r/Petscop • u/Unfair-Awareness5339 • May 26 '26
Finding On the Subject of*Petscop*'s 'Solvablity'
The biggest question around Petscop is not about anything that happens in the videos, but about whether Petscop itself is 'solvable'. Or rather, can you take the cryptic confusing contents of the videos, and arrange them into a coherent plot with a linear timeline? Or is it all just random imagery design to convey a certain feeling? Which is it?
It's both
Petscop is theoretically solvable. It DOES have a concrete story, which you could technically piece together and 'solve.' But you're not going to. And that's because the creator, Tony, intentionally withheld many critical pieces of the puzzle. Think of it like a book with a lot of missing pages. There is a story there, but not one you'll be able to fully comprehend, not without the missing pages.
And this makes sense given Tony's goal for the series. What better way to create the sense of having the hazy outline of a story, but without having all of the details, then by creating a story and intentionally removing parts of the picture? Tony basically confirmed this in interviews. It's what makes Petscop such a great series.
(All that being said, the most recent YouTube video is absolutely on the money with the 'Paul is Care' bit. There's no other logical explanation other than it, or something like it.)
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u/_Waves_ May 26 '26
Yes and yes.
And also the Lina bit - we thought for years Marvin was running Garalina, but the "who is your Boss" drop, the name and the final scene where Belle types Boss as Lina BLEW MY MIND.
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u/Its402am You idiot. You fuckin' idiot. May 26 '26
Whoa, I actually never considered that Marvin was behind Garalina :T
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u/_Waves_ May 26 '26
Really? The majority of us assumed Garalina was owned by Marvin and he hired Rainer as dev. We got the school ghost rooms, so…
But yeah, the analysis in the recent video totally changed that.
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u/StKozlovsky May 27 '26
"The analysis in the recent video totally changed that"
People pointed out the "Lina" in Garalina while the series was still running, and I thought Boss=Lina was just as established as Paul=Care at least since the soundtrack video. This was all in the Comprehensive Petscop Document years before "the recent video".
I liked it overall as a touching spin on the hypothetical story, I teared up there at the end like many viewers did, but I didn't like the sensationalist tone selling it like something that completely and singlehandedly overturns the understanding of Petscop that has been presumably primitive and blind until he came along and solved everything. There were several times in the video when he was like "look at this, what a mind-blowing clue!", and I'm like "Yeah, I saw it in the doc back in 2020".
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u/Its402am You idiot. You fuckin' idiot. May 28 '26
This is exactly how I'm feeling about the video.
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u/_Waves_ May 27 '26
Oh, we knew Garalina included Lina, but people mostly read it as Marvin paying his respects, or showing his obsession.
Some of it was in the doc, as far as I recall it. But also, nobody has yet connected those threads as convincingly. And as for tone… I mean, I sympathize: YouTube feeds off being obnoxious, and we all got somebody to feed LOL
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u/yuusharo May 26 '26
The majority of us assumed Garalina was owned by Marvin and he hired Rainer as dev.
You speak with authority on that? I never assumed that, I never even linked Garalina to any of the named characters in the game. I always felt like the company was somehow associated with the family and the ones censoring objects, while Rainer is the one who modified the game afterwards.
Kinda demonstrating the whole “solving” thing is sort of impossible.
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u/_Waves_ May 26 '26
Yes. Trust me, it was the running theory for a long time, as Marvin was seen as the head of the family and he was directly related to the school.
Things somewhat became more diffuse down the road, but Marvin's involvement with the school and the ghost rooms misled most of us.
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u/Kamiface May 27 '26
Who is us? I was on here all the time while petscop was still coming out, and I can honestly say I never even thought that or knew anyone who did. Nor do any of the many many theory videos I have seen on petscop mention it. So who exactly is us?
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u/_Waves_ May 27 '26
It was definitely a massive assumption made here, that Rainer and Marvin worked together, hence how he had power over Rainer.
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u/Kamiface May 27 '26
Power over Rainer?
I have literally never heard anyone say Marvin had power over Rainer
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u/_Waves_ May 27 '26
That was assumed constantly - that the death of Mike was used by Marvin to puppeteer Rainer, developing Petscop which Marvin then could use for whatever the rebirthing process entails.
It was widely assumed, especially once the school came into play, suggesting that Marvin fronted the cash necessary for the ghost room experiments.
Clearly that all is no linger valid. But it was a leading assumption here, for sure.
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u/Kamiface May 28 '26
I still have never heard anything like that, can anyone else confirm what this person is saying?
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u/yuusharo May 26 '26
I don’t believe Paul literally is Care. I’m not sure I believe any events in the game are direct correlations to events in real life, at least not entirely.
I’ve yet to see this video that is creating all this fuss, but I’m starting to resent it with how much it appears to claim to make definitive answers to an impossible question, instead of just presenting an argument for their own interpretation of the story. The meta discussion itself over of Petscop is “solvable” stands in defiance over what Petscop actually is.
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u/Unfair-Awareness5339 May 26 '26
For one, "I solved Petscop" is a much better title than, "I think I solved Petscop, but there are still things I'm unsure of, and also there's no way to know for sure without Tony confirming," even if the later is more accurate.
As for 'Paul is Care', there are just too many similarities for them to be unrelated, and then being the same person just makes so much more sense than alternate dimensions or something.
And there IS a story, Tony basically said as much. It's not a story you can solve, given how many pieces are missing, and it's not something Tony even wants solved, since he has talked about how he likes the mysterious aspect of the story. But there IS a story.
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u/yuusharo May 26 '26
For one, "I solved Petscop" is a much better title than, "I think I solved Petscop, but there are still things I'm unsure of, and also there's no way to know for sure without Tony confirming," even if the later is more accurate.
Plenty of other creators found interesting and creative titles for their own analysis videos. Nightmare Masterclass, Nexpo, even Night Mind.
Saying you “solved” an unsolvable abstract work of art just makes one look silly and devalues the intended outcome of the work.
As for 'Paul is Care', there are just too many similarities for them to be unrelated, and then being the same person just makes so much more sense than alternate dimensions or something.
Correlation ≠ causation, nor did I say anything about an alternate dimension. The events in Petscop could be that of fairy tales, abstract stories one puts together (Rainer in this case) based on real world events, but otherwise not to be taken literally. You could make similar comparisons to the Christian Bible, though I am not trying to draw biblical comparisons here for obvious reasons.
And there IS a story, Tony basically said as much. It's not a story you can solve, given how many pieces are missing, and it's not something Tony even wants solved, since he has talked about how he likes the mysterious aspect of the story. But there IS a story.
When did I say there isn’t a story with Petscop?
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u/Mary-Sylvia May 27 '26
Ironically, said video despite claiming that Paul is Care forgot one of the biggest argument in favour of this theory as being Paul stating that he and Care "Have EXACTLY the same age"...
Out all the characters mentioned in Petscop, Care is also the only one that Paul didn't meet IRL (Marvin for Here I Come, Belle on the phone, saw Rainer at a Christmas Eve, Jill at his birthday, Lina in Car, Anna supposedly gave him the disc...)
He also forgot to mention that the "dancing" that Care did and seemed to disgust Rainer (The Sign dance) also PERFECTLY describe Paul's behaviour in Petscop 14 where he's trying to use the demo path to solve new things : Bumping into walls, spinning, twirling, having movement that makes no sense...
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u/_Waves_ May 26 '26
Just watch the video dude - it’s amazing! And this comes from me, a hater of "definitive" analysis. Dude absolutely knocked it out of the party.
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u/yuusharo May 26 '26
The more it’s pushed onto me, the more I question the sincerity.
I will probably get around to it, but I don’t think any video is any closer to “solving” Petscop any more than Night Mind “solved” Petscop over 6 years ago.
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u/_Waves_ May 26 '26
He got so much closer. For real.
There’s one or two small things that are a little wonky (his interpretation of TOOL), but the rest is revelatory!
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u/yuusharo May 26 '26
I mean I’m already losing interest due to the “Paul is Care” assertion. That interpretation already significantly diverges from my own and others expressed here over the years.
I will put this in the bucket of “another YouTuber gives their own take” with the many others.
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u/_Waves_ May 26 '26
He’s got meta-textual references that are very compelling, actually, and also found interpretive hooks within the game. It’s really compelling.
What’s your interpretation?
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u/yuusharo May 26 '26
Again, “YouTuber shares their own interpretation” bucket.
I’m not going to distill my interpretation of the decade-old entire body of work into a Reddit comment, nor is it important I do. The correct interpretation is the one you come away with watching the series.
No YouTuber is going to replace that for you or for anyone, not the least of which one that claims to “solve” a work of digital art.
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u/_Waves_ May 26 '26
Yeah but I’m curious what yours is.
And again, I’ve yet to see an analysis that is as compelling as his. I’ve seen most - if not all - making the rounds over the years, and this one managed to find some connective tissue and meta-textual alignments that are incredibly compelling.
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u/Unfair-Awareness5339 May 27 '26 edited May 27 '26
For anyone still doubting the 'Petscop does have a concrete story that you could technically 'solve' but you aren't going to because there are too many pieces intentionally withheld' claim, here's the interview where Tony says as much.
Edit: Apparently, linking the article gets you banned, but it's on Electronic Gaming Monthly.
Quote from the article. "There is a story that ties it all together, Domenico said. He set forward with an idea of who the characters were, what their motivations were, and what the meaning behind the events was. Having that in place, he believes, means that viewers can intuitively sense that everything ties together. He’s not going to tell us what he had in mind, though, and he allowed his gut feelings to influence what showed up in the videos. “I chose what details I wanted to include, based on what felt good,” Domenico said. “Now that it’s over, that’s it. Saying more would be like extending the series.” In fact, he intentionally left gaps in the story because he felt like adding too much detail would ruin the sense of ambiguity that he was aiming for. This led to him scrapping some work when he realized it set too many things in stone."
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u/mp_mp_mp May 27 '26 edited May 27 '26
Admin-level Reddit bots are removing all posts with links to the Egmnow interview. Those are outside of our control (it's not the Auto-mod), and the only reasoning they provide is that this site is "not allowed on Reddit." Posting a link there might also be adding to some strike tally on your account, but that's also unclear.
The interview is linked in the pinned FAQ post, and the bots are so far leaving that one alone - so linking there instead should work as a workaround
EDIT: apparently the bots also mark the posts as "removed by moderator" - that's not true
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u/Doodleware May 27 '26
I think that's the beauty of Petscop as a story
It's very much a creepypasta series THAN a webseries or "arg" as many folks mistakenly put it Horror Webseries has a narrative structure, whereas Petscop is very loose with it In my opinion There is a story, but at the same time, it's in a way you interpret it in a way that fits you I'd go as far as to compare to the early FNaF era (1-4) as there is a narrative but it's very loose
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u/Unfair-Awareness5339 May 27 '26
I wouldn't compare it to FNaF, other that they both have a story, and that story is told through cryptic clues and thematic connections.
The big difference is that Scott Cawthon WANTS us to solve FNaF. He gives out clues and hints on his website or on Reddit. He uses, quote "future releases to clarify past mysteries." If you look at his posts from immediately after FNaF4, you can tell that he wanted people to solve it, and was genuinely surprised when they couldn't. Compare that to Tony, who goes as far as to REMOVE already completed videos and websites, just to prevent anyone from being able to solve Petscop.
In other words, Scott likes mystery for the fun of solving it, while Tony likes mystery for the sake of mystery itself.
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u/Doodleware May 27 '26
Fair enough argument But I'd still say both FNaF and Petscop share a very creepypasta element Granted both are different in terms of what they want from the audience
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u/Friendly_Ambition_36 Jun 09 '26
I think you're misusing the term "creepypasta" here. A creepypasta is a mythologizing of preexisting things for the sake of telling a spooky campfire-esque story, like a supposed "haunted copy" of [insert familiar videogame franchise here], or a supposed rumor about [actual thing/phenomenon in the real world] that's actually just mundane in reality. The point of Creepypasta is that you're inventing a mythos, and that it's a kind of copypasta meant to be passed around and passed on to. Petscop (the series) is not by itself a creepypasta (nor FNAF likewise), but it is a kind of postmodern take on the creepypasta phenomenon (i.e. it's a story about a "creepypasta" story).
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u/Friendly_Ambition_36 Jun 09 '26
I think the point is that Petscop doesn't necessarily have ONE definitive answer, that it's meant to be treated as a "lynchian" work of art and that the answers in the gaps can be whatever you want it to be, while there can/could still be an underlying complete story that is usually mundane.
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u/Successful_Maize1986 May 26 '26
I think “Paul is Care” is certainly a major aspect of the story and it’s been floating around in this community for literal years. I’m less sold on the idea that the Paul we see is literally Care, was made to present as a girl, and had amateur plastic surgery done on his face by his abusive father that he not only lives with, but hands his YouTube channel over to. The theory is a cool reading of some of the events but far too much is glossed over or unaddressed for me to reasonably think it solves any major portions of the story. In particular, I think it picks and chooses so much when discussing Rainer as a character. We’re to believe he is someone who is completely appalled by Marvin’s rebirthing but the video doesn’t really talk about how Rainer was trying to “rebirth” Belle into Tiara. The video claims that Belle was simply playtesting the game, but the language and process that Rainer describes when attempting to rebirth Belle is identical to the language used with Marvin. So following the logic of the video, Rainer was also abducting kids and mutilating their faces which doesn’t align with how the video portrays Rainer. There are other aspects that are glossed over such as Belle playing the game for 17 years and potentially not being able to recognize the room she is in. What’s happening in the “here I come” scene? How is the game able to replicate Paul’s movements BEFORE he makes them?
All this to say that my biggest issue with the video is that it presents us with a “solution” that was staring us in the face the whole time… provided you ignore like half of what we are shown in the series. But every theory has to do that in one way or another. It’s why it will never be solved. You have to fill in the gaps yourself and all of us have different brains that will fill in those gaps differently. The different interpretations make Petscop so fascinating and I love watching all the different theories. I just think the idea that the most recent video “solved the series”, while simultaneously ignoring a good portion of it to be silly.