👁️🗨️Uncanny Valley Lore👁️🗨️
⚠️This archive contains 18+ material, Minors DNI⚠️
Apologies for the wait! It's finally ready, the full Lore Masterpost for Uncanny Valley! Or at least... everything we know as of now about the island, its species and even some docs with specific facts on John Doe and Maison Talo! MortisFox might come back to these stories one day, when that happens, I'll update this archive ✨
All of the info here has been gathered through Tumblr and Twitter posts!
Now, without further ado, lets get into it!
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🫀 Section 1. The Island
The Uncanny Valley is described as a perpetually moving island with a surface area of 1'500 square miles (slightly smaller than Rhode Island). Due to its mysterious nature, however, it's not really visible to anyone who doesn't live in it, making this place near impossible to locate or observe.
Although normally it moves around in the ocean, on rare occasions it can happen to also intersect with other land masses, making it accessible to humans as well.
"The Uncanny Valley is not on any map, but if you're meant to find it, you'll end up there."
Living in the valley is a very "YOU ARE HERE NOW" experience, and you'll learn to live with what's on the island.
If the island is near land, someone could probably leave, but they'll most likely suffer from boat vertigo for the rest of thir lives. It really screws perception and balance up, causing dizziness and nausea when off the island.
Most people, however, won't even want to leave after they've lived there for a while. It's not a bad place to be, but it can be quite dangerous for the ones who don't know what to look out for.
Most of the Island's inhabitants are unaware of all its secrets and workings, but what's for certain is that this territory is somehow trying to imitate the real world's feeling with variable success, from odd foods and humanoid fuzzballs, to structures that are actual living organisms.
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🫀 Section 2. The Inhabitants
Speaking of the wide variety of species that live in the Uncanny Valley, lets see all the ones that have been revealed so far! There's actually a lot of lore about them that never made it into the games. It might change eventually, but for now, I'm treating all of this as canon.
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Regular Guys
Starting with John Doe's species: Regular Guys!
"Their actual name is not pronoucable, but the Valley calls them this way."
These lil fuzz balls are considered pests in the Uncanny Valley, but where do they come from? Well, the Mother Ball of course!
(Art by MortisFox)
Nobody knows how old the Mother Ball actually is, they've been living in the Valley for ages, to the point where nobody remembers where it quite came from either! But Regular Guys keep separating from it, and that's a problem for the other inhabitants.
It is technically possible for another Regular Guy to grow big enough to become another Mother Ball themselves, but the phenomenon has never been observed.
Anatomy
Upon separating from the Mother Ball, Regular Guys look like large clumps of hair with a single eye, they are also known as "Hairballs" in this state.
Their brain is protected by the Regular Guy's tongue, and their mouth is equipped with several rows of teeth similar to a lamprey.
(Art by MortisFox)
Regular Guys who choose to become part of society usually build their humanoid bodies out of clay and other materials, with varying degrees of success. This body often moves cartoonishly, and has a rubbery feel to it.
(Art by Bileshroom & MortisFox)
Regular Guys can't exactly reproduce, but when one has enough mass, it is possible for a piece of it to get separated and form its own consciousness after 24 hours. It can be compared to mitosis.
It should also be noted that Regular guys don't have a specific gender, and they can instead change it at will on their humanoid body, if they so wish.
Finally, a Regular Guy can technically live forever as long as they can find enough material to keep growing, similarly to lobsters.
Abilities
Aside from being able to eat pretty much anything, Regular Guys can also use their hair as small tendrils, in order to sneak into someone's pores and into their brains, altering how the victim perceives reality and how they react to it.
This action is considered illegal in the Valley, and can warrant extermination.
Regular Guys are also known to infest REALTORs as well, which can be deadly for the REALTOR.
In Society
Hairballs that refuse to become part of the community are considered pests due to their diet consisting of inorganic materials. If a place is left abandoned for long enough, it can become infested with them.
There's a pest control unit tasked with taking care of these infestations. They will pry the Regular Guys off surfaces with specially-made grabbers, toss them into a bag and either incinerate them or bring them back to the Mother Ball for Culling.
There are, however, people who LIKE Hairballs and will keep them for cleanup or as pets.
"They're sentient and able to take orders, but also sometimes are just jerks and won't listen. They're all unique!"
Regular Guys who want to be "people" are assigned jobs that suit their skills, and the vast majority of them have a humanoid body, as existing as a Hairball can be dangerous for them due to mixups.
Most of the Regular Guys that have integrated into society are a lot more normal compared to Hairballs, though they can still have some quirks.
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REALTORs
Moving on to the species of Maison and Heim: REALTORs!
Yes, the official way of writing their name is in all caps!
"It symbolizes a need to get it across, since it's technically a lie! Imagine emphasizing something you aren't"
Against all odds, these guys are actually classified as carnivore plants, with their real body being the house, and the lure being the humanoid figure who's trying to sell said house.
(Art by MortisFox)
They're a species spread all over the Valley, from its center to the edges.
Anatomy
Since REALTORs are plants, their starting form is similar to a seed or a bulb, that needs to be planted in the earth to grow big and healthy! Every REALTOR has it hardwired in their instincts to plant their offspring properly.
(Art by MortisFox)
Once the seed has been planted, it will grow into a house, the process mimicking the stages of a house being built.
First the support beams, then the shingles and so on. The lure sprouts last, like a flower, and once it has, their base appearance doesn't change or visibly age. It should be noted that the lure's appearance isn't linked to the REALTOR's sex, which is instead determined by the presence (Male) or absence (female) of a chimney.
REALTORs can also have multiple chimneys.
Once the REALTOR has fully grown, this is what they look like on the outside.
(Art by Bileshroom)
The insides, however... are a proper organism.
(Art by Bileshroom)
And the lure is nothing more then a wooden puppet used to hunt prey.
(Art by Bileshroom)
As for how REALTORs reproduce, it's not too dissimilar from how plants do, with the male REALTOR visiting a female REALTOR to pollinate them.
Afterwards, the female will have a seed, that they can then plant in a free space, where a new REALTOR will grow.
(Art by MortisFox)
The new REALTOR's genotype will be determined by the parent with the more dominant genes, whose likeness will be shown as a pin on the REALTOR's lure.
With them being plants, they can potentially live for centuries, and at the end of their life cycle, they would fossilize.
Abilities
REALTORs are designed to eat large amounts of raw meat. They're capable of eating other kinds of food, but it's not really good for them.
Their preferred prey is humans, since they can be fooled by their humanoid lure.
They can also produce business cards out of their vest's pocket, which are organic and will deteriorate over time.
They are capable of feeling everything inside their house body, making it impossible for prey to hide once they enter. This also means they can feel pain if their walls or floors are damaged with sharp objects.
REALTOR bodies are massive, so healing from most injuries is possible. They can even regrow their lure if it gets cut off from its cord, even though it'll regrow with deformities.
Unfortunately, regrowing a lure takes a long time, and most REALTORs will go hungry before they can complete the process and will die.
It should be noted that REALTORs eat and digest prey through the walls of their house body. The lure itself can't eat or drink.
In Society
Given their nature as huge carnivores, regulations were put in place to limit the amount of prey REALTORs are allowed to eat per month.
This amount usually isn't nearly enough to keep them properly fed, so a lot of REALTORs in the Valley are malnourished.
Just like the exterminators that control Regular Guy population, there's a service in place to keep REALTOR overpopulation at bay known as Weeding, though it's rather inhumane.
If a REALTOR happens to grow on a plot of land designated for another structure, they would get weeded out.
To further protect other inhabitants of the Valley, a phone line known as the Apartment Hunters has been established. This is the proper way to find housing on the island, without falling for a REALTOR's ruse.
It is, of course, possible for REALTORs to have an actual job, and a more socially accepted life, but hunting is hardwired in their brains.
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Malls
Malls are large living organisms made of other, smaller structures: Stores.
Unlike REALTORs, Malls are completely safe, as they feed off energy instead of meat, though they still possess a sort of luring system.
They can latch onto power cords and transfer a commercial to the Valley, showing the Mall's name and their various Stores.
The articles sold inside a Mall would be poor imitations of what a real-world mall sells, bootleg and distorted merch, that is in no way official.
The energy created by customers inside the Stores would then go on to be shared with the entire organism.
If a Mall doesn't get enough customers, it can die.
A dying mall will struggle to broadcast its commercials, which will be full of static and jump in points.
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Ice Cream Men
Not much is known about this species, but their intelligence is on-par with a human's. They can hold conversations, sell things and do anything that their bodies permit.
The windows are decorative and their bones and organs are stored inside.
(Art by Bileshroom)
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The Sources!
If you'd like to read all the screenshots where I gathered this information from, I made a Google Drive with all the sources!
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🫀 Section 3. The Characters
Moving on to another big section of this archive! The Uncanny Valley has many iconic characters we all love, and some more obscure ones that never really got a chance to shine, so lets take a look at them!
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The Mayor
The entity who "rules" over the Valley and has been there since the beginning. His official design was never fully shown, but there's a couple of NSFW Ivy pieces where his tentacles appear! Nothing else is known about him.
(Art by Bileshroom)
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Ivy Woodrow
She is the Mayor's Assistant! A kind and sweet human girl who helps out the Mayor with keeping track of things in the Valley.
She talks to everyone on a regular basis and documents everything she can about all of the inhabitants.
She's also the one who helps people and other creatures to find a job to become part of the community!
We don't know how she got in Uncanny Valley, but she's here now!
I made a post with all her sprites for reference purposes, which you can find here:
🌿Ivy Woodrow Sprites Collection🌿
Ivy is also the sister of a Purple-verse character, known as Basil Woodrow, who's perhaps one of the oldest OCs by MortisFox.
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John Doe
John Doe is just a Regular Guy! He's completely obsessed with You, and would do anything to end up with You, because he loves You so much!
His job was never confirmed, but it's been said he works pretty close to Ivy.
Being the most popular character in the UCV series, a lot about him has been answered, and I took the time to gather all this info in one Google Doc, which you can read here!
🦷Asks & Facts on John Doe🦷 There’s a lot of John Doe info, unfortunately it’s all scattered in different platforms, some of which aren’t e
This Doc also contains some NSFW facts, beware!
A big thanks to @proxylynn who has an amazing John Doe thread on Twitter, which you can find HERE!
Finally, I also made a post with all of Doe's sprites for reference purposes, which you can see here:
🦷John Doe Sprites Collection🦷
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Maison Talo
Maison Talo is the self-proclaimed #1 REALTOR in the valley, he just really wants you to buy a house from him, and is definitely trustworthy!
There's not a lot of material on him, but I still gathered all I could in this Google Doc right here!
🏠Asks & Facts on Maison Talo🏠 There’s not nearly as much info on Maison, but the few things I’ve found still deserve a doc of their own, s
And much like the previous two, he also got some nice sprites to look at for reference purposes, riiiight here:
🏠Maison Talo Sprites Collection🏠
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Heim Baile
Heim is... Heim, he's a REALTOR who'd rather have a nice burger than spend time hunting a human, and even when he does try, his house body is so unkempt, no human in their right mind would want to enter it.
He sprouted on July 19th 1974, and is the shortest REALTOR lure of the bunch, only being about 3 feet tall.
I made a sprite gallery for him, which you can see here for reference purposes:
🏚️Heim Baile Sprites Collection🏚️
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The Host
The Host appears very briefly in House Hunted 2, we don't know a lot about him, but he seems to be a whacky TV show host of sorts.
His species in unknown, but he isn't a Regular Guy nor a REALTOR
(Art by MortisFox)
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Caretaker
He's a very mysterious man, species unconfirmed, who takes care of Hairballs.
His pants are made of rubber as he spends a lot of his time in the river, rescuing the little guys.
(Art by BileShroom)
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Dom Hus
Dom is yet another REALTOR, and not much at all is known about him, but we do have a reference sheet for him! He was supposed to appear in the full UCV game series.
(Art by BileShroom)
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Raam Talo
Another character that was supposed to appear in the full UCV game. Raam only exists in name. We never got a design for them, or any other mention aside from one Tweet listing off the important characters in UCV.
This is pure speculation, but since they have the same last name as Maison, they could be related to him, maybe a sibling, or parent... or maybe even an offspring!
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🫀 Section 4. Game Footage
I am not allowed to share the actual games unfortunately, but what I can do is give you all some very good no commentary videos so that you can still experience the games in some way.
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Classic John Doe
BIG big thanks to @presidentyaoi for finding and reuploading the original John Doe gameplay from MortisFox! They've helped me a lot with game footage, I'm very grateful!
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John Doe +
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House Hunted
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House Hunted 2
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And huge thanks to @ YourGameOfficial and @ GamingSugoi on YouTube for these super thorough playthroughs of the other games! My internet is very poor so I would've struggled to upload my own recordings :'3
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🫀 Section 5. The music
Honestly this section was a last minute addition, but I happened to stumble upon the official Uncanny Valley playlist on Spotify and thought I'd add it!
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This is all I've been able to find. I know it's a huge post, but to anyone who's managed to read this far... well thank you! Really makes me feel all this work was for something!
I really hope to see this series make a return eventually.
Next archive I'm going to be working on is about Fallen, the game that chronologically would've happened first in the Purple-Verse timeline. Hope y'all will tune in for that as well!
Until then, thank you for reading ♥️