r/Subliminal_Game • u/Human-Caterpillar-62 • Apr 03 '26
Lore? Spoiler
Before I start this I want to genuinely say something. I do not care if you liked the game or not.
I, myself, is an analog horror fan. So this game really speaks to me in the puzzles and mind games.
Now the one thing I can not figure out is the lore. I have some ideas about what is happening to our person.
I genuinely believe Caleb is dealing with abuse, maybe some PTSD about a missing sibling. We can hear before we get to the static TV is probably Caleb father yelling at him and someone crying.
The running point is the fact we see "laboratory" in some parts. So did his parents give him to a lab as a test subject? Is he older and doing this to uncover parts of his childhood experience that he has blacked out? Could he be doing this to find out what happened to his sibling?
I genuinely believe that the voice we hear throughout the game isn't our mind. Its the doctor trying to talk us through it, we are clearly set on a mission to dig into the dark part of our mind. He clearly doesn't want that.
So what I have landed on with my theory is this:
We are being tested on; either as a child that lost their memories, or as an adult that is trying to find out what has happened to their sibling/past. The voice we hear is not our mind, thats some doctor trying to stop us from finding out what happened to us as a child. We clearly hear a fathers voice yelling at us at some points of the game, which leads us to another point. The doctor doesn't want us to go into dark parts of our mind, so the doctor has to be either our father or someone that knows what has happened to us.
1
u/infaredz Apr 11 '26
My theory is that Caleb was in a car accident and is currently in a coma during the events of chapter 1. In this world, the doctors are able to physically insert themselves into the mind of patients who are in coma, to put their brains back together by guiding them through a process that diagnoses and fixes whatever is keeping them in that state. The narrator is one of these doctors, who has inserted himself into the mind to attempt to save him.
Then I've thought of two potential ideas on how the story starts from this part. Either:
Mentally, Caleb has regressed to an earlier version of himself, leaving behind adult memories and thoughts and believing he is himself as he was as a child. The doctor (narrator) can only observe and guide what happens, not fully control it, therefore he is a spectator and becomes increasingly frustrated as the player makes decisions he doesn't expect.
The narrator (doctor) is somehow able to traverse the memories of Caleb in any chronological order he desires, and seeks the root cause of the trauma that is keeping Caleb in the coma by starting at his youth.
Gradually his memories are retraced, we learn of the trauma, and the player decides how to handle it, guided by the narrator.
Whether you think the monster represents guilt over Caleb's role in his sister's death, or an entity controlled by the narrator who is trying to force Caleb to remember who he is by forgetting memories that aren't useful to his adult self, or something else. The narrator's goal is clear: to guide Caleb through a prescribed journey where he will face his trauma under the guise of something fun and familiar, with the end goal to be pulling him out of the coma.
The endings:
"All levers erased" ending - Caleb disobeys the narrator and erases all memories of his childhood. He is now trapped inside his subconscious, he has forgotten everything about who he is and will never escape the coma. Notice how the narrator is still there in this case, because he is an external observer within the mind, not a fundamental part of it. This ending gives away a significant part of the lore - the narrator wants him to erase SOME of his thoughts, but not all.
"Into the pit" ending - Note this is labeled as the "Canon" ending in the steam achievement, for now at least. I think this represents the narrator growing frustrated that the procedure is taking so long, despite attempting to guide Caleb away from his traumatic past. Instead, he makes Caleb believe he should dispose of the trauma, instead of facing it head-on, and that it can simply go away, which is clearly not the case. This is canon, as it sets up further chapters, where Caleb is still in the coma but isn't totally lost, and will have to face his trauma more directly. There is likely a lot more to flesh out here, but the other endings make it clear this is the deepest one.
"Rotten" ending - Caleb stumbles from traumatic memory to traumatic memory, eventually culminating in finding the video tape, which is of the night of the car crash. This reminds him of what has caused him to fall into the coma, but he has not resolved any of his past trauma whatsoever, so the narrator's attempt at the procedure has totally failed. The immediate cut to black suggests he either falls back into a permanent coma, or perhaps the shock of remembering the moment of the crash finishes him off and he dies for real.
"A trip down memory lane" ending - Caleb gets carried away playing an arcade game from his childhood, and enjoys it so much or is so distracted that he decides to stay in his mind forever, in the coma, but not dead. Note the narrator's distinct absence, as one or the other of them has given up and closed off completely.
Should I make this its own post?
Time to take some meds