Quest:Ruby Quest/Theories
This is a compilation of all the current theories for Ruby Quest
They will be ranked RIDICULOUS, PLAUSIBLE, or VIABLEbased on how likely they are to be correct. If proven (Ha! That won't happen), their status will become CANON. If debunked, their status will change to DEBUNKED, with the old status <stike>crossed out.
VIABLE theories have some/a lot of evidence behind them.
PLAUSIBLE theories have little to no evidence behind them.
RIDICULOUS theories have little to no evidence behind them, and are also very very silly.
GRAND THEORIES
Put possible explanations of the entire scenerio here. Also called "Quicksand theories," because even if one of them is right, it won't really change anything.
1: It is all happening in Ruby's Mind- a grand hallucination
2: Abduction by scientists?
2-1: Abduction by Inept Scientists?
-Perhaps the facility was some kind of research station, biological or preternatural
or whatever- and accidents occurred forcing a lockdown and evacuation. The prisoners
could have been guinea pigs or workers.
3: Abduction by "God" figures or demons of some kind? (Cthulhu Theory)
4: Abduction by villainous characters seeking to test or control "God" figures, which are in fact benevolent? (Nice Cthulhu Theory)
FACILITY THEORIES
Put theories concerning the nature of the facility itself here.
1: The facility is a real installation deep underwater. Any FUCK YOU PHYSICS incidents are hallucinations or illusions.
2: The facility is a real installation deep underwater. However, for some reason it does not abide by normal physics laws. It does not abide by normal physics laws because-
3: During Tom's second imprisonment and Ruby's first blackout, the facility was not repaired. Instead, they were both moved to a different but similar set of rooms. This supports the "scientists/observation" grand theory.
4: The facility actually changed when Red used the eye pendant. The broken physics are explained by the damage to reality caused by the use of the pendant.
Rooms
Back Room
1: The gas was a mutagen that causes the abomination affliction.
Gas is a Mutagen
The gas is the reason for the mutations. Ruby, Red, the Bear, and the Hound are our known infectees, and all of them were either next to the Back Room (Bear and Hound), were in the back room when we activated the gas (Ruby), or are commonly assumed to have been everywhere (Red). Tom is not infected at the moment because he has never been near the gas. Ruby is growing her eye where it is because the gas entered through the claw wound.
Alternatively, going by the Eye Gouge theory, the gas went through our pneumatic pipe and up to Tom. It likely infected him when he opened it to get the antidote, and got in his eye. This would be why he gouged it out after the antidote was recieved, instead of earlier.
Broken Physics Brig Room
1: Red caused the enormous rift when he "cut ???" in Ruby's vision-hallucination-whiteout that occurred after Stitches gave her the cross peg.
CHARACTER THEORIES
Put theories on the characters, their purposes, their actions, and their motivations here.
Theories Concerning Ruby
Ruby is Going Insane
VIABLE
Several of the events in the story make it seem that Ruby's grip on reality is failing. Possible instances of hallucination include:
Her third eye appearing (she was the only one to experience this and her character prevents her from asking Tom to verify)
Her "waking dream" in which she seemed to wake up from bed, take a key from her dresser that may have actually been a filing cabinet, and attempt to interact with Tom. When she did, she came to her senses, and found it was the dummy.
Her corpse in the do not open box. Although she was highly perturbed by this site Tom had no apparent reaction to it, and when asked about the box, only mentioned the finger bowl.
The Dummy in the room where she woke up seems to "watch" her as she moves about.
The Eye painting in the bear zombie room seemed to "watch" her as she moved about.
Visual Hallucinations
PLAUSIBLE
Her hallucinations, however, seem entirely visual. Every time she has one, she wakes up from physical contact, leading one to believe the hallucinations are a coping mechanism, a way to deal with what is actually there a little more nicely.
The dummy room "This is my room" hallucination ended when she touched the dummy.
The "Tom is a monster holy jeezus" hallucination ended when Tom touched her shoulders and asked what was wrong.
We never had physical verification for the eye painting and the dummy watching her, the corpse in the box, and her third eye. As such, while likely, this theory has little evidence.
Warning Eye
PLAUSIBLE
Her eye is giving her warnings of either the future, alternate realities, or just a good sense of caution.
The eye painting and watching dummy are to keep her paranoid of the cameras, which we know she was anyway.
Tom's transformation was to keep her cautious of him, and not be too trusting.
Her corpse was to remind her of her own mortality.
By this theory, her third eye is real, and it is what shows her these warnings/visions.
Ruby is Psychic
PLAUSIBLE
One moment Ruby looks into Tom's eye (which is hurting) and the next moment there's a physics-defying chasm and Tom has no eye. In the meantime Tom went oddly "black-outlined".
What happened then? Dismissing it as "just Ruby's hallucinations" doesn't cut it. She got the copper key from her dream. It's likely still stuck in the door and very physical, meaning her hallucinations are more than "just hallucinations".
Ruby is Psychic/experiencing preternatural phenomena AND is going Insane
PLAUSIBLE
Superpowers and mental instability frequently go hand-in-hand in the cosmic horror genre. It could be that some of Ruby's experiences are hallucinations and some of them are "really happening."
Tom Seemed to verify that the enormous fissure in the broken-physics room existed but he did not react to the site of Ruby's apparent corpse in the "do not open" box.
Theories Concerning Tom
Tom Gouged Out His Own Eye
VIABLE
Tom's story simply doesn't add up. He was dragged up a ladder by a creature he did not see, which gouged out his eye, locked him in a room, and left? Sounds like something Red might do, but Tom didn't see his attacker. But in the Brig, he was sitting in the corner of the room, away from each and every entrance into the room. There is no way something could have snuck up on him. On top of that, his story is that he lost his eye as soon as we left him, explaining the blood. But, he still had his eye when we saw him on the computer monitor, well after he was taken away.
So, why is his eye missing? Maybe he was trying to save himself from something worse than loss of depth perception. What if he had transformed, down there, while he was weak on Arsenic and feeling miserable? He fled upstairs, and met Red up in the Monitor Room. Red wasn't going to deal with a monster Tom, and locked him in the room where we found him later. Eventually, Tom knew something was wrong with himself, and that he was monster. To stop the infection from spreading, he removed his own eye.
When Red eventually saw this in the monitors, he knew Tom was safe again, and let him back out. Tom doesn't remember Red from that first encounter because Tom was still a monster. Tom isn't telling Ruby any of this for the same reason Ruby is hiding her third eye - they love each other, and don't want the other to know.
Tom Clones
PLAUSIBLE DEBUNKED
The Tom we see now is not the same Tom we saw back then.
Made after part 3, the theory went that the original Tom died from arsenic poisoning. The Tom we met after our dream was a new Tom. The evidence for this includes: Tom vanishing, Tom appearing somewhere no one had access to, Tom reappearing suddenly right where we left him. I would go into more detail, but Tom's story has mostly checked out. The discrepancies don't lead us to think he is someone else entirely... but there are still problems with his story.
Thousand Toms
RIDICULOUS
Everyone is a Tom Clone.
Ruby is a Tom Clone with rabbit ears. The Bear was a Tom Clone. The Hound was a Tom Clone. Tom is 3 Tom Clones. Even the fish in the tank are Tom Clones. Red is a Tom Clone.
Or was it a Tom Clone is Red? We're not sure.
Either way, everything is Tom, down to the hamsters spinning in cages powering the facility.
Theories concerning Red
-A prisoner?
-A villain?
-Prisoner in league with villains?
Red's Mobility
VIABLE
Red's room was sealed by the Cross Peg most of the game. But, he was apparently able to get in and out of his room. Of course, he likely had the cross peg, and may have given it to Stitches when he hung him up on the wall (see We've Seen Stitches Before). But, how would he get down from there without being able to open the floor hatch?
Well, there is a tarp on the ceiling of his room. Maybe there's a secret passage. And the image to the right gives a good hint where it goes - the blue line pipe is in Red's room, goes down the monitor room, into the Z Hatch room, and simply stops at the back room, inside of a metal box. We know the pipe can't go anywhere between the back room and the dummy room, because that window there shows the walls are somewhat thin. So, it is quite possible that the metal box is a secret exit, and unlike Tom, Red is more than thin enough to crawl through to the Z Hatch room.
Red Killed Time
VIABLE
When Red used the eye pendant in the vision that the God Zombie sent Ruby into, he not only ended the dream, but affected the physical world possibly even before the story even started. The laser intersected Tom's head, Tom's eye was missing later. The gibberish when the laser was being used was scrambled terms from earlier threads. The HUGE UNEXPLAINED GAP appeared. The broken physics room. The back room was no longer filled with blood and the closet Bear was in now has shelves instead of zombies. The tube is no longer broken, neither is the mirror. The things which could be used to kill the Plant Zombie no longer exist. Tom said that nothing happened when asked about the past, while Bear certainly counts as something, possibly more evidence that Bear didn't even happen in this timeline. Ruby's inventory changed, gaining the key and losing the items that the altered past no longer gave her to opportunity to collect.
- gap in the theory: at first, after Ruby exits the room, the changes are only partial. It's after she looks into Tom's eye, the major change occurs.
Murder Theories
Red Killed Himself To Stay In Control
VIABLE
Red wants to be in control, and even if it is the illusion of control. He tells himself that he is not trapped, yet he appears to be in the same situation as Ruby and Tom. He refuses to answer questions, and even helps Ruby in some instances to either help or to further convince himself he is in control. In order to preserve that desire to be in control, he kills himself, going out on his own terms with a smile on his face. Perhaps Ruby and Tom's presence and desire to find out why they are not in control compounds the fact that he does not have a role in deciding his future, so he kills himself.
The theory is supported by Weaver's description of Red's feelings on the matter:
<TG_Weaver> You know, from Red's point of view, he won. He never got caught. He never got beaten. He never gave up. And he exited on his own terms. And most of all, he died with a smile on his face.
Red didn't kill himself at all
PLAUSIBLE BUSTED
The picture with the dead Red doesn't have a blood trail between the wall Red wrote on and the place he is lying dead, while he'd need a lake of blood to write all that he's written. Also, suicide by passing several spikes through your head can be quite difficult to perform.
The theory has been officially proved wrong since Weaver said the trail is absent for simplicity of drawing.
Red was Murdered
PLAUSIBLE
It must be pretty hard to drive a pair of wooden spikes through your head, draw some words on the wall, then walk back to the middle of the room and pose for us. Something out there could have killed Red.
The only real hole in this theory is WHAT is written on the wall - NEVER CATCH ME NEVERNEVERNEVER fits Red's personality perfectly, so the killer either knew him very well, or it really was a suicide.
Theories Concerning "Stitches"
Stitches was a Hallucination
VIABLE
Canon?- Confirmed by Weaver? (citation here)
Several of the events surrounding Stitches don't seem to comport with reality as it's experienced afterward. The white out, etc. However, we did receive an item from stitches - the cross peg - which makes him being completely unreal a bit unlikely.
Stitches is /tg/
PLAUSIBLE
Stitches could be a manifestation of /tg/ in-game. He seemed to want to communicate with Ruby, he showed her an item, and he was "stitched together" like some kind of Frankensteinian monster. This could be symbolic of the nature of /tg/, which is also a mosaic of personalities and minds. He also seemed to be bound or hindered somehow and was surrounded by what looked like images and text. This could be symbolic of how /tg/ has trouble making decisions and taking action because of its inability to reach consensus.
Weaver said that we'd seen stitches before <citation here> and may well have been talking about /tg/, but this theory loses water considering that we may have seen him from the gas room while searching for Tom's antidote.
Stitches is Benevolent
PLAUSIBLE
It seems that Stitches was prevented somehow from communicating with Ruby. He did supply her with an item, or at least show it to her.
We've Seen Stitches Before
VIABLE
Weaver told us we'd seen Stitches before. But, where? After some looking, it was concluded the only possible place was the first time we entered the back room behind the Z Hatch. There was a face peering at us from behind the window, and when we looked, it was gone. This face could not have been the Hound Zombie, because the Hound's ears hung very low, and we saw no such ears on this figure - just like with Stitches.
Moments later, we see a shadow in the back - theoretically, the Hound Zombie descending upon and eviscerating poor Stitches. Having been shopped up good, he was then left for dead. The next time we see that room, the window is mirrored.
As to how Stitches got on the wall afterwards, there is no evidence, but it is possible Red put him up there later, while we were passed out. If he did, then he is probably also the one to drag us onto the Do No Open box.