Only implied in a blink-and-you-miss-it shot, but the first episode shows the hallway which contains the players' living quarters, complete with their portrait on the doors. One of these portraits is a so-far-unseen dog character that has been crossed off, implying a dog-themed player once lived there. Rooms crossed off are all but outright stated to have belonged to abstraction victims.
Played for dark laughs in Episode 3. While Pomni and Kinger are having traditional horror game adventures, it's eventually revealed that Ragatha, Gangle, and a tied-up and gagged Jax are on the 'pacifist route' where they're drinking tea with the Baron's wife, the ghost of Martha Mildenhall. She's remarkably blase about her death by accidental shooting, and at worst has amused annoyance about the subject.
No stalking has happened as of Episode 2, but there are a few potential triggers. When Caine gives Pomni a tour of the circus in Episode 1, he mentions watching her with 'hundreds of all-seeing eyes' complete with a visual. That said, Caine is established not to be omniscient, and things can slip under his gaze easily. There's a brief scene shortly after where the moon greets Caine and says 'I love you', to which he reacts with horror and leaves with Pomni 'before the moon gets frisky.' It's unclear if Caine's reaction is the result of repeat harassment, the all-ages rating of the Circus in-universe, or simply doesn't want her to do anything in front of Pomni. Later in the episode, Jax reveals he has keys to every player's room, and makes a joke about going into Ragatha's to place centipedes inside (centipedes being something Ragatha is scared of). The fact that Jax, a bully, is capable of violating people's privacy like this may be upsetting to some survivors.
Jax, one of the players, has a habit of verbally and physically abusing the others, with his favorite target being Gangle, likely because of her more submissive, emotional personality. Examples include destroying her belongings, pushing her down multiple times, bossing her around, telling her she's supposed to be 'submissive and agreeable,' and straight-up blackmailing her. While the exact portrayal is closer to schoolyard or sibling bullying, it may still be a trigger due to the close proximity and inescapability of the situation.
Episode 3 takes place in a horror game setting, and one of the lore dump tapes reveals a man accidentally shot his wife believing she was the monster he was protecting them from. He notes the irony of him being a 'monster' instead of a protector. A later scene has the man's wife, now a ghost, enjoying tea with the characters on the other route, humorously acting blase about the situation.
In the trailers, Pomni gets several knives thrown at her and stuck in her body in a knife-throwing act, and Ragatha gets tripped by Jax and has a meat cleaver thrown at her head.
Ragatha also gets impaled by knives in Episode 2, but it’s not in a spectacular way.
While the show is still ongoing, Jax is a bully who is trapped in an inescapable torturous situation and goes after people trapped with him. It's unclear how much of Jax's behavior is the result of being stuck in the circus or other factors as of Episode 3, but it's confirmed that the show will explore the characters' psyches and motivations. That said, while his bullying is played for dark laughs the showrunners have been pretty good about not going into Jax apologia, to the point where Gooseworx outright said there was 'nothing heroic' about him.
The newest member "Pomni" mentions an exit door she'd seen outside the tent, so Caine insists she is hallucinating and there is no exit door. In the end, Caine eventually apologized for "lying about the exit" and admitted there was an exit door that he never really got to finish.
As of episode 2, yes. Although all animals shown are anthropomorphic, I would still count them. In episode 2, a crocodile character is sent into a test room type area, where he finds out that he isn't real, which upsets him.
At the end of the episode, they host a funeral for a character who was revealed to have died in the pilot/episode 1. Jax, a rabbit character, is seen briefly showing emotion before walking off.
No but pomni gets punched in the face unexpectedly after opening doors in the same sort of boat Jax says “ladies first” and then shoves someone, presumably a woman or feminine man I’m not sure of their gender, out of the way
Zooble’s character is made up of many shapes that are pulled apart. She doesn’t seem to be in pain, though, just annoyed.
Also, when Ragatha is glitching, her limbs glitch in ways that look like dislocations. The glitching is painful, but not necessarily the dislocating.
[SPOILERS]
Pilot: Pomni briefly hyperventilates after realizing she's trapped, but tries to play it off. Zooble chokes Jax after he detatches their arm.
Candy Cartier Chaos!: Gummigoo hyperventilates while him and Pomni are under the map.
Glitched bodies, a character with an unnaturally moving jaw and eyes inside said jaw for a head, a pull apart put back together character and characters who “abstract” turn into a black glitching mess with many flashing eyes on their whole body
The digital circus itself could be viewed as torturing souls of people who happen into it, especially with cane sending them on adventure that could seemingly hurt them
The intro video that introduced everyone and their name which I believe is a teaser video includes ragatha being stabbed in the face but she is not injured by it as she is a rag doll
So far, as of Episode 3, no children have died. The main cast is confirmed to consist of all adults, which is presumably true of the abstraction victims. Additionally, most if not all NPCs are coded in a way that implies they're meant to be adults. The closest it's gone to child death is a shot early into Episode 2 of a small child NPC in the Candy Canyon Kingdom which presumably gets destroyed off screen at the end of the episode, and a small cute ghost character that could maybe be considered childlike getting vacuumed up in Episode 3 (it's unclear what happens to him after).
Something akin to death happens to a character in Episode 1, but not a main character. Episode 2 contains the death of a character who is central to the episode, but didn’t appear before it.
*SPOILERS FOR EPISODE 2* A self-aware NPC Pomni befriended is poofed out of existence by Caine. It’s mentioned that the NPC could appear again, though they may not retain their memories if that were to happen.
*SPOILERS FOR EPISODE 1* Kaufmo, a character who never appeared in person, is shown to have abstracted in the first episode. He’s not dead, just banished to the basement, but his personality is completely gone, and in the second episode, the humans hold a funeral for him.
*SPOILERS FOR EPISODE 3* Kinger’s wife is revealed to have also abstracted.
Episode 3 has a description and flashback of a character's wife abstracting, which isn't an outright death but is analogous to it. Said character is clearly still impacted by it but is encouraged by his memories of her to keep going. The same episode has a description of a different man accidentally shooting his own wife fatally.
when Pomni is looking for Caine, she opens a door with a character taking a bath. Unexpectedly, a mask flies towards the screen with a yelling noise. this made me jump the first time i watched it
The plot of Episode 3 has the group essentially pulled into a horror game. One in-game plot point has a ghost put two characters in 'Hell' so he can possess their bodies. This happens to one of them onscreen, which results in the other smacking her with a shotgun butt as she taunts him about his trauma in a way that feels like something out of Evil Dead. She is shortly unpossessed, and they manage to leave the area without it happening again.
The gloink queen has multiple (probably at least 20) eyes along her head which form a bubbly pattern, it’s after pomni opens a bunch of doors and sequentially after three of them fall into the gloink hole (tryphobia is fear of both or either bubbly and holey textures)
No one is explicitly stated to have any specific mental illness, but insanity is a significant theme that is connected to “abstraction” which causes characters to attack others senselessly.
Pomni can't remember her previous life, and it seems that this is equally true for the other formerly-human circus residents. Zooble is a particularly strong case, having no memory of their gender identity. Kinger and Caine also suffer from memory loss, as emphasized in Episode 3.
No, but *SPOILERS* the way the characters talk about Kaufmo’s abstracting mirrors how one would discuss a person who committed suicide, saying they can’t believe he “gave up” and that they expected another mentally unstable character to do it first.
They are in a sort of limbo where Pomni feels like something is off and reality starts breaking and things clip into other objects and glitch, Jax also mentions Cane makes NPCs for the others to play with regularly. Pomni mentions she put on a headset and was teleported to limbo. Everything is presented and mentioned that they are living inside a computer game or simulation of some sort, in a “digital plane” cane also tells pomni she is having “digital hallucinations” but he seems to be lying. There is also cartoon logic (hammer space) and a weird infinitely respecting reality where pomni reenters the same room repeatedly. Pomni gets thrown into the void and seemingly has an existential crisis. They mention that food has no affect on them and they don’t need to eat, it just replicates the sensation of food
Everyone is mentioned to have a different body in the world this takes place while having regular human bodies where they come from, this causes Pomni to freak out when she sees herself in a mirror
While no explicit suicide has happened, there are parallels to it through abstraction. People are said to abstract when they 'lose their minds,' which causes them to turn into glitchy, violent monsters that are then sent down into the basement. When a character abstracts off-screen in the first episode, the rest of the cast discusses it with language expressing their surprise and sadness. One person, Zooble, says that they couldn't believe 'he gave up like that' and that they expected another (more openly unstable) person to go instead. The purpose of the adventures is to keep the players stimulated and distracted enough to avoid abstraction. The second episode continues these themes, with the cast, minus Jax, holding a funeral for the abstracted person at the end.
The first episode also has a line from Caine where, while giving Pomni a tour of the grounds, he mentions she could 'drown herself in the digital lake.' This potentially implies that at least one person tried to do so in a vain attempt to escape the circus.
Zooble gives the middle finger and swears but both are censored by the digital world. Pomni also repeatedly swears after finding out all of the swear words are censored. Jax calls Kinger "hoo-ha."
When they enter kaufmos room there is a beast with flashing eyes, when the rag doll girl gets picked up and when pomni gets touched on the hand they start glitching and flashing. When pomni enters a weird door and it takes her to a weird reality the lights flicker
Vaguely implied in Episode 3. Baron Mildenhall mentions in one of the lore dump tapes that he couldn't be a protector to his 'wife and theoretical children' when discussing his accidental shooting of his wife. This could potentially suggest that she was either in the earliest stages of pregnancy or they were planning on having kids, depending on your interpretation.
“Crazy” and “insane” are used, also “crazy” is used derogatorily to describe a neurodivergent coded character. Characters also “go insane” when they think about their past life or try to leave
there are minor, surface level religious references, like the ringmasters name being "Caine", which connects to the logo "C&A" which is a reference to Cain and Able. the dinner scene at the end is framed like The Last Supper.
After people “abstract” (which is when they go “insane”) they become a glitched beast and have to be sent away to a pocket dimension, upon being touched by said glitch beast the person becomes glitch ina different way, it’s mentioned it can only be fixed by Cane but also is incredibly painful, this could be seen as an allegory to some
Episode 2 has the adventure's antagonists steal a tanker in order to help the leader's, Gummigoo's, sick mother. However, the fact she remains unseen is a plot plot, as Gummigoo has an existential crisis when he glitches out-of-bounds and realizes he's just an NPC. He specifically notes that he doesn't remember what his mother looks like, because she only exists to be Gummigoo's motive, not an actual character.
Kinger's situation has obvious parallels to it. He is the oldest character in the show at 48, and he appears antsy, spacy, and forgetful, with occasional moments of lucidity. Episode 3 reveals he's more lucid in the dark, as he's more than capable of navigating the horror setting with Pomni. Some of his quirks, such as his interest in bug collecting and his hiding in a pillow fort, are also contextualized as him attempting to reconnect with what he remembers of his long-abstracted wife. The exact portrayal feels like something that could be comforting to those who know people with dementia, as Kinger mentions while lucid that the memories of those around Pomni will make everything less pointless, and she will remember even if he doesn't. Still, it is worth noting that it is a theme with Kinger's character that is explored.
Pomni tries to escape and it drives her crazy. She ends up back in the circus and she is despondent, finally realizing that it's not a dream and she is trapped forever.
There's a brief gag in Episode 2 where Jax immediately claims the tanker's driver's seat and honks the horn. He gets disgusted when the horn turns out to be weak and forces Gangle to drive. There's a car chase later in the episode, and there are tire screech sound effects during it.
When the tanker is introduced in Episode 2, it runs over one of the nondescript Candy Canyon Kingdom residents. If you look closely as Gangle is pulling out shortly after, she's running over a few more nondescript NPCs. This is largely played for dark laughs and isn't graphic.
While not in the usual sense, Pomni and Gummigoo escape the debug area by causing a model of the stolen tanker to be launched at high altitudes, which leads to them hitting a giant fudge monster over the head and knocking him unconscious when they land.
Episode 2 has Jax casually waving around a gun while explaining how he wants to go inside the enemy tanker and shoot everyone inside. When another character objects, saying it 'violates some kind of convention,' Jax snarks back at her with 'You're violating my ears with your clapback.' Jax later pulls out a different gun that seems to fire boots, but never fires it at anyone.
Episode 3 has more guns, as an NPC on the 'mature' horror route is a hunter who describes his encounter with a monster that happens to be his quarry. One tape describes him accidentally shooting his wife. Kinger uses a shotgun to shoot said monster, and later to literally smack evil spirits out of Pomni.
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