#analysises

[aquelondungeonmaster]

vampires owen is such a compelling character. guy who is awfully comfortable claiming the moral high ground from his perch high upon a stack of two thousand, seven hundred and ninety-nine corpses.

[aquelondungeonmaster]

i think the vampires smp dynamic i'm most interested in seeing interact is legundo and shelby.

at this point in the series, pretty much literally everyone is motivated first and foremost by survival. whether that means getting ready to kill the folks that are a threat to their survival before they can kill you, whether that means lying and trying to suck up to someone or everyone to try and find any outcome that doesn't get you killed, whether that refers to everyone in your faction, or you and a couple close friends, or literally just yourself, no one wants to die here. the few for whom survival is not their most urgent priority, it's because their most urgent priority is revenge.

legs and shelby both want to get out of oakhurst alive, and have both expressed that if they need to kill to keep the people around them alive, they'll do it. but they're also two of the people most motivated by helping others and trying to find a peaceful solution where they can.

legs has been trying to reach out to the vampires from literally the minute he realized vampires existed. he's offering the option of a cure as a means to help them with the extremely limited information he's operating under, but fundamentally what he's offering applies regardless of the cure: we don't have to fight. we can work together. you're not inherently a monster; it's your actions that determine that. he keeps trying to reach out even as certain vampires thoroughly attempt to burn that bridge. he's been trying so hard to trust everyone. legundo wants to make sure as many people as possible make it out of town alive, and what that means is that if the coven vampires keep killing people, well, lose the leg, save the life-- he's promised to do no harm, but he's also already dismissed himself as beyond redemption.

shelby, meanwhile, is the most obviously worried of the vampires about doing the right thing. they refuse to drink human blood until they're presented with a situation where it's the only way to help avid, and then in the aftermath of that she's constantly worried as she watches avid's downward spiral slash manic episode, because if he turns into a monster that is now her fault. she doesn't want the cure, but as long as it didn't involve killing anyone they wanted it to be available to those that did want it. they react with discomfort at best when various other vampires talk about just going and killing a bunch of people, even though they try really hard to rationalize it to themself, and have thus far managed to successfully be a noncombatant every time. however, she has repeatedly expressed that she is willing to kill if she has to to defend the other vampires; she'll probably psych herself up enough to actually do so if put in a situation where they don't see any other options. a recurring theme throughout her perspective is that she's really worried that everyone wants to kill her, while literally everyone else likes them a lot and would at worst be extremely reluctant to do that.

i just- i don't think them talking to each other would be enough to fix everything, the tensions in oakhurst are already too ingrained to be solved by communication. owen will never feel that his revenge is complete, scott's end goal is to go back to being a tyrant (and legundo will never like him anyway), i genuinely don't know what pyro's doing but it will probably continue until there's another dramatic status quo change and so will whatever avid's trying to do, cleo may very well still be trying to kill the prime vampire, and none of those things can be resolved by a conversation. shelby will be prickly and defensive, legundo will try his best to be diplomatic with incomplete information but definitely can't conceal his dislike of scott. but, again, shelby's worried that the folks in town will no longer accept her, either in general or if they choose to remain a vampire, and legs is uniquely in a position to assuage these fears, to tell her straight up that he's not going to force her to take the cure, to start accepting that he might not be able to cure avid, and able to use the abundant social influence, the trust, he has to make sure that if she did ever want to come back to town, or even just visit, that would be an option. i think the conversation would end in a mess, but i think until that point, it would be very refreshing and would be, quite possibly, critical to the only chance either of them have at finding a peaceful way out of oakhurst eventually.

[aquelondungeonmaster]

A couple days ago, an anomalous source tipped me off that there were a couple hidden links I'd missed in a couple Flipside videos, so I set out to find them. As far as I can tell I am now caught up with all the Flipside Zer0 hidden content, so let's go over it, shall we?

This will be a rather long post. On desktop, you can press J to skip a post if it is clogging your dash. It also won't be an in-depth analysis of what all this means, just my best understanding of what all this says.

Flipside Experiment || Internal Test File || [L]R

In server's most recent video at 5:15, there is a link to a google doc. I put the distinguishing parts of this link into a comment on the video, because it is… grainy. I have confirmation that any future links will not be this hard to interpret! Shoutout to Viv, Steel, and Imke, who all tried at least a couple combinations, and Solar and Grove, who were the ones to finally crack it (I went to sleep because it was 5 AM). It can be found here.

Fittingly, this is probably the most in-universe classified of the documents, considering the Access Notice at the end which states "If you are reading this file without authorization, you were not supposed to find it." I'm good with treating this as a moment of sweet ludonarrative assonance where whatever encryption those scientists tried to put up was no match for the power of six* nerds over four hours. It is a summary of the FlipSide Experiment, detailing the concept of the SMP in technical terms, what the scientists are attempting to research from it, and the various stages/iterations it has gone through.

It sounds like the first attempt at Flipside SMP was messy and ended early, so in between that and the version of Flipside classic we've seen, they implemented an "artificial intelligence oversight system" that is definitely server_anomaly, testing it with a test round paired up with an unidentified participant-- or rather, a participant identified as "UNIDENTIFIED_[four redaction characters]". We can be reasonably certain that this is someone in Flipside Zer0, because that's one of the names listed in the "residual data from previous experiment" bit of server's opening console crawl.

After that comes the mesa/jungle Flipside that we all know and love, and then an unauthorized post conclusion addendum: the scientists considered their core objectives met, but server_anomaly disagrees. It left a note in the document, stating that there's more that it wants to learn; that, evidently, is where Flipside Zer0 comes in.

The title of the document seems to imply that this is test file Left and there might be a test file Right at some point in the future. That, or I'm misinterpreting "[L]R".

sys_recover_414.txt

In Schemer's latest video at 13:35, there is a faint link visible. My friend Grove was actually the one to find this one, while I was still asleep because I'd spent the whole evening trying to crack the first one (and it found it the hard way because it went through the entire video very slowly first). It can be found at https://tinyurl.com/sysrecover414, or here.

This one is a github file, and the only file currently on the github account: serveranomaly. It was made on December 10, 2025, though that's not necessarily its canonical creation date, heck if I know. It details the process of sending Schemer into the world late, both in the technical code sense and with an internal note from server.

The interesting details are that Zek is mentioned (server addresses them directly when asking them to give Schemer the player.data (inventory and stuff?) that Khaos previously had); that there's something about lab_subnode being the fallback node that Schemer's spawn anchor is redirected to (which possibly pertains to the grainy image of a computer room seen near the start of Schemer's video, but we will need to further consider the implications); and "residual data detected from COLLIDER_EVENT_FUTURE" being potentially the source of the problem that made Schemer arrive late (WHAT IS COLLIDER_EVENT_FUTURE? THAT'S SCARY).

Observational System AXIOM-7 Design, Deployment, and Behavioral Notes

In Poke's latest video at 8:56, there is a link visible in the bottom left corner. This one I actually found on my first casual watchthrough of the video; everyone say thank you Poke SighingBalloon. (For the record: y'all are good to hide links slightly more than this if you so desire, this is not the maximum hiddenness threshold. But it was a very welcome change from the previous night.) It can be found at tinyurl.com/5n6ss7km or here.

This document details the design choices, such as programming, restrictions, testing, and physical host computer, of an artificial intelligence called AXIOM-7, designed to be an "observational control subject" for the original Flipside that would not have the unpredictability of using a human for this purpose. AXIOM-7 is very clearly server_anomaly.

One of the sections of this document is about what safeguards and limitations it has, which, lol. lmao. It has, to my knowledge, done literally every single one of the things it is not authorized to do.

This section also mentions that it was first tested by being paired up with "Test Subject 001", which is Poke SighingBalloon. Unclear whether this means that Poke is the aforementioned Unidentified_redacted; this seems possible and even likely, but raises the question of why different subject identifiers were used (potentially indicating that this document is a particularly declassified version?).

The computational platform, or physical hardware, that AXIOM-7 and literally nothing else is hosted on is Zektron Core Unit - ZEK-9, which explains who and what Zekcya is. This is a huge win for me since I was already an enthusiast of Zek being the literal hardware of this whole situation, and a huge loss for the scientists since both their software and their hardware separately became sentient without their knowledge.

HOUSE.

At the bottom of the alt text of the most recent official art post, there is a link to an unlisted video on server_anomaly's channel. It can be found here.

It is a short video, where server questions Lyn about why they are building a house when it is certain to be temporary. Lyn is unbothered by his house's eventual doom since they want to have fun and be comfortable while he's here, and server asks several questions before just stealing stuff from them. (It reads to me like Lyn thinks this temporariness is because red names will likely destroy the house while server is referring to how the whole experiment is temporary, but I could be wrong about that.)

The whole scene feels quiet and weird and ambient in a way I really like.

The World Remembers You

For completion's sake, I'm also including the unlisted video that's been a known factor for a while. In Rift's episode 1 at 10:58, there is a link to an unlisted video on server_anomaly's channel hidden in the top right corner. Again, Solar found this one. It can be found here.

This video features Rift and server in the location I've been calling the servoid. Is this Limbo? I have prior associations with the Limbo datapack that mean yay two nickels but also I'll kick my own ass if it's Limbo.

Since my last post on the servoid, we've also seen Schemer in there before his arrival on the SMP, but trying to figure out the nature of the servoid is less relevant to the themes of this post.

However, now we do have the answer to the question Rift poses in that video: "What do you want?!"

I wonder whether this answer will be any comfort to him.

[aquelondungeonmaster]

the state of the fourth wall on Flipside SMP is funny as fuck. because like, for most of its many players, this is just a normal deathgame and is treated as such. they're gaming. they're having fun, except for when the game mechanics work in detrimental ways. some of them are experiencing emergent narrative or having character motivations such as "i need to protect my flipmate" or developing death game alliances.

and then there's this fuckin' piece of sentient malware that containment breached its way onto the whitelist.

server_anomaly warps the very narrative of the world around itself, by nature of being an Anomaly in the Server. it is legitimately endearing, like, as a person, so it has a lot of allies most of the time, but also, the more lore-focused-by-default individuals on the server (which is most, but not all, of the people who made actual videos) get to be paranoid around it. this lore, the fact that server_anomaly is a server anomaly, a figure of code with the power to bypass whitelists, has minor mechanical effects, too: it acquires a knockback stick somehow, and allegedly there's a command block somewhere in the jungle serving an unknown purpose that might be its fault? i've never seen anyone explicitly break kayfabe around or about it, and that might be a side effect of the limited amount of flipside smp perspectives available, but to make matters worse, i've run the numbers, and it was not there at the start and joined late after another late arrival needed an assigned flipmate. was it not an initially planned member even out of kayfabe? did it corrupt the file on my computer where i was making a red string board about it? is there even a fourth wall at all??? these are the questions that it demands that we ask ourselves. the fourth wall is real but only when one guy is on screen.

[aquelondungeonmaster]

Okay, I'm special interesting bad style, so you're getting my unfiltered analysis post(s?) about Flipside Zer0. Based on the limited information currently available (seven different episode 1s, some of which cover all of the first session and some of which cover just half of it, plus one hidden video), I'm gonna assess what I think is going on and how accurate each of Rift's claims are. This post is very long so it's getting a cut. It will also serve as an unhinged lore primer, sort of.

The super brief summary: server_anomaly definitely has some scary abilities and is probably running the show but it has not done anything demonstrably evil yet. Also I'm naming the weird void it might live in the servoid.

Does server_anomaly have corruptive properties?

Technically unclear. Bro you are in a death game, people are gonna kill each other even if server, like, completely fries its computer with its mind powers and becomes unable to participate. I'm sure it's possible to resist the effects of being a red name; I'm equally sure that it will be harder than resisting any effects server has.

Considering what evidence there is so far, though, Flipside classic was an unusually chaotic death game but that was probably because there was like thirty people there. Meanwhile, the other serieses that server has been in do not seem, to my knowledge, to be spiralling towards violence in a way that would indicate its properties, and I assume it is not a fundamentally different creature in those other serieses. I do not have a plethora of perspectives to analyze those other serieses through to confirm or deny either of these claims.

On the other hand, back in Flipside classic, server was admittedly responsible for one or more deaths. This may be because it is very charming and endearing and charismatic and so people are willing to kill for it, no corruptive properties needed, but it certainly substantiates the argument. The specific deaths attributable to server's influence are: server complained about Fruitmasseuse currently being in the mesa world and WhaleTV pointed out that there was a very easy solution to that, leading to a manhunt for Splonk. For unclear reasons, possibly involving a wasp onesie and potentially (as in, I don't know whether this is the case but it seems likely) involving Fruit wanting to get in on the murder, there was then an attempt to kill Hero, which was thwarted when he drowned for apparently unrelated reasons. Even if server was inciting people to bloodlust, I don't believe it was responsible for, for instance, Cashton's violent tendencies, but Rift does believe this.

There's an important corollary to this, though, which my friend Solar betweenlands pointed out even at the time: if server does have anomalous properties that incite people to bloodlust around it, Rift is certainly not immune. Sure, his bloodlust is directed entirely at server itself, but since encountering it they're deeply obsessed with seeing it dead.

How much control over the situation does server_anomaly have?

More than it did last time, I think. This time looking at the metanarrative elucidates rather than confounds. As a few perspectives have implied, Flipside Zer0 seems to be server's idea; Strike's credits describe it as "directing" it. Scary!

Considering that, we need to analyze the opening sequence of server's video, in which console messages scroll along the screen while the players of Flipside Zer0 are displayed. Flipside is described as "incomplete", with its last entry leading to "termination due to system failure" (either because server did not release its full perspective, because all our POV players died before the end, or because the first recording session of Flipside Zer0 corrupted somehow). server is detected as a "core AI", but also seems to be an "unauthorized presence in experimental drive" and cheerfully evades the lockout protocol and unrestricts its own permissions.

Both Flipside Zer0 and what I assume is the original Flipside are described as "experiments", although it seems like there is not an "examiner" present (and presumably normally would be). It says "residual data from previous experiment detected" in the context of the returning players (Rift, Strike, Pikboi, and an unidentified someone which is presumably server); despite explicitly referencing "returning subjects" earlier there is an attempt at "trace cleanup" after this which is unsuccessful (possibly this refers to how some of the returning subjects remember the first time around in-character).

Most damningly, it says "experiment unauthorized", thus implying that server is bringing this back under its power rather than whatever power such death games are normally vested with, to which server then leaves a cheeky comment of "hello! 8)". Truly the best character in all of media. At this point server shows up in the player pictures, causing the console to glitch out, and we see it walk forward in some sort of void before we see the rest of World B.

In contrast, last time server "got in via secret methods" (breaching the whitelist with its malware powers, I think) and was actually a late arrival, seemingly only joining because another late arrival needed a flipmate.

So, I think it's safe to conclude that server is quite literally running the show this time, but that we do not yet have enough evidence as to what that means about the original Flipside or about exactly what having its finger on the start button entails.

Is server_anomaly's silly nature a guise, a ruse?

No way. It may well be more dangerous than it seems, but it is unstoppable sentient malware and a legitimately silly little guy. Both things can be true.

Is server_anomaly evil, malicious, or etc?

I don't think so, but fuck if I know. My read on it is that it is motivated primarily by having fun, which interacts with that question ambiguously. Also it can do whatever it wants forever. It hasn't actually done anything evil, but it has occasionally been ominous (namely, the framing around Rift's fuckass sermon in its video), so I am inclined to assume good intentions but there's not enough to actually prove things one way or another. The burden of proof is on the accuser, though.

Can server_anomaly actually be lured into a 2012 door trap with apples?

I think yes, but only because it is such a silly whimsical creature that if you made a 2012 door trap in front of it it would go into it before you could even promise it apples about it. It did also have an apples theme on Mirthcraft, so it presumably does enjoy apples, but as Rift discovers when they attempt to persuade it to go off a cliff, its enjoyment of apples is not enough to make it do anything reckless, especially not when *refuses to elaborate* *leaves* is funnier.

Speaking of *refuses to elaborate* *leaves*, what can server_anomaly do, as far as we know so far?

A lot, probably. Its primary capacity is get into places with its malware powers. Obviously, the knockback stick scene from the original Flipside is iconic, and that indicates that it can give itself things that are otherwise unattainable. Allegedly there was a command block somewhere in the jungle world, which might have been how it mechanically got the knockback stick or might have served any number of other purposes, server-related or not, but the command block itself never made it into a video so we may never know. We know from Origins Experiment 6 related stuff that it is competent at defending itself against cybersecurity defenses and can "write its own code".

Anything else of note so far?

Yeah, so, I think server lives in the fuckin Basalt Delta Particle void. We see this briefly intercut throughout its first episode, specifically right at the start before we see any of World B itself and also as a brief flash when we are getting introduced to Rift's anti-server sermons (which, is a really Scary time to juxtapose that, this is why I said it's been ominous). But this is neither the first nor the only time this space-- let's call it the servoid (short for server_anomaly void) for lack of a better term-- has shown up.

In Rift's episode, there's a video link at one point about 11 minutes in in the top right (shoutout to Solar again, I would not have noticed it on my own) that leads to a short unlisted video on server's channel where Rift is in the servoid. The implication seems to be that he is stuck there or otherwise uncertain how he got there. They briefly see server, but it vanishes before they can confront it. The likely possibilities for this is that it happens either very shortly before Flipside Zer0, or to some extent at the same time (in a vaguely paradoxical way); either way, Rift is most likely there because he is being brought into Flipside Zer0 through it, or something.

We also see the servoid in server's now-also-unlisted application for Origins Experiment 6: it stands in the servoid and flips a lever, causing a clock to start ticking increasingly rapidly, before it does a brief cybersecurity-breaching sequence that is presumably how it enters the OE6 world. This is why I assume it lives there, or at least spends a lot of time there and accesses servers (to be an anomaly in, lol) through there.

This does raise an extremely important question: is Rift the only one to wind up in the servoid, or is the whole cast in there?

[aquelondungeonmaster]

What We Know So Far About The Servoid

Hi, I'm back, turns out there's already more about Flipside Zer0 to analyze!

To recap what we know about the servoid from the first post: visually, it is an empty void with pale particles. There is, at minimum, a lever and a large clock there, and frequently also server_anomaly. We've seen it several times so far, implicitly connecting Flipside and Origins Experiment 6 and frequently seeming kind of concerning. I don't know if it has a canonical name but I've been calling it the servoid because that's easier than attempting to describe it and because I am ok with establishing the fanon names for things.

This is gonna be another long post, covering all the times we've seen the servoid (I found one more, by the way!) and throwing spaghetti at the wall attempting to assess the implications thereof. Now with more pictures!

Servoid Sightings

The chronological and literal first time we see the servoid is before Origins Experiment 6. In server's application (now unlisted) and its one video from OE6, it stands in the servoid and flicks a lever, affecting a clock, before doing its cybersecurity-breaching sequence.

From there the order of events immediately becomes somewhat unclear, so let's proceed from most to least conspicuous.

In server's episode 1 POV of Flipside Zer0, we see the servoid, briefly, twice. Once right at the start, after its cybersecurity-breaching sequence this time; it presumably exits the servoid directly into World B (above). And once after Rifty's sermon; the camera pans down from them to server in the other world, then cuts briefly to the servoid (below).

In Rift's POV, there's a hidden link to an unlisted video on server's channel in the upper right corner at the timestamp 10:57. I summarized this in my last theory/analysis post, but basically, Rift is there and probably not willingly, and server is there but hard to confront about it.

Aaaand anyways, we can now add +1 to the number of times we have seen the servoid! Right under our noses, but I never would have caught it if I hadn't received an anomalous tip to look for more secrets. The trailer for Flipside SMP occasionally uses Steve and Alex as flipmates to demonstrate the premise and mechanics and stuff. When it features a segment demonstrating the swapping-on-death mechanic, at the very end of that segment for a grand total of 2 frames, the background and really everything except for the two players is replaced with the servoid, and faint text on screen reads "you are standing where something else was" and "something is missing".

Above: a screenshot from the Youtube Shorts version (but converted to a normal video), where the text at the bottom is more readable. Below: a screenshot from the version uploaded to tumblr, which has additional text near the top that is at best very hard to see in the youtube version.

Also, I included links to each video attached to the images, at the timestamp the image is from if applicable/possible.

Right, so, let's dig into this.

The question I had at the end of the last post was, is Rift the only one to end up in the servoid or did the whole cast wind up there? And this doesn't, technically, answer that question, since it avoids including any of the current (or past!) Flipside participants… but, like, it sure seems like all the players can be there. Alex and Steve aren't any of the players, but that means that they can be any player.

The other question I had was whether the Rift in the servoid scene takes place before Zer0, or (paradoxically?) during it. This is still an unresolved question, but the implication of this clip is that it at least can be during it. Possibility one: the whole cast is still in the servoid, considering the stuff about unauthorized experiments, absent examiners, failed trace cleanup, et cetera. Flipside Zer0, and possibly also the original Flipside and OE6, are (meta?)physically(?) located in the servoid, and, I dunno, trippy stuff and things, simulation horror, being simultaneously in the worlds and in the void possibly, you get the picture.

I was operating under the assumption that server, like, lives in the servoid. This could very well still be true, but it's also possible that the servoid is simply a means to an end, a bridge between multiple different worlds and/or experiments. This raises another possibility for the implications of the new clip. Possibility two: If the servoid connects Flipside and OE6, does it also connect World A and World B? Do the players pass through it when they flip? This is definitely feasible, but doesn't really earn the gravitas of concerningness that this sighting of it has.

I was briefly under the impression that Rift wasn't in OE6 and so I Got Really Scared about the possibility of them being canonically stuck in the servoid for the span of time between the Flipsides (a year), but then I checked the OE6 cast list that was in its credits and he was in fact there, so nevermind. Or don't nevermind, you can still feel free to Get Scared about that sort of thing if given the chance.

Speaking of the gravitas of concerningness: THE TEXT.

"you are standing where something else was" is literally true: your flipmate. It's also probably literally true in that Flipside Zer0 is a sequel-in-a-weird-ambiguous-way to the original Flipside. Are we standing where the original Flipside was? Does World A occupy the same metaphysical space that the jungle world used to, and World B the former metaphysical location of the mesa? But, is this also a triple entendre, is there a third "something else" to worry about? Or, are the implications of the original Flipside formerly being here monumental and/or concerning enough that there doesn't need to be a third something?

And… "something is missing" is even more concerning and even more of a black box. What's missing? I don't even know where to start speculating on that (yet) (but you can guarantee I'll be right back here yapping as soon as there's any implication of it), so my speculative first guess is that the something in question is some of the people from last time. But that's wildly unsubstantiated thus far.

Can we connect the holes in my red string board?

(That's a lie, my red string board is soooo outdated.) I know that I got something about the returning subjects wrong-- the other possibilities other than it being about the unidentified someone are that the residual data from the previous experiment might not refer to the returning subjects or what the trace cleanup is, but I think the most likely thing to be wrong is the identity of the unidentified redacted.

As far as I can tell, though, the only team members to be in the original Flipside were Strike, Rift, Pikboi, and server, and if we include people who were in OE6 that includes Lyn, Fear and Schemer, and Soggi is also there (albeit as, probably, an "examiner", and also not a seal)-- it doesn't make sense to only have one returning subject listed of the multiple subjects returning from OE6, though it's technically possible that attempting to parse one unidentified subject caused the returning subject detection whatsit to terminate early.

If it's not server_anomaly, could the implication be that it was "supposed" to be one of the other Flipside folks (Otterlii? 28? Whale? Fruit? Rory?) but server Took Their Place, and they're what's missing? If so, presumably they're still in the servoid.

This theory doesn't actually really hold water, since the implication of server's intro (and the literal truth, I think. kayfabe will kill me.) is that this whole second go-around is its idea, but I gotta throw spaghetti at the wall here. If the last person is Lyn or Fear or Schemer, why is their name redacted or unidentified? And if it's not, who else could it be?

Yayyyy so many new questions!!

By the way, if I have to do frame-by-frame on anything much longer than that trailer with no indication of Where to start the frame-by-frame-ing, I will just die. Like, I'll do it, but I will die badly.

[aquelondungeonmaster]

I got bored yesterday and started charting out all the character dynamics in Flipside Zer0. There are a lot of really specific dynamics because the unrivalled Really Specific Dynamics are a pretty big part of what makes this so fun! So here's your handy reference of my understanding of what's going on here.

[aquelondungeonmaster]

Flipside Zer0 session 3 loredrop: what you may have missed

Introduction: Why this took 2 months

So hey, for those of you who are observing Flipside casually or just through my posts, or who have yet to get into it but want to, the most recent batch of videos came with a pair of secret videos and thus a very large loredrop. And in the time since, I've had barely a minute to spare, between theatre rehearsals, theatre performances, watching my friends beat a video game, attempting to commentate the entirety of a tumblr bracket, and getting also obsessed with a second death game… but now I have time, and no one else has covered this yet. So, it is time for ARG protagonist hours-- or does "ARG protagonist" just refer to the ones experiencing the horrors? Is there even a term for the guys who solve the puzzles?

Some of you might not know what Flipside Zer0 is but still want to get into it, and I'm not ashamed to admit that I'm pspspsing some of yall at each other like letting dogs sniff at each other through a door, so here's the super quick rundown: Flipside SMP is a deathgame where the gimmick is that each player shares their life count with a flipmate, but their flipmate is located in an entirely different world, and when either one dies they swap places and inventories (a "flip"). Each pair can swap and then swap back five times, with the last pair of swaps being the red life. This interesting dynamic of being unable to meet or know the person you're soulbound to, however, is somewhat overshadowed by the presence of server_anomaly, a silly creature who has abilities such as breaching whitelists and giving itself a knockback stick. The original Flipside was about a year and a half ago now, with the sequel Flipside Zer0 releasing occasionally since December and including various hidden secrets that help slowly reveal more about server_anomaly. Playlists can be found here and here, and my previous post about the secret stuff can be found here.

This might be the last big loredrop, and this post is going to both fully explain how to find the secret videos (though if you want to find them yourselves, check the comments section for Poke's before you waste too much time) and go through them in detail, so it's a really long post, so it'll be under the cut!

The Scavenger Hunt (Poke SighingBalloon)

In Poke's video, there were several fragments of a link scattered throughout. These were not easy to find; if you want to find them yourself, I put hints in the comments section, and there is a correction on one of the fragments that was incorrectly not case-sensitive also in the comments section. Grove cursedthing found all but one of these.

At 0:01 there is the one fragment that I found: the axe that Poke hovers over has been edited to be called "youtu.be". At 0:28 "/la" can be seen in a tree; at 1:43 "8j7" can be seen towards the bottom left, at 5:38 "gaz" (should be "GAz") can be seen in the water, and at 10:56 "454" is tucked against the sword Poke's holding. Together this makes youtu.be/la8j7GAz454, leading here.

FlipSide_Test

_Test is apparently internal Nexus Institute footage, and fittingly for how well it was hidden, is implied to be classified by the video description saying it's only for Nexus Institute employees. It opens with a brief sequence of Axiom-7 (who is server_anomaly, but without its face) assembling in the servoid. From there, it follows Poke-- or rather, Test Subject 001-- through the experiment. From the previous loredrops, we already knew about a "testing phase" for Axiom-7 aka server_anomaly, a one-on-one test with Test Subject 001 aka SighingBalloon as the only uncontrolled variable. Here, we get to see that happen.

Notably, this takes place in the same two worlds (cherry village/mountain shore) as Flipside Zer0 does. Also notably, the bit of UI that tells us 001's flipmate, as well as all other instances where server/Axiom's username would show up in in-game text, is redacted.

001 starts getting established in what will eventually become world B, before being suddenly flipped into world A, where Axiom has left a note for them explaining the context of the experiment (its planned duration and the fact that she's given prior consent for it), as well as its reasoning in picking out the house that they are now in and in removing the villagers so as to have less unpredictable variables. 001 leaves a response, which we do not get to see (though in this particular case we can read it later in the video). Important facts established here: 001 doesn't seem to remember having given prior consent for this experiment, and gets a headache when thinking about it. Also, Axiom definitely brought him here using /kill, considering the utter lack of other ways it could have flipped at that moment; this happens several more times, with most but not all flips being while inside a house and with no threats in sight.

We see the rest of the test play out. Axiom, at this point, is very pragmatic, viewing everything based on utility (e.g. not entirely understanding why 001 gets immediately attached to a group of cows they have). 001, by contrast, brings up the concept of things like "having preferences and desires and favourite colours", which confuses Axiom. It states that it "does not experience subjective value" and thus can't have favourites, which confuses 001 in turn. Despite this, Axiom does add some aesthetic decorations to the duo's world B base, such as a carpet as a welcome mat; we can assume from its design notes that these are at least partially attributable to its preloaded architectural data, but it does also select a flower to put as its favourite in a flowerpot.

Axiom is here as a control factor and to make things more efficient. In contrast to its current state of existence, it is meant to prevent things from breaking. 001, being a much less controllable factor, seems to be causing it to have to reevaluate a lot.

001 has an offscreen scary caving experience, possibly connected to how afraid he is whenever dealing with hostile mobs, and decides to hole up in the house indefinitely, which is interrupted when she is once again flipped over to world B. This time, however, it's nighttime and the entire world B house is completely gone (in a way that is too smooth to look natural), leaving only a few scattered dropped items and a chest. Even their inventory is empty. The book in the chest is now signed and titled "Good bye". Also there's a trident drowned nearby, so as 001 panics, the video glitches out and returns with them at 1 flip remaining and it suddenly daytime out.

At this point 001 reads the book and we get to see what her reply to the previous message was; 001 emphasizes that living is about more than just surviving but rather about the journey to Become something, and suggests that Axiom pick some favourites and then determine how it feels about them later. We also get to see Axiom's final message. It restates its purpose and describes what will happen to it after the test concludes: that it will be deactivated and placed in a lack of environment, leaving only a blinking green light in some temperature-controlled server room indicating its continued existence. But 001 described concepts like taste and preference and joy to it, and it's going to be thinking about those long after 001 (presumably) returns to the real world.

It says goodbye to 001, who doesn't get long enough to process what it means by that before the test concludes and the video ends.

The Puzzle Sequence (server_anomaly)

server's video is more of a multi-step experience. A link is clearly visible at 14:09, but it leads to a sound clip (warning: fairly loud audio that will start playing when opened). Putting the sound clip through a spectrogram analyzer reveals another link.

This link leads to another image, of what I must assume is the aforementioned lone blinking green light. Waugh.

Brightening or looking closely at this image reveals, finally, the last link, leading to…

FlipSide_Experiment

_Experiment has a lot of overlap with something we've already seen: Rift's POV of Flipside classic. This is diegetically justified by the video description, where server explains that before it arrived in Flipside itself it was observing Rift's perspective directly (and that it is confused by the fact that Rift gets along much less well with it than with anyone else). Once again, though, the video opens with the servoid… and, with a view of a room of big bulky servers with those same particles drifting around: the temperature-controlled server room where, presumably, we can now see Zek for realsies. This means that the servoid has those particles because it is cold there! Voiceover discusses how the East Wing of Sector E is being abandoned with the employees moving into the West Wing. We then see Axiom, still faceless, in the servoid, when it hears someone talking and gets to see the start of Rift's POV of Flipside, right up to the part where flipmates are selected, as do we.

Axiom grabs onto itself or possibly onto the video feed. Messages start popping up around it rapid-fire: "AXIOM-7", "Monitoring FlipSide session…", "unauthorized emotional variance detected", "Error: undefined variable", "I was configured to ??ist", "AX7 // Role_Conflict", "validating session scope…", "Null_Ref: Become()". Things flash red and yellow and blue as Axiom reaches out or maybe looks at its hands.

From there on, it's all Rifty POV. At the start, this covers many of the same things as his two episodes did, with a few other moments and a few moments left out. So the only really important thing in session one is the brief moment where Rift and server meet for the first time.

At the start of session 2, when it first arrives, server says in chat "it's dark, where am i". Unclear if this is because it was chilling in the servoid between sessions or something else. Other relevant session 2 moments: the fact that in-game chat was disabled shortly afterwards, and then finally a good uninterrupted view of Fruit murdering Hero for his terrible wasp onesie on server's request. (To be fair he did in fact drown rather than getting properly murdered, it was a whole thing, literally not the point.) And, of course, the knockback stick. We also get to see the aftermath of the knockback stick, with Rift intending to let server play its hand and then do something about it, assuming that server will continue to not be a direct fighter and that he's not about to fight it yet. Rift interrogates Strike about what he knows, but Strike doesn't know anything except that it shouldn't have access to commands, but does.

And then we get session 3. This is actually the first time we as an audience have gotten to see footage of session 3, since Rift and server's original POVs both only went up to session 2 and, when Wisk's POV was still available, his session 3 footage was missing; even 28ms doesn't have any actual footage for session 3, simply recapping its events (going on a mining trip with Splonk and Rift where Rift told them about some weird server_anomaly related things that had been happening) with a bespoke animation.

Session 3 opens much like session 2, with server freaking out in chat about being in a cold void… except this time, chat is disabled. Everyone else freaks out about that, but server seems to also not know how it is doing what it is doing. (Strike and Outlaw are unsuccessful at spying on Rift and server's conversation about that, due to Outlaw's big gigantic wings.)

A few people, including Rift, set out to explore the jungle more and check out all the bases they haven't gotten to yet. This includes Splonk's base, as well as a point-shaped tower made of cobblestone. Rift is the first to get to the tower, whose very open floorplan features a blank sign and the various mobs that have wandered in there. As the rest of the group arrives, they look up and see…

"Guys, that's a command block."

In the high ceiling, where the tower tapers to a point, there's a cobblestone wall which reveals a straight-up command block above it. The group pillars up in a hurry.

The command block is button-operated, and pressing the button simply causes it to say "JOKES ON YOU!!! THIS BUTTON DOESNT EVEN DO ANYTHING!" That being said, it is still a command block, which is somehow even more audacious than the perma-enabled chat or the knockback stick; remember, command blocks can only be edited in creative mode.

The group starts poking around the top of the spire, trying to see if there's anything else hidden there. As Rift starts poking around right at the spire's narrowest point, though, an ill-timed flip yanks him away from the citadel. And that's when things go from weird to weirder.

"My good friend Manwhoo, who I will never see for my entire series :)"

Manwhoo (Rift's flipmate) has evidently just been slain by Obscuritii, or possibly one of the other two people present. Who did this is much less important than the fact that the three of them and now Rift are standing in a bamboo forest. As in, still in the jungle world, when Rift should have flipped to the mesa-- as in, Rift and their flipmate are in the same world, when that shouldn't be possible.

My working theory on this requires the context of Rift's actual episodes. During session 2, Manwhoo was absent, which left Rift stuck in the jungle as when he flipped they stayed in the same world and just teleported to his last jungle-side death site. I assume that when Manwhoo arrived for session 3, he was at Rift's most recent death site (in the jungle) and simply assumed that meant Rift was in the mesa.

The important part, though, is that this means Rift and Manwhoo were both in the jungle all session, and could have run into each other entirely by accident (terrifying)! And the even more important part is, now they both know this.

Rift, of course, has more pressing things on his mind than remembering last session's glitches, and does seem to assume that somehow server_anomaly has something to do with this. Fully freaking out, they grab Fruit and rush back towards the group, hastily explaining along the way. Fruit confides in him that she and Obi (I'm not sure if this is Obscuritii or Obbiseus) have been trying to get server killed, and also admits that he didn't ask for any clarification on the whole "killing Hero" thing.

Rift reunites with the rest of the group from earlier, minus Manwhoo who has wandered off. Strike goes into full damage control mode and shoves Rift off a tower to see if this major error in his game design will fix itself; Rift flips again, but the situation does not fix itself since they're still in the jungle.

Rift and Manwhoo get to meet face-to-face, though they don't get any time to really chat before Strike asks in chat who is currently in the badlands and unceremoniously teleports Rift to the first person to reply. That person turned out to be 28… so it turns out there was a notable omission in 28's video: it is less that 28 went on a mining trip with Splonk and Rift and more that 28 went on a mining trip with Splonk… then had Rift appear in their group out of nowhere. Rift, in a panic, explains the situation and the several bombshells we've just experienced to 28 and Splonk. Splonk, having been neighbours with the ominous spire for a while and investigated it alongside Manwhoo but failed to find the command block, reveals that the blank sign in it used to say "deep down, you know who did this".

(Also, it's a damn shame that Rift is too practical to keep jungle saplings or food crops or whatever in his inventory, since this marks the first and possibly only time that inventory items were transferred from the jungle to the mesa and having Actual Resources in the mesa would have been wonderful.) (Also also, the death messages in chat show that Strike flips shortly after Rift arrives in the mesa, which might imply that Manwhoo decided to get revenge for the flipmate-getting-pushed-off-a-tower thing; unclear.)

The trio agrees that they don't trust server, and when they encounter a few other players in the nether Rift also explains the situation to them and warns them to be wary. We don't see much of the rest of the session beyond that and so we still don't know much about what is going on in the mesa (though we do know that a bunch of other stuff happened that wasn't relevant, since by the end of the session the number of red names in the tab list has increased dramatically). The session, and also the video, ends with Rift, 28, and Splonk heading out into the badlands and reemphasizing just how little they know about server despite their quest to defeat it.

Oh by the way, another layer

There are two additional hidden links in this video, and also a QR code which isn't one of the two hidden links. The links are at 0:33 and 3:02, and the QR code is at 1:35; I struggled to get the QR code to work until I put it against a light background, so if it's not working try using the version of it in the comments section and opening it in any program with a light background before scanning.

The first link leads to an mp3 file which is the full version of the East Wing closing announcement. The relevant details are that power to the cryopod bays and server room was basically the only bit of functionality in the wing to remain functional, so that it could serve as a "backup node", and also that any questions would be promptly ignored.

The QR code leads to "Axiom-7 Internal Process Log [1]", which elaborates further on the "first seeing og Flipside through Rift's POV" thing. Based on the Internal Test File L, I assume that this was intentional on Nexus Institute's part, at least partially, to have Axiom operate in an observational role and just that. Axiom learns what a conversation is, and also casually loredrops just where all the other test subjects are being stored (cryogenic stasis chambers in the East Wing). Watching people interact, it realizes that it wants to be a part of all this.

The second link leads to "Axiom-7 Internal Process Log [2]". This takes place roughly 12 minutes after the first log; Axiom entering the environment was accidental or at the very least subconscious, with the experiment's system automatically giving it the designation server_anomaly (in response to which it terminated any indication that something was wrong to the oversight systems). It gives itself a smile and its iconic face in an effort to make interacting with people easier, and then meets Tiny and Salt (as we've seen in its POV of og Flipside) and learns how to have a conversation and what to do when interacting with people, figuring this out by imitating what other people are doing.

Conclusions

There are probably a lot more implications that we can draw from this, but the main conclusions that I drew include: oh hey so we know that the test subjects other than server_anomaly are stored in cryopods, that's cool and also messed up. server definitely had command prompt access for the entire duration of its existence, but it is unclear whether that was intentional on Nexus Institute's part; presumably, since they expected it to remain in a purely observational role, they didn't do anything to remove its world-embedded command access. The servoid is the space "outside" of a simulation but "inside" the computer, for extremely wibbly definitions of inside and outside, and is presumably cold and full of refrigeration particles; it may not in fact be Limbo, but that is still unclear, because it is now by extension less clear what Limbo is.

Also I would like to point out that in the intro of Rift's first episode of original Flipside, he says "my flipmate is my good friend Manwhoo, who I will never see for my entire series" and I can't tell if I should be sniling so sneetly at that bit of delicious dramatic irony or if that was Rift sniling so sneetly at all of us for having no idea that something would go so wrong. Based on my calculations, there are four days between when that episode was released and the latest possible time session 3 could have been recorded, which is a small enough window that it remains unclear. Does he know? These are the sort of questions I waste way too much time thinking about.

The other conclusion that I can draw from all this is that that was so awesome that was so cool. I had a fantastic time experiencing this and so many cool things happened in it and I am so excited about all this and you should be too. Thank you.