Frank is Losing His Mind…

Frank is being removed from Welcome Home, a new update is here and he is the one under the microscope with his deepest darkest fears revealing that his fate may be worse than all the others. Hello internet! Welcome to Game Theory, the show that always remembers to wave up high. And if you're familiar with that phrase, you know that means there's been an update to one of our favourite ARGs. Welcome home, a mysterious 70s kid show that we've been breaking down update by update for a few years now. You see, while the show appears all squeaky clean, inside is a dark truth. Home, the living house in the centre of the neighbourhood has an evil intent for the neighbours, leading them like a cult and coercing our main man Wally into carrying out its desires. In the last few updates by discovering hidden videos, we have seen that home has been bringing the neighbours to their breaking point and exposing them to their worst fears in order that they all fall in line. They made Eddie the male man feel unwanted, Poppy the family bird feel alone and Julie the joyful monster responsible for bringing spring unable to grow a single flower. But despite home control over the neighbourhood, Wally seems to be breaking free. He is the one leading us to the secret videos revealing the dark secrets behind this show and exposing home. And he's back at it again with this brand new update. This time, revealing to us the truth about the bug loving book smart Frank, the guy we felt has been our man on the inside, trying to help the other neighbours and overcome whatever home is planning. Clearly that didn't go unnoticed, so now it's his turn. Although, let me tell you theorists, his fate is going to be far worse than anyone else's in the neighbourhood. When you first enter the website, you are met with a trigger warning page. It's basically laying out what the ARG is. I guess they wanted to make sure people were not stumbling into the Sesame Street looking website, only to find the trauma inside. To get into the main website, you have to click this door and you were then met with home trapped inside Jelly. And when I see Jelly, there's one person I think of. FOOT! DIMMIT! DIMMIT! You put my stuff in Jell-o again. No, no, not him. The neighbour who loves Jelly and is now sitting on the front page. Frank, we've also got new cards for the choreography game that we found in the last update, as well as Frank's new rule sets. There's two new audio story books, and there's mention of a bug dog toy. But that's kind of it. Although, on the news page we find out why. According to the Welcome Home Restoration project, there was some unforeseen circumstances, a live animal in one of the boxes, which, according to the away from PrimeEye's website, hatched from a toy egg. I guess the old adage I was taught when I worked in television is true. Two things you should never work with. Children and animals. Just because there's a lack of physical discoveries, doesn't mean there aren't a whole bunch of secrets waiting for us. We've once again got bugs all over the site. However, instead of being clickable like last time, they seem to be guiding us towards the secrets. On the news page, for example, a bug is sitting next to an image of Frank. Click on it and a crumpled up note appears. Dear Wally, I'm not sure why you asked for this, but here you go, a drawing of your telephone button. Frank. Wally's telephone button is pretty significant to the lore of this show. Multiple times, the Welcome Home toy phone has led us to secret pages where we can talk to Wally. So, naturally, I'm going to click on this drawing. And when you do, you are taken to a new web page called Ring Ring Ring. This is similar to a URL from the last update, a page called Ring Ring, where we learn that Wally is breaking free from home's control and asked us to play Gava in order to find Julie's secret videos. This URL is the same. There is an audio file to play and Wally is speaking to us once again. Wally has more truth to show us than you know me. I'm always interested in more lore. So, I guess we have a hunt to go on. Let's go through every page of the website and see what secrets are lying there. On the neighborhood page, a bug jumps onto the street below and does a sick backflip by home, but clicking home doesn't do anything. It just shows us Wally's page like it usually does, and that's because the secret is actually on the home animation at the top of the page. A little obtuse, but okay. Suddenly, the whole page goes dark and highlights Julie's house. For the first time, we can go inside one of the neighbor's houses, and this page is called our home. There is a bunch to look at here too. The window shows Julie looking out the window scared. There's an image of Frank on the wall, a photo of the joy falls, and a gift addressed to Frank. But the most interesting part is the dresser. We can see a phone on the floor like it's been abandoned. The vanity has some flowers addressed to Julie from Frank, and the dresser drawer has another note from Frank. In our last theory, we saw Julie crack. She is supposed to be able to make the flowers bloom, and yet she couldn't manage it for this singular black flower. She then freaked out when Frank showed up, and now she's gone into hiding. Stop answering her phone, looking out the window afraid of being seen because she failed. And so, he's trying to write to her to figure out what's wrong, but she's locked herself away. Although, Frank's note contains one more secret. On the note is a butterfly. Clicking it will squash it, and a wing will be left behind. Click the wing, and a new page is revealed. It says, finish it. Specimen A. And right here, we have our first secret video. Oh boy, let's go! You were very good at this game. Keep going. Come back to our home when you have it. All six pieces. So, this butterfly wing is one of six. Finding them shouldn't be too hard either, especially with our animated bug friend pointing us in the right direction. Maybe we should give them a name. How about Jeff? How does that sound Jeff? Oh, it's a good insert. You are. Yeah, you are. Anyway, our next bug is on the sticker page. Jeff is doing backflips over the neighbours section, and right there is another bug, Specimen L. Ha, I guess this isn't a simple ABC deal. I wonder if that will be important later. For shadowing. Regardless, in this video Frank is playing chess with home. But when? Wally shows up Frank says something interesting. You don't understand home. I do not. Home does not talk. Well, not like you or I do, but he still speaks in other ways. Frank goes on to say that he taught home more scot so that home could communicate. At that moment, the video glitches out. Initially, I wondered if this evil kind of glitch was because Wally was jealous. He's the one who's supposed to communicate with home. Home is his friend. Or God, it's uncle. But now Frank can talk to him too? He has to go. But that isn't the case. Because from that clip, Wally can't talk to home at this point. Instead, I think this must be an earlier part of the timeline. At the end of the video, Frank also agrees to teach Wally more scot. Meaning, Wally could then communicate with home. And maybe that was what put this whole thing into motion. Because now that they could communicate. Wally could access the power of the void underneath home and cause all of his friends to break so that they would never leave, always needing him. But that's early speculation. Let's get back to our bug hunt. On the food paid by scrolling through the images, you find specimen P over the crispy sweet cereal box. With the video showing Frank heading over to Poppy's house after checking in on Julie. But then we begin to hear radio static. Locks on the cabinet? Is he scared? Everything will come flying out of her? Oh, the pantry too. These are clearly Frank's thoughts we're tuning into. He is concerned about his frit. Hold on, is that a bomb? A packed bowl too, Poppy. Are you trying to lay me out of my air? Stop it. It calms me down. We know Poppy is a bit of a chicken and is constantly jumping at stuff and back in the 60s and 70s when the show took place. Songs were widely popular as a way to relax. But this is a kids show. What the heck is going on? In response to this, Frank brings up Poppy's breakdown from Brick by Brick and asks if she was using the bomb when it happened. Oh, no, no, no, never for work. Only weekends, days off, whatever. Oh my god, do you remember Frank? Look on Ron's face. He was so worried. Who is Ron? This name has come up on the website before once. On the about us page, it credits Ronald Dorellane as the creator of Welcome Home. That's it. That is all we know about this guy. But the fact that Poppy mentions Ron brings us back to something I'd not really consider. These characters are real. People. Ron is not a part of the show. He's the creator. On set, watching it be filmed. When Poppy had her mental breakdown, Ron was there and concerned. That, along with the bomb that Poppy uses on days off and weekends, and Frank bringing up these less child-friendly topics, means that the videos we are watching aren't from the show, but behind the scenes. When the actors are off the clock, it makes sense. These aren't videos found by the WHRP. Their secret videos that Wally is revealing to us. Videos no one has seen because they were never public episodes. This is huge. We've got to get to the bottom of this now. And this next one requires us to use game theory, signature, advanced ARG technique. Click absolutely everything wildly and pray it works. And it does. Just like that, we find a hidden link in the neighborhood page woods. Squash the butterfly and you get specimen E and a continuation of one of the homewarming videos where Eddie has his panic attack with home staring at him. That video ended with Eddie unable to speak. This time, Frank tries to help Eddie go home. But... Frank decides he should go to, but before he can, Julie grabs his hand. And once again, we hear the radio sounds and begin to hear Frank's thoughts. He's becoming forgetful. Which is concerning and then he turns around. It isn't Julie holding his hand. It's Wally. Frank begins to question what's going on with Wally insisting he stay. When Frank refuses, Wally let's go, letting Frank fall into an empty void as he begins to forget more and more. The whole show's premise is about being a good neighbor, which Frank is clearly trying to do for Eddie. But what this video shows us is it's less about being a good neighbor generally and more about being a good neighbor in the eyes of Wally. During Frank's conversation with Poppy, when she talks about not making a fuss over her breakdown, we see Wally's eye flash frame on the screen. It's about doing things how he wants them. And when Frank disobeyes Wally, he lets him fall into the void, to be alone in the darkness, to suffer like Eddie, Poppy and Julie have. Frank is the smartest of all the neighbours, so him becoming forgetful is the perfect torture for him. One that will show him not to disobey Wally ever again. Another one of the specimens can be found on the toy page. But it's not as straightforward as the others. The new addition to this page are the new cards for fluoriography. And Jeff is pointing towards these images. But it's not the cards you need. It's the fluoriography game board, which you can click on to take you to a full sized version. There, over the finish line, is a dragonfly specimen R. This video follows on from what we saw last time in Julie's update, where she's breaking down over being unable to open a mysterious black flower. I can still hear it. I can hear it calling to me, Frank. This is where our boy Frank comes in. We're going to take it out. Oh no, no, no, Frank, please no. They go back and forth for a while until finally Julie gives in. Frank tells Julie to go home while he digs up the flower and hide it. Frank is once again seeing the distress cause to his fellow neighbour, just like Eddie and Poppy. But after this whole Eddie incident, he's decided to take a more active role in solving the problem, openly defying the mess made by Wally and Holmes. Sadly though, based on what we saw from Julie's room earlier, his attempts to fix the problem aren't working. She's become a hermit, ashamed and hiding away. No longer talking to Frank after digging up the flower. She's isolating herself. Exactly what happened to the others, playing right into Holmes' hand. If Holmes has hands. Now it's time to track down our final specimen, which starts on the storybook page. Weirdly, Jeff is not near the new stories, but over the sweet, briar story from the last update, where Julie and Frank reenact sleeping beauty. Jeff is also using a new animation. He's digging rather than pointing or backflip looking around there does nothing and there's no other pages revealing anything, which leaves me with only one thought. We need to see what's beneath the surface of the webpage. As in the website's code, by using the inspector tool, we can see text in between the code for the animated banner and the sweet briar title. And it's a riddle. I know something you don't know. It is two words long, the first word is sweet. The second word is a flower. Intertwined, they call to mind the face of a neighbor, he pretends not to know. Okay, so we know the first word of this code is sweet, and the second word is a flower. And given the new flower cards found in the choreography game, it has to be one of these flowers. They're all six, so we need more clues to narrow down exactly which flower is the key. And the answer, believe it or not, is on clown's e-shop. Yes, really. Now their merch shop is part of the ARG and, ooh, look, an idea plushy. And two cards. You see, each character plushy comes with a flower pin. The flowers used are the same flowers used in the choreography game. Poppy has the Zephyr flower, Sally the Animone, Eddie the Lavender and Howard the Apple Blossom. That means the flower we are looking for is associated with one of these characters, and our new reliable pal, Jeff, is here to show us which one. On the main page, Jeff goes right to the bottom and crawls to the banner with all the neighbors. They all look like they usually do, except for Eddie, who has a lavender behind his ear now. Eddie is also growing lavender in his garden on the neighborhood page. Lavender has to be the second word. By putting sweet lavender at the end of the Welcome Home URL, we are met with a page of lavender and specimen scene. Our final piece. This video is backstage during the sweet briar play. As Frank is preparing, he's thinking to himself, wondering why he always is given the prince role. But as he's thinking, Eddie comes up to Frank and asks him to fix his outfit. We then return to Frank's internal thoughts and he's angry about the whole exchange. Indeed presents, hires you can't afford to get wrong, like warehouse operations manager. Where are the fortlets? I sold them. They were too expensive. I got a great deal on these scooters though. You expect us to move a two turn pallet on a scooter. It'll be fun. Just think of the core strength you'll build. This is a job for sponsored jobs. This is what happens when you don't sponsor your job on Indeed. So the next time you need someone to get the job done right, get matched with quality candidates with an Indeed sponsored job. Visit Indeed.com slash next hire and sponsor your job today. What is he talking about? They almost sound like a couple when one of them has forgotten their anniversary. And that might not be far from the truth. Eddie's flower is lavender, which has many meanings. One of the biggest historically is its association with the LGBTQ community. In the 1940s through to the 1960s, there was a moral panic called lavender scare. During this time, homosexuals were seen to be a risk to national security and were often considered communist sympathizers. This led to many of them being ostracized from their friends and family, being harassed by police and often losing their jobs. Even to the point where President Eisenhower signed an executive order barring homosexuals from working in federal governments. It was an absolutely horrible moment in history. And of course it was all just fear mongering, similar to the red scare associated with communism from that time. But the reason I bring it up is that clown has confirmed that Eddie and Frank are canonically in a relationship together. But welcome home takes place in the 70s. And during this time, it was illegal in many states to be homosexual. And as we've discussed, these characters are real people, meaning that this relationship between Eddie and Frank was likely frowned upon and it seems hidden from the public. On various parts of the website, such as the character descriptions and news pages, it suggested that Frank and Julie appear to be romantic partners on the show. We saw the picture of Frank in a heart shaped frame in Julie's house and it's why he plays the prince in every single play with Julie. This would have been seen as much more acceptable for kids at the time. Plus, the riddle said, intertwined they call to mind the face of a neighbor he pretends not to know. More and more, we are starting to see the real people behind these characters. The lives they live were not being filmed for the show, but here, it is pretending not to know Frank. His breakdown and his fear of home is forcing him to, at the part, to play up to his defined character, a character that isn't romantically involved with Frank. But with that, we have our six specimens. And the letters of all of them spell the word, parcel. See, I told you they'd be important. If you then go back to our home where we've started this hunt and add parcel to the end of that URL, we find a new secret page with one final video. Frank is in his shed hiding the black flower there. As he returns to his house, we begin to hear his thoughts. He decides to distract himself with some journaling, but he notices it's brand new. You lost your field journal. Don't you remember? You had to get a new one. How could you forget? Frank's memory is continuing to fail him and it haunts him. With his thoughts becoming more aggressive, calling him an idiot, telling him no one would read his journal. But it's almost like it's not him speaking. Like him falling into the void beneath home in the previous video, allowed home to enter his mind and speak to him, twisting his thoughts. All of this culminates with Frank opening his door only to find a red letter on his doorstep, which he looks horrified at. This is where everything began to fit into place for me. This isn't the first time we've seen this letter. During the WHRP's play fellow exhibition of show memorabilia, there was a secret page that contained this picture. Frank holding a red card with a look of fear on his face. We've speculated about this image for a while. Notice how Frank has human hands? This led us down the path that Frank wasn't what he seemed. Like he was a human in a world of puppets trying to infiltrate the neighborhood. However, with all of this new context, I believe we're being told something similar, but slightly different. Frank is definitely the odd one out in the group. But not because he knows too much, but more because he's breaking the rules of the show. It's self. In the play, he won't kiss Julie just by that being what he's supposed to do. He not only knows and talks about Poppy's bond, but he's unshocked by it, meaning he's witnessed it before and maybe even part took himself, which is not part of his character. He left home warming when Wally told him not to, and he dug up Julie's flower. He even taught home to use more code so that they could communicate when home is supposed to be Wally's main friend. But also on top of that, the website tells us that the show format revolved around Wally learning new skills from the cast, not that they would teach each other things. Frank is consistently breaking the rules and breaking character off and on screen. He is not the character he appears to be, which is why we see the human hands in this image. This is the real Frank, not the character. And that red letter? Well, two things. First, we've been looking a lot at the meanings and symbolism of things, especially around floriography, which was wildly popular as far back as the Victorian era. During that time, colours also carried strong meaning, with red usually being associated with love and passion, but more specifically lust and scandal, which is why women caught in adultery were forced to wear a red letter on their clothes. Not the same kind of red letter as Frank's, but you get the picture. Pass with the show taking place in the 1970s, where homosexual relationships were extremely frowned upon, Frank would sadly fall into this scandalous category. And don't forget what I said earlier about the lavender scare being associated with the red scare. But on top of that, the other thing that sprang to mind was an eviction notice. Companies use red paper to emphasise the urgency of the matter, and that's especially common when you're being evicted from your home, so I did that. And so I'd like to point your attention to the latest news article from the Welcome Home site. In it, the WHRP has figured out that Frank was either added to the cast's lights, or removed from the show early in its run. I believe those two things combined tells us what we're seeing. This is Frank's eviction notice from the show. His socially scandalous relationship with Eddie has begun to draw too many eyes. It's leaking out of just being behind the scenes and is stopping him from taking on his role in the show alongside Julie. But the truth is, he's been breaking the rules for a long time now, but training his character and the setup of the show, which is what Wally and Home are fighting for. They want a perfect neighbourhood, where everyone is just as they should be, where the characters are exactly like you see on TV. They want it to essentially be like Sesame Street. You may have seen Blooper Reels wear real-life actors mess up on the show, but Elmo and the gang never break. The puppets always remain in character. They are still Elmo, but an earning. Seems to me like the behind the scenes of this seemingly happy show weren't all that happy. These characters were being forced into molds that didn't fit them, denying their ability to be themselves. But you have to remember the why of it all. Why are we being shown this? We believe that the person revealing all of this to us is Wally. The good Wally. While the WHRP is scrambling to bring back and present this show in its wholesome light, Wally is revealing to us the pain and suffering that went on. The truth of who these people were, and with our modern lenses, that isn't a bad thing. I mean, again, look at Sesame Street, as time's gone on, they've evolved with the times, and now they have diversity of all kinds on that show. So if we do bring back the show, Wally wants us not to bring back the supposedly clean and polished characters of the 1970s. He wants us to bring back the real ones. But hey, that's just a theory. A GAME THEORY! Thanks for watching!