All current evidence that's pointing towards Fan = Mephone4
It's always been interesting to consider what the different contestants subconsciously mean to Mephone4 as a person and what aspects of himself they were originally created as representations of, but none of them moreso to me than Fan.
Mephone, at the time of conceptualizing Fan, was in exactly his position. A huge reality TV enthusiast who wanted to be appreciated through it.
Fan was quite literally Mephone4 making a variant of HIMSELF for his own show.
And after Mephone went away with 3GS, Fan ended up doing exactly what Mephone4 had done all those years back. Stepping up from being an enthusiast to being a host.
And then there's Fan's near death experience. It has some concerning parallels to Mephone's first death.
The cliff. The Meeple product that caused it all. Everything down to the inclusion of Bot as a parallel to Bow, both hurt from their prior experiences.
The recurring electrocution in the water.
You can even draw interesting conclusions as to how this suggests that Poppy is the stand-in for the suitcase, a prize or treasure being sought after? Either way, they're set up to be eerily similar.
Now - Let's look at Fan's dream:
"I see you were a fan too."
I've wondered about this screen, and exactly what its supposed to represent. First guess would have been that It's Inanimate Insanity, but Fan doesn't talk about it like they're watching II, but later lines make more sense if that was the case. With the fact that he uses the pronoun 'this' instead of 'the', it sounds more likely to be an unrelated show. Its possible that the mystery screen is meant to represent whatever shows either of them we're interested in, both II and whatever Mephone enjoyed simultaneously. That still brings up two equally concerning possibilities:
Either Mephone is here sitting in Fan's shoes, or Fan remembers a show we know only Mephone has actually seen.
Either way, there's a connection being drawn here.
This whole scene is even more confusing but there's some stuff to pick out here.
First is that when Mephone questions him on the use of 'were', Fan automatically assumes that he was asking why Mephone isn't a fan anymore, as opposed to assuming hes scared something might have happened to him.
Fan saying "You were a fan too" would make sense in the context of him not knowing Mephone anymore after the events of season 2, but it's immedietely made strange by the fact that he backs up this claim by saying that the show he was watching got worse over time when pushed. That, and Fan seems to just know that Mephone isn't a fan of this show anymore. Mephone's reaction immedietely after is even more jarring.
Somehow, this causes him to genuinely fear that something happened to him. Whether you think that it was the past tense usage alone or fan's small explanation that sets him off, this is still an either an incredibly irrational conclusion to get to considering Mephone's perspective of this conversation.
Fan immedietely catches onto this and reassures him that they stopped him. Cobs name is not said, but its implied.
Him accusing Fan here is even weirder. We can definetely say that Fan has to feel some sort of guilt with what happened to Mephone for this to come up in his dream. You could also say this connects back to Fan's insecurities and conflicting feelings towards the show, especially now that hes in charge of it.
I think theres a 2nd interpretation you could see in all of this, that Mephone is Fan and 'him' is referring to Mephone4 himself. 'You stopped me, so where am I? What did you do?' Admittedly thats a stretch but I think its worth considering.
And in the final scene, Mephone seems to do a sudden 180 on him. Leaving Fan with the same problem that he had to go through. That Meeple was coming for him. That he had to leave. That Fan had to run away from it all.
And Fan falls down.
And whats the first thing he does when he wakes up? When he leaves this dream and falls out of the building window? Pretend to have lost his memories.
After that, he seems to unknowingly take what Mephone told him to heart, too. In the hospital, he panicks and says that they are coming for them, that everyone needs to run away and get off of the island. He ends up making that specific person a little clearer afterwards, sure, but the unspoken threat here is Meeple. And even when he is asked what makes him so sure of that threat, all he can say is that its just a feeling.
And thats a paranoia we've only quite seen in one other person before.
Another minor thing in this episode that I want to mention is the fact that when Fan opens his phone, it opens on II episode 1, but specifically the scene in which Mephone first introduces himself to the audience. What an interesting choice for the first episode of this season we see him again.
Overall, I think this show is going to play a lot with the idea of Fan going from being a fan to being a host, and in that same way, paralleling Mephone's journey along the way. Like some sort of... how did Cammy put it, ...a second coming of him?
If anyone else has something to add to this, please comment! All is appreciated.
discussed a very small and unimportant theory with my boyfriend and i hate twitter so im putting it here
the screen protector given to mephone4 is super ill fitting and looks way too small in every clip we see it on him
like it doesn’t fit his whole body annnd a while back I had a realization that 3GS models only have the speaker line and not the front camera both in real life and on ii
And mephones screen protector only goes around that line and doesn’t cater to his front camera
idk I’m thinking cobs made 3GS a screen protector but then never got to use it because of the failed mission so instead of making a new one for mephone4 he just reused the one he made for 3GS
I'm here to talk about how Mephone4 actually sucks at spelling and why
Now some people believe that this man doesn't suffer from spellings cuz of his notes that he write
AUTOCORRECT exists in Mephone4, and my prove is the time Mephone4 used text to speech in the "overthinkers" EP
[what he was trying to say was "While I appreciate the extra time for my screen shining, enough is enough! You all have ten minutes to hit the button. Or I'm going to spin around and randomly pick someone to choose who's eliminated"]
You can clearly see how even the auto correct failed to understand what Mephone4 was trying to say, proves that he has issues with spelling in season 3
But why not when he was writing the papers back at mecloud?
I think I understood why
Mephone4 is not in his body, and from the last I remember there is a register-? Well some component of a PC that saves on all the spelling. Again Mephone4 isn't in his body, he's in Mephone4s's body. Mephone4s job was to terminate so Cobs didn't felt like it was important for Mephone4s to have the need to spell
Thus Cobs never worked on the English and spelling part. This is why I think Mephone4 can't spell, sorry if I explained badly
A Theory In Light of The Reality of The Situation Regarding OJ and Taco
As is tradition for the last few posts, MAJOR INANIMATE INSANITY SPOILERS! Not just II S2 16 this time, though that DOES play into the major crux.
So I had a big think and I made a big theory.
Something that kinda stood out to me in seeing the reactions to II S2 16 is how much OJ's narcissism is brought up- the hats, the titling of it being HOJP instead of HOP, keeping himself the focus and stuff like that, to the point where his choice of what to do after he won was to make a hotel called Hotel OJ.
But then I thought about how...he won and more importantly, Taco lost. And then this line came to mind:
And the phrase "I was built to win!", after the revelations of II S2 16, takes on such a different meaning now. Obviously this was pre-the decision of the plot twist so consider this half theory, half headcanon, but something that stuck out to me is that the twist only kicks in after Taco loses. After Taco loses...because of Bow, who was always a wild card in the grand scheme of things.
...What if Taco was supposed to win S1, but Bow ruined it?
Now I kinda brushed this off when I had this yesterday but then I saw that image in a tweet and more importantly...this response.
And now I'm thinking there might actually be something to this.
Now, originally I believed that the paths that Taco and OJ ended up taking were their programming trying to correct itself and rapidly getting everything messed up. OJ's narcissism and pride are shoved into the facade of a winner, a natural leader, while Taco's entire character is rewritten to justify her losing- villains don't win, so she much be a villain for her to suddenly lose like that when she so clearly had it in the bag!
...Originally being the keyword. Because while I think this is still true to a certain degree, a different question reared its head into my brain and has not left.
What if OJ was supposed to turn villain when he lost?
It would fit the narrative- selfish, prideful person loses everything at the last step and turns villainous to take what is "rightfully his". But then Bow messed everything up, and now Taco, who lost instead, must take on the twist villain role.
When I first told this theory to a friend, they pointed out that that means instead of Taco playing Pickle, OJ was probably going to turn out to be playing Paper the whole time. But the story had to correct itself, and thus...
The bottom line is essentially that Taco and OJ are, to some degree...broken.
