Trivia

It turns out that if you’re willing to kill your immersion dead, some of the things you will learn about the creation of the Slender Man are very interesting.

See also: Soundtrack, Dreams and Pareidolia, Nightmare Retardant

Original Mythos

  • Victor Surge, real name Eric Knudsen, stated in an interview that his creation “was mostly influenced by H.P Lovecraft, Stephen King (specifically his short stories), the surreal imaginings of William S. Burroughs, and couple games of the survival horror genre; Silent Hill and Resident Evil. I feel the most direct influences were Zack Parsons’s “That Insidious Beast”, the Steven King short story “The Mist”, the SA tale regarding “The Rake”, reports of so-called shadow people, Mothman, and the Mad Gasser of Mattoon. I used these to formulate something whose motivations can barely be comprehended and causes general unease and terror in a general population.”
  • One of the images on the Wilks Estate page comes from the mirror of Myrtles Plantation, purportedly “one of America’s most haunted homes”. According to one poster on the Original Mythos Meta page, “nothing was spooky about that mirror, but the entire night was full of violent banging and slamming from down stairs and I kept pushing the covers off only to feel them resting on my shoulder a few minutes later as I laid there listening to the demolition derby down stairs, hoping dearly that it was just staff paid to break shit all night.”
  • As shown on the Original Mythos Meta page, the Slender Man mythos and SCP Foundation share common authorship. The author of SCP-173, the original SCP Foundation story, proceeded to write the “Generalized description of the Slender Man” portion of the Optic Nerve page.
  • The first reference to House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski in relation to the Slender Man also comes from the Original Mythos Meta: one of the earliest posts on the Slender Man suggests that someone write a novel on the monster that would be “a collection of witness statements, newspaper clippings, pictures, drawings, articles discussing evidence for an against the slender man and, to tie it all neatly together, a few stories of people who want to track the slender man, unravel the mystery. And the kicker would be the last 20 or so pages would be missing, with only scraps of paper left, arranged as logically as possible, just excerpts, words, rips, ink stains, etc.” Another of the earliest posts notes the spiritual similarities between the Slender Man and the Rake.
  • The “Lahaska, Pennsylvania” images from the Found Photographs page are pictures of Roots, a Halloween decoration by artist Pumpkinrot.
  • In what was most likely a coincidence, one of the Small Findings images depicted the Slender Man’s head as a crossed-out circle before Marble Hornets ever established the Operator symbol. So if you need an in-universe justification as to why the symbol only appears in Tribe Twelve and Dark Harvest before they established their own, it should suffice to say that different people who encounter the faceless monster could come up with the same basic symbol independently of each other –just like in real life!
  • Yes, I am aware that the otherwise serious Jessica Samson story references Jessica and Ashlee Simpson. No, I haven’t the foggiest as to why it does.

Marble Hornets

  • In the August 2, 2010 interview with WXCI, Troy Wagner stated that the name “Marble Hornets” was meant to replicate the “adjective noun” titles of pretentious student films and that he chose them from two trucks he saw drive by – one for granite delivery and another for pest control. In-universe, early “J” correspondence states that “a little sculpture of a marble hornet came into play at some important part of the movie. I think it was drawn from Alex's experience, since when he lived with his parents, they had a bunch of little sculptures laying around, decorating their house.” The series’ working title had been “The Slender Tapes”.
  • Starting with that same WXCI interview, the group have stated that when Marble Hornets was originally intended to end with Season One, Jay would have encountered the Operator by the side of the road and say he would continue, never to be heard from again or barely survive a car crash that causes him to quit his investigation.
  • Also starting with that same interview, they have stated that the Operator was not a mannequin, but the way it was actually made will remain a mystery due to its alleged mundanity and potential to spoil the fear.
  • On November 6, 2009, Roger Ebert tweeted about the series: ““Marble Hornets,” a YouTube serial. A forsaken indie film meets “Paranormal.” All episodes to date.”

“When the object enters the timestream, time begins to correct itself. Let me use this example: Imagine four balls on the edge of a cliff. Say a direct copy of the ball nearest the cliff is sent to the back of the line of balls and takes the place of the first ball. The formerly first ball becomes the second, the second becomes the third, and the fourth falls off the cliff. Time works the same way.”

  • With regards to the person in a skull mask shown in “Entry #26”, it has been confirmed that it would have been Jay in a similar state as Tim until they decided to scrap it; “I guess we can say, though, since you know, we didn’t really hear from that character anymore, they could still be out there”. As Marble Hornets Explained by Night Mind posits, this scrapped plotline could account for such unusual Season Two moments as the “Tweetocalypse”.
  • While the same cannot be said for their characters, one camera actually lasted the team the entire five-year series –nearly breaking towards the end, but ultimately pulling through.
  • The Marble Hornets creators actually left burnt tapes in the park with red tower; a video of their discovery can be found here.
  • The school library used as a filming location for the last few videos has since been renovated in an effort that started around the same time the Marble Hornets creators used it. Apparently, this was one of the few locations where they received permission to film.

Just Another Fool

  • Just Another Fool references House of Leaves with Logan’s address on Ash Tree Lane, location of the titular house, and in the prominence of Yggdrasil, subject of a poem on the very last page of the book.1
  • Although Dav Flamerock (UF) was just a player in the ARG, the frequent in-universe acknowledgment of his comments implies that Miskatonic University really exists within the story as he describes it; which is to say, “the reason Miskatonic has no web presence is because we work exclusively on Internet-2, so none of our webwork can be accessed on Internet-1 (what we are using now). […] Lovecraft, as you mentioned, went there and wrote about it, and that was the first really public view to the school. As I’m sure you know, the first story sticks, and so now everyone knows it as ‘that school that Lovecraft wrote about.’” At one point, he notes “the frightening resemblance of the scratches on the cover to something too dangerous to discuss on these unreliable networks.” And, in response to a gamejack that also attempted to reference Lovecraft: “if you really wanted to pass yourself off as real, you would at least do some historical research and remind yourself that Innsmouth was effectively destroyed in police action over sixty years ago.”

Everyman HYBRID

  • Everyman HYBRID references House of Leaves with frequent appearances of a copy in the background of some videos, a passage circled by Jeff as a lead of some sort (“Why did god create a dual universe?”), “From Johnny Truant” on CANYOUSEETHEWORDS, and “November 1, 2010” on CANYOUSEETHEWORDS. It probably also influenced the series’ internal logic and the blog’s consistent text markup (water, flood, ark), not to mention Alex’s crawlspace and the house at Baldpate.
  • Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov (which In-Game Jeff says “actually inspired House of Leaves, for obvious reasons”) comes up first in CANYOUSEETHEWORDS post “Prior to Canto Three” and then in the Centralia Note’s text of “shade’s password to the unreliable narrator”: pity.
  • Everyman HYBRID references the game Alan Wake in such instances as “The Poet and the Muse” by Poets of the Fall Old Gods of Asgard playing in “Jeff”, these beautiful moments on the series’ Twitter (“‘My name is Alan Wake. I've lost everything, my flashlight, my wife.’ But not Barry. [J]”), and the name of Lady of the Light.pdf.
  • Speaking of beautiful moments in Everyman HYBRID referencing video games, we can all die happy knowing that this happened.
  • Since Centralia, Pennsylvania was the inspiration for Silent Hill, it is only fitting that the Graffiti Highway in Everyman HYBRID’s “Centralia” video includes lyrics from a song in Silent Hill 3: “This town will eventually take me… This town will win.”
  • The Rake’s presence in this series is often accompanied by songs by The Decemberists due to the title of “The Rake’s Song”, which played just before its appearance in “Cops Checked, No Body”.
  • Weird New Jersey may have influenced the selection of such locations as Lambertville High School, considering their story on it and this digression on Twitter (“who would have ever have thought that I'd have a reason to share this? [J]”).

Tribe Twelve

  • Noah’s room has a poster of Sandeman, a conveniently-named brand of wine.
  • Victor Park is indeed a reference to Victor Surge; in fact, the signs displaying its name have been edited in post. In addition to the early uses of the Marble Hornets Operator symbol (now irrelevant in-universe) and totheark reference of Noah’s name, the Just Another Fool reference in “Submission #2” came from the name “Logan” being already carved into the tower at a convenient time.
  • Tribe Twelve’s later references to other series include Noah saying “it’s really fucking with my mind something awful” in “November 11th”, Noah quoting Marble Hornets’ “more tapes” line in “Extraordinary Circumstances”, and the Everyman HYBRID business card on his desk in “Crawlspace”.
  • The Observer’s statement that “you, and everyone you’ve ever known, are prisoners… bound in a cave and facing a blank wall on which you can only perceive shadows” alludes to Plato’s Allegory of the Cave.
  • “Halloween Hotel” includes a brief shot of someone wearing a shirt of The Silence and a Weeping Angel, two Doctor Who monsters commonly compared to the Slender Man.
  • In “Crawlspace”, Noah is shown reading Impossible Worlds, a collection of works by M.C. Escher and Bruno Ernst.

Dark Harvest

  • Dark Harvest frequently references the Legend of Zelda games (possibly itself in reference to the Haunted Majora’s Mask creepypasta and ARG), often just by having them play in the background.
  • Chris’ shirt in “Update #5 (5:02 PM 11/25/2011)” says “I've got a squeedly-spooch” as a reference to the Invader Zim episode “Dark Harvest” after which the channel is named.
  • Dark Harvest references House of Leaves with Daniel reading a copy of the book in Tribe Twelve video “The Manifest” and retweeting Mark Z. Danielewski: “"Again that faint growl returns, rolling through the darkness like thunder." #houseofleaves”
  • In keeping with its blend of conspiracy theorist culture and Slender Man mythos, Dark Harvest twice references the dark net: first when Daniel digs up information on the Order’s membership, and then when Matt mentions that he got the forged birth certificates from a friend who used to sell them on the Silk Road. As Jeff puts it, “it makes it really easy to look up information, but it makes it extremely hard for, like, the government or anyone to destroy the information.”
  • One person aware of the Slender Man mythos but not Dark Harvest in particular once happened upon the real daycare; their pictures can be found here.
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