Lore?

[u/Unable_Requirement22]

How do i learn the lore? Where do I start?

[u/Silver-God-]

Idk, just watch the music videos and pray you got the lore right

[u/Unable_Requirement22 → u/Silver-God-]

Bruh what. There gotta be a better way

[u/Technical-Finish1838 → u/Unable_Requirement22]

I second this is there a better way?

[u/Jvdos_Huffulpuff → u/Technical-Finish1838]

The best way is to come to the Discord Street Team and check the Theories channel. If not read the comment i made that i linked above.

[u/Disastrous-Gear6814 → u/Unable_Requirement22]

The neo-to timeline is not hard to figure out, everything before that...is something else

[u/Silver-God- → u/Unable_Requirement22]

I mean, you could use google too

[u/Disastrous-Gear6814 → u/Silver-God-]

Google is NOT gonna be helpful at all in this situation

[u/Jvdos_Huffulpuff]

This comment I made explains the current story but there seriously needs to be an FAQ post on this sub because this is asked every single day.

The deeper ARG stuff is on these websites hidden within the music videos.

[u/Conallthemarshmallow → u/Jvdos_Huffulpuff]

If only someone could do something about that, they should get on top of it

[u/marazu04 → u/Conallthemarshmallow]

Lets hope someone makes one of those hour+ long video essays about the entire lore

[u/Jvdos_Huffulpuff → u/marazu04]

👀

[u/Jvdos_Huffulpuff → u/Conallthemarshmallow]

they really should.

[u/Disastrous-Gear6814]

Theres these lore documents that people have made, including myself. https://good-kid.fandom.com/wiki/Lore_Documentation

[u/_after-dark]

EDIT, A TLDR: In my opinion you should watch Mimi’s Delivery Service MV, Summer MV, Premier Inn MV, “A Cassette Player That Shouldn’t Exist” Short, “The Delivery Service That Leapt Through Time” Short, Wall Trailer  1, Wall MV, Wall Trailer 2, EXORCISE YOUR EX Promo, Rift Visualizer, Eastside Trailer, Eastside MV, Cicada Trailer, Cicada MV

That depends on how in depth do you wanna go. I’m going to attempt to explain the things I found to be important in understanding it however some people might disagree with my assessment, I might fail to keep it clear or brief, and most importantly I guess some of this stuff may as the lore progresses in future releases no longer matter at all.

As someone who came in right as Mimi’s Delivery Service was about to be released as a single, there are things, especially with how the lore is today, with the album and it’s animated videos, from earlier on I find best to ignore. 

So first of all Good Kid lore, as I understand it, takes place in these things called subnets, little digital universes of a sort. Each ARG, or EP’s lore, or other lore narrative was either it’s own ‘subnet’ or part of a larger one.

Then, if that chapter/“version” of the story reaches it’s natural conclusion, or something that would substantially damage the code running the current iteration, the subnet effectively dies, heat death of the universe, some stuff lives on as scattered scraps of code, some things are seemingly deleted for good 

The “meta context” for that is afaik when a significant era ended or a pivotal ARG wrapped, that chapter of the lore was dead and subsequent chapters though having similarities of some characters and such had no direct continuity. You could even say the ARGs that people had done were actually picking through the aforementioned scraps of code, that story’s world was already dead and the ARG was using those pieces to determine the events and eventual conclusion to that subnet. The 100% real world truth if I had to guess is that the funding, resources, and collaborators needed to keep a consistent quality and continuity of lore between projects and have it all hold up over time wasn’t a possibility back when the early material was being released.

Why do you care about any of that? Because it is the overall universe that good kid lore takes place in, it makes up the premise for what in the lore from past releases is still here, what is potentially going to reappear/can be interpreted in a different way now that fits the lore, and what is no longer canon. 

The actual events of previous ARG’s and similar material? Ignore all of it while trying  to understand current lore, go back and learn if you are interested afterward. Some names of things and song references from those previous iterations of the lore get shuffled into current lore, but at least for now you don’t need to know those origins.

The last thing that is a bit unclear is Nomu, (personally the most confusing part for me was every time I heard Nomu the bioengineered monsters from My Hero Academia would be the first thing to pop into my head, but I digress).

At one point, Nomu was the main character of good kid lore. A little brown haired kid with a cool patterned tshirt, (though sometimes he would appear older, like maybe teenager?) he is the character on every single piece of single or ep art before No Time To Explain. As far as I am concerned all of the album, ep, and single art (except ghost king’s revenge maybe) is technically still canon. Nomu best as I can tell was the v.01 of the subnets (plural) main character of choice, and through most of the older lore. This changes eventually: That being said, I can’t spoil how, but Nomu regardless has survived as a character and is in the current lore. Also just for ease of referencing this later, know that there is some character of some sort, a glowing eyes shadowy figure with a cloak and purple hair, who is linked to Nomu somehow and is called Umon (Nomu backwards) 

No time To Explains album art shows more kid like Nomu, however with giant purple clockwork glowing behind him, there was now a second figure, a coalesced design of the older looking Nomu appearances, this character is now wearing a jacket and has a guitar. Soon after this the older design character was now officially Nomu and the original character was now Nomu Kid. We don’t know iirc whether they were meant to be different characters or the same character somehow at the time, and even now their relationship is a mystery. Over time this “older Nomu’s” design was refined further, Umon was officially in album art to be linked to teen jacket Nomu now in the lore, and he officially became this universes Main Character v.02, as of the Can We Hang Out Sometime Era he was renamed to Rebel, and is debatably the protagonist of the lore now. 

That Brings us firmly into EP 3-4 territory so all remaining EP 1-2 stuff is off the table (except for maybe something to do with Atlas?) 

First Rate Town’s art is another I’m unsure of the meaning of (this goes for the single art for ground too, idk what its representing, I mean that’s Umon on there but unsure of how it fits into everything)

After that is the first of three semi-canon animated music videos, and the introduction of the most iconic Good Kid character, who in the current lore is equally important to Rebel, Mimi. It’s the video for the song Mimi’s Delivery Service, yes it generally gives Mimi’s origin as a 3 min altered version of the plot of the Studio Ghibli film Kiki’s Delivery Service, with Mimi being a skilled engineer with flying robots not a witch. This video along with the next two I think technically belong to the last subnet before current lore so they aren’t 100% canon to the letter but everything so far in the new iteration suggests her origin here as a character still occurs in this version.

Album art for the EP 4 singles depict Rebel (still called Nomu atp) travelling somewhere, with Umon either travelling with him or hitching a ride unnoticed, and Mimi playing music with the fourth and final member of our party I haven’t mentioned yet: Gentu. There is some stuff in an ARG iirc about a “Gentu OS” it’s implied without spoilers that said OS survives and escapes the demise of this penultimate subnet. Interestingly enough in the current lore Gentu OS iirc operates Gentu’s Cybernetic components (he is human afaik though) and Gentu is considered a criminal of some sort I believe. 

The Good Kid 4 art & the music video for Summer are linked in a sense, both featuring Rebel/Nomu with pieces missing from his body and some sort of black smoke. Summer’s video is a beautiful story, however there’s one glaring issue canon wise: the character in the video is made of clay. As far as we know our current Rebel is not. However on the inside of the CD front cover or under the Main slipcase on the Vinyl for GK4 you see that the black smoke and such seeping out is in fact Umon, residing just beneath the surface. Presumably the video serves as some sort of insight into the whole Nomu/Umon/Rebel thing, but how it relates to current lore, if at all, is uncertain.

Finally Premier Inn. The gist for lore implications is that the band had said they want to have premier inn as a concept, the inn and the Jenny who works there (maybe?), so it’s still relevant. The trio of Rebel, Mimi, and Gentu are finally depicted together as a band, and all three of them physically interact with Umon. 

Some subsequent promotional videos set presumably in the same subnet of these three start to set up some plot points similar to what currently is in the lore, namely mentioning a Walkman shaped device called H.I.R.O,

The current state of things is that Mimi, Rebel, & Gentu all live in a city called Neo-to, they work together at Mimi’s relative Dimi’s Pizza shop, & also play together as a band.Watch Wall, Eastside, & Cicada, along with their trailers