History WebVideo / MarbleHornets

* TrueArtIsIncomprehensible: Marble Hornets (The Film), InUniverse.

* DaylightHorror:
** Several entries in the first season take place during the day. Notable examples from season one include Entry #17 and Entry #23 (when Jay goes into Alex's old house during the day).
** The vast majority of season two seems to take place during daylight hours. Only a few entries happen at night, and most of the truly scary scenes all occur in broad daylight.
** A lot of the responses posted by totheark are disturbingly incoherent, and are often shot in daylight hours.

* PrecisionFStrike: In Entry #73, [[spoiler:Hoody mutters "Oh shit" when he hears Alex coming]].

On August 3, 2015, the first installment in an official sequel/SpinOff series, ''WebVideo/ClearLakes44'', was uploaded onto the Marble Hornets channel. The series ran for 13 episodes (or "broadcasts") until it was officially cancelled due to extreme in-house issues with THAC. However, in October 2016, a SpiritualSuccessor to ''Clear Lakes'', called ''WebVideo/{{ECKVA}}'', debuted on a new channel in late 2016, following THAC's reformation into FWAN.

->''"A little bit down the road we saw this really tall guy standing in the middle of the street, just completely still. For whatever reason, this really set off Rocky, and, um, he got really scared -- he wouldn't move and he kept on pulling on his leash to go back home. There was something about this guy that was just... it was strange."''

The series' official [[https://www.youtube.com/user/marblehornets YouTube account]], presented as Jay's channel, chronicles material from the tapes, and the increasingly bizarre and frightening events of Jay's own life, in video updates referred to as "entries". A [[http://twitter.com/marblehornets Twitter page]] was added some time later. After Entry #9, Jay also began noting a guy named [[https://www.youtube.com/user/totheark "totheark"]] responding to almost each entry, adding a whole new level to the scary.

A film called ''Film/AlwaysWatchingAMarbleHornetsStory'' was released on VOD on April 7, 2015 and to select theaters on May 15th. Creator/DougJones plays the Operator. The film isn't a remake/adaptation of the series, nor is it a direct sequel - however, it is supposed to take place in the same universe with shout-outs and references to the original series, but a focus around three new characters.

-->"She thinks following a stranger into the woods is a great idea. ''({{beat}})'' ...Though [[WhatAnIdiot I'm not really one to judge]]..."

* FailedASpotCheck: Regularly played for [[ParanoiaFuel horror]].

* AmbiguousEnding: [[spoiler:Entry #87. Jay, Alex, and Brian are dead and while Jessica appears to still be alive, Tim is leaving town. He approaches a two-way intersection and the camera feed cuts to black showing the words,]] "Everything is fine."

** Alex uses this trope to a malevolent advantage to taunt Tim in Entry #86, the penultimate entry.
-->'''Alex''': [[spoiler:I've done everything to keep this under control! Everyone is ''dead''! Sarah, Seth, Jessica, Amy, Brian, Jay, '''''[[PreMortemOneLiner and now you!]]''''']]

** In entry #19 when [[spoiler:Masky suddenly appears in Jay's room while he's sleeping, accompanied with ''loud and sudden'' audio distortion.]]

* PreMortemOneLiner: Attempted by Alex to Tim in Entry #86. It doesn't boot, since after he attacks Tim [[spoiler:he suddenly gets a knife to the side of the neck]].

--> ''Someone was following Alex.''

--> '''Jay''': "But there's something else about it that really disturbs me.
-->[[spoiler:I don't remember any of it ever happening."]]

--> (''after showing a news report on an apartment that burned down'')
--> '''Jay''': [[spoiler:[[TearJerker "That was]] [[TheCallKnowsWhereYouLive my apartment."]]]]

--> '''Jay''': [[spoiler:"The past 7 months are completely missing from my memory."]]

--> '''Jessica''': "You haven't been having any kind of, like, memory loss or anything, have you?"

-->"These [totheark responses] are so inconsistent. It's like they're being made by different people."

--> [[spoiler:"I HAVE NOT FORGOTTEN".]]

--> '''Phone''': Leave. ''Now.''
--> '''Jay''': [[spoiler:That was Alex.]]

--> [[spoiler:'''Tim:''' This was my room.]]

-->'''[[spoiler:Jay]]''': Give me the tape.

** In entry #52, Jay hears Jessica scream and runs to check on her. He opens the door, [[spoiler: and ''[[OhCrap walks straight into the Operator himself]]''.]]

** While you would expect [[spoiler:Tim and Alex's fight]] in Entry #86 to be ''somewhat'' brutal, you have to admit that [[spoiler:Tim stabbing Alex in the side of the neck]] ''wasn't'' expected. Especially as [[spoiler:Tim was trying to talk him down all throughout their fight]].

'''Jay:''' In case something happens, I want people to know.\\

---> '''Alex:''' Okay rolling.\\

---> '''Alex''': When I gave you those tapes, I told you never to mention them again. I thought that ''implied'' not sharing them with the world!

---> ''Alex, Tim and Brian are discussing the Marble Hornets film when the power goes out.''\\

** In Entry #20 Jay and Alex (who at this point is still unaware of anything amiss) have a brief conversation about a painting which depicts an ominous looking forest with several trees aflame, and which belongs to their friend Brian. In Entry #38 [[spoiler: Alex tells Jay a disturbing story of how a forest with almost supernaturally fast growing trees was once used as an execution ground for murderers/child molesters, and the condemned would be crucified to the trees and left to die as the fast growing trees stretched them like a rack, before the trees were burned down to remove the bodies.]]
** In Entry #43, [[spoiler: we find out Amy's roommate is named Jessica.]]

** Many posts on the Marble Hornets Twitter page foreshadowed events that would occur in upcoming entries. For example, prior to Entry #46, Jay mentioned how [[spoiler: he found footage of him stalking Alex]].

** At the end of season 1, [[spoiler: Jay's apartment is burnt down.]] It's heavily implied to be the work of [[spoiler: Masky]] at the time, but towards the end of season 3, [[spoiler: Alex burns Tim's house down in an attempt to kill him]], heavily implying that it was actually [[spoiler: him trying to kill Jay as early as the first season.]]

** Tim's true last name, [[spoiler: Wright]], is foreshadowed a couple of times before the reveal in the credits:
*** In Entry #60.5, [[spoiler: the medical documents that Jay found in the tunnel from Entry #60 show that the first initial of Tim's name starts with a "W." The rest of his name is redacted]].
*** In Entry #61, [[spoiler: the "Entry" uploaded by The Hooded Man contains anagrams of Tim's full last name in the mock "title text" where Jay usually indicates the Entry number. E.g.: "ENTRY #1IHR{WGT0}00" anagrams to "Wright."]]

* FourIsDeath [=/=] ArcNumber:
** In the run-up to Entry #26, Jay gets a text message on the 4th of April. He then receives a tape recorded on the day he got the text, showing: [[spoiler: Alex and Amy narrowly avoiding the Operator, who appears to them at 4:04 pm. To take it further, the first hint of his presence (the footage tearing) occurs at 4:04 on the [=YouTube=] player.]]

** In Entry #'''44''', the Operator makes its appearance at the 3:2'''4''' mark and [[spoiler: disappears...along with Alex.]]
** In Entry #49, [[spoiler: after strangling a man, Alex bashes his head in with a rock '''4''' times.]]

** In Entry #52, at 10:'''44''', [[spoiler: Jay is at the mercy of the Operator, and his face seems to disappear before appearing comatose on the ground moments later]].

** If you pause Entry #45 right at the end as [[spoiler: Alex yells 'I'LL KILL YOU!' to the Maskies]], you can see [[spoiler: footage of the Operator from Entry #40]].

** In Entry #57, if you look at the dark space next to [[spoiler: Tim while he's having his coughing fit]], you'll see [[spoiler: the Operator appear for a brief second]]. It happens twice; once at about the 6:23 mark, and again at the 6:34 mark, [[spoiler: the exact moment the camera starts screwing up badly]].

** In Entry #46, Jay decides to [[spoiler: stalk Alex at his house]]. This would normally fall under the umbrella of GenreSavvy, considering [[spoiler: Alex's more than suspect behavior]], but the way Jay goes about it ([[spoiler:going into the house while Alex ''is taking out the trash'', leaving him next to no time inside]]) he's just asking to get caught. [[spoiler:Which he does. And even ''Alex'' points out how stupid he was. It goes even worse than he could have imagined when the Operator shows up.]]
** In Entry #59, even after all Jay's been through, he's still willing to meet someone he doesn't entirely trust in what appears to be an isolated location alone in the middle of the night for an incredibly vague reason. [[spoiler: Fortunately, while Tim is not happy with him, he just punches him once and then yells at him instead of, say, pulling a gun on him]].

** In Entry #67.5, Jay refuses to disclose where he's going because [[spoiler: he knows Alex is following Tim and him now.]]

** In Entry #47, he's smart enough to check before leaving that [[spoiler: Alex really gave him Jessica's number]] and, arguably, at the end when he pretty much admits that [[spoiler: it's more than likely that it's his fault Jessica ended up amnesiac in a hotel]].

** In Entry #69, Jay says he thought he saw something moving in the woods and shrugs it off as a bird. Tim says that, given what's happend, they need to be nervous even when they think they've seen something. Later, after [[spoiler:Jay sees someone that he fails to catch on camera,]] Tim states that they should have left as soon as Jay thought he saw something. [[spoiler: When this happens a third time, Tim recognises it as what happened to him before he became Masky, and suggests that Jay get medical help immediately.]]
** Jay also appears to have stopped saying where he's going on Twitter. [[spoiler: Unfortunately, that doesn't stop the Operator from still finding them. ]]
* TheGhost: [[BigBad The Operator]] plays this role for our protagonist, Jay. Though he can often be seen in the tapes, was seen by Alex and Tim, and the viewer can see him watching Jay on several occasions, Jay doesn't actually encounter the Operator until Entry #23. When Jay (possibly) attempts to fight the Operator [[spoiler:in Entry #52]], the Operator easily overpowers Jay and [[spoiler: wipes his memory]].

* GhostStory: We get told one about the old forest and how in pilgrim-times, the villagers would use strange, ever-growing trees that grew in the forest to torture and kill convicts. [[spoiler: It's ''very'' strongly implied that the Operator is somehow linked to this legend and the forest described in it.]]

* GoodSmokingEvilSmoking: Played with. [[spoiler: Tim]] is the only character to be seen smoking onscreen, and [[spoiler: he's later revealed to be the antagonistic Masky]], though we later find out [[spoiler: Masky is a separate personality and Tim is in fact a good person.]]

* GoryDiscretionShot: Invoked in Entry #49. [[spoiler: After murdering a man, Alex takes a rock and lifts it above his head. The following scene was cut out by Jay, who tells us he hurled the rock onto the victim's head four times.]]

* HarassingPhoneCall: Jay gets one in Entry #64. [[spoiler: From Alex.]]

* HoistByHisOwnPetard: [[spoiler: Alex's fate is to be dragged off by the Operator, just like how he sacrificed people to the Operator to save himself.]]

[[spoiler: Cue the distortion from hell and the Operator standing right behind Alex.]]

** Entry #57 also shows how [[spoiler: Tim got to the abandoned building in Entry #51]].

* IdiotBall: Even when it becomes clear that there are ''several'' people stalking and possibly trying to kill him, Jay continues to telegraph his next move over Website/YouTube. [[spoiler: This comes back and bites him on the ass in Entry #52, when Alex threatens to kill Jay at gunpoint for posting the videos and incriminating him, amongst other reasons and in Entry #59 where Tim explodes at him after finding the videos and refuses to ever speak to him again]]. He also returns to the same haunted house multiple times, often at night, and has a habit of wandering off into the woods despite nothing good '''ever''' happening to people who do that in this series.

** Jessica can be heard coughing from her room in the middle of the night during some of the hotel entries. [[CaptainOblivious She doesn't seem aware of the fact she's doing it]]. [[spoiler: It's later found out she had indeed come into contact with the Operator]].
** [[spoiler: Brian]] has a coughing fit in Entry #51, [[spoiler: about a minute before the Operator shows up]].

*** In season two, we see it again in Entry #51 [[spoiler: when Brian finds him curled up into a corner in an abandoned building]].

*** Most notably, we hear him coughing at the end of Entry #56 [[spoiler: after Alex attacks him and leaves him for dead]]. In Entry #57, [[spoiler: which takes place immediately after]], he's coughing violently throughout the whole entry. [[spoiler: It also explains how he wound up in the abandoned building in Entry #51]].

*** He's at it again in #59, and [[spoiler: explains that it only started up again recently... [[NiceJobBreakingItHero when Jay showed up]]]].

** Jay has a serious coughing episode in Entry #72 [[spoiler: during his and Tim's run-in with the Operator]]

** In Entry #35, when [[spoiler: the Masked Man pops around the corner in the abandoned house]].
** In Entry #46 when [[spoiler: the Operator suddenly appears in Alex's room.]]
** And again in Entry #49 when [[spoiler: the Operator appears out of nowhere with loud distortion and leaves just as quickly, taking the body with him.]]

** In Entry #68, [[spoiler: totheark]] moves the camera around in a very paranoid fashion. He doesn't find anything... [[spoiler: until he turns back to the door and sees Alex charging straight at him.]]
** In Entry #76, [[spoiler: when the Operator appears to dispose of Jessica's body, just like he did with the white-shirted man before.]]

* KarmaHoudini: [[spoiler:The Operator. [[JustifiedTrope Justified]] by the fact that it's basically impossible to truly destroy or punish him. The only hope is that letting him take Alex finally satisfied him and if it didn't then Tim will have to kill anyone else allowing his existence.]]

* LaserGuidedKarma: In Entry #86, Tim manages to [[spoiler: avenge Jay's murder by killing Alex with Jay's old pocketknife]].

** In Entry #52, [[spoiler: one of the reasons Alex threatens to kill Jay is because he's posted all his videos on [=YouTube=] and revealed his secrets to the world.]]
** In Entry #59, [[spoiler: Tim has caught up with everything that's been going on by just searching for Marble Hornets on the web and finding the [=YouTube=] channel, [[LaserGuidedAmnesia including everything that he didn't know was going on with himself]].]]

** The video and audio glitches in some entries serve as Meaningful Foreground Events. They give a hint to the viewer either that they should put down their drink immediately (as in Entry #40), or that the person on camera is suffering the effects of contact with the Operator, as with Jessica and Alex in season 2 and one very subtle instance of visual tearing [[spoiler: when Tim is giving Jay his number]] in Entry #53.

* AllTheWorldsAreAStage: In a rare non-videogame example, [[spoiler:#83 is sort of this. Tim's chase with Hoodie goes through some of the locations visited in the third season; the torched hospital, the college buildings, the parking lot from #63, Rosswood, and Tim's house. All done via what seems to be Operator teleportation and a heaping helping of MindScrew.]]

** The behavior of the Masked Men has changed over the series. In Entry #19, one of them teleports into Jay's room and just sits there, like The Operator would, but none of them have done that since. Usually the Masked Men are much more feral, attacking the protagonists on sight, and when they aren't they just follow them on foot and film them, not teleport right to them. There used to be distortion whenever the Masked Men appeared, most noticeably in Entry #19, but there isn't anymore.

* HeterosexualLifePartners: The creators of the series, Troy and Joe. It gets [[UpToEleven taken up to eleven]] in the DVD audio commentary. You definitely come to realize how close the two of them are as friends in real life.

* FilkSong: [[http://rowanlewis.bandcamp.com/album/soundiseverything A whole album's worth.]]
** Rowan Lewis is pretty prolific. They've released [[http://rowanlewis.bandcamp.com/album/human-therefore-no/ another album]] called [[http://marblehornets.wikidot.com/totheark#toc1 human, therefore no]].
*** And [[https://rowanlewis.bandcamp.com/track/pre-rolled-cigarettes two]] [[https://rowanlewis.bandcamp.com/track/all-ive-got additional]] songs about Tim appear on their more general 2018 album.

* LostWoods: A wooded area that was once the execution place for condemned criminals is somehow central to the plot. The Operator seems closely tied to these forsaken regions.

* PublicExecution: Done within the bounds of a LostWoods. This may be tied to the Operator's origin.

''[[https://www.youtube.com/user/marblehornets Marble Hornets]]'' is an {{Alternate Reality|Game}} PsychologicalHorror web series created by the group that would eventually become [[WebVideo/TroyHasACamera THAC]]. The series was instrumental in codifying parts of Franchise/TheSlenderManMythos, but is not part of the IntercontinuityCrossover that includes many of the blogs and vlogs that followed it, although it does feature in other canons as either a chronicle of real events or a fictional series...it leads to some confusion. The series appears to have started in [[http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3150591&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=14#post362207600 this post]] from the original Slender Man thread on the Website/SomethingAwful forums.

In 2006, film student Alex Kralie suddenly abandons his movie ''Marble Hornets'' in the midst of production, swearing to burn the tapes and never speak of it again. Alex's friend Jay rescues the taped material and, years later, [[ParanormalInvestigation begins reviewing them]], only to realize too late why the film shoot was abandoned and that by digging it up again he may have reawakened sinister forces.

Jay's [[https://www.youtube.com/user/marblehornets YouTube account]] chronicles material from the tapes and, increasingly, the bizarre and frightening events of his own life. A [[http://twitter.com/marblehornets Twitter page]] was added some time later. After Entry #9, he began noting a guy named [[https://www.youtube.com/user/totheark 'totheark' responding to almost each entry]], adding a whole new level to the scary. The series concluded with Entry #87, released exactly five years after the first video.

Has a [[http://marblehornets.wikidot.com/ fan run wiki]] with commentary, [[http://marblehornets.wikidot.com/comprehensive-timeline a timeline]], and transcripts of all the entries. [[http://store.thac.tv/ The entire series]] is also available on DVD, with bonus content such as commentary and actual scenes from Alex Kralie's would-be movie.

A film called ''Film/AlwaysWatchingAMarbleHornetsStory'' was released on VOD on April 7, 2015 and to select theaters on May 15th. Creator/DougJones plays the Operator. The film isn't a remake/adaptation of the series, nor is it a direct sequel - however, it is supposed to take place in the same universe with shout outs and references to the original series, but a focus around three new characters.

-->''Everything is fine.''

* FollowTheLeader: There's a truly staggering number of Slender Man-based blogs and small-scale [[AlternateRealityGame ARGs]] out there, and it appears [[CaptainErsatz each one has its own Totheark]].

* TroubledProduction: {{InUniverse}}. The student film, to say the least.