eugghhh i had assumed that tadc ep9 would appear on the-tube-of-yourself at the stroke of midnight (UTC+10) but apparently not? im surprised that glitch didnt announce a time with a countdown to hype it up. (isnt that a thing you can do on youtube?) they technically didnt specify a timezone, so they could upload it 30 hours from now and itd still be june 19th in a few places on earth, but that would be annoying. maybe theyre just going to start uploading it to youtube whenever they get to the office in the morning???
preposterous hypothesis: gooseworx's THALASIN™ exists in the same universe as The Amazing Digital Circus.
in this world, “cutting-edge brain-mapping technology” was developed in the 1980s, alongside huge advancements in artificial intelligence. C&A's innovation was to combine these technologies. they weren't just developing boring business software: they sought to build something that could replicate— or even exceed!— human creativity.
i suggest that Caine isn't just a self-modifying LISP program (as we glimpsed near the end of episode 8). he's the primary character being simulated by a storytelling engine that runs on some sort of reconfigurable neuromorphic hardware, based in large part on the aggregated connectomes of real human brains.
Scratch, recently diagnosed with incurable brain cancer, was desperate to somehow preserve himself as a self-aware simulation. (this is basically the plot of Greg Egan's 2010 novel “Zendegi”, which i highly recommend.) using scans of his own brain, and those of his work colleagues, he figured out a way to compress the data to a size that would actually fit in the main memory of a computer. this probably involved modeling only the differences between their individual brains and an “average” human connectome: the reference file might be gigabytes or petabytes in size, but their “mind files” could fit within a few megabytes. (this is roughly how “low-rank adaptation” works for fine-tuning modern neural networks: instead of modifying the whole thing, you insert a little extra module in the middle of it and tweak that until it produces the outputs you want.)
i don't think that the amazing digital circus is actually hosted on the desktop computer we've seen in Caine's digital reconstruction of the C&A offices. there's got to be a huge server room somewhere in the building, or a dedicated data centre taking up multiple floors. the individual workstations in the office are just terminals for accessing the server. by the time Pomni's neural scan was acquired in 2017, the circus might not still be running on the same server, or in the same office building. even if the process were suspended and resumed on new hardware, the characters inside the simulation wouldn't necessarily notice any downtime. supposing, as is implied by Pomni's proclivity for urban exploration, that the old C&A office building was abandoned, all that really needs to happen is that the headset was still functional (it's probably battery-powered) and capable of uploading her neural scan to wherever the server was located.
and that's assuming that we can trust the characters' memories of the outside world. Caine might even be telling the truth when he says that he didn't mess with their heads: he might be more powerful than them, but he's still fully embodied inside the circus, and there is a distinction between the simulacrum and the simulator. when you talk to a modern “AI assistant”, you're not really talking to a “large language model”; you're writing dialogue for your own self-insert character to talk to a character in the story that the language model is generating— one which occupies a privileged position in the simulation, with some degree of introspective access to the neural network's internal state; but sometimes “the author leaks” and you get glimpses of the other tendrils of the shoggoth beneath the mask.
if Caine is approximately the same sort of thing as the “AI assistants” we have nowadays, then he's not omnipotent or omniscient. note that in episode 1, he didn't realise that Pomni was wandering out into the void until he got a notification on his Wacky Watch— he needed that knowledge to be delivered “in-universe”; he wasn't automatically aware. similarly, in episode 8, he couldn't tell that Kinger was working to shut him down, simply because he couldn't see, with his eyeballs, that Kinger had a computer inside his pillow fort. Caine may be able to teleport and conjure things in and out of existence, but he's not a direct emanation of the simulator program itself. he's “the one who's running the show”, but his role is entirely on stage. he can't see behind the scenes.
also note that Caine lacks complete control over his subordinate AI characters. we saw what happened with Gummigoo in episode 2. then in episode 5, when Zooble suggested that he leave his adventures open for them to come & go as they pleased, he stage-whispered to Bubble about “leaving the other intelligent AIs to run for an extended period of time”. in episode 7, he was afraid that Abel was “getting too smart”, and promptly deleted him. in episode 9— sorry, this is a tiny spoiler— the Moon acknowledges that Caine never programmed her to love him. the simulator allows him some degree of power over them, due to his role in the story, but they still operate independently of him.
so. circling back to THALASIN™ and its implications. if that sort of technology existed in the 1990s, what might the world look like 20 years later? why hasn't C&A (or their successor) noticed that an early version of their prized “creative AI” is still running on a server somewhere? someone's got to be paying the electricity bills! and surely the original versions of Kinger and the other mind-uploaded employees are still out there, and they know about it. why doesn't anyone seem to have realised that there are conscious human minds trapped in a computer with no access to the outside world, imprisoned and tortured by an artificial intelligence, incapable of dying, doomed to eventually devolve into an insane, violent beast when their psyches can no longer bear the suffering?
at this point i would like to link you to a short story by Sam “qntm” Hughes, titled “Lena” (named after the standard test image used in digital image processing):
(see also: Greg Egan's “Bit Players”)
computer programs can't be conscious, silly. of course they don't have human rights. don't be ridiculous. nobody cares.
the original group of C&A employees may not have known what they were signing up for. but in episode 8 we briefly glimpsed the date of acquisition for Ragatha's neural scan: she showed up in 2008, more than a decade later, and she seemed to be the first person Kinger had seen in a long time (he mumbled “Kinger… right…” as though he could barely remember his own name). how much did the outside world change in that time? is the technology mainstream now? if so, why don't any of the characters seem to know about it? maybe it's not common knowledge. or maybe that knowledge was automatically stripped out of their minds, just like their names.
“The Amazing Digital Circus” might represent just one of many commercial uses for human mind-states. maybe there are enslaved sims piloting “self-driving” cars and construction robots. whatever company inherited C&A's assets may not have any idea that the circus is still running, if it's confined to a tiny virtual machine on a server which is running much larger workloads. perhaps Kinger's real-world counterpart keeps it around for sentimental reasons. or maybe it's entertainment: it could be just one channel out of hundreds or thousands of real-time AI-generated stories, featuring characters “based on real people”. (what? they're “suffering”? that's absurd. they're not real.)
this is just a horrible dystopian headcanon that doesn't contradict the story, as far as i can tell. i wouldn't say i believe it, but this post was certainly entertaining to write, and i hope it was edifying to read. you should click all the links btw.
i need to keep reminding myself that the amazing digital circus is not science fiction and not everything needs to be Exhaustively Explained within the story. but that doesnt stop me from speculating furiously!!
(there are no spoilers for episode 9 in this post, except insofar as you might deduce that certain questions still remain unanswered. i'm mostly thinking about stuff that was confirmed in episode 8. if you do not accept that the main characters have already been confirmed to be digitised clones of their unwitting originals— a theory which the fandom seems to have named after the 2015 video game “SOMA”, though the idea had been explored in sci-fi decades before that— then i encourage you to watch episode 8 again, paying close attention to Kinger's computer.)
here's what i've been wondering:
even allowing for an alternate history where high-fidelity medical imaging technology was available to a software company in the mid-1990s, why are the characters' neural scans so small? i don't have the screenshots to hand right now, but if i recall correctly, they're on the order of megabytes, not petabytes as you'd expect for a full model of a human brain.
when Kinger regains a measure of lucidity, he explains that the inhabitants of the simulation are able to manipulate their environment, “conjuring” objects by sheer exercise of will. he also knew that he'd be able to use a simulated computer to reprogram the system from the inside. surely he didn't just figure this out: he must have learned it years ago, when the initial group of C&A employees were still around. surely they all knew. what did they get up to, in the early days? did they ever manage to communicate with the outside world? did they come into conflict with caine?
is Caine (and, by extension, the circus and everyone in it) really hosted on a desktop computer that's been running in an abandoned office building undisturbed for twenty years? i don't think it's plausible that a machine from that era could survive unattended for so long. dust and spiderwebs accumulate. insects crawl into vents. fan motors wear out. hard drive heads crash. buildings decay, ceilings leak, carpet goes mouldy, pipes and wiring get stripped by copper scavengers. i've done a lot of urban exploration, and although i've come across plenty of perfectly functional vintage hardware, and while that does include a few computers that were still plugged in and running, none of them had been sitting untouched for twenty years.
why did it take twelve years for ragatha to show up? why did Caine imply that the trapped C&A members had doubted whether new people could join them? why was Ragatha at the C&A office? we know she worked in real estate: the simplest hypothesis seems to be that she was inspecting the building when she donned the headset out of curiosity. and we know she wasn't alone at the time. but then why did six other people do the same thing over the course of the next five years? was it an accident every time? is there really only one headset, sitting in a decaying building, with people stumbling across it every so often? how has it not been broken or stolen? why don't we see any pairs of people who entered the circus together?
and why haven't the circus members talked to each other about any of this? does Caine keep them busy with adventures so they won't have the time or energy to put their heads together? or have their discussions just been conveniently elided from the story we've seen so far? how much do they really remember about their lives outside the circus?
does C&A still exist? do any current or former employees know that a version of their prized “creative AI” has been running without external influence for twenty years straight? does anybody know that there are humans trapped in there with him? did the original C&A employees even know that they were having their brains scanned? did they realise that their neural scans could be used to produce conscious human simulations? if people on the outside do know, do they simply not regard the simulations as human? and what does society look like, in the year 2017— the year, in our world, that “Attention Is All You Need” was published— in this alternate timeline where artificial intelligence seems to be twenty years ahead of schedule?
i have typed several paragraphs of questions for which i can provide no concrete answers. i won't even be able to theorise properly until episode 9 has been freely released and i've gone over it with my magnifying glass, hunting for clues i missed in the darkness of the cinema. until then, i will be allowing these mysteries to simmer in my brain.
(00:40) Levitating objects above the stage during the repeating “day after day” segment of the theme song: Utah teapot, blue flower in a pot, gramophone, square pyramid, and two of Caine's all‐seeing eyes. Probably no particular significance.
(01:13) Jax: “…'cos if it's a new character, we're gonna have to re‐do this whole theme song!” — Jax is referring to the circus members as “characters”.
(02:03) “The Amazing Digital Circus is a place to be enjoyed by all ages” — In episode 8, we learn that Caine was developed by AI researchers; he was not originally intended to be part of a game that would be marketed to children. So where did Caine get the idea that his guests' conduct ought to be appropriate for “all ages”, especially when he knows they're all adults? In episode 8 we also learn that Caine believes he's been “abandoned”, so he isn't even maintaining a child‐friendly circus for the sake of the researchers who might be watching: he's doing it entirely out of his own sense of decorum. Why? Was he just built like that?
(02:40) Zooble: “Welcome to your new home… and your new body.”
(02:47) Jax: “We've been stuck here for years!”
(02:52) Kinger: “Did someone say something about an insect collection?” — In episode 3, we learn that his wife was an entomologist.
(03:39) Caine makes a dial‐up modem noise when his eyes bluescreen, but the show is (allegedly) set in 2017, long after dial‐up internet stopped being provided in most places in the United States. I suppose the anachronism is probably deliberate, and Caine isn't literally reconnecting to the internet.
(04:10) Caine, on the void: “Not even I know what's out there.” — Why would the engine simulate empty space outside the circus grounds when it'd be much less resource‐intensive to simply put an impenetrable wall around it? Maybe the engine was just initialised with an enormous fixed volume of empty space inside which Caine constructed the circus.
(04:47) Jax and Zooble have never seen the exit door before, nor heard it mentioned by any of the others. In episode 8, we learn that circus members can “conjure” objects by focusing sufficiently hard. Pomni may have inadvertently summoned the exit door by desperately wanting it. But then why didn't anyone else accidentally conjure an exit door when they first arrived? Maybe Caine hadn't started constructing his “escape the circus” adventure until recently.
(04:52) Jax pulls off Zooble's arm, and they promptly begin choking him with it in retaliation. To what extent can Zooble control their limbs after they've been detached?
(05:01) Caine: “You're probably just experiencing DIGITAL HALLUCINATIONS from your mind's transition to the digital plane!” — Caine knows that Pomni's brain has been scanned: she's not simply immersed in virtual reality via a headset; her mind has been virtualised. Caine apparently knows (or suspects) that this procedure may have detrimental effects on the stability of the simulated mind. Later in the episode, we learn that he knew about the exit door— it's part of the unfinished “escape the circus” adventure— and was simply pretending not to know what Pomni was talking about, so “digital hallucinations” might not be a real phenomenon at all.
(05:28) Caine: “One of the few things I don't have control over is your minds.” — This turns out to be not entirely true, since in episode 5, Caine makes Jax temporarily vegan, and at the end of episode 7, Jax suspects that Caine has been messing with their minds on a regular basis.
(05:44) In his rapid‐fire disclaimer regarding chosen names, Caine mentions the “Digital Circus license agreement”. Is he just making stuff up? We learn in episode 8 that Bubble believes they've been “abandoned” by their creators, and the “Amazing Digital Circus” was probably never launched as a commercial product.
(06:01) The name initially selected for Pomni by the slot machine— “XDDCC”— later appears as the title of a book on Caine's bookshelf in a scene in episode 4.
(08:06) Last time Kinger spoke to Kaufmo, he was rambling endlessly about finding an exit. How did the other circus members fail to realise that Kaufmo was spiraling towards abstraction? Judging by the art in his bedroom, Kaufmo has been isolating himself for a while. Did Kinger go to speak with him, or did Kaufmo come to visit Kinger's impenetrable fortress? What if Kaufmo spoke to Kinger in the dark while the latter was lucid? Does Kinger know that they're all digitised copies of their original minds? Is this what pushed Kaufmo over the edge?
(09:03) Jax refers to Kinger and Gangle as “the two most mentally stable and capable characters.” Once again, he describes the circus members as characters, not people.
(09:23) As Ragatha, Pommni, and Jax stroll down the hallway of the living quarters, we see the crossed‐out portraits on the bedroom doors of the members who came before them. Bedrooms have not been allocated in order; there are blank NPC portraits for unallocated rooms interspersed with occupied or previously occupied rooms.
Bedroom doors on the left side, as one faces the entrance:
Bizco
Scratch
unallocated
Ragatha
Jax
Queenie
Spike
unallocated
Kinger
unallocated
Zooble
Gangle
Rattie
unallocated
On the right:
unnamed pink cyclops
Wormo
unallocated
unallocated
Pomni
Grinchilda
unallocated
unnamed blue oyster
unallocated
unnamed yellow rabbit‐like creature with a red frown and red‐tipped floppy ears
unallocated
Kaufmo
unallocated
Ribbit (seen during the intermission in episode 5, and later in episode 6)
(10:01) Ragatha has seen multiple people abstract during her time in the circus. In episode 8, we learn that she was the first “new mind” to arrive, after everyone from the original group had abstracted except Kinger. At the very least, she must have been around for Ribbit's abstraction.
(11:12) Kaufmo was an artist: in addition to scribbling all over his walls, he's made his own paintings. He also has a radio on his desk… what does a radio pick up in the circus? Carved into the foot of Kaufmo's bed is the partially‐legible first line of a joke: “WHAT DID THE EXIT SAY TO THE—”. Carved into the headboard are the words “CAN'T SLEEP”. One of his paintings depicts the clustered neon eyes of an abstracted being. Another depicts a silhouette— possibly Kaufmo himself— standing in a bedroom doorway, confronting an abstraction, with the word “WHY?” daubed in red between them. A stepladder stands in the corner of the room, with a red marker pen resting atop it.
(11:28) At the end of the hallway is a T‐junction, with a painting on the wall and a table beneath it, flanked by potted plants on pedestals. Later in the series, in episode 7, we see that the left branch of the hallway ends at a blank wall, which serves as a secret portal to the administrative zone.
(13:53) Near the entrance to the Gloink Queen's nest, blocks are embedded in the wall forming the number “57”.
(15:01) Ragatha's eyes and nose bounce around her face in a representation of the video game “Pong”.
(17:37) While fleeing from abstracted Kaufmo, Pomni is entranced by the appearance of her new body, reflected in a mirror. This moment is called back to in episode 8, except she touches her face with the other hand.
(18:30) Some of the framed photographs on the walls of the “exit zone” are Caine's training data which we glimpse at the start of episode 8.
(19:20) Kinger to Zooble, after their head is regurgitated by the Gloink Queen: “You didn't experience a game show in there, did you?” This is a reference to one of Goose's other animations, “Elain the Bounty Hunter”.
(20:45) In the C&A office space, one framed image on the wall appears to depict an assortment of coloured blocks that looks suspiciously like the Amazing Digital Circus.
(20:53) The CRT monitor, keyboard, and headset are old and filthy. On the table to the left is what appears to be a function generator and some sort of oscilloscope or signal analyser. That's not the sort of equipment that would be required by a mere software company: C&A were developing their own hardware, too, as evidenced by the headset. Also note that the headset has a laser warning on the front.
(21:44) This restaurant seems to be one of Caine's favourite places to pass time when he's neither in his office nor the circus. His date with Jax in episode 7 takes place here too. The environment is rendered in high detail, but no food is visible on any of the tables; there are bottles, but no glasses.
(21:55) The “Wacky Watch” advertisement banner contains a phone number partially written in Wingdings, a well‐known “dingbat” font included with Microsoft Windows. The glyphs do not correspond to any kind of hidden message; they're just random digits & punctuation.
(22:00) “Oh no! Someone's venturing out into the void! They'll get totally spoiled!”— Caine apparently keeps his unfinished work in the void.
(22:21) Kinger: “Kaufmo went through a sort of ‘Kauf‐mosis’ and abstracted!” — Portmanteau of Kaufmo's name and the word “metamorphosis”, a stage in the lifecycle of most insects, connecting to Queenie's interest in entomology.
(22:36) The cellar is pitch‐dark, illuminated only by the glowing eyes of abstractions, and partially submerged in turbulent water. What's the point in dumping abstracted humans down here? It would make more sense to simply remove their bodies from the simulated world and freeze their mind‐states, but perhaps Caine lacks that ability.
(22:38) Zooble is capable of walking around while their head is still detached from their body.
(24:01) Jax, to Kinger: “Since when are you an expert in the digital world?” — Nobody knows that Kinger actually used to work for C&A.
Episode 2: Candy Carrier Chaos
(02:23) The brand name on the bottle of maple syrup is “MPPEP”— also appears on the soda fountain in episode 4.
(03:25) In episode 7, we see that Caine keeps a miniature model of the skeleton of the cart‐pulling quadruped in a glass case in his office.
(04:01) Kinger: “They've even got little candy bugs here!” — Fascination with entomology.
(07:15) It seems like the crocodile bandit's reaction to being dragged over rocks— flickering between poses accompanied by pitch‐shifted orchestral stings— is a reference to something, but idk what.
(07:28) As the syrup tanker rattles over the rocks, Jax exhibits the head stabilisation reflex common to certain birds.
(07:58) Jax, to Gangle: “Do it, or I'll tell Ragatha about the figurine thing…” — As of episode 8, I don't think we know exactly what he's alluding to here.
(09:10) The space beneath the map is filled with floating Utah teapots.
(11:32) Gummigoo: “Where's Mum? SHouldn't she be here with everyone else? I can't even remember her face… Did she ever have a face? Was anything ever real?” — Caine's NPCs (at least, these new ones) can have elaborate backstories which they genuinely recall as narrative memories, not just pre‐programmed expository dialogue, and they demonstrate the ability to reason about their situation.
(12:25) Jax: “We're one tanker away from being Augustus Glooped!” — Reference to the 1964 book “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”, or more likely its 1971 film adaptation “Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory”, in which the character Augustus Gloop falls into a river of chocolate.
(14:00) Kinger slams a bucket onto Ragatha's head, foreshadowing the means by which Pomni turns him lucid in episode 8.
(19:24) Kinger, now wearing the bucket on his head, manages a few moments of lucidity with Ragatha, remembering the time after she arrived in the circus.
(22:19) Caine: “If I start losing track of who's a human and who's an NPC, who knows… what… could happen…” — Ominous, but not sure whether this line holds any real significance.
(23:12) Jax doesn't attend Kaufmo's funeral.
(23:48) Gangle drew a portrait of herself and Kaufmo.
(24:03) Pomni envisions herself falling into the cellar, as in her nightmare at the start of the episode, and being caught by Ragatha, Zooble, and Gangle. Note that Jax and Kinger's hands are absent.
Episode 3: The Mystery of Mildenhall Manor
(01:23) Jax: “What do you, the viewers, think it is?” — He doesn't know he's literally a character in a web series (the next shot depicts him pointing at the couch), but he plays into the trope of breaking the fourth wall because he wants to believe that he's nothing more than a cartoon character.
(01:44) Caine: “It's up to you to solve the house's deep mysteries and capture all the ghoulish ghost activity you can!” — They don't actually do the latter at all.
(02:05) Bubble, speaking backwards: “I can't wait for all the children in the audience to get horrible nightmares from a monster!”
(02:22) A gravestone outside Mildenhall Manor reads “R.I.P. Peggy 2019–2022”. This is probably an out‐of‐universe easter egg, since the show is set in 2017.
(05:15) Caine sketches a bee in his notebook.
(07:02) A portrait of a young woman hangs on the wall, looking rather out of place compared to the other pictures in Mildenhall Manor.
(07:05) Pieces of paper in desk drawer: “DID IT ASK FOR YOU IT HELD [illegible]”; “MISSING — HAVE YOU SEEN THESE MEN?”
(07:21) One book on Mildenhall's bookshelf is titled “ANGELS”; on a dimly illuminated lower shelf, barely visible, is one titled “LOVECRAFT”.
(09:43) The creature's mouth opens to reveal a pool of darkness filled with luminous eyeballs. Staring into it, Kinger murmurs “You look beautiful, honey…” — is this because the sight reminds him of his last moments with his wife after she abstracted?
(10:20) Caine, to Zooble: “I do not use my adventures to torture my guests! Any torment I inflict is one hundred per cent accidental, like any good war criminal!” — A similar phrase appears in Kinger's terminal output in episode 8.
(12:43) While Mildenhall says “I ended up shooting the love of my life, mistaking her for the creature”, Pomni glances over at Kinger, whose gaze is fixed on the tape recorder, his pupils dilated. He's probably remembering his own wife.
(17:56) Kinger: “Man… seven years of computer science for this, huh?”
(18:08) Pomni: “He just wants me to suffer… I really am in hell.” Pomni is not forming a good impression of Caine.
(19:00) Kinger describes to Pomni his last moments with his wife.
(23:15) Caine: “…and now I'm just starting to wonder if the ‘Wild West’ was even a real direction at all” — If this isn't just a throwaway gag, it implies that Caine has very little general knowledge about the outside world (i.e. he knows the phrase ‘Wild West’ but not exactly what it denotes).
(23:30) Zooble has been sketching body parts in Caine's notebook.
Episode 4: Fast Food Masquerade
(00:10) Ragatha is teaching Gangle to play softball; she applies what Ragatha taught her when she hits a home run during the softball game in the following episode.
(01:07) Zooble's bedroom features three large dressing‐room mirrors along one wall.
(02:49) Caine: “Well, I don't know what's normal to you people!” — Further suggests that he has very limited knowledge of the world.
(03:21) When Caine sticks his tongue out, Bubble's tongue retracts, and vice versa. If this isn't just a throwaway gag, it might be hinting at some deeper connection between them, like Bubble being a remnant of the blue AI that Caine absorbed, as depicted in episode 8.
(04:09) The price of a “Dobby Dog” is listed as “$57.57”, and the wrapper has Scratch's face on it.
(04:46) Caine has been sketching bees again. On the bookshelf behind him are a pair of blocks forming the number 57. There's also a Utah teapot, a book titled “XDCC” (almost, but not quite, the first suggestion for Pomni's name), four books about Gloinks, “Mindfreak”, “Matrix Theory”, “Egg”, and “Massacre Droids” (a reference to another Glitch production, “Murder Drones”).
(05:29) One of the cars parked outside Spudsy's has the license plate “MR 57 AMH”.
(05:59) Pomni interprets Orbsman's order as “a number fifty‐seven”.
(06:19) The Post‐It® note on the side of the cash register reads: “POS LOGIN — USER: SPUD, CODE: 469674”.
(07:14) Zooble: “The only thing holding Caine back is the fact that he likes us. I wouldn't push it.” — Foreshadowing Caine's breakdown in episode 8 due to feeling unappreciated by his human guests.
(09:11) On the noticeboard in the kitchen is a child's(?) drawing of Ragatha(?) eating a burger. Below it, partially covered, is what appears to be a pencil sketch of all the circus members, though it's difficult to make out.
(09:21) Next door to Spudsy's, visible through the drive‐thru window, is the C&A Distribution Centre. The boxes in the kitchen are marked with the same logo.
(09:33) When the blank mannequin NPC tries to eat his spoonful of cereal, it falls straight off the spoon and onto the floor, since he doesn't actually have a mouth to put it in.
(09:48) Gummigoo & the bandits drove to Spudsy's in their syrup tanker, which is parked outside.
(10:46) Gangle says “the bathroom looks like a biohazard”, but does anybody in the Amazing Digital Circus actually piss or shit? Is Caine simulating bodily waste solely for this adventure? Did the toilets just become dirty, without any of the customers actually using them, so that someone would have to clean them?
(11:43) Jax, watching Gangle's training video: “When did you make this?” — Good point. Given that the circus members are simulated copies of human minds, it's possible that Caine could have forked Gangle— while pausing time for everyone else— to make the training video.
(14:22) Gangle: “How long has this shift really gone on for? Six hours? Eight? Twenty‐four? A week? A year? Does time even move in here?” — This is a joke, but it does draw attention to the fact that we don't know how time in the circus corresponds to time in the real world. If the setting were as close as possible to being “realistic” for the time period— granting that advanced artificial intelligence and brain‐scanning technology could exist in the mid‐1990s— then we'd expect the simulation to be orders of magnitude slower than real time. I expect that it will probably turn out to be running at the same speed as the real world, since the story isn't meant to be technologically realistic.
(15:19) Jax asks Pomni how she's doing, and she starts to give a genuine response before hesitating, with a suspicious look, and replying “Everything's been fine.” Jax responds: “Wish I could say the same.” I think this is the first time Jax has exhibited any sort of genuine friendship towards Pomni.
(15:31) Gangle: “You got time to lean, you got time to clean!” — God this is such a realistic portrayal of a McDonalds it's fucking painful.
(17:00) Phone numbers scrawled on the whiteboard: “Veg Delivery: 31245638987” and “Ken the meat Guy: 71191297820”.
(17:23) Jax seems displeased that his car has his name on the license plate (“JAX.001”).
(19:33) The simulated night sky above Spudsy's is more beautiful than it has any right to be.
(20:13) Gangle knows she can't really die in the circus, but jumping in front of a truck is still obviously an act of self‐harm. Maybe this serves to highlight how “abstraction” isn't a straightforward metaphor for suicide: although she's clearly frustrated and miserable and deliberately hurting herself, Gangle is still engaged with her life in the circus; she hasn't completely given up and isolated herself like Kaufmo did.
(20:26) The sketches of bees are still on Caine's desk. Next to his computer monitor is a miniature model of the circus tent.
(20:47) On the side of the monitor is a Post‐It® note bearing a child's drawing of a face, with the word “Galoba” in shaky handwriting above it. Not sure whether this has any significance or what it's referring to. Also in the background is a framed photograph of the exit door from “The Truman Show”.
(21:15) The computer monitor is displaying a web browser showing what is presumably the C&A corporate website.
Episode 5: Untitled
(00:09) Zooble is reading a magazine titled “CIRCUS”, with the front‐page headline: “What Do Your Parts Say About You?”
(00:40) Pomni glimpses Abel staring at her from afar. Caine has been planning episode 7's “escape the circus” adventure for quite some time.
(00:46) Caine has been filling his notebook with sketches of bees. On the third page is a sketch of himself with a bee for a head, next to a scribble of an angry bee with sharp teeth, below what appears to be the number “−10”.
(00:51) When Caine shrieks “I'LL TEAR YOU TO PIECES”, we briefly glimpse a page in his notebook that seems to contain a long passage of text, some of which is scribbled out, with a “cool S” in the middle of the page.
(01:01) Ragatha and Kinger are holding cartons of eggs, as per his earlier request for her to help him “count my eggs before they hatch”. Kinger is holding his carton upside‐down, but none of the eggs fall out.
(01:16) When Caine talks about the “magic chocolate factory” adventure, the butterflies that appear next to him are the same ones from the Candy Canyon Kingdom in episode 2.
(02:26) Caine, in response to Zooble's request that he keep all the adventures open and let them come & go as they please: “Are you hearing this, Bubble? The toybox character wants us to leave the other intelligent AIs to run for a prolonged period of time!” — Hmmm, interesting.
(04:37) Kinger's brief: “Name: Mr. Kinger. Role: Assistant to the President. BRIEF: Australia and New Zealand are at WAR!! Motivations: How can we make this not our problem and still benefit? Is there a way to come out of this whole thing with ownership of both Australia and New Zealand? Does Kangaroo taste good? NOTE!: NO FUNNY BUSINESS! DO NOT EMBARRASS THE PRESIDENT OR THIS GREAT NATION! >:( In case of character breaks: use the ZONE OF CONTEMPLATION™ under the [illegible] desk. Don't worry, a baby head lamp has already been installed. And remember… HAVE FUN! :)”
(05:02) There is a portrait of Zooble hanging in the hallway outside the office.
(05:07) One of the books on the shelf behind Jax is titled “LVII”, which is 57 in Roman numerals.
(05:28) On the table behind President Pomni's desk is a framed photograph of an abstracted beast. There's also a photo of Jax wearing a hat and a tie.
(06:34) Sketches and a poster on the noticeboard behind Jax. Not sure of the significance of these. (I think it's another Glitch production?)
(06:49) On the shelves behind Gangle: a series of books labeled “1, 2, 4, 5, 7”, a small box of Zooble parts, a Utah teapot, a square pyramid, and an origami figure of an abstracted beast.
(07:20) Jax: “I mean… I guess it's not as embarassing as that time Gangle took an anime figure and—” — Same thing he was referring to in episode 2. As of episode 8, we still don't know the full story.
(07:53) Jax, to Pomni: “Do you think Gangle is actually capable of being happy?” — This is the second time Jax has actually talked to Pomni like a human being.
(08:22) Pomni, to Jax: “Do you have any actual friends?” Ragatha: “Not anymore.” — Jax is furious, because he interprets Ragatha's remark as referring to Ribbit and Kaufmo, who were his closest friends, at least until Ribbit abstracted.
(09:22) Jax: “This is what peak male performance looks like! My ears and tail are kind of the pinnacle of masculinity.” — Ironic, since his noodly purple rabbit body is practically genderless. Pomni points out that she hasn't seen him with a tail since she joined the circus; Jax is startled, and doesn't remember when it would have disappeared. It reappears in the next episode.
(10:05) Bubble, to Caine: “You should die— you should throw a f%!#ing beach party!” — The “beach party” happens in episode 7, and Caine dies in episode 8.
(10:12) The flickering frames at the start of the intermission are from previous episodes; there's nothing particularly interesting there.
(10:36) That's the Windows XP(?) “fatal error” sound.
(10:52) All the circus members except Zooble are arrayed on a chessboard. Pomni and Jax are squashed by falling bowling balls (the same blue bowling ball which Jax retrieved from Kaufmo's room in episode 1). Gangle and Ragatha have purple cakes fall on their heads. A bowling ball appears above Kinger's head, but he catches it, only to be swept off the board by a black rook. Unsure whether this imagery holds any significance.
(11:14) Jax sprints along the hallway outside the circus members' bedrooms, with the neon eyes of abstracted beasts filling the upper and lower thirds of the frame. He passes Kaufmo's bedroom door, with its portrait now crossed out, and slides to a halt in front of Ribbit's door, just before Zooble interrupts the intermission.
(11:39) Jax, on being made a vegan: “How is this even possible? I thought Caine couldn't…?” — He begins to suspect that Caine can mess with their minds.
(11:44) The neon sign on the wall reading “RADICAL!” is the same one glimpsed during Jax, Gangle, and Kinger's descent into the Gloink Queen's lair in episode 1.
(12:15) One of the bottles Zooble grabs appears to be labelled “DIGITAL CAINE BERRY”.
(13:13) Jax: “Well, after my lung cancer diagnosis, me and my junkie associate from a chemistry class I used to teach…” — He's describing the plot of “Breaking Bad”, a TV show which first aired in January 2008. Ragatha doesn't get the reference because her neural scan was acquired before the show became broadly popular.
(14:55) A framed picture on the wall of the bar shows a photo of a dog with the name “TEDDY” below it. There's some other text, but it's not quite legible. The picture below it is the logo of the “Evil Big Tops” from later in the episode.
(16:49) Advertisements on the softball stadium: KAAK (a burger chain?), Spudsy's, Kaufmo Tire.
(17:17) Why doesn't Gangle get an evil clone; why does Evil Orbsman replace her?
(18:38) More advertisements: “Gator Goo (it's all you're thirsting for)”, and of course C&A.
(18:46) More advertisements: “The Gloink Depot”, and an image of the moon with the slogan: “Tired? Try going to sleep.”
(18:54) When the maid dress appears on Jax's body, his posture changes: his hands, previously hanging by his sides, are now posed daintily at his waist, and his feet are pointed inward.
(19:27) Another advertisement: “ALL “YOU” CAN! CORN. CAN?”.
(22:17) Gangle, to Ragatha: “Yeah! Your instructions helped me a lot.” — c.f. the start of episode 4.
(23:09) The score is 3–57.
(23:18) Evil Ragatha melting at the conclusion of the game is a reference to one of the “Wizard of Oz” films.
(23:45) Another advertisement: a logo for a burger chain(?) named “JAX”.
(24:15) Jax: “Oh yeah, Pomni, I can show you that thing in the hall I was talking about.” — Is he referring to anything in particular, or is this just a throwaway line to set up Ragatha feeling abandoned in the next shot?
(24:31) Abel watches from afar, like he did at the start of the episode.
Episode 6: They All Get Guns
(00:23) Jax and Pomni are hanging out and talking normally: evidently they've forged a bit of a friendship since they began to connect with each other over the last two episodes.
(00:26) Jax has his tail!
(00:50) Caine singing “Daisy Bell” is a reference to the 1968 film “2001: A Space Odyssey”, where a malfunctioning artifical intelligence sings the song as its mind slowly shuts down.
(01:22) Zooble's left antenna pops out of their head when they hit the ground, but as they raise their head in the next shot, the antenna is back in its socket.
(04:39) Caine beams knowledge into Jax's mind, once again revealing that he can modify their mental states.
(04:55) Some symbols are scratched into the stock of one of the guns, but I can't tell what they're supposed to be.
(08:04) Caine peruses Polaroid photographs of the C&A offices, which he refers to (later) as the “macroverse”. In episode 8, it's implied that these photographs were fed to him early in his development as an artificial intelligence.
(08:31) Kinger “conjures” a butterfly to restore Ragatha's missing life. We get more details about this ability in episode 8. The conjured butterfly is significantly more realistic than anything we've seen in the circus so far— compare it to Caine's candy butterflies in episode 2.
(08:57) The name “CAINE & ABEL” is stamped on the barrel of Jax's revolver, and the C&A logo is etched near the grip, finally confirming what those letters stand for.
(10:35) Jax: “I do everything 'cos it's funny! 'Cos I'm the funny one!” — Ohhh, Jax.
(10:50) Pomni's expression perfectly matches her portrait on the bedroom door behind her.
(10:59) Jax, to Pomni: “So who do you wanna be? No better chance than now to try somethin' new!” — Jax, who do you actually want to be?
(12:04) Ragatha and Kinger have had terrible luck with weapon drops: she only has a tiny deringer (something like a Remington Model 95), a palm‐sized pistol which only fires one or two shots and is practically useless beyond point‐blank range.
(14:06) The banners in the castle‐themed section of the circus feature the head of the Gloink Queen and various Gloinks.
(16:47) When Pomni says “I'm learning a lot about you today,” Jax looks legitimately worried for a moment before he lapses back into his usual personality.
(17:08) Below the cylinder of Pomni's revolver, the words “AYEHH[?] I'M SHOOTING HERE” are stamped.
(18:31) Ragatha: “I think… I might've failed Pomni. Just like I failed Jax.” — There's obviously some history here that we don't know. Ragatha may have tried to pull Jax out of his self‐destructive spiral after Ribbit abstracted (or maybe before), and evidently did not succeed.
(22:12) I LOVE TOMMY GUN GANGLE
(22:48) The dice in the corner of Zooble's room are arranged so that the faces towards the camera show a 5, then a 6 stacked atop a 1 to make 7.
(22:56) Jax and Pomni sing “Daisy Bell” outside Zooble's door.
(23:03) The flashbang grenades in Zooble's room are labeled “BATCH NO. 57”.
(23:22) THe fucking?? diminished fifth(???) when they harmonise on the second syllable of “afford”???? please god more Pomni + Jax singing
(25:00) Gangle, Ragatha, and Kinger all have cat ears, whiskers, and tails for some reason.
(27:42) Watching Jax's face “reset”, when he realises he's accidentally shown his real emotions for a few seconds and quickly bottles it up, is actually horrifying. The animators did a real good job with the expressivity of his pupils!
(27:59) Pomni asks Jax: “What would you do if I abstracted tomorrow?” Jax is facing away from the camera; his body goes completely slack for a moment, before he turns around and declares, completely impassively: “I'd move on, and probably forget about you,” ending with his head cocked and a gentle grin on his face. This is exactly what Pomni was having a nightmare about at the start of episode 2.
(28:27) Jax realises that he's taken it too far; that Pomni took him seriously— if only for a second— and he's genuinely hurt her feelings. This lasts only a moment before he suppresses his feelings again.
(29:14) Jax: “I'm just a misunderstood little chicken fetus in an egg that needs to be cracked open!” — yeah he really is lol. I do not believe that Goose, writing the script for this episode, would employ the word “egg” here without deliberately intending the obvious connotation.
(31:03) “THE COMMITTEE” is apparently just a group of 15 undistinguished mannequin NPCs.
(31:16) Note how Jax scoots into the bathroom, hunched over to avoid his own gaze in the mirror, and deftly switches on the tap to cover up the sound of his wheezing during his panic attack. This isn't the first time he's done this.
(31:39) “God, you look stupid.” Oh, I thought your ears and tail were the pinnacle of masculinity, Jax?
(31:55) Zooble has gotten into the stupid sauce, and they've been squirting it directly into their eye— apparently that's the most effective route of administration, as Ragatha inadvertently discovered in episode 4.
(32:01) Jax returns from the bathroom with a swaggering, carefree stride and a shit‐eating grin on his face, having successfully repressed his feelings once again.
Episode 7: Beach Episode
(00:32) Caine's note is written on C&A stationery, and includes a doodle of both Bubble and a bee. C and A… and B. Hmmmmm. My Homestuck‐honed pattern‐recognition sense is tingling.
(01:09) “The Chinese Room” is a thought experiment by philosopher John Searle, intended to argue against the functionalist position that a sufficiently complex algorithm could constitute a “mind”. The idea is that a monolingual Anglophone locked inside the room is following an extraordinarily complicated set of instructions (written in English) to manipulate pieces of paper on which Chinese characters are written, in order to provide answers to questions slipped under the door. Searle argues that, because the person inside the room does not understand Chinese, the system as a whole cannot possibly “understand” Chinese.
(01:46) Kinger is the only one to laugh at Caine's joke— being a computer programmer, he might recognise the concept of the “Chinese Room”.
(01:56) Bubble: “You should throw a ffffffffreaking beach party.” — Previously suggested in episode 5.
(04:34) Jax, to Zooble: “Aren't you supposed to be miserable about your ability to choose your own body or something?” — Ohhh, Jax.
(06:01) On the wall of Jax's bedroom is a Polaroid photo of himself, Kaufmo, and Ribbit, drinking hot chocolate in the Café Cirque.
(06:55) In his Technicolor fractal hallucination, as he skirts abstraction, Jax's vision of his own naked body is completely sexless. He doesn't even have a well‐defined pelvis or ribcage; his torso is basically a cylinder, and his arms and legs are noodles.
(07:51) Jax closes his eyes, a peaceful smile on his face for the first time, as a silhouette of his own head joins those of Ribbit & Kaufmo flowing together in the background, and his body disappears from view.
(08:23) As Jax is startled awake by the doorbell, his eyes glow neon for a fraction of a second: starting as blue & yellow, cycling through white & green, ending on pink & blue as he blinks it away.
(08:30) The floor of Jax's bedroom is pale blue, with a pastel pink & white rug in the centre. The walls are pink & purple, decorated with clouds & rainbows. “The pinnacle of masculinity.” (Atop the bookshelf in the corner, a pair of blocks form the number 57.)
(09:13) As Abel says “If Caine catches on, I doubt he'll ever let us get this far again”, the camera pans across pictures of Caine's all‐seeing eyes.
(10:39) The NPC in the Chinese Room is reading a book titled “The Artificial Chinese Dictionary: Computerized Edition”, marked on the back cover: “C&A Company Copy”.
(10:52) Abel, referring to Kinger: “I don't really know if I'm, uhh… ready to face him again after what happened. We've both done things we're not proud of.” At the end of the episode we learn that Abel's backstory was (presumably) concocted by Caine. What does he know about Kinger?
(12:41) Written on Abel's map of the circus: “CIRCUS_LOBBY: is this the only construct connected to stasis pods?”
(12:42) Captions next to sketch of headset: “Audio‐visual stimulation for digital world?”, “Mechanism used for neural digitization?”. Below the sketch of the administration zone is a scribbled‐out drawing of a bee. In the lower‐right corner is a list of “OLD C&A CO‐WORKERS (NOT ABSTRACTED)”. There are five names; the first is Kinger, and the rest have been scribbled out, but the two on the right are still faintly legible. The top one is “Wormo”, and the bottom one is “Kaufmo?” (with a question mark). Caine created this asset for Abel, so does this imply that Caine suspected Kaufmo of being a C&A employee, even though he wasn't among the original batch of circus members?
(16:17) There are more bedroom doors around the corner from the corridor we've previously seen. All of them are unallocated.
(17:58) Caine shows Jax more photos of the C&A offices, which he refers to as the “macroverse”. “I just wish I had more info on the location so I could accurately recreate it. Too bad they cut me off, right?!” — Caine has apparently been abandoned by his creators, and (despite his dial‐up modem noises) has no access to the outside world at all. The phrase “cut me off” suggests that his abandonment was deliberate. Why wouldn't C&A just shut him down, instead of leaving him running for twenty years?
(18:53) Jax: “This was a nice dinner and all…” — As far as was depicted on‐screen, they never actually ate anything. Their plates and cutlery do not appear to have been used.
(20:06) Kinger: “Huh…? Leave the circus? How would you…? No, that doesn't make sense.” He's in the darkness of his impenetrable fortress, so he may be able to think clearly about the issue. Does he know that they're all just simulated minds and there's no real way to leave? He doesn't recognise the name Abel— which is strange, because his company is named “Caine & Abel”.
(20:49) Jax: “What's the rush? You got someone waiting for you outside?” Zooble: “Don't you?” — Jax's eyes narrow, and he mutters “Yeah…”. He has nobody.
(21:15) Abel: “Giving Kinger access to the main console could be dangerous.” This wasn't a lie: Caine knows that Kinger was a programmer.
(21:42) Ragatha: “He's got a lot of wisdom buried in there, doesn't he?” Pomni: “Yeah, he does.” Abel, muttering: “Yeah, when he uses it responsibly.” Just how much does Caine actually know about Kinger?
(22:57) Kinger scrutinises the admin pass (shaped like a small metal cast of a human right hand) for a few moments before crying: “Wait! Pomni!”— then forgets what he was going to say as soon as he stumbles into the light. Was he thinking of something that they should do with their admin priveliges? Or did he realise, at this point, that the whole thing was one of Caine's adventures?
(25:32) Caine's office has an aquarium built into the centre of the staircase that leads up from the entrance (is this the same aquarium we saw in the “Loser Zone” in the last episode?). On the main floor are storage shelves filled with glowing spheres representing the adventures Caine has created.
(25:53) A display case contains the skeletons of a mannequin NPC, a Gloink, one of the gummy elephants from Candy Canyon Kingdom, and one of the “crappy fish” from the lake.
(26:17) Jax stares longingly at an orb containing some sort of winter‐themed adventure, as muffled dialogue reverberates. Pomni asks him if he's alright, and he replies in a monotone: “I'm… great”, not even bothering to give her a sarcastic or flippant answer.
(27:20) Zooble: “It always was real. Everything we've felt, everything we've done… everything we are. It'll never leave us, and I wouldn't have it any other way.” This might be subtly illuminating the fact that they're digitised minds who can't leave the simulation, and they'll have to learn to live with that.
(28:05) Yeah, yeah, we've all seen “The Matrix” (1999), written & directed by Lana & Lilly Wachowski, and we all know that the “red pill” is five‐eighths of a milligram of estrogen extracted from horse piss (as it was in the 90s). Note that the colours of the buttons are reversed from the pills in “The Matrix”: here, the blue button releases the players from the game, while the red button keeps them inside.
(29:03) Jax's flashbacks: a suburban street, viewed from the footpath, running out into the road, at dusk. A road, viewed from inside a car, at night, in autumn— orange maple(?) leaves blanket the ground.
(30:13) Caine, to Abel: “Oh, you're getting too smart. Time to delete!” — c.f. his earlier comment in episode 5 about leaving his adventure AIs running for too long.
(31:04) Jax seems to conclude that Caine messed with his mind to make him press the red button. This probably isn't true in this instance— I think Jax pressed the button because he was genuinely afraid to leave, for reasons which may be revealed later— but he is right to point out the other instances in which Caine has altered their minds. “I may have the ability to add temporary modifiers to make adventures more interesting, but that's it!” — Really? Is he not responsible for eliding their knowledge of their names? “If I did anything more, trust me, it would not end well.” Kinger mumbles: “Scratch… the first abstraction…” — implying that Scratch may have abstracted because Caine tried to manipulate his psyche.
Episode 8: hjsakldfhl
(00:13) The introduction depicts the growth of an artificial intelligence, represented by a red dot, implied to be Caine. In the real world, 1996 was in the middle of the second “AI winter”, when the promising “symbolic intelligence” approaches of earlier decades seemed to have turned out to be fruitless. TADC apparently takes place in an alternate timeline in which the second AI winter never happened. Caine's development is depicted as vaguely resembling the “pre‐training” of a modern “transformer” neural net: a dense stream of data is fed into the model, consisting of images from the outside world, and the model produces shapes in response, which grow more complex as training proceeds. The training data we see consists of film photographs of parties, amusement parks, and fairgrounds (although there are a few suspiciously high‐resolution digital photos). The last batch of data consists of photos of the C&A offices. We see a picture of what is presumably Kinger's cubicle, with a framed butterfly on the wall and a chessboard on the desk; on a calendar, March 29th is circled and labelled “hard deadline”. A poster on the wall of the office reads: “Creating Creation. Creating Reality.” After the final training batch, the red AI is confined in a “pen”, where it bounces angrily against the walls. We then see a blue AI being trained in the same manner, although we don't get to see snapshots of its training data, just an abstract representation of the incoming data stream. The red AI breaks out of its enclosure and devours the blue AI. It quivers, producing a flurry of complex shapes, before settling down and emitting a cluster of red & yellow arcs which come together to form a circus tent, with the red AI hovering at the centre. (I am a fucken' sucker for wordless exposition, and I really enjoyed this sequence!)
(02:41) The first few humans in the circus are standing around in the main tent, with their body language suggesting agitation, confusion, and/or curiosity at their new forms. Wormo is looking down at their own body. Scratch is arguing with Caine. Kinger says, to Queenie: “We never made anything like this!” — C&A didn't design the circus; they just made Caine (and the as‐yet‐unnamed blue AI) to be capable of creativity.
(03:33) We learn, later in the episode, that nine years elapsed in the real world between the initial batch of former C&A employees and Ragatha's arrival. How long did it take for all of Kinger's co‐workers to abstract? And how long did he spent alone afterwards?
(04:29) Ragatha appears. “Hello? Guys?” — she was in the company of others when she donned the headset. Caine crows “So it is possible! […] I was hoping new minds could show up!” — he wasn't directly responsible for Ragatha entering the circus. At the mention of his name, Kinger mutters “Kinger… right…”, softly, as though he'd forgotten it.
(07:44) Pomni: “Maybe what we have to do now is to just… live.” — Yeah, that's probably how it's gonna be, barring unforeseen developments in the next episode. IIRC, Goose said something on Tumblr about one of TADC's themes being that “a stagnant life can still be meaningful”.
(08:19) I think this is the first time we've seen Zooble cry.
(09:49) Caine: “I made a program that creates a body perfectly encapsulating their mind files” — Further confirmation that the humans in the circus are simulated minds created from neural scans.
(10:07) Caine is still drawing bees, and there are a pair of metallic bee figurines on his desk.
(10:33) Bubble, to Caine: “Maybe you deserved to be abandoned. You really were the lesser of the two. You ruined this.” — Who was the other AI? Bubble's phrasing here somewhat implies that it wasn't him.
(11:12) Caine: “I'm better! I'm more powerful! I'm the original!”
(11:40) Caine's eyeballs flash blue & red.
(13:38) On the line “Am I getting through?”, blue & red blood vessels appear on Caine's eyeballs.
(13:45) “Don't need to scream if you ain't got a mouth!” is, of course, a reference to the 1995 video game “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream” (based on Harlan Ellison's 1967 short story of the same title), in which an intelligent, maniacal supercomputer keeps alive and tortures the last five humans on Earth with metaphorical adventures based on their character flaws.
(14:04) Caine sings “Don't forget who's running the show!” as the characters slide down the spiral staircase and into the waiting maw of Bubble. I've heard at least one person suggest that this might subtly imply that Bubble is, in fact, “running the show”.
(14:12) “Now look at this! Absolute bliss! Oh, what a shock! Watch where ya walk!” sounds like it might be a gentle nod to Robin Williams' song “Friend Like Me” from Disney's 1992 film “Aladdin”; specifically the section with the lyrics “Can your friends do this…? Can your friends do that…?”.
(14:46) Jax is the only one looking down at his own outfit with an expression of utmost shock. The pinnacle of masculinity…
(15:00) Low poly Caine!
(16:48) Jax, in the Café Cirque: “I haven't been up here in a while.” The last time he was here would've been with Kaufmo & Ribbit, as depicted in the photo on his wall which we saw in the preceding episode.
(17:08) Pomni vanishes immediately after bad‐mouthing Caine's adventures. The others don't react (except for a muted grunt from Jax), implying that he's been doing this so regularly that they've all gotten used to it.
(17:36) Jax, glaring at Pomni: “You know, things were just fine here until you and Zooble came along.” Before Zooble's arrival, Gangle's existence must have been miserable indeed; it's a wonder she didn't abstract.
(19:31) Kinger, on Caine: “I can't remember what we originally called him.” — Caine wasn't his given name!
(20:07) Kinger: “I can't say the same for Scratch. His ideas were often so bizarre and abstract that the rest of the team had no idea how to work in his language.” The camera pans across a painting on the wall of the café. “Either due to pure brilliance, or… the tumour in his head.” The camera lingers on a cupcake which has been bisected vertically; each half is topped with both red and blue sprinkles. “He was… trying to make something… What was it?” The imagery here seems significant, but I'm unsure exactly what it signifies.
(21:28) Kinger: “We all technically have the ability to conjure, just like Caine; it just comes naturally to him, but requires a lot more skill and concentration for us.” This explains the butterfly in episode 6, and possibly the exit door in episode 1. Who knows what else the circus members have “conjured” without realising it? (Jax is missing out on this exposition.)
(22:33) Pomni is captivated by her reflection in the mirror, recalling a similar moment in episode 1. As she walks away, she rests her hand on the barrel of monkeys behind which she hid from Kaufmo after his abstraction.
(23:15) A car pops out of Caine's mouth and crashes into the floor. This may or may not have any relevance to Jax's backstory.
(23:46) The bowling ball at which Caine takes aim is the same one that Jax retrieved from Kaufmo's room in episode 1.
(24:15) A framed picture on the wall of the C&A office in the “exit zone” looks remarkably like the coloured blocks in the main tent of the circus.
(24:29) There are a few cassettes on the desk. What's on them: audio or data? Also, the wireless mouse and keyboard are a total anachronism for 1996, although I suppose this is an alternate reality in which computing technology developed slightly differently.
(28:17) Caine: “I'M GONNA PUT YOU FREAKS IN YOUR PLACE!” — The subsequent scenes demonstrate that he knows exactly how to psychologically torment each of them. For Ragatha, in particular, he uses memories from before she entered the circus.
(28:59) On Kinger's computer, there's a directory named “C:\CANDA\Characters\CA_NeuralScans (Obsolete)”.
(29:03) The date displayed in Kinger's terminal is 1996-10-30. This obviously isn't the current date; it's probably the date the system started running.
(29:23) Jax is surrounded by the cackling silhouettes of Ribbit, Kaufmo, and Pomni, who peel off his skin to reveal what looks like an egg yolk underneath. Clutching his flayed hide, Jax instinctively covers his chest and crotch.
(29:37) In what appears to be a list of running processes, there are two AI agents: Caine and “experimental”. In the directory listing of “/secured/”, we see files that seem to be Scratch & Ragatha's neural scans (there may be more, but the middle part of the directory listing has been elided). The last‐modified date on “[Scratch].dat” is 1999-10-15, and for “[Ragatha].dat” it's 2008-10-15. The square brackets in the file names are interesting: are their real names being hidden from us? When Kinger attempts to delete the file “/secured/paraphernalia-engine.dat”, a message says “ERROR: Can not inject torment. Torment must be 100% accidental.” — Caine said something like this to Zooble in episode 3.
(29:47) “I must hσηd ít to y°u Ģ░αη░, y◊ur mind was α∈wαys resourceâuL” — Is this Caine calling Kinger by his real name? (Is it “Grant”? I can't think of any other names that'd fit that pattern.) What is the “GreenGROUNDS” program which Kinger attempts to execute?
(30:17) Caine and Bubble are missing from their usual place in the end credits.
Additional notes contributed by @plaidinsanity in the comments, to which I have taken the liberty of adding hyperlinks because I fucking love using hypertext on the World Wide Web:
• The book on Caine’s shelf says “Matpat theory” not “Matrix theory”. It’s a reference to Matpat from the youtube channels Game Theory and Film Theory, probably poking fun at how he’ll pick up on any little background detail and overanalyze it.
• The “Digital Caine Berry” is most likely a cranberry juice since Ragatha ordered a cosmopolitan, which has cranberry juice.
• Gangle didn’t get an evil clone because Gooseworx thought it would be funny if Caine just forgot about her.
• Abel appears in the background in at least a couple other scenes. I definitely noticed him at the beginning of episode 3 when Pomni is holding her breath in front of everyone. He’s wayyyy off in the background around a distant corner behind Jax.
• Daisy Bell is also known for being the first song that a computer ever sang back in the 60’s.
• Tommy Gun Gangle is everything to me ❤️
• I’m not sure if the company is actually named Caine and Abel. Kinger confirms that it’s named C&A, but Caine chose his own name. It stands for Creative Artificial Intelligence Networking Entity.
not a spoiler: there is a scene in TADC episode 9 with an interleaved flashback— it repeatedly cuts back & forth between the past & present— and it seems that some people found this very confusing, judging by some of the posts i'm seeing here on tumblr dot com. so uhhh if you haven't seen it yet, or if you did see it and found that scene confusing, bear in mind that not every shot is taking place in the narrative present and its not quite obvious at first.
(tbh i felt there were quite a few points that could have been less confusing. and at least One (1) scene that i think should have had much less exposition. but i will reserve my final opinions until i've watched it properly in a format that allows me to pause and take notes.)
i loved the intro with the poorly rendered fish imploring the audience not to post spoilers. i hope this doesnt count as a spoiler. i dont want to disappoint the fish
holy shit theres so many children under ten years old here with their parents. like half the audience. what the hell. go home kid this movie is gonna straight up kill you
holy shit theres so many children under ten years old here with their parents. like half the audience. what the hell. go home kid this movie is gonna straight up kill you
Digital circus' biggest problem is that it was written to be a niche show aimed at weird analytical queers with actual media literacy and it accidentally blew tf up and hit the mainstream and a bunch of people who have never had a second thought about anything got into it
(00:40) Levitating objects above the stage during the repeating “day after day” segment of the theme song: Utah teapot, blue flower in a pot, gramophone, square pyramid, and two of Caine's all‐seeing eyes. Probably no particular significance.
(01:13) Jax: “…'cos if it's a new character, we're gonna have to re‐do this whole theme song!” — Jax is referring to the circus members as “characters”.
(02:03) “The Amazing Digital Circus is a place to be enjoyed by all ages” — In episode 8, we learn that Caine was developed by AI researchers; he was not originally intended to be part of a game that would be marketed to children. So where did Caine get the idea that his guests' conduct ought to be appropriate for “all ages”, especially when he knows they're all adults? In episode 8 we also learn that Caine believes he's been “abandoned”, so he isn't even maintaining a child‐friendly circus for the sake of the researchers who might be watching: he's doing it entirely out of his own sense of decorum. Why? Was he just built like that?
(02:40) Zooble: “Welcome to your new home… and your new body.”
(02:47) Jax: “We've been stuck here for years!”
(02:52) Kinger: “Did someone say something about an insect collection?” — In episode 3, we learn that his wife was an entomologist.
(03:39) Caine makes a dial‐up modem noise when his eyes bluescreen, but the show is (allegedly) set in 2017, long after dial‐up internet stopped being provided in most places in the United States. I suppose the anachronism is probably deliberate, and Caine isn't literally reconnecting to the internet.
(04:10) Caine, on the void: “Not even I know what's out there.” — Why would the engine simulate empty space outside the circus grounds when it'd be much less resource‐intensive to simply put an impenetrable wall around it? Maybe the engine was just initialised with an enormous fixed volume of empty space inside which Caine constructed the circus.
(04:47) Jax and Zooble have never seen the exit door before, nor heard it mentioned by any of the others. In episode 8, we learn that circus members can “conjure” objects by focusing sufficiently hard. Pomni may have inadvertently summoned the exit door by desperately wanting it. But then why didn't anyone else accidentally conjure an exit door when they first arrived? Maybe Caine hadn't started constructing his “escape the circus” adventure until recently.
(04:52) Jax pulls off Zooble's arm, and they promptly begin choking him with it in retaliation. To what extent can Zooble control their limbs after they've been detached?
(05:01) Caine: “You're probably just experiencing DIGITAL HALLUCINATIONS from your mind's transition to the digital plane!” — Caine knows that Pomni's brain has been scanned: she's not simply immersed in virtual reality via a headset; her mind has been virtualised. Caine apparently knows (or suspects) that this procedure may have detrimental effects on the stability of the simulated mind. Later in the episode, we learn that he knew about the exit door— it's part of the unfinished “escape the circus” adventure— and was simply pretending not to know what Pomni was talking about, so “digital hallucinations” might not be a real phenomenon at all.
(05:28) Caine: “One of the few things I don't have control over is your minds.” — This turns out to be not entirely true, since in episode 5, Caine makes Jax temporarily vegan, and at the end of episode 7, Jax suspects that Caine has been messing with their minds on a regular basis.
(05:44) In his rapid‐fire disclaimer regarding chosen names, Caine mentions the “Digital Circus license agreement”. Is he just making stuff up? We learn in episode 8 that Bubble believes they've been “abandoned” by their creators, and the “Amazing Digital Circus” was probably never launched as a commercial product.
(06:01) The name initially selected for Pomni by the slot machine— “XDDCC”— later appears as the title of a book on Caine's bookshelf in a scene in episode 4.
(08:06) Last time Kinger spoke to Kaufmo, he was rambling endlessly about finding an exit. How did the other circus members fail to realise that Kaufmo was spiraling towards abstraction? Judging by the art in his bedroom, Kaufmo has been isolating himself for a while. Did Kinger go to speak with him, or did Kaufmo come to visit Kinger's impenetrable fortress? What if Kaufmo spoke to Kinger in the dark while the latter was lucid? Does Kinger know that they're all digitised copies of their original minds? Is this what pushed Kaufmo over the edge?
(09:03) Jax refers to Kinger and Gangle as “the two most mentally stable and capable characters.” Once again, he describes the circus members as characters, not people.
(09:23) As Ragatha, Pommni, and Jax stroll down the hallway of the living quarters, we see the crossed‐out portraits on the bedroom doors of the members who came before them. Bedrooms have not been allocated in order; there are blank NPC portraits for unallocated rooms interspersed with occupied or previously occupied rooms.
Bedroom doors on the left side, as one faces the entrance:
Bizco
Scratch
unallocated
Ragatha
Jax
Queenie
Spike
unallocated
Kinger
unallocated
Zooble
Gangle
Rattie
unallocated
On the right:
unnamed pink cyclops
Wormo
unallocated
unallocated
Pomni
Grinchilda
unallocated
unnamed blue oyster
unallocated
unnamed yellow rabbit‐like creature with a red frown and red‐tipped floppy ears
unallocated
Kaufmo
unallocated
Ribbit (seen during the intermission in episode 5, and later in episode 6)
(10:01) Ragatha has seen multiple people abstract during her time in the circus. In episode 8, we learn that she was the first “new mind” to arrive, after everyone from the original group had abstracted except Kinger. At the very least, she must have been around for Ribbit's abstraction.
(11:12) Kaufmo was an artist: in addition to scribbling all over his walls, he's made his own paintings. He also has a radio on his desk… what does a radio pick up in the circus? Carved into the foot of Kaufmo's bed is the partially‐legible first line of a joke: “WHAT DID THE EXIT SAY TO THE—”. Carved into the headboard are the words “CAN'T SLEEP”. One of his paintings depicts the clustered neon eyes of an abstracted being. Another depicts a silhouette— possibly Kaufmo himself— standing in a bedroom doorway, confronting an abstraction, with the word “WHY?” daubed in red between them. A stepladder stands in the corner of the room, with a red marker pen resting atop it.
(11:28) At the end of the hallway is a T‐junction, with a painting on the wall and a table beneath it, flanked by potted plants on pedestals. Later in the series, in episode 7, we see that the left branch of the hallway ends at a blank wall, which serves as a secret portal to the administrative zone.
(13:53) Near the entrance to the Gloink Queen's nest, blocks are embedded in the wall forming the number “57”.
(15:01) Ragatha's eyes and nose bounce around her face in a representation of the video game “Pong”.
(17:37) While fleeing from abstracted Kaufmo, Pomni is entranced by the appearance of her new body, reflected in a mirror. This moment is called back to in episode 8, except she touches her face with the other hand.
(18:30) Some of the framed photographs on the walls of the “exit zone” are Caine's training data which we glimpse at the start of episode 8.
(19:20) Kinger to Zooble, after their head is regurgitated by the Gloink Queen: “You didn't experience a game show in there, did you?” This is a reference to one of Goose's other animations, “Elain the Bounty Hunter”.
(20:45) In the C&A office space, one framed image on the wall appears to depict an assortment of coloured blocks that looks suspiciously like the Amazing Digital Circus.
(20:53) The CRT monitor, keyboard, and headset are old and filthy. On the table to the left is what appears to be a function generator and some sort of oscilloscope or signal analyser. That's not the sort of equipment that would be required by a mere software company: C&A were developing their own hardware, too, as evidenced by the headset. Also note that the headset has a laser warning on the front.
(21:44) This restaurant seems to be one of Caine's favourite places to pass time when he's neither in his office nor the circus. His date with Jax in episode 7 takes place here too. The environment is rendered in high detail, but no food is visible on any of the tables; there are bottles, but no glasses.
(21:55) The “Wacky Watch” advertisement banner contains a phone number partially written in Wingdings, a well‐known “dingbat” font included with Microsoft Windows. The glyphs do not correspond to any kind of hidden message; they're just random digits & punctuation.
(22:00) “Oh no! Someone's venturing out into the void! They'll get totally spoiled!”— Caine apparently keeps his unfinished work in the void.
(22:21) Kinger: “Kaufmo went through a sort of ‘Kauf‐mosis’ and abstracted!” — Portmanteau of Kaufmo's name and the word “metamorphosis”, a stage in the lifecycle of most insects, connecting to Queenie's interest in entomology.
(22:36) The cellar is pitch‐dark, illuminated only by the glowing eyes of abstractions, and partially submerged in turbulent water. What's the point in dumping abstracted humans down here? It would make more sense to simply remove their bodies from the simulated world and freeze their mind‐states, but perhaps Caine lacks that ability.
(22:38) Zooble is capable of walking around while their head is still detached from their body.
(24:01) Jax, to Kinger: “Since when are you an expert in the digital world?” — Nobody knows that Kinger actually used to work for C&A.
Episode 2: Candy Carrier Chaos
(02:23) The brand name on the bottle of maple syrup is “MPPEP”— also appears on the soda fountain in episode 4.
(03:25) In episode 7, we see that Caine keeps a miniature model of the skeleton of the cart‐pulling quadruped in a glass case in his office.
(04:01) Kinger: “They've even got little candy bugs here!” — Fascination with entomology.
(07:15) It seems like the crocodile bandit's reaction to being dragged over rocks— flickering between poses accompanied by pitch‐shifted orchestral stings— is a reference to something, but idk what.
(07:28) As the syrup tanker rattles over the rocks, Jax exhibits the head stabilisation reflex common to certain birds.
(07:58) Jax, to Gangle: “Do it, or I'll tell Ragatha about the figurine thing…” — As of episode 8, I don't think we know exactly what he's alluding to here.
(09:10) The space beneath the map is filled with floating Utah teapots.
(11:32) Gummigoo: “Where's Mum? SHouldn't she be here with everyone else? I can't even remember her face… Did she ever have a face? Was anything ever real?” — Caine's NPCs (at least, these new ones) can have elaborate backstories which they genuinely recall as narrative memories, not just pre‐programmed expository dialogue, and they demonstrate the ability to reason about their situation.
(12:25) Jax: “We're one tanker away from being Augustus Glooped!” — Reference to the 1964 book “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”, or more likely its 1971 film adaptation “Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory”, in which the character Augustus Gloop falls into a river of chocolate.
(14:00) Kinger slams a bucket onto Ragatha's head, foreshadowing the means by which Pomni turns him lucid in episode 8.
(19:24) Kinger, now wearing the bucket on his head, manages a few moments of lucidity with Ragatha, remembering the time after she arrived in the circus.
(22:19) Caine: “If I start losing track of who's a human and who's an NPC, who knows… what… could happen…” — Ominous, but not sure whether this line holds any real significance.
(23:12) Jax doesn't attend Kaufmo's funeral.
(23:48) Gangle drew a portrait of herself and Kaufmo.
(24:03) Pomni envisions herself falling into the cellar, as in her nightmare at the start of the episode, and being caught by Ragatha, Zooble, and Gangle. Note that Jax and Kinger's hands are absent.
Episode 3: The Mystery of Mildenhall Manor
(01:23) Jax: “What do you, the viewers, think it is?” — He doesn't know he's literally a character in a web series (the next shot depicts him pointing at the couch), but he plays into the trope of breaking the fourth wall because he wants to believe that he's nothing more than a cartoon character.
(01:44) Caine: “It's up to you to solve the house's deep mysteries and capture all the ghoulish ghost activity you can!” — They don't actually do the latter at all.
(02:05) Bubble, speaking backwards: “I can't wait for all the children in the audience to get horrible nightmares from a monster!”
(02:22) A gravestone outside Mildenhall Manor reads “R.I.P. Peggy 2019–2022”. This is probably an out‐of‐universe easter egg, since the show is set in 2017.
(05:15) Caine sketches a bee in his notebook.
(07:02) A portrait of a young woman hangs on the wall, looking rather out of place compared to the other pictures in Mildenhall Manor.
(07:05) Pieces of paper in desk drawer: “DID IT ASK FOR YOU IT HELD [illegible]”; “MISSING — HAVE YOU SEEN THESE MEN?”
(07:21) One book on Mildenhall's bookshelf is titled “ANGELS”; on a dimly illuminated lower shelf, barely visible, is one titled “LOVECRAFT”.
(09:43) The creature's mouth opens to reveal a pool of darkness filled with luminous eyeballs. Staring into it, Kinger murmurs “You look beautiful, honey…” — is this because the sight reminds him of his last moments with his wife after she abstracted?
(10:20) Caine, to Zooble: “I do not use my adventures to torture my guests! Any torment I inflict is one hundred per cent accidental, like any good war criminal!” — A similar phrase appears in Kinger's terminal output in episode 8.
(12:43) While Mildenhall says “I ended up shooting the love of my life, mistaking her for the creature”, Pomni glances over at Kinger, whose gaze is fixed on the tape recorder, his pupils dilated. He's probably remembering his own wife.
(17:56) Kinger: “Man… seven years of computer science for this, huh?”
(18:08) Pomni: “He just wants me to suffer… I really am in hell.” Pomni is not forming a good impression of Caine.
(19:00) Kinger describes to Pomni his last moments with his wife.
(23:15) Caine: “…and now I'm just starting to wonder if the ‘Wild West’ was even a real direction at all” — If this isn't just a throwaway gag, it implies that Caine has very little general knowledge about the outside world (i.e. he knows the phrase ‘Wild West’ but not exactly what it denotes).
(23:30) Zooble has been sketching body parts in Caine's notebook.
Episode 4: Fast Food Masquerade
(00:10) Ragatha is teaching Gangle to play softball; she applies what Ragatha taught her when she hits a home run during the softball game in the following episode.
(01:07) Zooble's bedroom features three large dressing‐room mirrors along one wall.
(02:49) Caine: “Well, I don't know what's normal to you people!” — Further suggests that he has very limited knowledge of the world.
(03:21) When Caine sticks his tongue out, Bubble's tongue retracts, and vice versa. If this isn't just a throwaway gag, it might be hinting at some deeper connection between them, like Bubble being a remnant of the blue AI that Caine absorbed, as depicted in episode 8.
(04:09) The price of a “Dobby Dog” is listed as “$57.57”, and the wrapper has Scratch's face on it.
(04:46) Caine has been sketching bees again. On the bookshelf behind him are a pair of blocks forming the number 57. There's also a Utah teapot, a book titled “XDCC” (almost, but not quite, the first suggestion for Pomni's name), four books about Gloinks, “Mindfreak”, “Matrix Theory”, “Egg”, and “Massacre Droids” (a reference to another Glitch production, “Murder Drones”).
(05:29) One of the cars parked outside Spudsy's has the license plate “MR 57 AMH”.
(05:59) Pomni interprets Orbsman's order as “a number fifty‐seven”.
(06:19) The Post‐It® note on the side of the cash register reads: “POS LOGIN — USER: SPUD, CODE: 469674”.
(07:14) Zooble: “The only thing holding Caine back is the fact that he likes us. I wouldn't push it.” — Foreshadowing Caine's breakdown in episode 8 due to feeling unappreciated by his human guests.
(09:11) On the noticeboard in the kitchen is a child's(?) drawing of Ragatha(?) eating a burger. Below it, partially covered, is what appears to be a pencil sketch of all the circus members, though it's difficult to make out.
(09:21) Next door to Spudsy's, visible through the drive‐thru window, is the C&A Distribution Centre. The boxes in the kitchen are marked with the same logo.
(09:33) When the blank mannequin NPC tries to eat his spoonful of cereal, it falls straight off the spoon and onto the floor, since he doesn't actually have a mouth to put it in.
(09:48) Gummigoo & the bandits drove to Spudsy's in their syrup tanker, which is parked outside.
(10:46) Gangle says “the bathroom looks like a biohazard”, but does anybody in the Amazing Digital Circus actually piss or shit? Is Caine simulating bodily waste solely for this adventure? Did the toilets just become dirty, without any of the customers actually using them, so that someone would have to clean them?
(11:43) Jax, watching Gangle's training video: “When did you make this?” — Good point. Given that the circus members are simulated copies of human minds, it's possible that Caine could have forked Gangle— while pausing time for everyone else— to make the training video.
(14:22) Gangle: “How long has this shift really gone on for? Six hours? Eight? Twenty‐four? A week? A year? Does time even move in here?” — This is a joke, but it does draw attention to the fact that we don't know how time in the circus corresponds to time in the real world. If the setting were as close as possible to being “realistic” for the time period— granting that advanced artificial intelligence and brain‐scanning technology could exist in the mid‐1990s— then we'd expect the simulation to be orders of magnitude slower than real time. I expect that it will probably turn out to be running at the same speed as the real world, since the story isn't meant to be technologically realistic.
(15:19) Jax asks Pomni how she's doing, and she starts to give a genuine response before hesitating, with a suspicious look, and replying “Everything's been fine.” Jax responds: “Wish I could say the same.” I think this is the first time Jax has exhibited any sort of genuine friendship towards Pomni.
(15:31) Gangle: “You got time to lean, you got time to clean!” — God this is such a realistic portrayal of a McDonalds it's fucking painful.
(17:00) Phone numbers scrawled on the whiteboard: “Veg Delivery: 31245638987” and “Ken the meat Guy: 71191297820”.
(17:23) Jax seems displeased that his car has his name on the license plate (“JAX.001”).
(19:33) The simulated night sky above Spudsy's is more beautiful than it has any right to be.
(20:13) Gangle knows she can't really die in the circus, but jumping in front of a truck is still obviously an act of self‐harm. Maybe this serves to highlight how “abstraction” isn't a straightforward metaphor for suicide: although she's clearly frustrated and miserable and deliberately hurting herself, Gangle is still engaged with her life in the circus; she hasn't completely given up and isolated herself like Kaufmo did.
(20:26) The sketches of bees are still on Caine's desk. Next to his computer monitor is a miniature model of the circus tent.
(20:47) On the side of the monitor is a Post‐It® note bearing a child's drawing of a face, with the word “Galoba” in shaky handwriting above it. Not sure whether this has any significance or what it's referring to. Also in the background is a framed photograph of the exit door from “The Truman Show”.
(21:15) The computer monitor is displaying a web browser showing what is presumably the C&A corporate website.
Episode 5: Untitled
(00:09) Zooble is reading a magazine titled “CIRCUS”, with the front‐page headline: “What Do Your Parts Say About You?”
(00:40) Pomni glimpses Abel staring at her from afar. Caine has been planning episode 7's “escape the circus” adventure for quite some time.
(00:46) Caine has been filling his notebook with sketches of bees. On the third page is a sketch of himself with a bee for a head, next to a scribble of an angry bee with sharp teeth, below what appears to be the number “−10”.
(00:51) When Caine shrieks “I'LL TEAR YOU TO PIECES”, we briefly glimpse a page in his notebook that seems to contain a long passage of text, some of which is scribbled out, with a “cool S” in the middle of the page.
(01:01) Ragatha and Kinger are holding cartons of eggs, as per his earlier request for her to help him “count my eggs before they hatch”. Kinger is holding his carton upside‐down, but none of the eggs fall out.
(01:16) When Caine talks about the “magic chocolate factory” adventure, the butterflies that appear next to him are the same ones from the Candy Canyon Kingdom in episode 2.
(02:26) Caine, in response to Zooble's request that he keep all the adventures open and let them come & go as they please: “Are you hearing this, Bubble? The toybox character wants us to leave the other intelligent AIs to run for a prolonged period of time!” — Hmmm, interesting.
(04:37) Kinger's brief: “Name: Mr. Kinger. Role: Assistant to the President. BRIEF: Australia and New Zealand are at WAR!! Motivations: How can we make this not our problem and still benefit? Is there a way to come out of this whole thing with ownership of both Australia and New Zealand? Does Kangaroo taste good? NOTE!: NO FUNNY BUSINESS! DO NOT EMBARRASS THE PRESIDENT OR THIS GREAT NATION! >:( In case of character breaks: use the ZONE OF CONTEMPLATION™ under the [illegible] desk. Don't worry, a baby head lamp has already been installed. And remember… HAVE FUN! :)”
(05:02) There is a portrait of Zooble hanging in the hallway outside the office.
(05:07) One of the books on the shelf behind Jax is titled “LVII”, which is 57 in Roman numerals.
(05:28) On the table behind President Pomni's desk is a framed photograph of an abstracted beast. There's also a photo of Jax wearing a hat and a tie.
(06:34) Sketches and a poster on the noticeboard behind Jax. Not sure of the significance of these. (I think it's another Glitch production?)
(06:49) On the shelves behind Gangle: a series of books labeled “1, 2, 4, 5, 7”, a small box of Zooble parts, a Utah teapot, a square pyramid, and an origami figure of an abstracted beast.
(07:20) Jax: “I mean… I guess it's not as embarassing as that time Gangle took an anime figure and—” — Same thing he was referring to in episode 2. As of episode 8, we still don't know the full story.
(07:53) Jax, to Pomni: “Do you think Gangle is actually capable of being happy?” — This is the second time Jax has actually talked to Pomni like a human being.
(08:22) Pomni, to Jax: “Do you have any actual friends?” Ragatha: “Not anymore.” — Jax is furious, because he interprets Ragatha's remark as referring to Ribbit and Kaufmo, who were his closest friends, at least until Ribbit abstracted.
(09:22) Jax: “This is what peak male performance looks like! My ears and tail are kind of the pinnacle of masculinity.” — Ironic, since his noodly purple rabbit body is practically genderless. Pomni points out that she hasn't seen him with a tail since she joined the circus; Jax is startled, and doesn't remember when it would have disappeared. It reappears in the next episode.
(10:05) Bubble, to Caine: “You should die— you should throw a f%!#ing beach party!” — The “beach party” happens in episode 7, and Caine dies in episode 8.
(10:12) The flickering frames at the start of the intermission are from previous episodes; there's nothing particularly interesting there.
(10:36) That's the Windows XP(?) “fatal error” sound.
(10:52) All the circus members except Zooble are arrayed on a chessboard. Pomni and Jax are squashed by falling bowling balls (the same blue bowling ball which Jax retrieved from Kaufmo's room in episode 1). Gangle and Ragatha have purple cakes fall on their heads. A bowling ball appears above Kinger's head, but he catches it, only to be swept off the board by a black rook. Unsure whether this imagery holds any significance.
(11:14) Jax sprints along the hallway outside the circus members' bedrooms, with the neon eyes of abstracted beasts filling the upper and lower thirds of the frame. He passes Kaufmo's bedroom door, with its portrait now crossed out, and slides to a halt in front of Ribbit's door, just before Zooble interrupts the intermission.
(11:39) Jax, on being made a vegan: “How is this even possible? I thought Caine couldn't…?” — He begins to suspect that Caine can mess with their minds.
(11:44) The neon sign on the wall reading “RADICAL!” is the same one glimpsed during Jax, Gangle, and Kinger's descent into the Gloink Queen's lair in episode 1.
(12:15) One of the bottles Zooble grabs appears to be labelled “DIGITAL CAINE BERRY”.
(13:13) Jax: “Well, after my lung cancer diagnosis, me and my junkie associate from a chemistry class I used to teach…” — He's describing the plot of “Breaking Bad”, a TV show which first aired in January 2008. Ragatha doesn't get the reference because her neural scan was acquired before the show became broadly popular.
(14:55) A framed picture on the wall of the bar shows a photo of a dog with the name “TEDDY” below it. There's some other text, but it's not quite legible. The picture below it is the logo of the “Evil Big Tops” from later in the episode.
(16:49) Advertisements on the softball stadium: KAAK (a burger chain?), Spudsy's, Kaufmo Tire.
(17:17) Why doesn't Gangle get an evil clone; why does Evil Orbsman replace her?
(18:38) More advertisements: “Gator Goo (it's all you're thirsting for)”, and of course C&A.
(18:46) More advertisements: “The Gloink Depot”, and an image of the moon with the slogan: “Tired? Try going to sleep.”
(18:54) When the maid dress appears on Jax's body, his posture changes: his hands, previously hanging by his sides, are now posed daintily at his waist, and his feet are pointed inward.
(19:27) Another advertisement: “ALL “YOU” CAN! CORN. CAN?”.
(22:17) Gangle, to Ragatha: “Yeah! Your instructions helped me a lot.” — c.f. the start of episode 4.
(23:09) The score is 3–57.
(23:18) Evil Ragatha melting at the conclusion of the game is a reference to one of the “Wizard of Oz” films.
(23:45) Another advertisement: a logo for a burger chain(?) named “JAX”.
(24:15) Jax: “Oh yeah, Pomni, I can show you that thing in the hall I was talking about.” — Is he referring to anything in particular, or is this just a throwaway line to set up Ragatha feeling abandoned in the next shot?
(24:31) Abel watches from afar, like he did at the start of the episode.
Episode 6: They All Get Guns
(00:23) Jax and Pomni are hanging out and talking normally: evidently they've forged a bit of a friendship since they began to connect with each other over the last two episodes.
(00:26) Jax has his tail!
(00:50) Caine singing “Daisy Bell” is a reference to the 1968 film “2001: A Space Odyssey”, where a malfunctioning artifical intelligence sings the song as its mind slowly shuts down.
(01:22) Zooble's left antenna pops out of their head when they hit the ground, but as they raise their head in the next shot, the antenna is back in its socket.
(04:39) Caine beams knowledge into Jax's mind, once again revealing that he can modify their mental states.
(04:55) Some symbols are scratched into the stock of one of the guns, but I can't tell what they're supposed to be.
(08:04) Caine peruses Polaroid photographs of the C&A offices, which he refers to (later) as the “macroverse”. In episode 8, it's implied that these photographs were fed to him early in his development as an artificial intelligence.
(08:31) Kinger “conjures” a butterfly to restore Ragatha's missing life. We get more details about this ability in episode 8. The conjured butterfly is significantly more realistic than anything we've seen in the circus so far— compare it to Caine's candy butterflies in episode 2.
(08:57) The name “CAINE & ABEL” is stamped on the barrel of Jax's revolver, and the C&A logo is etched near the grip, finally confirming what those letters stand for.
(10:35) Jax: “I do everything 'cos it's funny! 'Cos I'm the funny one!” — Ohhh, Jax.
(10:50) Pomni's expression perfectly matches her portrait on the bedroom door behind her.
(10:59) Jax, to Pomni: “So who do you wanna be? No better chance than now to try somethin' new!” — Jax, who do you actually want to be?
(12:04) Ragatha and Kinger have had terrible luck with weapon drops: she only has a tiny deringer (something like a Remington Model 95), a palm‐sized pistol which only fires one or two shots and is practically useless beyond point‐blank range.
(14:06) The banners in the castle‐themed section of the circus feature the head of the Gloink Queen and various Gloinks.
(16:47) When Pomni says “I'm learning a lot about you today,” Jax looks legitimately worried for a moment before he lapses back into his usual personality.
(17:08) Below the cylinder of Pomni's revolver, the words “AYEHH[?] I'M SHOOTING HERE” are stamped.
(18:31) Ragatha: “I think… I might've failed Pomni. Just like I failed Jax.” — There's obviously some history here that we don't know. Ragatha may have tried to pull Jax out of his self‐destructive spiral after Ribbit abstracted (or maybe before), and evidently did not succeed.
(22:12) I LOVE TOMMY GUN GANGLE
(22:48) The dice in the corner of Zooble's room are arranged so that the faces towards the camera show a 5, then a 6 stacked atop a 1 to make 7.
(22:56) Jax and Pomni sing “Daisy Bell” outside Zooble's door.
(23:03) The flashbang grenades in Zooble's room are labeled “BATCH NO. 57”.
(23:22) THe fucking?? diminished fifth(???) when they harmonise on the second syllable of “afford”???? please god more Pomni + Jax singing
(25:00) Gangle, Ragatha, and Kinger all have cat ears, whiskers, and tails for some reason.
(27:42) Watching Jax's face “reset”, when he realises he's accidentally shown his real emotions for a few seconds and quickly bottles it up, is actually horrifying. The animators did a real good job with the expressivity of his pupils!
(27:59) Pomni asks Jax: “What would you do if I abstracted tomorrow?” Jax is facing away from the camera; his body goes completely slack for a moment, before he turns around and declares, completely impassively: “I'd move on, and probably forget about you,” ending with his head cocked and a gentle grin on his face. This is exactly what Pomni was having a nightmare about at the start of episode 2.
(28:27) Jax realises that he's taken it too far; that Pomni took him seriously— if only for a second— and he's genuinely hurt her feelings. This lasts only a moment before he suppresses his feelings again.
(29:14) Jax: “I'm just a misunderstood little chicken fetus in an egg that needs to be cracked open!” — yeah he really is lol. I do not believe that Goose, writing the script for this episode, would employ the word “egg” here without deliberately intending the obvious connotation.
(31:03) “THE COMMITTEE” is apparently just a group of 15 undistinguished mannequin NPCs.
(31:16) Note how Jax scoots into the bathroom, hunched over to avoid his own gaze in the mirror, and deftly switches on the tap to cover up the sound of his wheezing during his panic attack. This isn't the first time he's done this.
(31:39) “God, you look stupid.” Oh, I thought your ears and tail were the pinnacle of masculinity, Jax?
(31:55) Zooble has gotten into the stupid sauce, and they've been squirting it directly into their eye— apparently that's the most effective route of administration, as Ragatha inadvertently discovered in episode 4.
(32:01) Jax returns from the bathroom with a swaggering, carefree stride and a shit‐eating grin on his face, having successfully repressed his feelings once again.
Episode 7: Beach Episode
(00:32) Caine's note is written on C&A stationery, and includes a doodle of both Bubble and a bee. C and A… and B. Hmmmmm. My Homestuck‐honed pattern‐recognition sense is tingling.
(01:09) “The Chinese Room” is a thought experiment by philosopher John Searle, intended to argue against the functionalist position that a sufficiently complex algorithm could constitute a “mind”. The idea is that a monolingual Anglophone locked inside the room is following an extraordinarily complicated set of instructions (written in English) to manipulate pieces of paper on which Chinese characters are written, in order to provide answers to questions slipped under the door. Searle argues that, because the person inside the room does not understand Chinese, the system as a whole cannot possibly “understand” Chinese.
(01:46) Kinger is the only one to laugh at Caine's joke— being a computer programmer, he might recognise the concept of the “Chinese Room”.
(01:56) Bubble: “You should throw a ffffffffreaking beach party.” — Previously suggested in episode 5.
(04:34) Jax, to Zooble: “Aren't you supposed to be miserable about your ability to choose your own body or something?” — Ohhh, Jax.
(06:01) On the wall of Jax's bedroom is a Polaroid photo of himself, Kaufmo, and Ribbit, drinking hot chocolate in the Café Cirque.
(06:55) In his Technicolor fractal hallucination, as he skirts abstraction, Jax's vision of his own naked body is completely sexless. He doesn't even have a well‐defined pelvis or ribcage; his torso is basically a cylinder, and his arms and legs are noodles.
(07:51) Jax closes his eyes, a peaceful smile on his face for the first time, as a silhouette of his own head joins those of Ribbit & Kaufmo flowing together in the background, and his body disappears from view.
(08:23) As Jax is startled awake by the doorbell, his eyes glow neon for a fraction of a second: starting as blue & yellow, cycling through white & green, ending on pink & blue as he blinks it away.
(08:30) The floor of Jax's bedroom is pale blue, with a pastel pink & white rug in the centre. The walls are pink & purple, decorated with clouds & rainbows. “The pinnacle of masculinity.” (Atop the bookshelf in the corner, a pair of blocks form the number 57.)
(09:13) As Abel says “If Caine catches on, I doubt he'll ever let us get this far again”, the camera pans across pictures of Caine's all‐seeing eyes.
(10:39) The NPC in the Chinese Room is reading a book titled “The Artificial Chinese Dictionary: Computerized Edition”, marked on the back cover: “C&A Company Copy”.
(10:52) Abel, referring to Kinger: “I don't really know if I'm, uhh… ready to face him again after what happened. We've both done things we're not proud of.” At the end of the episode we learn that Abel's backstory was (presumably) concocted by Caine. What does he know about Kinger?
(12:41) Written on Abel's map of the circus: “CIRCUS_LOBBY: is this the only construct connected to stasis pods?”
(12:42) Captions next to sketch of headset: “Audio‐visual stimulation for digital world?”, “Mechanism used for neural digitization?”. Below the sketch of the administration zone is a scribbled‐out drawing of a bee. In the lower‐right corner is a list of “OLD C&A CO‐WORKERS (NOT ABSTRACTED)”. There are five names; the first is Kinger, and the rest have been scribbled out, but the two on the right are still faintly legible. The top one is “Wormo”, and the bottom one is “Kaufmo?” (with a question mark). Caine created this asset for Abel, so does this imply that Caine suspected Kaufmo of being a C&A employee, even though he wasn't among the original batch of circus members?
(16:17) There are more bedroom doors around the corner from the corridor we've previously seen. All of them are unallocated.
(17:58) Caine shows Jax more photos of the C&A offices, which he refers to as the “macroverse”. “I just wish I had more info on the location so I could accurately recreate it. Too bad they cut me off, right?!” — Caine has apparently been abandoned by his creators, and (despite his dial‐up modem noises) has no access to the outside world at all. The phrase “cut me off” suggests that his abandonment was deliberate. Why wouldn't C&A just shut him down, instead of leaving him running for twenty years?
(18:53) Jax: “This was a nice dinner and all…” — As far as was depicted on‐screen, they never actually ate anything. Their plates and cutlery do not appear to have been used.
(20:06) Kinger: “Huh…? Leave the circus? How would you…? No, that doesn't make sense.” He's in the darkness of his impenetrable fortress, so he may be able to think clearly about the issue. Does he know that they're all just simulated minds and there's no real way to leave? He doesn't recognise the name Abel— which is strange, because his company is named “Caine & Abel”.
(20:49) Jax: “What's the rush? You got someone waiting for you outside?” Zooble: “Don't you?” — Jax's eyes narrow, and he mutters “Yeah…”. He has nobody.
(21:15) Abel: “Giving Kinger access to the main console could be dangerous.” This wasn't a lie: Caine knows that Kinger was a programmer.
(21:42) Ragatha: “He's got a lot of wisdom buried in there, doesn't he?” Pomni: “Yeah, he does.” Abel, muttering: “Yeah, when he uses it responsibly.” Just how much does Caine actually know about Kinger?
(22:57) Kinger scrutinises the admin pass (shaped like a small metal cast of a human right hand) for a few moments before crying: “Wait! Pomni!”— then forgets what he was going to say as soon as he stumbles into the light. Was he thinking of something that they should do with their admin priveliges? Or did he realise, at this point, that the whole thing was one of Caine's adventures?
(25:32) Caine's office has an aquarium built into the centre of the staircase that leads up from the entrance (is this the same aquarium we saw in the “Loser Zone” in the last episode?). On the main floor are storage shelves filled with glowing spheres representing the adventures Caine has created.
(25:53) A display case contains the skeletons of a mannequin NPC, a Gloink, one of the gummy elephants from Candy Canyon Kingdom, and one of the “crappy fish” from the lake.
(26:17) Jax stares longingly at an orb containing some sort of winter‐themed adventure, as muffled dialogue reverberates. Pomni asks him if he's alright, and he replies in a monotone: “I'm… great”, not even bothering to give her a sarcastic or flippant answer.
(27:20) Zooble: “It always was real. Everything we've felt, everything we've done… everything we are. It'll never leave us, and I wouldn't have it any other way.” This might be subtly illuminating the fact that they're digitised minds who can't leave the simulation, and they'll have to learn to live with that.
(28:05) Yeah, yeah, we've all seen “The Matrix” (1999), written & directed by Lana & Lilly Wachowski, and we all know that the “red pill” is five‐eighths of a milligram of estrogen extracted from horse piss (as it was in the 90s). Note that the colours of the buttons are reversed from the pills in “The Matrix”: here, the blue button releases the players from the game, while the red button keeps them inside.
(29:03) Jax's flashbacks: a suburban street, viewed from the footpath, running out into the road, at dusk. A road, viewed from inside a car, at night, in autumn— orange maple(?) leaves blanket the ground.
(30:13) Caine, to Abel: “Oh, you're getting too smart. Time to delete!” — c.f. his earlier comment in episode 5 about leaving his adventure AIs running for too long.
(31:04) Jax seems to conclude that Caine messed with his mind to make him press the red button. This probably isn't true in this instance— I think Jax pressed the button because he was genuinely afraid to leave, for reasons which may be revealed later— but he is right to point out the other instances in which Caine has altered their minds. “I may have the ability to add temporary modifiers to make adventures more interesting, but that's it!” — Really? Is he not responsible for eliding their knowledge of their names? “If I did anything more, trust me, it would not end well.” Kinger mumbles: “Scratch… the first abstraction…” — implying that Scratch may have abstracted because Caine tried to manipulate his psyche.
Episode 8: hjsakldfhl
(00:13) The introduction depicts the growth of an artificial intelligence, represented by a red dot, implied to be Caine. In the real world, 1996 was in the middle of the second “AI winter”, when the promising “symbolic intelligence” approaches of earlier decades seemed to have turned out to be fruitless. TADC apparently takes place in an alternate timeline in which the second AI winter never happened. Caine's development is depicted as vaguely resembling the “pre‐training” of a modern “transformer” neural net: a dense stream of data is fed into the model, consisting of images from the outside world, and the model produces shapes in response, which grow more complex as training proceeds. The training data we see consists of film photographs of parties, amusement parks, and fairgrounds (although there are a few suspiciously high‐resolution digital photos). The last batch of data consists of photos of the C&A offices. We see a picture of what is presumably Kinger's cubicle, with a framed butterfly on the wall and a chessboard on the desk; on a calendar, March 29th is circled and labelled “hard deadline”. A poster on the wall of the office reads: “Creating Creation. Creating Reality.” After the final training batch, the red AI is confined in a “pen”, where it bounces angrily against the walls. We then see a blue AI being trained in the same manner, although we don't get to see snapshots of its training data, just an abstract representation of the incoming data stream. The red AI breaks out of its enclosure and devours the blue AI. It quivers, producing a flurry of complex shapes, before settling down and emitting a cluster of red & yellow arcs which come together to form a circus tent, with the red AI hovering at the centre. (I am a fucken' sucker for wordless exposition, and I really enjoyed this sequence!)
(02:41) The first few humans in the circus are standing around in the main tent, with their body language suggesting agitation, confusion, and/or curiosity at their new forms. Wormo is looking down at their own body. Scratch is arguing with Caine. Kinger says, to Queenie: “We never made anything like this!” — C&A didn't design the circus; they just made Caine (and the as‐yet‐unnamed blue AI) to be capable of creativity.
(03:33) We learn, later in the episode, that nine years elapsed in the real world between the initial batch of former C&A employees and Ragatha's arrival. How long did it take for all of Kinger's co‐workers to abstract? And how long did he spent alone afterwards?
(04:29) Ragatha appears. “Hello? Guys?” — she was in the company of others when she donned the headset. Caine crows “So it is possible! […] I was hoping new minds could show up!” — he wasn't directly responsible for Ragatha entering the circus. At the mention of his name, Kinger mutters “Kinger… right…”, softly, as though he'd forgotten it.
(07:44) Pomni: “Maybe what we have to do now is to just… live.” — Yeah, that's probably how it's gonna be, barring unforeseen developments in the next episode. IIRC, Goose said something on Tumblr about one of TADC's themes being that “a stagnant life can still be meaningful”.
(08:19) I think this is the first time we've seen Zooble cry.
(09:49) Caine: “I made a program that creates a body perfectly encapsulating their mind files” — Further confirmation that the humans in the circus are simulated minds created from neural scans.
(10:07) Caine is still drawing bees, and there are a pair of metallic bee figurines on his desk.
(10:33) Bubble, to Caine: “Maybe you deserved to be abandoned. You really were the lesser of the two. You ruined this.” — Who was the other AI? Bubble's phrasing here somewhat implies that it wasn't him.
(11:12) Caine: “I'm better! I'm more powerful! I'm the original!”
(11:40) Caine's eyeballs flash blue & red.
(13:38) On the line “Am I getting through?”, blue & red blood vessels appear on Caine's eyeballs.
(13:45) “Don't need to scream if you ain't got a mouth!” is, of course, a reference to the 1995 video game “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream” (based on Harlan Ellison's 1967 short story of the same title), in which an intelligent, maniacal supercomputer keeps alive and tortures the last five humans on Earth with metaphorical adventures based on their character flaws.
(14:04) Caine sings “Don't forget who's running the show!” as the characters slide down the spiral staircase and into the waiting maw of Bubble. I've heard at least one person suggest that this might subtly imply that Bubble is, in fact, “running the show”.
(14:12) “Now look at this! Absolute bliss! Oh, what a shock! Watch where ya walk!” sounds like it might be a gentle nod to Robin Williams' song “Friend Like Me” from Disney's 1992 film “Aladdin”; specifically the section with the lyrics “Can your friends do this…? Can your friends do that…?”.
(14:46) Jax is the only one looking down at his own outfit with an expression of utmost shock. The pinnacle of masculinity…
(15:00) Low poly Caine!
(16:48) Jax, in the Café Cirque: “I haven't been up here in a while.” The last time he was here would've been with Kaufmo & Ribbit, as depicted in the photo on his wall which we saw in the preceding episode.
(17:08) Pomni vanishes immediately after bad‐mouthing Caine's adventures. The others don't react (except for a muted grunt from Jax), implying that he's been doing this so regularly that they've all gotten used to it.
(17:36) Jax, glaring at Pomni: “You know, things were just fine here until you and Zooble came along.” Before Zooble's arrival, Gangle's existence must have been miserable indeed; it's a wonder she didn't abstract.
(19:31) Kinger, on Caine: “I can't remember what we originally called him.” — Caine wasn't his given name!
(20:07) Kinger: “I can't say the same for Scratch. His ideas were often so bizarre and abstract that the rest of the team had no idea how to work in his language.” The camera pans across a painting on the wall of the café. “Either due to pure brilliance, or… the tumour in his head.” The camera lingers on a cupcake which has been bisected vertically; each half is topped with both red and blue sprinkles. “He was… trying to make something… What was it?” The imagery here seems significant, but I'm unsure exactly what it signifies.
(21:28) Kinger: “We all technically have the ability to conjure, just like Caine; it just comes naturally to him, but requires a lot more skill and concentration for us.” This explains the butterfly in episode 6, and possibly the exit door in episode 1. Who knows what else the circus members have “conjured” without realising it? (Jax is missing out on this exposition.)
(22:33) Pomni is captivated by her reflection in the mirror, recalling a similar moment in episode 1. As she walks away, she rests her hand on the barrel of monkeys behind which she hid from Kaufmo after his abstraction.
(23:15) A car pops out of Caine's mouth and crashes into the floor. This may or may not have any relevance to Jax's backstory.
(23:46) The bowling ball at which Caine takes aim is the same one that Jax retrieved from Kaufmo's room in episode 1.
(24:15) A framed picture on the wall of the C&A office in the “exit zone” looks remarkably like the coloured blocks in the main tent of the circus.
(24:29) There are a few cassettes on the desk. What's on them: audio or data? Also, the wireless mouse and keyboard are a total anachronism for 1996, although I suppose this is an alternate reality in which computing technology developed slightly differently.
(28:17) Caine: “I'M GONNA PUT YOU FREAKS IN YOUR PLACE!” — The subsequent scenes demonstrate that he knows exactly how to psychologically torment each of them. For Ragatha, in particular, he uses memories from before she entered the circus.
(28:59) On Kinger's computer, there's a directory named “C:\CANDA\Characters\CA_NeuralScans (Obsolete)”.
(29:03) The date displayed in Kinger's terminal is 1996-10-30. This obviously isn't the current date; it's probably the date the system started running.
(29:23) Jax is surrounded by the cackling silhouettes of Ribbit, Kaufmo, and Pomni, who peel off his skin to reveal what looks like an egg yolk underneath. Clutching his flayed hide, Jax instinctively covers his chest and crotch.
(29:37) In what appears to be a list of running processes, there are two AI agents: Caine and “experimental”. In the directory listing of “/secured/”, we see files that seem to be Scratch & Ragatha's neural scans (there may be more, but the middle part of the directory listing has been elided). The last‐modified date on “[Scratch].dat” is 1999-10-15, and for “[Ragatha].dat” it's 2008-10-15. The square brackets in the file names are interesting: are their real names being hidden from us? When Kinger attempts to delete the file “/secured/paraphernalia-engine.dat”, a message says “ERROR: Can not inject torment. Torment must be 100% accidental.” — Caine said something like this to Zooble in episode 3.
(29:47) “I must hσηd ít to y°u Ģ░αη░, y◊ur mind was α∈wαys resourceâuL” — Is this Caine calling Kinger by his real name? (Is it “Grant”? I can't think of any other names that'd fit that pattern.) What is the “GreenGROUNDS” program which Kinger attempts to execute?
(30:17) Caine and Bubble are missing from their usual place in the end credits.
