This game is, arguably, a deconstruction of the idea that you should never meet your heroes because they are flawed human beings who will let you down.

In this game, Raz dives right into the very psyches of several of his heroes and sees their flaws and mistakes first hand and... It doesn't really change how he sees them. If anything, getting to know the real them and helping them overcome their own traumas makes him admire them more while reinforcing the idea that everyone makes mistakes, everyone is flawed, and everyone can suffer trauma.

Even with Ford, Raz is justifiably angry, but... He doesn't hate Ford. He honestly seems more concerned about the immediate fallout and is still able to listen to reason with Ford.

Eddie Rigs is who you're thinking of: Incidentally, Raz's reaction to finding Vison's Violin is also a reference to Brutal Legend.

Per that game, a Roadie's job is to stay out of the spotlight, sneak around, clean up, and do whatever it takes to make the band look good. In the rockstar world, it is a sacred duty that can only be undertaken by someone responsible and trustworthy

(So you heard it here, you ever go on tour, respect your roadies.)

This means that Helmut seeing Raz that way means he has a great deal of trust and respect for Raz now.

The other members of the Feast specifically see Raz as himself, in their respective colors and with their respective sense organs exaggerated.

My advice regarding concessions was a post-game thing unrelated to the memory vault.

Note how Helmut was very clearly diving in front of Bob to take a hit for him.

The archetype can attack if it's fully upgraded, but only in direct response to being attacked itself. It's a support power, there to back Raz up. A roadie to a roadie, if you will.

I kind of get the feeling that Ford didn't shatter his mind on purpose. He was trying to erase or suppress his own memories of what he did with Lucy and then he done messed up. In his shattered state, he forgot about Helmut.

Otherwise, you'd think he'd have gotten Helmut taken care of first.

Note that Helmut is clearly the last of the psychic seven to join.

Bob seems to have fallen for Helmut upon seeing him perform for the first time, shortly after they met.

Super Sneezing Powder and smelling slats have different names... But the idea that they have some related properties is compelling.

Counterfeiter and Teacher see you as Archetype, Writer sees you the same way that the whole cassie in the outside world sees you: A fan with her book. which, you know, Raz is.

It's very interesting: Cassie clearly has mixed feelings about the rest of the Psychic Seven... But she still places them above herself in her mindscape.

Otto was Ford's research partner and it was his idea to bring in more people at first. That's pretty much it—he's not without redeeming qualities, when you asked him about Helmut he pretty clearly feels remorse that they couldn't find him and that it was his invention that caused him to be lost to them, but... Yeah.

Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if ford and Otto were only fines becuase they were roommates in college or something.

Cassie's mental image of Bob seems a bit... scatterbrained, doesn't he?

So... Cassie doesn't really understand how or why Lucy snapped?

So, if you recall Lucy was the first person that Otto and Ford brought in, which means that they were well underway in the hydraulic mining by the time Cassie came in. Presumably, that's why they didn't listen to her.

So that bt regarding the stage act and Lucy's tone talking about it... That's gonna be a theme.

Again, Cassie got there after Lucy. Maligula ruined everything, but... Also, Cassie seems to be missing a bit more information regarding Lucy.

Like Cassie's archetypes of herself, each of her mental images is a two-dimensional construct. That includes those of her friends.

For the record, either on revisit or in the postgame (not sure which), if you go back to where the knight and dragon were there's a pile of ash where the knight used to be and you can have a conversation with the dragon about it.

Note that Augustus looks to be about Raz's age, give or take, in that flashback. It's been 20 years since then, and the oldest Aquato child looks mid-teens.

Which implies that Augustus and Donatella were teen parents.

No wonder the Aquatos are so poor off. Throw in Nona going a bit senile at somepoint as the damage caught up to her... Raz running away and the fact that traveling apparently costs them enough money that they can't leave the Questionable Area? until they raise enough money to cover the cost of the trip... It's not okay that they treat Raz gruffly for this, but it's more understandable.

That's probably where they studied Psycho-Isolation Raz.

Yeah, the combination seemed obvious to me, too.

...So the thought occurs to me that Lucy being a former psychonaut might be why there was a Psi-Challenge Marker in the Aquatodome.

In the first game, Raz was able to talk through the stream just fine, it was only the lake, and water in the mental worlds, that were problems.

Presumably, it has to be deep enough for him to drown... Or at least think he can drown. We just found ut last time that the curse is just a superstition born from Lucy and Agustus trying to rationalize the phobia that Ford placed on them and the whole thing is Psychosomatic. The rules are probably whatever Raz thinks the rules are.

As far as we know, Compton and Cassie are just friends. Remember: Compton is a grandfather and his grandchildren look like him, but not like Cassie.

So that's a still. He is fermenting and distilling mushrooms. Waste of perfectly good yummy bumps of fungus if you ask me.

Bob has also aged like Milk. He's spent at least ten years and probably much longer by himself, not self-maintaining, living mostly on moonshine and... So alcoholism runs in my family. Not a bad as Bob, but it's very hard on you in mind and body.

So there are two ways to read the scene regarding the plant giving Raz permission to go into Bob's head and I don't know which I like better.

1: The plant is fully sapient and this is equivocal to staging an intervention.

2: The vine is not sapient and is under Bob's control and Bob is subconsciously begging for help becuase he knows he has a problem but can't admit it to himself.

The second is supported by the fact that Bob doesn't really resist once the portal is in place.

Not Lucrecia, Tia. You'll meet her in a little bit.

Immediately the Bob in the mind is... Much nicer than the Bob in the outside world. He's sad and confused, but not violent. H's not a bad guy, he's just a mean drunk.

That's not water. That's his moonshine. His mindscape is literally flooded with alcohol. It behaves like water as a gameplay mechanic, but so do the lines at the concession stands in Helmut's mind.

So Tia isn't "aunty," Tia is the name of Bob's mother.

And I hope you do more island exploration becuase there's one more construct I want to see your reaction to.

The Bulb Bobs seem to be reciting lines from drinking songs.

A stone woman, specifically... In rigor mortis.

You first encounter Bad Moods in the mind of bob Zanatto. A man who is frequently in ill-temper due to his excessive drinking.

Note: Bad Moods see Raz as a psychiatrist.

Yeah... The implication is that Tia Zanatto was also an alcoholic and that she drank in the greenhouse. And that she either finally overdid it, or that the complications caught up with her, or that she... Not alived herself, and Bob fond her body and started drinking himself to cope.

You could go but the bottle wouldn't have been there. It only spawned in during that cutscene.

This is a dark place and Bob has been here for a long time. Keep that in mind.

The Moth strongly resembles Bob's face for a reason...

You'll notice that some of the tiles are cracked.

Unless they changed it again, you've already seen the page: Originally it only mentioned dental phobias, but changed to include fear of tight spaces and vomit in the same patch that added the checkmarks to show world completion and the quality of life and expanded post-game due to receiving feedback.

So make a note: Bob's flashback of the day he was fired makes Truman out to be much more reasonable than the image of Truman on the island.

Bob tried to invent the beard of holding. It was a... Mixed success.

Red velvet wedding cake, through an impossible space into a confetti wedding cake, into chocolate, and I legit don't know what the blue and green one is. If this is accurate then these two went all out for their wedding.

Otto was at the wedding—In Helmut's mind under the stage there's an auto figment in formal wear near the other wedding figments. But... Well, I'll get to that later.

The implication here is that Bob was a little drunk at the wedding but wasn't so far gone enough to not realize it was a problem and make an ass of himself. He took the time to compose himself because... He had a problem, but it wasn't until he lost Helmut that it dominated his life.

The burp shattering the face of the Helmut and the highly realistic skull inside? Probably reminiscent of a mixture of what Bob feared may have happened and his belief that Helmut is dead and gone forevermore...

...Lost forever... like Lenore.

"Quoth the Raven, nevermore."

The birds that have been carrying the Bulb Bob's are specifically ravens because he's mourning a lost love that he feels he will never see again. Crap, I thought those were shanties but I'm gonna have to cross-reference Bulb bob's lines against Poe's work. I just realize it but now it's so obvious now that I've thought of it god damn. I typed a thing and my brain made a connection.

This game is fricking brilliant.

So Psi-King's sensorium is the prettiest level, but the flashback of Bob's wedding vows is hands down the most beautiful thing in this game. Seriously, I tear up a little hearing it.

The Feel Mobile is there becuase this is a feels trip.

You might notice the "sailing themes," while an orignal score to be sure, has just some slight influence from Drunken Sailor at the very beginning of the loop.

On Otto... Note how in Helmut's memory vault, Helmut was the last of the seven to join. Bob was in psychic six-well before Helmut.

The moth is an embodiment of Bob's alcoholism. His instinct to isolate himself and use liquor to bury his painful memories and numb himself to anything coming in the future. The Truheltia Memonstria(Truman, Helmut, and Tia) are the memories he's trying to bury. But also the lies that he tells himself to justify his alcoholism.

And note how it's another self-destructive boss: It gives you those mines that you can throwback to damage it. Alcoholism isn't something you can control, you can either moderate your drinking or you can't(which is consistent with a lot of addictions and similar behaviors, whether it's inborn or acquired you're never "cured" of it)... But the justifications you make for yourself to indulge your alcoholism or other addictions is a behavior that can be changed and it should be becuase if you let the addiction control you then you'll end up in an early grave.

'Wonder what the Truman plant being a firebreathing monster represents,' he said sarcastically.

Bob starts fighting back when the Helmut Memonstria says "I never loved Bob" because that's something that Bob can't convince himself of. And how could he? It's an act of love most supreme to throw yourself in front of a killing blow meant for someone else. True love. Unconditional love.

And the very thought of that crossing his mind, the simple idea that Helmut didn't really love him is enough t make Bob admit he has a problem and start right then and there to work towards it, resisting his urge to drink his pain away... Becuase if it means spitting on Helmut's memory if it means denying that love, it's not worth it. Bob's love for Helmut is stronger than all of his pain put together.

Alcoholics Anonymous, the most successful alcoholism support group, states that the first step toward sobriety is to admit that you are powerless in the hands of alcohol and entrust yourself to a "higher power" that gives you the strength you need. For Bob? That's his love for Helmut.

His line about taking the new seeds coming in "one at a time" is likewise evocative of common advice when dealing with addiction: Take it one day at a time.

Elijah Wood doe a good job in this scene I think. He's essentially playing two roles at the same time: Jack Black, and the character that Jack Black is playing. And I think he nails it, especially the delivery of "borrowed lips, it wouldn't be right."

So there's probably something symbolic about Bob making his moonshine out of something his beloved Helmut hates.

So Helmut relating to Bob how he survived is framed a little bit like a "kill yourself to avoid being killed by someone else" type thing with the comment that Helmut "blew his brains out." But you know, it ended much better(eventually) than that usually does.

Actually, the gag order doesn't stop the Archetype from talking... It sounds like he's got a pillow shoved in his mouth.

So once you clear a mind the rule of symbolism kind of goes away if you go into a combat zone, they'll just spawn in whatever.

So, all of the psychic six, but especially Bob and Helmut would be well justified in holding a grudge against Lucy... But not one of them does. and Bob, followed by Helmut, are the first ones that come in for the hug. Even Otto goes in for the hug.

So... Of all the minds, it seems that Helmut's view of the crew was most accurate.

And Raz seems to be taking Lucy's place in the psychic seven for this job. That's a nice touch, but also... Maybe he doesn't want to be sitting on that cushion given what Nona just said.

Note: This is the only time anyone in Raz's family has called him Raz. I the real world, his father calls him Razputin, his mother and Nona call him Pootie, and his siblings call him Pooter.

Back in the first game, he said something along the lines of "They call me Raz" and... No. No one did until he instructed himself that way. So either 1: That's a nickname he wants to be addressed by that nobody does or 2: He made it up on the spot to try and sound cool.

Though honestly, considering hes' named after Grulovia's greatest love machine I'm not sure why he'd want a cooler name.

If you've noticed, variations of the Meat circus theme have been consistently played as a recurring motif with Razputin's family throughout this game... But not the actual theme itself. It's the same melody, but the instrumentation will be slightly different, or here it's a higher pitch. It consistently sounds somewhat less sinister due to tose changes and also the different context, if only slightly.

Which, naturally, makes sense: The meat circus was the corrupted and distorted version.

He'd have been doing it the whole time if you'd bought the Bobby pin.

....So I only just noticed that the way Nona carries herself and the way she's dressed kind of make her resemble a flee when viewed from profile.

So, you know... The high dive is a lot higher and delivered the second time you climb it.

So a Sonic the Hedgehog game introduced rail grinding as part of a promotional tie-in for Soap Shoes and that just became The Thing for platformers for like a decade.

So I think it's safe to say now: Maligula is a disassociated identity and an embodiment of Lucy's Fight or Flight response cranked up to 11 and permanently stuck on Fight. The experiments that the Psychic Seven did in the heptadome rendered her very fragile, as has been explained. She went to Grulovia becuase it was invaded and used her vast powers to swiftly end the war, but when the war was over the people became dissatisfied with the Gzar and wanted change. BEcuase of how... Vulnerable Lucy still was, she was susceptible to manipulation and she would disperse crowds of protestors peacefully with rain... But one time it didn't work, and she'd unknowingly caused a huge build-up behind the damn. Keep the rain up a little too long... Sploosh.

The realization that she'd inadvertently killed countless people... With her sister being one of them? Broke her. A piece of her splintered off, becoming an Alter embodying the dark, base instincts that everyone has, that should have been easy to control, and she lashed out, seeing everything as a threat to be destroyed. Because that was easier than dealing with the sheer horror of what had just happened.

That would be bad at the best of times... but as one of, if not the, strongest psychics alive at the time... Whoa boy.

And yes, Nona has a hell of a lot of emotional baggage and Ford used all of it to hold Maligula down.

I've seen people argue that he looks like a vaguely middle eastern peasant to 'Truman's' perspective.

Don't worry, Norma's already made as much of a mess as she possibly can.

The fact that the line stander figments talk when you collect them is really offputting.

Lili sees Raz as himself, but taller and more well-kempt. Big improvement from the first game where she saw him as Romeo.

The line attendant sees you as something to be herded.

...That's a very accurate guess Zodi.

Yeah. During the war, an invading force attacked young Gristol, and he was rescued by Lucy... So he unambiguously sees her as a hero and in his mind twists history to support that narrative. And... Rightly, he thinks of father using and abusing her and then trying to dispose of her when he was unable to control her as something that was... You know, wrong.

It'd be sweet if he wasn't a narcissistic sociopath.

The rich and spoiled pay out the ass to eat the parts of the food that other people throw away. That's how lobster got its start, believe it or not.

Money is a strange thing. You can have not enough money and too much money for your own good, even at the same time, but you can never have enough.

Unlike every other mind you've been in, Gristol isn't mentally ill. Not from psitnium poisoning, not from sensory deprivation, not from an organic disorder, not from brain damage, not from trauma, though he's certainly had traumatic experiences. Based o his knowledge and life experiences, he's perfectly rational.

That's what makes him scary.

Ah, lobster came up. To be specific, it was considered garbage to the point that feeding it to prisoners too often was legally considered cruel and unusual punishment, then people on the coast started selling it to rich people who struck it big out west by claiming it was a delicacy and shipping cars full of lobster on ice out to them on the railways and the opinion of the wealthy rubes supplanted the orignal opinion that it was an icky sea bug.

Gristol acts like his family were living in abject squalor... when he can afford to permanently rent out the penthouse at a five-star, highly exclusive casino resort and buy so much caviar that he forgets about it and leave it out till it goes bad. Really, it's a good example of how if the upper class doesn't raise their kids right, they won't appreciate what they have.

The term diaspora is sometimes used to refer to anyone being forced to leave their homeland and scatter across the world, usually as a simile.

I mean, technically you've been punching Nick in the brain for a while.

Raz did in fact point out the rotten caviar.

The Gristol in the mental construct of the Luctopus penthouse sees Raz as a fellow prince and is quite friendly with him, at least after finding out that he's Grulovian. This is probably the one part of Gristol that... Actually cares about people. The nugget of truth in his otherwise absurd idea that freeing Maligula will be a net good for the Grulovian people and that they'd all be wealthy. H's mostly just being a spoiled brat, but on some level, he does want to help even if the rest of him is just a rich asshat.

So, if Raz says yes," he says yes before clarifying that he's only half. I don't know what he says if you say no.

Note that Gristol refers to Raz in his mind as "a rusted agent of the psychonauts" and not "the kid that literally just showed up like three days ago." He doesn't actually know who Raz is...

This combat section is clearly based on Gristol's memory of being attacked and Caligula rescuing him... And other than the censors, the enemies here all correspond to the kind of feelings he'd have at the time or have pon looking back at it later.

Note, there are Dogen and Bobby Zilch and Mikail and suicide cult figments in the camp facade. Gristol was monitoring the camp recently.

Kind of explains why "Truman" had the big freak out about Lilli having a boyfriend at the end of Rhombus: the real Truman was probably kidnapped and the switch happened as the first game was happening. Gristol probably stopped monitoring the camp like, the day Raz showed up, sometime before the evening. From his perspective, he looks away for a short period of time, and then a big change happens.

There's also a theory that since Loboto was working for both Gristol and Oleander at the same time, that Gristol was aware of Oleander's plans and was planning to co-opt them. "The World Shall Taste My Eggs" makes more sense from an egg obsessed mind than a meat obsessed mind.

"Everything was awesome for me, it had to be awesome for everyone else, right?"

So important thing to note: Despite not being psychic, Gristol has absurd control of his own mental world. He's confronting Raz directly in his own mind while simultaneously controlling Truman's body in meat space and manipulating the environment in the mindscape to his advantage.

Too bad that it seems to be a consistent rule that your mental self is only as strong as your natural meat body. Otherwise, he might have been a threat.

You can go back for the Figments Zodi.

There was like a second between Lili running off with Raz and Lucy turning back into Maligula. Also, Milla seemed to understand perfectly so...

Honestly, the plan to stop Maligula for good probably would have gone off without a hitch if Gritol hadn't pulled Raz out, so this is all Norma's fault.

By the way: Shasha and Milla are in their clothes from the first game again for some reason.

So, in the flee circus there's evidence of a knife-throwing act, but no sign of a fat lady either in the real Aquato circus or the construct of it that Ford created.

But the one tent in the Aquato Family's camp does kind of match the color scheme of the Fat Lady that was a bouncy platform in the Meat Circus in the first game.

And here: Raz has known for the past long while that the curse isn't real, but it's still been an obstacle. Here he's stating outright that it's not real and is confronting the water head-on because he has to. If he doesn't, then the world is doomed. Again. This is important.

The first time one of Raz's relatives calls him Raz in meat space is when the whole family gets together to help him save the world... After Donatella hands Augustus the pinecone he's been levitating and trying to ignite all day—you can tell a lot about someone by how they react in a crisis. Raz's siblings and mother react to a crisis by finally accepting Raz and Agustus's psychic nature and letting go of their prejudices because there's more important stuff to be concerned with. They're even starting to use Raz's preferred name.

I mentioned Rainbow Lensing, treating a non-LGBT topic as a metaphor for it back in my comments on the first stream. And this is it. It's very easy to see Raz's family and their reactions to his running away and being openly psychic and compare it to a gay or trans kid coming out to their family and the myriad of reactions to it... I'm not really sure I can comment on whether or not it was done well.

As an aside, modern technology references exempted, the games very clearly seem to be set in the 80s or 90s. Bob and Helmut's marriage was over 20 years ago, putting it in the 60sor 70s. And since Hollis's memory of tampering with Dr. Pott's mind seems to suggest that sexism and racism are a thing(he has 'race' and 'woman' idea bubbles and, well, Hollis is clearly coded as an African American woman...) that means that homophobia is probably still a thing regardless of the existence of psychics and prejudices against them.

So Bob and Helmut's wedding was very much a "**** you, we're doing what makes us happy regardless of the law or society's thoughts" thing. And that's pretty cool.

Back on topic, Mirtala continues to be just a little too young to really understand what's going on.

And yes, it's terrifying how powerful psychics can potentially be... and Raz is of this same bloodline. He's already demonstrated absurd levels of power. He is probably going to be this powerful someday, if not stronger, and he has no shortage of potential mentors to help him refine his power and hone his skills.

Just, hope to god that he never loses his support network. If he snaps the world is probably screwed.

There's no reason to suspect that anyone but Ford and the other psychic six knew how to get through the forgetful forest. The place is locked up tighter than Fort Nox. Truman probably sent the letters to Bob by giving them to Otto, who we know has gone there at least once to set up an Otto-matic for presumably just in case Bob or Casie want to buy something.

Earlier Ford refers to Raz's grandparents as Lazlo and Morona, but, like you said, Lazlo is a perfectly valid nickname for someone named Lazarus.

Raz did say that Maligula was in the way, Zodi.

Notice that Caligula has no defensive game. She attacks and she moves around. Fight or Flight exaggerated and stuck on fight.

I get the feeling that they meant for Morris to be the first one to show up but the phases got switched around.

"Everything I got" is obviously a call back to the first game... But either Nona has more to give than Augustus did, or just a few days was enough for Raz's skill to grow becuase instead of a mere energy construct this time we get...

*Bum ba buh dum!*

You all wanted it but were afraid to ask...

The Triumphant Return of...

Goggleor!

I get the feeling that this last phase of the boss fight was just the develops deciding, just for the hell of it, to show what Lungfishopolis would have been if they had the resources needed to do that concept justice. I'm pretty sure that's even the same music.

Because Raz confronted the 'curse' head-on, he's conquered his fear and now the Hand of the Golochio helps him

Much better. It's amazing what a little experience and a decent budget can get you.

Regarding doing more with the family: In the casino, Raz alludes to playing a game called Gruloky with Nona... Apparently, data miners have found unused voice clips of Raz explaining some of the rules and e entire aquatic family playing it, suggesting that at some point there was a "play Gruloky with the family" sidequest or minigame that got cut.

D'Artagnan isn't in the game. Though the kooky lady in psycho isolation will guess that that's Raz's name. And it was his hat, not his scar, that was too awesome to work in the game engine.

At a bare minimum, there's gonna be some Psychonauts 2 DLC. Could have sworn it was already announced but I can't remember from where I heard that. Like... going back to Rhombus. Loboto said that someone was paying him to steal Raz's brain specifically, but Gristol doesn't have much idea of who Raz is... This implies that Loboto was moonlighting for a third employer that we don't even know about yet.

Knight accidentally called you Zordon. Don't know about you, but that's a pretty flattering mistake.

there's a Viking helmet in the ball with Helmut's brain.

Under standard difficulty settings, you take damage after respawning from the water. That goes away in the post-game.

So, regarding the concessions: the lines there behave like water, fall in and can't get back out and the hand comes out and drags you in. I've seen it thrown around that, in the post-game, the hand instead makes you crowd surf.

Loboto left his kid at the camp.

So... There's someone at the camp who has a similar body type to Loboto, the same skin color, similar heterochromia, who has a bit of an inferiority complex, who teared up at the mention of the good relationship between Raz and his father at the end of the first game, and whose Campster profile lists his favorite music, movies, and so on as all things that are about or include dysfunctional families, abusive or absent father figures, and/or murderous psychos.

Bobby is Loboto's son. Which, yeah... Daddy stole his brain. No wonder the kid has issues.

So basically they built the mural with Lucrecia but then just left a tarp over her part for the last 20 years.

If Raz is Nate Grey, Queepie is Molly Hayes.

Apparently, there's a way to trigger Raz saying that Otto's the only member of the Psychic Seven whose mind he didn't visit and then says "maybe someday" but I don't know how that gets triggered but... Yeah. Overt sequel hook.

"Didn't see you breathing fire at a giant manifestation of Nona's overinflated fight or flight complex, Frazie."
"...What?"

Donnatella just flat-out ignores that the curse was never real... Oh God in psychonauts 3 i's gonna turn out that curses are real after all and Donatella is secretly a former witch?

...Okay, I think Donnatella's comments about using psychic powers to crush the opposition is better than her previous attitude...

You know, the funiculars might be another place where using the speed-up time bubble pin might work.

*sigh* Mental Gristol is halfway there...

So what are the odds that the scar on Augustus's face came from a mishap with the knife-throwing act?

Raz's face when Augustus reveals that they're getting swimming lessons from Oleander is probably peak "well okay then."

I'm fully expecting that if there is a Psychonauts 3, or if they somehow add more powers in DLC, that Nona will teach Raz how to consciously control his hydrokinesis.

Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if there aren't multiple psi powers that are applications of it.

As is, if Raz can learn a psi power from Nona, Compton, Bob, Otto, and Truman he'll have trained under the entire "who's who" of the psychonauts.

Yeah, turns out the hydrokinetic is thirsty as hell. The question is... Was Lucy always like that, or is she just at the age where she doesn't give a crap anymore?

Queepie is hanging out with Morris. But you never fond Morris so...