Nightmare Fuel / Mandela Catalogue

"For such people are false apostles, deceitful workers, disguising themselves as apostles of Christ. And no wonder! For Satan disguises himself as an angel of light."
— 2 Corinthians 11:13-14

You ever wonder if the person sitting next to you or someone you know seems a little off for some reason? When the whole planet is overrun with shapeshifting abominations, there's a pretty valid excuse to believe this.

The Mandela Catalogue has been called one of the most terrifying Analog Horror series to date. So you better memorize that THINK principle, because this claim is not unjustified.

As a Nightmare Fuel page, all spoilers are unmarked. You Have Been Warned!

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In General

• As per many Analog Horror series, the very concept of the creatures found in here are absolutely terrifying. The Alternates, demonic shapeshifting creatures with the single-minded objective of driving you to suicide via sheer psychological torture. We have seen just how far this psychological torture can go, from tormenting their victims for days straight to tormenting them about their past mistakes.
• Three words. Metaphysical Awareness Disorder. A mental illness spread by the Alternates using said psychological torture, characterized by multiple sleepless nights, religious delusions, paranoia, panic attacks, and climaxing on the victim's suicide. Only 3% of victims are able to recover, and even then it's arguably a Fate Worse than Death given how the Alternates treat their victims, which could lead to potential other conditions like PTSD.
• The concept of Satan actually winning his rebellion against God and practically altering everything after that implies that not only is Christianity and practically every single branch of Abrahamic religions are secretly Religions Of Evil, but the world may very well be a Villain World by any other name.
• There is something inanely creepy about seeing Bible class cartoons meant for children corrupted into some eerie message about a horror story. Doubly so if you saw these cartoons growing up.
• The very phrase "Alternates". Its usage implying that no matter how unbelievably wrong these creatures look, intentionally or otherwise, they're still somehow a natural alternative to who they're taking the place of despite being dangerous enough to warrant public warnings. What is the unnatural alternative?

Community Posts

• The very first community post is a woodcut of Noah's Ark, but with two Arks being visible. While true, this was already in the original woodcut, the context of the series recontextualizes it for the worse. It doesn't help what episode the post is foreshadowing, "Exhibition".
• The first community post foreshadowing Season 2 is a picture depicting the new types of Alternates as of 2005, revealing not only that 2 types of Alternates were found, but that the Type 2 Alternate (who has been speculated to be Satan), has been renamed from the "Detectable" to "Unspeakable", which practically confirms the theory.
  • The confirmation that Alternates who pass as objects with the downside of heavily breathing is utterly terrifying. Just imagine picking up your phone to make a call, just for you to realize that it's still on your night table as you hear the breathing on your ear.
• A more recent community post, foreshadowing 333, shows a saturated picture of a VHS tape labelled Jesus is Born (corrupted), or as the viewer knows it, "Overthrone".
• The newest community post on Youtube as of writing this is a pitch dark picture, which shows a humanoid creature standing after you brighten it up sufficiently.
• Several community posts allude to the existence of the Internet in this universe. The first picture uploaded alluding to this is the Windows XP wallpaper, followed by a picture of Cesar's House in what appears to be the wallpaper, reminiscent of the Weirdcore aesthetics. The last picture (In Alex's Twitter.) uploaded is a darkened Windows XP wallpaper.
• During the await for 333, Alex's Twitter and Instagram profile drastically changed to foreshadow the episode. The bio changed to "I can hear the scraping again", and the location changed to " Nazareth, Israel."

Overthrone

• The first alternate depicted in the series is Archangel Gabriel, and it is not pretty. We get a brief glimpse of his face as the video seems to glitch out, the first major hint that something is very, very wrong.
  • What's even worse is the translation for the binary text in the closed captions
    I am the one true savior. I must reverse the delusion. Joseph is next.
• As Joseph sleeps, the alternate Gabriel appears outside his window, whispering ominous threats in an eerily distorted whisper.
  I will fool the shepherds.
  I will know their greatest fear.
  I will know your greatest fear.
  Wake up, Joseph.
  wake up wake up wake up wake up wake up wa
• The downright grotesque Slasher Smile that the alternate Gabriel takes on when he appears to the shepherds is often considered to be the standout scare of the series. His mouth is warped into an impossibly wide, toothy grin and his eyes are much taller than they should be.
  JESUS LOVES ME, THIS I KNOW, FOOOOOOOOOOOOO—
  • And the worst part, this video probably has the least scary imagery compared to the rest of the entire ARG!
• The monologue at the very end, speculated by some to be from Jesus himself, describing the speaker being bound by chains and trapped in a tomb of sand for all eternity as their "foolishness becomes their legacy". It caps off with this lovely message:
  "If there is a god...
  Please help me..."
  • There's also an added layer of Fridge Horror to this as well. If the real Jesus never walked out of his tomb and was replaced by an alternate, wouldn't God (who biblically is depicted as omniscient) realize that and retrieve him? This lends itself to three equally horrifying possibilities; God has rejected Jesus and refuses to free him from his torment, Jesus is in such a cursed place that even God can't reach him without risk, even if He did want to save him, or, the worst possibility, the alternate and his lies were so convincing that he managed to trick even God along with everybody else into believing that he's actually His son, and literally no one is aware of the real Jesus’ torment.
  • This last may be the most horrific, as anyone familiar with the Christian concept of three-in-one will know that Jesus is both a unique entity and (effectively) an aspect of God. If the speaker is Jesus, and if God in the Mandela Catalogue truly doesn't know what happened to the real Jesus, that would mean someone has convinced God Himself that an Alternate is one of His own aspects.

The THINK Principle

• In this video, we're formally introduced to the concept of alternates, and they are horrifying. Essentially, they are otherworldly beings that taken on the guise of humans with appearances that fall deep into the Uncanny Valley. They can range from looking slightly off to being full blown Humanoid Abominations.
• During the public service announcement, viewers are taught the "T.H.I.N.K. Principle," a series of guidelines on what to do when confronted with an alternate. These include "Telling" an authority figure, "Hindering" the alternate's movement, "Identifying" the type of alternate, "Neutralizing" the threat if it's safe to do so, and finally..."Killing" yourself, because "there's not enough room for two of us." (The actual final steps, "Knowing" your place in reality / your enemy, are not much better.) The background music cuts to dead silence when the last slide appears, enhancing the shock of the message.
• Before the video ends, we get footage of a pitch black room. When the light cuts on, a gigantic shadowy being can be seen standing in the corner, providing a very unconventional silent Jump Scare and brutally subverting Nothing Is Scarier.

The Mandela Catalogue Vol. 1

• In this video's version of the THINK Principle, the second type of Alternate class (detectable), isn't shown at all. Either the alternate Gabriel is so dangerous that the government retroactively doesn't want people knowing about it, or it managed to somehow edit itself out of the demonstration.
  • Come December 2nd, 2021, Alex, the creator, would release a teaser for Season 2. which goes into detail about Alternates. Aside from the official name for type 3 Alternates and the teased Type 4 and 5, the teaser gives a new name for the Type 2's. The name? Unspeakable. The description for it doesn't lighten it up either.
    Previously classified as "DETECTABLE." The name that shall not be named.
• During the talk between Mark Heathcliff and Cesar Torres they are listed as "victim 1" and victim 2" at first and part way during the talk Cesar's picture distorts to show a darkened Slasher Smile, implying that by the time of this recording Cesar has already been replaced by an alternate and is leading Mark to a trap.
• Then it cuts to a recording of the cameras at Cesar's house, which alternates between three camera shots around the house. Then it starts recording footage of a "Motion Detection" at 3:34 AM. The first two shots don't show anything until the third shot, where a large shadow can be seen in the distance of the shot. In the next shot, there is a very subtle sound of a window being shattered, until it eventually reaches the last shot of the recording, showing the hallway door open, and nothing can be seen inside or near the door. 2 hours after the camera shots, the recording starts back after a "Sound Increase" is heard, and what follows is Cesar's mother screaming while the previous image of Mark and Cesar show up with Cesar's face horribly distorting until it cuts to a black screen with a pair of eyes looking right at the viewer.
• After this the next scene cuts to Mark's bedroom where he states that "it followed him home" and we can hear a distorted voice taunting Mark from outside the room. Mark eventually opens the door where it shows darkness and the alternate laughing hysterically, leading to a gunshot from Mark. Then the words "uh oh! bad decision, mark!" appears on screen then it cuts back to the black video feed again where a few seconds later there is the sound of sudden running to the camera and then a point blank shot of the alternate's face. It then cuts to a partially censored out shot of Mark's body with the text "no one came for me" with a dial tone in the background.
• The next scene is a police training tape. The first thing that shows up that clues in that something is very wrong is the warning that even viewing the video is illegal and punishable by law if not previously cleared with an assistant. The video then proceeds fairly normally until it mentions what to do in an alternate encounter. The tape then makes the very specific instruction to "Do not help a caller reporting an alternate encounter. No matter how frantic their screams are." and to essentially lie to caller that help is on the way, all while making sure to not show your fear. This is then followed by the video voice going "NOTHING IS WORTH THE RISK, NOTHING IS WORTH THE RISK, NOTHING IS WORTH THE RISK".
• Finally we are treated to a Toddler Stress Assessment Video where a child is shown various stimuli and like before the video proceeds as normal until halfway into it cuts to the first-person text and drawings of Mark when he was a 4-year-old child, where he tells of a scary night where he went to his mother's room in the middle of the night, and he passed by a dark room by the stairs where he saw "the man in the corner", in which he then shows a drawn picture of a hooded figure smiling. The video then cuts to the visual stimuli portion where after a few innocuous examples it suddenly shows a picture of a dark room by a set of stairs, similar to the description given earlier, before a picture of the aforementioned "man in the corner" shows up and... well, its actual face isn't as cute as the drawing made it seem. And considering Mark's almost friendly tone when describing it, this entity was more than a one-off occurrence.

Intruder Alert

• The video immediately starts disquieting out of the gate as we get a close-up of a man's face with the phrase "I am inside your home" being whispered.
• The portion of the video explaining to keep your kids away from anything capable of projecting violent content immediately takes a horrifyingly hypocritical turn when it tells the parents that "if you hear your child screaming in their room, wait for them to stop making noise."
  • After, the woman figure in the diagram walks into the room to check on her baby, only to find the cradle empty. She then turns towards the TV in the room on which the man from the beginning appears, only now sporting a very uncomfortable Slasher Smile. Nothing happens for a couple seconds in the video save for the mother for some reason floating towards the top of the screen, only to immediately cut to a more realistic depiction of the scene, to which the mother has apparently hanged herself.
    distraught at the sight of her missing infant distraught at the sight of her missing infant distraught at the sight of her missing infant distraught at the sight of her missing infant distraught at the sight of her missing infant
    • In that same scene, the baby's crib is replaced by a coffin, which has horrifying implications.
• After this, the video switches to the Mandela County Emergency Alert System for a minute, to which it states that apparently 3426 children across four counties have gone missing. At the same time.
• The latter half of the video switches to that of a police report of a suicide, presumably of the mother in beginning. Things immediately start off wrong when the police are visibly uncomfortable with being around and inside the house, let alone inside the room where the suicide occurred. To solve this, one police officer sets up a camera that takes a photo every 5 minutes outside of the room. The first photo starts off normal, but then the second one is immediately covered in shadows, with the third one having two dotty eyes peering out. The next photo changes the eyes out for the smiling face of the intruder earlier in the video. The very last photo, however, is the most horrific out the bunch. While the main contents are covered by a censor bar, the police notes say it depicts an invisible force tampering with the victim's corpse as it brings it downstairs,.
• The last scare of the video comes from the cops saying that, although the intruder's face is unidentifiable, they have ruled out the possibility that an alternate caused any of this. If the man in the TV is unidentifiable but has been ruled out as an alternate, then what the hell is he and what caused all of this?

Exhibition

• The first half of the video is pure Paranoia Fuel as it contains a video on Mark's personal camcorder that the police have in custody of evidence. The video features Mark traveling to a church in the middle of the night, looking for something before the video cuts out. What follows is him at home keeping a close eyes on his rooms around the house when suddenly a door in one of the rooms opens up a crack. We don't see anything at first but when the video cut backs to the room it pans down to a CRT TV on the floor, which turns on, plays music, and slowly a dark blank eyed head rises from the bottom of the screen. Then it cuts down to a very blurred picture of the window which shows a dark figure looking in from the top of the window.
• "Gabriel" appears again, this time to Noah and his redesign is arguably even freakier. While it lacks the wide eyes and big slasher smile from its last appearance it is much more darkened, making it look like it has Black Eyes of Evil, blood over its face and its smile giving off a bit of a Psychotic Smirk. It rebukes Noah for refusing to accept its message and says it will put another creature onto the boat. One that Noah won't notice at first but when he does see it it will be too late. Implying that this "angel" created the alternates. Especially bad from a bit of hidden text in the subtitles imply.
  2 Corinthians 11:14 "And no wonder! For Satan disguises himself as an angel of light."
• And finally the episode ends with another message from the United States Department of Temporal Phenomena, one that at first reads "The Death of Mark Heathcliff" before cutting to the real title. It then states that if "you or a loved one has been effected by the result to exposure to analog television and mirrors, contact your local authorities immediately" followed ominously by "Financial compensation will not be available", this message being after the recently issued "Television and Mirror Destruction Order". Whatever is happening it seems to have gotten so bad authorities might have resorted to very dubious things.

Season 2 Teaser

• The entire teaser is a black screen, with a voice reciting a prayer in the background, more specifically a prayer for healing, spoken by a clearly desperate narrator, presumably going through M.A.D. only to be cut by an alarm. Whatever this man is going through, it's not pretty, and it's not hard to draw parallels between him and Mark in Exhibition.
  "Loving God, I pray that you will comfort me in my suffering, lend skill to the hands of my healers, and bless the means used for my cure. Give me such confidence in the power of your grace, that even when I am afraid, I may put my whole trust in you; through our Savior-"
  • To make matters worse, the prayer is cut right before the name of Jesus Christ is spoken.
  • After the release of Volume 2, we can tell from the voice that this is none other than Jonah. While it's a relief that he's alive after the episode's Bolivian Army Ending, it's apparent that his life is still in danger, and now he is all alone.
• The alarm itself. Using a Creepy Machine Monotone voice and a siren sound to warn the homeowner about someone breaking and entering into their house. Its word choice? "Intruder Alert"

The Mandela Catalogue Vol. 2

• The video has a more humorous start than others in the series, detailing the phone call Adam and Jonah receive about a "ghost cat" inhabiting a woman's house. The humor very quickly dies however when, if you pay close attention, the driveway as the duo pull up to the house and one of the hallways in the camera footage of the first search by Adam look eerily similar to Mark's footage and the security footage of the hallway from Vol. 1, implying that this house is none other than Cesar's house.
• Things get even worse when, while Adam and Jonah are discussing what they should do after going through the first search (with the only point of interest being a sole door in the house being locked), Jonah starts to bring up that "the more [he] looks at it, the more [he doesn't] want to be in it." Now, where have we heard a familiar overwhelming sense of dread before?
• When Adam goes back inside to talk to the "ghost cat" using a paranormal device. Suddenly from the radio he hears Jonah "Oh my god, behind you!". On its own, it perfectly embodies Paranoia Fuel, until you also realize that Jonah is not repeating it, it's the same audio clip, meaning something is certainly with Adam.
• After this, Adam is inside a room, as he is taking pictures. Suddenly, a door opens, as Adam continues to take pictures. An Alternate appears from the darkness and says "Open your eyes". The camera then appears to be facing the ceiling, after which the Alternate (later identified by one of Alex's Twitter posts as "The Preacher") comes right into it, mouth wide and whispering what sounds like reversed and sped up speech.
• Adam sees that the locked door in the house is in fact open, from which he hears the meowing cat and decides to go inside it. When he goes down, the camera sees a television with a picture of a cat, after which the Intruder shows up. Adam asks what he is, after which everything from the previous videos flashes on the screen.
• All of this is too much for Jonah, who is shown driving away from the house, leaving Adam behind. An Alternate (presumably the Intruder, based on the voice) is tormenting him for his decision of abandoning his friend, as well as repeating "Open your eyes, open your eyes". The worst part about is that you can hear him begging The Intruder to stop.

The Mandela Catalogue Vol.333

• More lovely details about Mark Heathcliff's last days are revealed in the beginning of this volume. Specifically, a combination of a video, audio, and written Apocalyptic Log of him being locked in his room while Intruder and Cesar's Alternate tormented him, displaying the madness he spiraled down into, to the point of retreating into desperate pleading prayers to God.
  • The last item of the exhibition shown is his journal entries- or rather, his frantically written prayer book. It first starts "normal" enough, with him writing normal prayers to God to save him from the Alternate outside his door. As it continues, he grows agitated as no one has come to help him and repeatedly questions who he was really praying to all this time. It then flips to illegible scribbling as the days continue, before finally...
    my eyes are wide open
  • Special mention goes to Cesar's Alternate, who originally was trying to goad Mark into letting him in by putting a friendly face and saying he has a present and won't hurt him; but after an unknown amount of days where Mark has refused to budge, Cesar's Alternate decided he was done with the façade, and outright demands Mark open the door, in a bone-chillingly cold manner, with no emotion saved for a muted yet barely restrained menace.
    Cesar's Alternate: You need to open the door. NOW. I am not going away.
    • What's even worse is at one point, the Alternate starts to mimic the sound of an entire crowd talking. This means one of two things: Either there is more than one Alternate outside his door, or a single Alternate can somehow mimic an entire crowd talking.
• Everything involving Stanley, a disembodied rubber-band puppet face (inspired by a similar puppet used in Jim Henson's Limbo: the Organized Mind) that seemingly hosts a children's show segment on how to make your own imaginary friend. Everything about it just feels...wrong. And it's heavily implied that it's connected to the Intruder and the missing children's incident that was referenced in the Intruder Alert video.
  Your new friend is somewhere in your house. Now it's up to you to go find them.
• Listen closely when Thatcher first confronts an Alternate at the house. At first, the Alternate just keeps repeating what Thatcher says to it; but after a while, when the audio starts distorting, you can hear bits and pieces from the emergency phone call from earlier in the video. So either the Alternate is taunting the cops for failing to save the caller... or the Alternate was the caller all along and lured the cops there.
• What's more terrifying than a picture of an Alternate? A video of an Alternate, and it doesn't disappoint — the thing is disproportionately gangly and often seen in high-contrast lighting, so the audience doesn't get a good look at its malformed face until the end. Special mention goes to how the Alternate in question (implied to be the Intruder, if the return of the "uh oh! bad decision" title card is anything to go by) physically stretches its own jaw until it's unnaturally elongated, all for the purpose of letting out an unearthly, yet all-too-human laugh.
  THERE ISN'T ENOUGH ROOM FOR THE TWO OF US, LIEUTENANT
• The sheer Vocal Dissonance of Jude's phone call with the police. From his voice, it's clear that Jude is crying, terrified, and panicking, yet the police officer sounds completely unconcerned and merely sounds bored, as though Jude is merely telling him an uninteresting story. The fact Thatcher only sounds alert when Jude says the intruder doesn't resemble anyone he knows makes it turn into Fridge Horror: just how many Type 1 and 2 cases has Thatcher heard to be this numb to Jude's terror until he realizes it's a new kind of Alternate?
• The last twenty seconds of the video feature a statue of Jesus and Simon of Cyrene against a pitch black background, completely still and silent. Just before the video ends, a familiar figure fades behind the statue, heavily obscured in shadow: It's alternate Gabriel, still sporting his Psychotic Smirk from Exhibition.

Interlude

• One of the first things we see in the video is a Population Trend Report for Mandela County from 1990 to 2010. And it is not pretty. While we don’t see every year, the ones we do see paint a horrifying image of just how fast and steady the Alternates whittled down the population.
  • To start, we begin with the change between 1992 and 1993, dropping from 14,763 to 12,978. While a drop like that is bad enough, it immediately gets worse when looking at the change in 1994, where the population drops by over 5,000 to 7,312.
  • While the rest of the report doesn’t have nearly as bad of a change, we can see that by 2010, the population is likely dropping to below 1,000 people. It really sets in the fact that in just 2 decades, the Alternates whittled down the county’s population by over 13,000 by either killing them off or scaring them into fleeing for their lives.
• We then see a progression of the alternate's "evolution" cycle. First starting as an Incomplete Assimilation the flawed but still kinda similar forms alternates take early on, then onto Complete Assimilation, where it becomes more or less a 1:1 copy of the victim. Then Overdriven Assimilation when an alternate becomes the extreme Uncanny Valley examples, showing the alternate that whispered to Adam Murray in Vol.3 as an example, right by an old nun who later gets labeled as a "messenger".

The Mandela Catalogue Vol.4

• The video opens on another bible cartoon which describes the creation of the Earth in seven days. "Gabriel's" effects are already seen when a tree suddenly turns black, then later when they describe the scene where Adam is tempted to eat the fruit of knowledge it shows "Gabriel" being the one to taunt him. It then cuts back to eve which shows her looking in an Art Shift style up at Adam, whose face is ominously framed in shadow. Metaphorically this can be taken to symbolize Adam Murray falling into the machinations of the alternates or more literally, that the biblical Adam was the first alternate.
• During the first part of his live-action segment, Thatcher is visited by Ruth Weaver's alternate, who stares at him from the doorway, sporting a rictus grin, before silently fading into the darkness.
• We then get a shot of Thatcher's alternate back during the police station at Vol 3, assuming his voice and calling off police back up that could help David. All while watching its facial and eye contortions that are straight up Uncanny Valley, before gleefully smiling after the backoff is called off.
• The implication that the Alternates have now gotten their hands on Facial Recognition Software if the "Face Studio 2" segment is anything to go by, is nothing short of terrifying. These shapeshifting demons now have access to a possibly-nationwide database of people's contact information for them to utilize, and can seemingly manipulate technology to lure others into coming into contact with them. And if the Adam/Sarah Heathcliff segment of the video is any indication, they've already begun to utilize this software to its full sinister potential...
• Dave Lee meeting none other than Gabriel himself. First, Gabriel introduces himself by darkening the skies dating back Exhibition, before proceeding to give a mocking speech calling Dave a fool and telling him that he was doing his bidding. It ends with Dave's eyes being gouged out and his presumed death, all while Gabriel's laughing maniacally. We also see the return of Gabriel's Nightmare Face, now with black eyes and a large empty grinning mouth.
• Towards the end of the video, Adam receives an anonymous message asking for his identity. Just as he's about to tell the messenger to "fuck off", the other's profile picture suddenly switches to The Intruder, who then goes on to speak with Adam like they're old friends, his features ever-shifting thanks to the high-contrast lighting and intentionally Uncanny Valley CGI work, constantly giving off the impression that he's just barely clinging on to a human disguise. And that's not even getting into what exactly he says to Adam:
  The Intruder: The flicker of the TV illuminated this bedroom, drowning out the darkness with his favorite programs. Do you remember how we became friends? The light scared off all the monsters, it kept him safe. Do you remember my face? With contorted flesh and broken bones, I made myself known. Do you remember my touch? I cradled him in my arms, my sweet boy. I took him away. Do you remember that night, Murray? When you stare into the mirror, you see the same monsters from your bedroom, don’t you? But your skin is not your own. You’re not the real you.
• And finally the ending of a dark scene with red text, stating that they deceived the Mandela Prophet, have their prayers and records. And that it begins today. Then it shows a profile shot of Adam, the kind of profile shot the Face Studio 2 asked users to take. Seems like the alternates are just getting started...

mandela catalyst

• In the very opening scene, we get a news report on Dave's death, getting the small detail that he was yelling as he was getting his eyes poofed from existence itself. It was NOT a quick or pleasant death at all.
  • The news report is suddenly interrupted by what is very obviously an Intruder/Alternate related interference. Starting tame with the news reporters missing from the scene without any explanation, then suddenly shifting to a man without facial features staring into the camera in a white void, before turning to a text that reads like gibberish but is actually a Youtube link, to ending off with another text reading "No more running away." The Alternates are going all out on Mandela, and they want them to know that.
• The video shows us a video of Evelin's room, with a voice that appears to be Adam's talking to her telling her to "come here" and that "[he] has something [he] wants to show [her]." When Evelin turns on the lights, she learns that this voice didn't belong to Adam the hard way, as she comes in direct contact with the Preacher. When the lights turn off by themselves, Evelin tries to turn them on and off over and over again to catch a glimpse of the Alternate to no avail as she yells to "Adam" to tell her what he just brought to her home.
• Dave Lee's autopsy reveals even lovely details regarding his death: First off, it turns out Gabriel didn't just gouge his eyes as was originally thought, they're straight up GONE. And second, after one of the nurses opens up his skull, she implies that ''something'' horrible happened to his brain.^note Word of God states that it has literally exploded.
• Gabriel attempting (and, as it is implied, succeeding) in fooling Thatcher by pretending to be the poor mentally ill man's own intuition and telling him to "follow the screams". Mind you, this is the first time we see Gabriel actually come outside in the Modern Times era, and he's doing it like it's nothing by standing on a rooftop.
• Thatcher drives to Adam's house, finding it to be completely in shambles. The build-up to the following scene is tense, accompanied with a radio narration of The Fate of the Jester, a tale about a boy who, in his sleep, lost all of his humanity and went from the hero of the story to a cog in a machine as an spectator watches from the shadows of his room. Sound familiar? Well, it's about to.
  • The following scene can't be described as anything else than creepy. In the first proper jumpscare in the series, we get to see Adam, converting, or perhaps even fully converted, into an Alternate and yelling to the Lieutenant. This is made worse by the fact that his ear-wrenching screams are, as a matter of fact, cries for help, begging for Thatcher to murder him, as he cannot do it by himself. As the screams intensify, we can see his face contort and his eyes go from normal to those of an Alternate. That poor boy isn't even human anymore.
• Two details that may have been entirely unintentional end up ramping up the horror of the final scene even more.
  • First, when Adam is first discovered, there's a dark, curved area in the center of his chest. Nothing between Adam and Thatcher's flashlight is the right shape to cast that shadow, and until the camera moves around a bit more on front of him it doesn't seem to be positioned or shaped quite the way a human man's leg would be if he had his leg curled up against himself. The bleach bottle and cinder block in the room tell us Adam tried poisoning himself and crushing or bludgeoning himself, at the very least, and we know it's because he's trying to stop becoming or being whatever he really is. That dark spot looks like a hole in his upper body, and even from the front, if it is his leg, it's as distorted as his jaw...
  • Secondly, after the screen goes white, turn on subtitles. Some of the subtitles in mandela catalyst appear to be standard, auto-generated captions, centered at the bottom of the screen and about 90% accurate - but on occasion, the captions will pop over to the left, and will show short phrases that clearly don't match the audio (such as "thank you" during the news segment, while there's no audible speech at all and no sound anything like the phrase "thank you"). What do the captions say after Thatcher discovers Adam? "[laughter] Oh." Over the sound of Thatcher and/or Adam screaming.

Presto

• Following Dave's death his store he was running announces a "going out of business" clearance sale. With Dave now gone there is nothing keeping the Alternates from continuing to spread themselves through the analog TV sets there and are spreading now through CCTV connections.
• The latter half of the video features an interview between Thatcher and Adam, and it is clear that whatever transformation is happening with Adam is escalating even worse. What glimpses we get to see of his face is essentially a deteriorating eyeless Ghostly Gape. He blames himself to what happened to him and Jonah, saying it happened just like "he" said it would. Which leads to this exchange.
  Thatcher: "Who is 'he'?"
  Adam: "God."
• This is followed by a video titled URBAN TRAGEDY. THATCHER DAVIS DOOMS ALL. It then shows the picture of the Intruders appearing on the analog TV sets, followed by broken text that reads. "You were so caught up in your own volition that you never noticed your world turning into a gray and twisted version of its former self". This gives the implication that Thatcher's entire chase for Adam might have been a Red Herring set up by the Alternates all along or that by bringing Adam to the police station he just ensured the Alternates victory.

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