Film Theory: This Series is NOT Made for Kids! (Guby)

Hey guys! My name is Guby and today we will learn about

film

theory

. Do you know

film

theory

? My favorite part of film theory is the murder. Hello Internet! Welcome to Film Theory, the program that wants to know what your favorite color is. My favorite color is the subscribe button. If there's one thing I've been most excited about hosting Film Theory, it's the opportunity to really immerse myself in the work of independent creators. Don't get me wrong, big-budget content is great, but I've found that, especially in horror cinema, it's the independent creators who are able to create the most memorable scares, because they can delve into what really terrifies them rather than which The Boardroom thinks will scare the ideal number of people, but not too much because we want them to come back for a sequel.

That independence, that level of creativity, mystery and horror is what we are going to find today in Guby. What the hell is Guby? I hear you ask. Well, aside from one word that's really fun to say, Guby is an analogue horror channel that you'll find here on YouTube.com. But instead of getting its spoops from evil animatronics like Walten Files, or creepy found footage like Backrooms, or body horror like The Man in the Suit, Guby feels more like a parody of classic call-and-response children's entertainment like Dora the Explorer. or Blue's Clues. This is number one. So

this

is number two.

It comes after one. But hey, YouTube, it's not too similar to those

series

. As the channel description repeatedly tells you, Guby is not

made

for children. This is one of those

series

that was recommended to us by the good people of the Film Theory subreddit, and I must say, you guys nailed it. Matt and I have been covering

this

on GTLive, and it's some of the most fun we've had thinking about things. I saw some history. Abby. Last seen at her house, January 3, 20...2004? Looking at something in pajamas. Parents. Jamie and Albert Lang. Don't hold anyone back.

Someone in the room. Yes of course. Oh. Oh. No, honestly, we really overthink it. When we got to our fifth Cypher puzzle, I knew this was something I had to cover here on the channel. And after diving into it, there's a lot more to Guby than the happy-go-lucky surface would have you believe. You see, beneath this facade of a smiling yellow noodle friend is a dark secret. An evil being that literally makes its way into reality through television and punishes children who refuse to play along. Choose your favorite animal, loyal theorists. It's time to solve this mystery.

So, first things first. Guby is one of those series that are very dense. Covering each and every puzzle would take a long time, so what we'll do instead is get to the broad strokes and then dive into the main mysteries of the story. Cool? Cool. Let's start by reviewing what's really in Guby's videos. Each of these covers a topic that you would expect to see in a kindergarten classroom. Think about letters, numbers, the color of blood, that kind of thing. You may not have noticed, but something very strange is happening here. Yes, the more you look, the more you realize that something is not quite right with Guby.

Sometimes, Guby takes drastic personality changes and requests personal information. Do you want to see my favorite number? It's in one of these. Can you read me those numbers on the front? And other times, Guby lets his darkest interests come to light. Do you want to see my favorite animal? It's one of these. And then sometimes at random intervals, glitches will take over the video. Today we are going to learn about... ...sounds. You get the idea. Now, we don't need to sit here and watch every video explaining exactly what happens. Please show Guby some love and watch the videos yourself.

But I do want to talk about what is hidden in these videos. See, in classic analog horror style, during some of these glitches, there will be hidden images or information in a single frame of the video. And let me tell you, Guby loves using this trick. In Learned Numbers, there is Morse code hidden in one of the glitches that is difficult to read, but probably results in evolution. In Learned Shapes, we see various incarnations of Guby in different media. A realistic Guby, a puppet Guby, an old school cutout Guby. And in Learn Colors, the entire video ends with a glitchy extended clip from a completely different video.

But the most notable thing is that, throughout several videos, we see fragments of missing persons posters for children, all between 3 and 14 years old. And yes, from a simple content perspective, that's Guby. So what the hell is going on here? Well, let's start with the obvious. Guby here, he's clearly the reason these

kids

are missing. The first big piece of this puzzle is that all of the children in these posters appear to have disappeared while watching television or in their living rooms. And we know they were watching Guby because in Learned the Alphabet we see that one victim's sister left the room to find her grandmother's credit card.

Remember the clip we showed earlier? It's in one of these. Bring it here. What's more, during many of these failures, we can see multiple images of different children sitting in living rooms looking directly into the camera, almost as if the camera was actually a television. These are the children who disappeared and we see them from the television's point of view, from Guby's point of view. So in some way, Guby is kidnapping these

kids

through television. And we can even find out how Guby does it. At GT Live, we wondered if the kids who answered Gooby's questions were giving him permission to come into the real world and take them.

But after rewatching the series, that's not what happens. In Learned Animals, Guby has this exchange with a viewer we can hear. The boy answers Guby's question and everything is great. But elsewhere in the video, the boy interrupts Guby and Guby doesn't take it well. Guby freaks out and do you notice that subtitle? It may seem silly, but they are actually jumbled letters that, when read in the correct order, tell the child exactly how to play the game to get the answers he wants, the way he wants and when he wants. Also, notice that Guby disappears here.

This has to be when he comes out of the TV to grab the kids and drag them into his world. And just so we're all on the same page, this isn't the only time this happens. Again, those messy subtitles say, Guby is interrupted for the third and final time at the video's climax. It's called... Once again, Guby goes crazy and the video just goes black. Oh, and it's also worth noting that the subtitles tell us that all animals have teeth, which is factually inaccurate. I thought this was an educational program. So Guby seems to be taking these kids who he sees as not doing what they're told, talking when they're not being talked to, and dragging them into the television.

But what will become of them then? Well, they become part of Guby, still conscious and still somewhat aware. During many of the glitches throughout the series, sequences of numbers sometimes appear on the screen. Savvy theorists will recognize these as a form of cipher, and after some trial and error, I was able to discover that they were actually touch codes, which we've covered before in our sister location Game Theory. So, check it out if you want a really in-depth explanation. If I'm being honest, most of these aren't very important to the overall mystery. They are used more to emphasize the creep factor.

Like here, where they explain: He is not who he says he is. Creepy, no doubt, but nothing new. However, there is another code hidden in a later video that says: Where are we? Sofia asked. “We are in a beautiful meadow,” Mikayla whispered. This is not a meadow, Sofia responded. Mikayla and Sophia were two of the children on the missing persons posters, and as we see here, they can still see. They may even talk to each other and some even think something is wrong. And we also know that this meadow Mikayla is seeing isn't some kind of weird purgatory TV space, because some of the kids are trying to communicate with the outside world through Guby.

Like here, in Learn the Alphabet, where there is a moment in which one of the children seems to speak from the television. My favorite words are: Help me. Please help. That's not Guby. That's a little girl talking. Probably Mikayla, since that's the missing person poster we see shortly after. In fact, we hear multiple voices coming out of Guby. Remember the deep male voice we heard in Learn Numbers? And in Learn Sounds, we hear Guby's favorite sound, and it sounds a lot like children screaming. Do you want to hear my favorite sound? Also, the name of the channel is not just Guby.

It's Guby and his friends. The Friends are clearly the people he absorbs. And after all that evidence, if you're still doubting this, well, this should bow a little to the point. During one of the glitches, a random quote appears. This is not encrypted or mixed into a subtitle. It simply says: If that doesn't make sense to you, that's fair. It didn't make sense to me either, but after a little research, I discovered that it's actually a quote taken from the short story titled I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream by Harlan Ellison, which, get this, involves a character who merges with an artificial intelligence. and tortured forever.

I know, this was actually one of the main inspirations for The Amazing Digital Circus, and it sounds a lot like what's going on here with Guby. Just something to think about, y'all. So that answers what Guby is and how he does it, but why? Why is he kidnapping all these children and sucking them into his television purgatory? Well, in order for us to solve that part of the mystery, we're going to have to dig deep and solve the series' biggest riddle yet. In the Learn With Guby video, we quickly see that something is wrong. This is the first video without a theme and without Guby.

Instead, there is only static. But, if you look at the subtitles, you will see something. Alright! Oh Lord! So if you're like me, your mind will first think that this is some kind of encryption hidden in the subtitles. But notice that some of the letters in these titles have different colors than the rest of the text. That's actually impossible to do with YouTube subtitles. Yes, they are physically recorded in the video, but they look like YouTube subtitles. Honestly, this was an amazing way to play with my expectations and I loved it. Anyway, if we go through and collect all the different colored letters, we will find that a blank YouTube URL is created.

And as soon as the fake subtitles stop, other letters and numbers start appearing on the screen, spelling this out. Now, your first thought may be that this is the rest of the YouTube URL, but in reality it is too long to work. If you try to watch the video with this code, it just breaks. But here's the interesting thing and a shout out to Rubex3 on the Game Theory subreddit for helping us figure this out on GTLive. Down in the description, you'll find this string of numbers, and if you line them up with the sequence above, you'll get a new string of text that's the perfect length for a YouTube URL.

Plug that sucker in and go! A valid link to a new video. I went through this video frame by frame to make sure I caught everything, and while there are a lot of hidden images, they're all related to things we've already seen in Guby. X-rays of children, images and clippings of missing children, photographs of animals, diagrams of the human brain, and multiple pieces of what I can only call fan art? But the most important information we learn here once again comes from the subtitles. Although at first this may seem like a strange jumble of random words with no rhyme or reason, if you take the first letter of each word here, it actually spells out this message.

How I feast on my teeth. How I feast on my teeth. How I feast on my teeth. To me, this clearly reads like a message from Gooby himself. But what about the teeth? That's weird, right? Yes it is. But it has also been something recurring throughout the entire series. I mean, there was a time when the subtitles incorrectly told us that all animals have teeth, teeth are present in many of the perfect framing failure images, and at the end of one of the videos, we see this clip. Here you go, little chewer. We don't want you.

This was taken from an educational stop-motion animation called The Munchers, a fable intended to help children take care of their teeth. Here you go, little chewer. We don't want you. Teeth are everywhere in this series. But why? Well, that could indicate a couple of things. First of all, dreams with teeth. Stay with me here. Have you ever dreamed that your teeth become very loose and start to fall out of your head? If so, you are not alone. It's actually a pretty common dream, and philosophers dating back to ancient Greece are trying to figure out what it means.

One of the most popular modern interpretations of this is that the teeth in your dreams represent power. Teeth are tools used to bite, tear andtear. So that makes sense. Well, Gooby is obsessed with teeth precisely because they represent power in the subconscious human brain. And that would matter to Guby because Guby is literally a thought manifested into reality. See, in the Learn Animals video, we found another glitch, but this one is different. It's less of a glitch and more of an interruption when we stay in this series of monologues for too long. They talk about how the narrator's mind has been consumed by thoughts of him, how this narrator imagined his antics, how his name evoked laughter, joy, innocence and wonder, how he was an embodiment of childhood in himself, and then how he it was a manifestation of the narrator's desires, his aspirations, wanting to exist through the narrator's mind.

Most importantly though, this being started to take the wheel, he started pulling the strings enough that the narrator couldn't even remember a time when this being wasn't a part of them. And in the end, the narrator was just a vessel for this being to exist. I'm not going to lie, that's really cool. And this idea reminded me a lot of something known as a tulpa or thought form. These are beings that come into existence through the sheer force of someone who believes in them enough. Basically, Guby here is not a real being, but he became real thanks to whoever he imagined him to be.

But this leaves an important thread pending. Who

made

Guby originally? Who was the narrator who gave life to Gooby? Well, we can have a pretty good idea of ​​that too. Throughout the glitches, we can see an elegantly dressed man in a realistic Guby mask, surrounded by an audience of children. Given the width of the man's jacket lapels, the sort of yellow celluloid aesthetic of the images, and the audience of kids he's talking to, this is giving me some real '70s energy. Look, in the early days On television, particularly between the 1950s and 1970s, many sitcoms and children's programming were filmed in front of a live studio audience.

This clip from Howdy Doody gives you a very good example of what I mean. So it seems this guy is the creator of Guby, and that he hosted a show as Guby sometime during the 1970s, using a mask to physically embody Gooby and help him take the wheel. Then at some point, Guby made the jump from this kind of classic TV show to something digital, and we know that for a few reasons for a fact. First of all, we often see Guby become a kind of rudimentary wireframes, which are the backbone of modern 3D animation. Second, the dates on the missing persons posters point to them occurring sometime in the 2020s.

And well, let's face it, I doubt there are many kids watching anything that isn't digital these days. When you step back and look at all these pieces on the table, the puzzle becomes much clearer and explains a lot. Why does Guby take the form of a call-and-response television series? If the children hear his question and believe it is real enough to answer, that would make a tulpa, a being that can only exist if people believe it exists, more powerful. Why would Guby be obsessed with teeth? Well, if teeth represent power in your dreams and the dreams come from your mind, a tulpa would be obsessed with them.

Why does Guby attack the children and kidnap them? Well, if the kids who watch his show don't play along, don't believe in him enough to answer his questions the way he wants and when he wants, they will weaken him. Also, do you know what more children have than adults? Teeth. Yes, children are born with all their teeth. They're right inside his skull. And children tend to be much more imaginative than adults. Literally multiple studies have concluded that people become less creative as they age simply because they adapt to mindsets or worldviews. Again, Guby would want that extra imagination to help him manifest into reality.

The pieces just line up too well. At this point, there isn't enough information to truly solve the mystery of what's going on here in Guby. There are many outstanding threads that we simply don't have good answers for. For example, there are other nature documentary clips scattered throughout the series. Thanks to their large, complex brains, mammals can transmit survival information from generation to generation. And another image that appears repeatedly in rulings showing this man from the 1930s or 1940s. And then there's the song that plays over the narrator's creepy monologue. This thing. I see what I am.

I'm too wise. I gave up all control. A girl. This is a real song titled Any Girl Who's a Nice Girl is the Right Girl for Me from the 1910s. How does all that fit in with the idea of ​​teeth? Or connect with different eras of entertainment like Guby's Bridge? And what does all this have to do with the concept of tulpa? Those are all mysteries for another day, my friends. Or who knows? Maybe Gooby was made by a dentist who really liked retro music. Either way, I can't wait to try the next part of Guby's story.

But hey, that's just a theory. A cinematographic theory! And cut! If you want another theory about a great analogue horror series with an incredible aesthetic, watch our video about Bois Vert. It's a great personal story. We really should watch that series again sometime, right? Or if you want another theory about a child trapped in a computer, check out our theory about Dora the Explorer being possessed by demons. Yeah, I'm not making this up. Either way, I'll see you all next week.