = remorse..

[jason]

I'll just pretend that Fran and everything that happened was real and taht she didn't kill her parents and went on to live in that other reality happily ever after.

[wayzed]

Originally posted by Form Sector:

I'll just pretend that Fran and everything that happened was real and taht she didn't kill her parents and went on to live in that other reality happily ever after.

that would be the happiest ending...but in that case there are a lot of things that we cant explain.

[DoopForces]

After reading many parts of this, it seems that conclusion is:

We have NO IDEA what happened, all our IDEAS and STORIES are possible, all are as likelly, there is no solution :/

So I am asking the author a more general question first:
is there any solution at all,
did author had any story in mind when creating ? can we find it?

http://steamcommunity.com/app/362680/discussions/0/2595630410187512665/

[FairyQueen]

I don’t know if people are still writing on this but does anyone find it odd that Fran’s parents were depicted as horizontally sliced and when they dig up the bodies, they were completely in tack? Also how would she have sliced there bodies up that way with just a knife. Also the bodies looked like they were decaying for a while to the point of bones? Makes you question how long she was actually in there for and If she is really still 11 years old. The titles of the chapters also make me wonder, such as ‘vegetative state’, makes me think that’s what’s truly happening in reality and the entire game is a figment of Frans imagination.

[unknown]

Originally posted by FairyQueen:

I don’t know if people are still writing on this but does anyone find it odd that Fran’s parents were depicted as horizontally sliced and when they dig up the bodies, they were completely in tack? Also how would she have sliced there bodies up that way with just a knife. Also the bodies looked like they were decaying for a while to the point of bones? Makes you question how long she was actually in there for and If she is really still 11 years old. The titles of the chapters also make me wonder, such as ‘vegetative state’, makes me think that’s what’s truly happening in reality and the entire game is a figment of Frans imagination.

Actually if they are sliced up mortitians actuallty have plasic parts that are inserted into the bones to reattach limbs and generally do whatever they can to have an open cascet funeral as people tend to want to say goodbuy to peoples faces rather than a coffin.


And trust me you can infact cut limbs with a knife as i have butchered many deer this way on my hunting trips. so long as the knife is sharp and you detach limbs at the joint there is no problem (which is nessesary when trying to get a 300lb deer to fit into a cooler to be stored for consuption at a later date)

[pinkmellow]

This game drives me crazy because I really feel the developers went way too vague. I hate the phrase "we wanted to leave things up to interpretation" because to me that's a lazy way of dismissing plot holes or poor storytelling. I really hope that with the sequel (if they get around to it) they clarify quite a bit.

OK on to interpretation.

Basically my thoughts are that Leon & Oswald and the rest started up their research institute studying the pineal gland. The pineal gland has been thought to be the "seat of the soul" ie spirutal center of the brain for some time now for whatever reason. Why did Oswald have a weird twin thing idk that may have just been a reference to Mengele. Anyhow over time Leon goes crazy tapping into this pineal gland stuff and makes up all these ideas of separate realities and whatnot. Meanwhile Oswald turns the institute into a children's asylum so he can get helpless and unwanted victims to experiment on. He is especially interested in children who seem to react with ektoplomatin, which Deern describes as something that opens the subconscious mind, which is actually how LSD was first marketed in psychotherapy. Fran shows a very powerful reaction especially and so he is interested in her.

I don't believe the lobotomies going on in the asylum were true lobotomies at all but rather Oswald taking specimens for study, hinted as he wants Fran's brain at the end of the game.

Taking the pills triggers a strong memory in Fran. I believe these pills were used to influence Fran to kill her parents. Thus it starts up dreams telling her to take the pills to find the truth, which is symbolically represented by her cat, Mr. Midnight. Note that Remor (very similar to Remorse, her guilt at what she has done) wants to prevent her from doing so. Tells her that pursuing the truth will only pull her father into madness-and in the end it really does.

There are some things that are confusing to me. I don't understand how she can take items she is supposedly hallucinating and use them in the real world, or how she can do things like walk right by someone while she's on the pills and have them not see her. (ie the nurse in the office before you exit the asylum) It is also strange how she seems to understand the thoughts of the other children. I assume living with them for so long she'd know a bit about what happened but the things the kamalas were saying weren't the sort of thing I think the other kids would tell her, they were more complex feelings I don't think a child would be able to articulate. Thus perhaps Fran is even more unique in that she has some sort of ESP and with ektoplomatin can then even tune into the subconscious of others.

When she's in the woods she starts seeing strange things even without her pills and I think this is when the stress of running away is triggering her psychosis so she hallucinates. In this case, the pills show a truer version of reality because she is suppressing reality in her subconscious, and duotine is supposed to show what is being hidden. She would rather see a pretty house than a well with dead babies and skeletons in it for example. (I also don't understand the semi-recurring theme of dead or aborted babies in this game-makes me wonder if perhaps Fran was a twin and then her parents had her other twin aborted so Oswald wouldn't want to take her for experimenting? So they could keep at least one child? I don't know)

Fran eventually finds something else in the well or near there in the forest, the journal of Leon. I think this may be a big influence in her psychosis, or else may be a further trigger for her memories of talking with him back in the asylum when she was a child. (I'll get to that later)

Anyways she falls off a cliff and as the title states is in a vegetative state for sometime, having perhaps a near death experience. The kamalas, her fear, want to keep her there forever so she doesn't learn the truth but she can't give up because she has to know. So she chooses to go back because only she holds the key to her truth which she can use when she's ready. Also here she meets her evil self, who claims Mr. Midnight is a traitor who killed her parents, then kills him. Earlier Fran asks him if they can always be on the same side and he agrees. However she is in denial of the truth....she remains engaged in fantasy thus Mr. Midnight is friendly and magical and can talk. He's a traitor because he is not representative of the truth. The truth is that she killed her parents. Evil Fran kills him because Fran does not want to know the truth, and doesn't want to know that her Mr. Midnight is not real. Could also represent her deep-seated paranoia-she is afraid that she can't even trust her cat. In addition he tells Fran he wanted to be with her but hid because he was afraid. Thus Fran betrays herself again by creating this lie that he was safe and merely hiding out of fear.

Anyways she eventually decides she wants to go home. She does and is miraculously unharmed somehow. I don't understand this. I think the whole portion with Itward is probably imagined. She badly wanted a friend and so dredged up her old imaginary one who liked all the same things as her and would celebrate her birthday with her. Very sad. Again I'm not fully sure what Itward is and even after watching the puppet show I am not entirely sure what he did to Mia and Clara.

She gets home, loses Mr. Midnight, Dr. Deern finds her and we get the whole conspiracy story.....again not sure how she seems to read Deern's mind....the cat in the coffin I'm 99% sure is Mr. Midnight.....so I don't know if Fran killed him in her drug induced rage as well or if Oswald and the rest killed him. Then I think Oswald and Co show up and kidnap Fran and Deern. By the last chapter Fran seems to be completely lost in psychosis. We end up finding out Fran killed her parents under the supposed manipulation of Remor, who was said to be Fran's fear and worst feelings manifest. Due to her previous hospitalizations and writings on the wall showing how she felt abandoned by her parents during these times I can imagine she was harboring resentment towards them thus the pills made her act out. Thus probably Grace drugged her to get the parents out of the way. Mr. Midnight can't speak anymore and I think this is because Fran has matured and is accepting the truth, she doesn't have that childlike fantasy anymore. Kiki's Delivery Service did the same thing, in the end Kiki could no longer understand Jiji and was angry but it was representative of her growing up. In what is probably hallucination Grace gets rid of the traitor, ie the false representation of the truth, and Fran goes crazy losing her last thread of hope and attacks Grace, is then shot and dies and the last is her going into that near death experience once again.

I donno there's really so many questions I still have. It was a beautifully done game otherwise. And it did a fantastic job of portraying the struggles of psychosis, the intense and constant confusion over what is real and what isn't, the grief and misery at being tormented by things and not understanding why, seeing equal amounts of evidence that what you experience is true and untrue at the same time. Fingers crossed Fran Bow 2 is eventually realeased and clears things up.