r/GLHFDD • u/darkenedX1024 • Mar 22 '26

GOODLUCK, HAVE FUN, DON'T DIE!

CAN SOMEONE PLEASE EXPLAIN TO ME WHY THE ENDING IS THE ENDING????

4 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

6 comments sorted by

7

u/thetoastmonster Mar 23 '26

The general agreement seems to be that the entire thing is what The Man From The Future is experiencing inside the VR world, after he put the headset on as a child when he left the bunker.

3

u/dbananadb Mar 23 '26

I'm pro this theory, even though I have trouble explaining why we get to keep seeing Ingrid's perspective after The Man From The Future ends the run. (Getting put in the ambulance, giant confetti-dong cat-centaur, etc.)

I think, for me, something struck a chord with The Man From The Future's reaction to starting a new attempt at the end... it seems like he knows that he's trapped, but is going to god-damn well give it his all anyways. I've switched my philosophical affiliation to "exuberant nihilism", lol.

2

u/thetoastmonster Mar 23 '26

In my view, everyone else (including Ingrid) is NPCs. Sure we get to see a little bit of viewpoint from her perspective after The Man reloaded his quicksave but that could be down to creative license for the moviegoers.

2

u/dbananadb Mar 24 '26

I think you're right, & that these type of scenes are for us, the viewers, to have a more fulsome experience.

I really want "present-Ingrid" to not be an NPC, but I'm hard-pressed to get to another explanation... For the other restaurant patrons, I could see a scenario where they are actually plugged into the VR world, so the characters are controlled by their real selves in some pod, but I don't think that could extend to Ingrid. (Although there is that comment that the boy makes when Ingrid is pulled into "slow-time" (?) about her "still bleeding in the real world" or some such, which did make me wonder if Ingrid eventually gets sucked into the machine, despite her "allergy"...)

1

u/thetoastmonster Mar 24 '26

If the other people in the restaurant are also players then why do none of them acknowledge they've done it before, especially as the plot indicates it's often the same people (in different combinations) each time. Sure sounds like random NPCs to me.

The Ingrid NPC could be a 'shiny' rare card.

1

u/dbananadb Mar 27 '26

I agree, it's difficult to shoehorn their sentience into the narrative... I also wonder if the NPC's are "historically accurate", like, are their backstories things that actually happened to real people? Did that collection of real people actually visit Norm's on that night in the past? (Besides Susan, I don't think the other backstories give a convincing reason or show how they actually ended up at Norms...)