The Maw harvests humans for meat, and the first area is where they keep the cattle.
- Multiple entities throughout the game attempt to eat Six.
- The first area includes a barred off cafeteria with a lone (presumably) human individual eating, who even shows compassion and throws Six some food.
- The wrapped-up bodies being sent to the kitchen are, compared to Six (and assuming she's human herself), roughly around the right size for an adult human. (Although, Thin Man is human but he is taller than most characters.)
- The Janitor wraps up what looks like several children to be sent to to the Kitchen, and the Runaway Kid begins the second DLC escaping from this fate.
- Two track names from the OST support this theory, "Prison Walls" and "Prison Toys".
The Maw originated somewhere in Japan or is currently stationed near it.
The restaurant area has a distinct Japanese aesthetic to it and the Lady appears to wear a kimono. Either it's been like this from the beginning, or it's currently boarding monsters from a Japanese area and has changed its aesthetic to fit.
In which humanity was displaced and replaced by a species of human-eating
monsters that wear human-like skins in a poor attempt to blend in. But the humans are basically all gone now, leaving behind a bunch of monsters badly trying to imitate them (and forcing the Maw to turn some of its guests into food — human meat is getting too hard to find).
- Explains why in the third section all the guests go through the trouble to try to catch and eat Six whenever they see her, culminating in a literal tidal wave of them clamoring to get at her.
- Outdated, there are other humans in little nightmares, and guests are not the general population.
There is more than one Maw.
Each individual Maw has a different aesthetic depending on which country and/or what food type that is
supposed to be served. For example, the Maw shown in this game has a Japanese aesthetic with its manager fitting in with the theme. Other Maws could include a French aesthetic, Chinese, Latin American, and so on.
The food on the maw only makes you
hungrier.
Throughout the game, Six and other guests on the Maw never seem to get full from eating the local food, the two longest lasting meals seeming to be the rat and nome. The visitors also go right for Six, like she's so much tastier than the piles of food in front of them. Given the fae like nature of the maw, it's possible the food is merely addictive and not filling except in large quanities, creating guests and causing scavengers like Six to slowly starve. This would explain the
Face–Heel Turn as just desperation and not
eating the nome over the perfectly viable sausage, as it simply wouldn't help her.
Little Nightmares is in the same universe as
Bioshock.
An underwater city devoid of morals and spiraling into insanity? Sounds awfully familiar...
- The deformities of the Guests, the Twins, and the Janitor could be some extreme form of splicing.
- Even the Lady's powers seem a lot similar to Telekinesis and Teleportation plasmids.
Little Nightmares is a coming of age story and a satire of consumerism
- The world of the maw is at it's core about consumption, either goods or food, and the people in control are either those who can consume the most food, or those who produce said food. The story is about Six's coming of age in this world, where she slowly rises from a highly vulnerable and dependent non-consumer like the nomes, into an "Adult", like all the other adults of the story as a consumer. Her powers in the end are less last minute superpower and more a sign that she's learned from the best at this point: The only way to not be eaten is to eat everyone else. This is the twisted, and satirical "moral" of the game. The Lady's statement that she built the Maw to escape the insanity of the outside world is meant to be irony, as it is a perfect mirror of the same consumerism that exists in the rest of the world.
Expanding on the coming of age theory... perceived power dynamics and the roles of the characters
First off, we gotta acknowledge that we're seeing this story through the perspective of a little girl. As the viewer being shown the narrative by the girl, she's not reliable, but the world is still circling the drain, cosmic horror story-style.
As a child, all the threats just seem bigger because there's nothing to compare them to. With that said though, there's no shortage of predatory adults. So what's going on?
The world imploded in a big way, and the children are bearing the brunt. In this case, between the comic and the game, we know there's demand for eating children. From the things like arms hanging out of bags, they're essentially getting processed into meat. This is partially due to their limited ability to defend themselves.
We have the gluttons. They're also "the masses." It becomes almost literal when their falling all over each other to get at the girl. They're also great stand-ins junkies.
Then there's the geisha: she's comparably beautiful in a very ugly world. As a provider to consumers, she's sort of like a drug kingpin. She knows not to indulge in her own product, hence her figure. The game also plays on the "power is beautiful" concept. The mask sort of highlights how brittle that power can be.
Interestingly, towards the end of the game, just before the final confrontation, Six "climbs to the same level" as the geisha, while she stands on the balcony. The final confrontation is less about showing the geisha "her corrupted image" with the mirror, and instead, more like "mirroring the geisha's power."
By the time we get to the final cutscene, Six effectively supplanted geisha by being more ruthless than her; hence the absorbing all the life energy of the gluttons. By the time we get the image of Six standing at the edge of the ship, she not 'escaping,' she's expanding. Its kind of safe to assume, if she ate glutton and gnome alike, there's nobody still alive on the Maw.
The Maw's Staff and Guests aren't human...
They're monsters wearing ill fitting human suits. Notice how the Chef's faces never change no matter what's going on? How, if you observe them long enough, they'll pull up their faces to scratch underneath? How about the janitor's super scrunched up face? Then there is the fact that the Lady's quarters contain wigs along with dresses and masks. This is because they're all monsters that simple mimic human appearance and behavior, and why they have no trouble consuming children, because these creatures are not, and never were, human!
Six isn't the first child to try and escape.
For proof, all we have to do is look at the grimy hand prints, petrified remains near the first Eye trap, and the sheet rope leading to the nursery. Six is not the first child to try and escape... Nor will she be the last either...
- The Secrets of the Maw DLC confirms this, as the rope was left by an escapee before Six and you play as another runaway.
The Janitor is, or was, the king of the Nomes.
There is a bit of a resemblance, with the tone of his skin, and how he covers the top of his face. Also, the fact that he has pictures of the Nomes on his walls.
He seems somewhat different from the others working on the Maw in appearance, as well as the fact that he seems to be the lowest in the hierarchy, remaining on the lower floors shambling through the darkness blindly, tending to the 'livestock' to send to the next level.It could be that if it is true the Nomes were the original inhabitants of the Maw, he was the one in charge of it. But when the Lady took over she forced him into servitude.
Perhaps him working for them is part of an agreement to not hurt the other Nomes, which would explain why the other inhabitants of the Maw ignore them. Except for Six, and the Janitor himself.
When he chased the Nomes that ran out of the elevator he wasn’t trying to capture them, he just wanted to make sure they were safe.
- Data-mining has revealed an image in the game's files; a portrait of five Nomes, one of which has a body type very similar to the Janitor's, which may give some more credit to the idea that he is, if not their king, at least a Nome.
- This theory is made a little unlikely with The Hideaway's reveal that the Nomes are children.
- It's still possible if you assume that only some of the children are Nomes and the rest are their own race, as Tarsier Studios confirms that the Nomes were around before the Lady.
Why Six eats the friendly Nome and the Lady.
The longer one stays on the Maw, the hungrier one gets. But the thing one starts craving the most the longer one stays? Not actually food. My theory is the reason that Six devours them both is because by the end of the game, Six is craving
SOULS. Not something she'd get a lot of from the food and getting such from the guests would be difficult
given their size compared to her. The other two however? She's clearly bigger than the former and with the latter laying down, the size difference is irrelevant.
Six can see the future
The beginning of the game has Six seeing a vision of the Lady turning to stare at the camera; it's possible she's having
bad dreams about her past if she and the Lady are related, but it's also possible she's spurred to escape the Maw by her vision of her encounter with the Lady. Furthermore, all of the deaths in the game are followed by Six waking up in the last spot that the game autosaved, as if she had a dream of her possible death. Like the player, Six in-game is then able to use this dream of her death to evade the monsters of the Maw and escape.
The tie-in comic book makes a big deal about the things Six "sees," and to some extent it's literal and talks about the past she refuses to speak of, but it could also refer to visions she might have had about The Maw.
Six is of the same kind as the Lady
Quite clearly Six is not a normal child. She can withstand falls that would kill a normal human being, and her hunger fits are clearly abnormal and inhuman. (Also, a normal human, especially a child, would have very hard time eating a rat raw.)
It could be that this species consumes other members of the same species in order to gain their powers, and it may even be that Six is not a prisoner, but arrived in order to specifically seek the Lady. (It would also explain why the Lady wants to kill her. She is protecting herself.) And, of course, Six gains the Lady's powers when she eats her, which gives support for this theory.
- Also supporting this is how, when playing the Runaway Kid, he doesn't experience the Horror Hunger. That is exclusively Six and perhaps a species trait.
Six is the daughter of the Lady
Building on top of the theory that they're the same species, the two could in fact also be related. During the game, there is a portrait picturing a woman who is definitely the Lady with a little girl who looks suspiciously like Six, a resemblance which becomes more apparent as more portraits of the girl also appear in the game where she wears a familiar yellow jacket.
Six could have perhaps been sent away in the first place from the Maw because she'd reached the age of her kind where they become hungrier and hungrier until they devour their mothers to inherit their abilities- something the Lady would definitely know about as she would have done the same herself at that age.
Of course, as we know, this did not stick and in the end Six returns to the Maw and still ends up killing her mother, as was the way of their kind.
Jossed, an interview with someone from Tarsier confirms that they are not related.
Something about the Maw is just off, the fact that it has claws that cling to the ocean floor doesn't help.
The Maw is actually an Eldritch Abomination that either gives off the illusion of being a ship, truly shapeshifts into one, or just looks like one. Either way it is not what it seems, it has a terrible effect on the minds of those whom enter it, causing them to only care about eating, and never feel full.
Nobody whom has ever boarded the Maw has ever returned, but if that's true, why do the Guests keep coming? The Maw attracts them with its mind-bending abilities. It forces the Guests to come, but why? The same reason any other creature attracts pray.
To feed.
Either the Maw feeds on the flesh of the Guests, though it's implied the Guests meat is used to feed the next batch of Guests, along with the meat of the children and fish, so perhaps the Maw doesn't feed on flesh at all. It may feed on emotions, suffering, souls, or any other abstract concept it may gain from the endless cycle of Guests.
The workers on the Maw are either brainwashed into doing their jobs, followers of the Maw of their own will, or constructs.
The Nomes are also creations/servants of the Maw, perhaps even acting like cells in its body.
- I'd like to expand on this: The Maw is some sort of Eldritch Abomination "Meta Organism" and/or a living embodiment of gluttony and predation. The nomes and crew aren't "servants" of it, they're parts of it (with The Lady presumably acting as the brain). What it feeds on isn't suffering or emotions, the Maw feeds on gluttony itself. It eats its guests when they walk in; digests them as they gorge themselves, get made into food, and subsequently get gorged upon; and excretes them when, well, the other guests do.
- Alternatively, instead of the Maw itself being alive, the Lady herself is responsible for the brainwashing of the Guests, as well as Six's uncontrollable hunger pains, as she is stated to be the one who casts the "hypnotic spell that keeps the engine running."
The Lady, Six, and The Granny are all one family.
Based upon available evidence this Troper suspects that The Granny was the last Lady of the Maw whos daughter trapped her in its flooding basement so she could take over. When her powers manifested The Lady couldn't bear or was unable to outright kill her mother but managed to trap her. This left The Granny to slowly succumb to age as her powers (presuming she's the same as the Lady) faded from being unable to consume souls of dying or dead guests. This was of course driven by her powers, dark in nature, which instilled an uncontrollable need to dominate The Maw for herself.
Eventually The Lady had children of her own and for a time she was happy. However when the first one approached the age of maturity for whatever they are The Lady realized that if she had overthrown her mother when her powers manifested there was a fair chance that her own children would do the same. Over the course of many years she bore five children but just before the age when their own powers would have manifested The Lady would have them tossed down into the maw to die out of sight and out of mind. She couldn't live in that big living quarter all alone but could not allow her children to live past a certain point.
Six was the final one to be subjected to this treatment, the most recent and Sixth child of The Lady. Even by her own name it is shown that The Lady is having trouble valuing the children she knows she will have to sacrifice eventually. Six was tossed like all the others before her but by some trick of luck Six began developing powers just a bit early. As an early bloomer already condemned Six had no guide to show her how to properly use or control them only able to trust her instincts to guide her budding supernatural abilities.
This would be why The Lady had a photo or painting of herself and Six still in her quarters, she had only just decided to have Six killed and hadn't even finished removing the reminders. More likely then not she simply abandoned Six while out in the world and sent someone else to do the deed for her, thus closing the logical gap in the comics where Six began outside. It would be less painful for The Lady that way and she could remember Six fondly in her favorite yellow rain coat after a day out. In a twisted way a heart warming choice of final events.
- Not too sure about the theory of how the Lady treats Six but the Granny and the Lady being related seems possible, given that it's revealed the Lady looks like a (relatively) younger version of the Granny.
- This is untrue as Tarsier confirms Six and the Lady are NOT related.
The Chefs were once one entity, but they were split in two when they looked into one of the hangman's mirrors.
In the comic, a group of children stumble across a bunch of mirrors that cause whoever views them to see themselves in a radically different form. Then the person
takes on that form. One of the kids sees two of himself in one mirror, and then there are two of him outside of it. It's not the same as suddenly having a twin though, as when one of them is ripped away from the other, the other's words are cut in half and can't be understood.
The Lady is Five.
There is a portrait in the Lady's quarters with her and four other Geisha looking women who are all blacked out. This could make the Lady the fifth, or Five, with Six being....well, Six, because she is the sixth.
The Shoe Burrower and the North Wind are the same entity.
Recently, the second issue of LN comics reveals that the Hanged Man is a
Mirror Monster that once tried to capture several children. He failed to capture all but one of them. After the fight, the child who ruined his attempt to catch them was deserted by his/her friend and brought to the Maw by the Ferryman. In the game proper, Six comes across what seems to be the Hanged Man's dead body, close to where she begins her journey.
So here are my hypotheses: Either (1) the Lady wants to have the children and orders the Ferryman to catch them, but she isn't the only party who's trying to do this - I.e., the first issue of the comics had implied that the North Wind was competing with the Ferryman to capture children. Thus the Lady feels the need to punish her competitors; or (2) the Lady controls all of these monsters, the North Wind and the Hanged Man were all working for her, but they failed the Lady when they failed to capture the children, so the Lady may still be motivated to punish them in some ways.
As we have seen, the Hanged Man has already been "punished": When we see his body hanging from the ceiling, he seems totally motionless and lifeless. Thus, it is possible that the North Wind may, too, be punished in some ways, hanging (sorry) somewhere around the Maw. What if... his/her/its punishment is to be locked inside a pit of shoes? Think about it. Both the Shoe Burrower and the North Wind are formless creatures. The North Wind has the ability to control wind, while the Shoe Burrower makes a strong air current that sends shoes flying when he tries to get to Six.
Conclusion: The North Wind and the Shoe Burrower are the same entity.
The Lady murdered the Hanged Man for trying to disrupt/kill her in the past.
The second issue of the comics has revealed that the Hanged Man (the one seen dangling lifelessly from the ceiling in the early part of Six's journey) was actually a
Mirror Monster. He has the power to move from mirror to mirror and to catch and magically manipulate people from behind the glass. This may be connected to the broken mirrors in the Lady's quarter: The Hanged Man may have tried to disrupt or even kill her through her mirrors, resulting in her breaking all but one of them. The Lady would understandably be pissed, and perhaps that's why the Ferryman showed up in the Hanged Man's mansion - he was ordered by the Lady to go get the Hanged Man. The Ferryman was there
for the Hanged Man - getting the hunchback kid was just a bonus for him. Once the Ferryman brought the Hanged Man to the Maw, the Lady had him executed.
The significance of the mirror that was used to defeat the Lady
As we already know, the Lady sees an ugly reflection in the mirror she has in her quarters, yet her actual character model is shown to have a beautiful face. It's apparent that her weakness is her reflection, but the mirror she looks at in
The Residence doesn't harm her. And when Six devours the Lady and gains her dark powers, she uses them to kill all of the Guests, yet she isn't harmed by the bright sunlight that shines on her when she leaves the Maw at the end, which would also likely mean that the Lady wouldn't be affected either. So, the Lady isn't harmed by only her reflection, nor would she be affected by light; it's specifically the small mirror that Six uses in the final battle that affects her.
This is because that mirror in particular is the one the Lady used her dark powers on to make herself look beautiful, similar to how the kids changed their appearances and left them behind in the mirrors in the comics; though instead of merely touching them, she used her own magic. It's also why that mirror is still intact; because if it were to be destroyed, the Lady's beauty would begin to vanish. However, while she can look in other mirrors without being harmed, the reason why she can't look in that one mirror is because it's mentioned in the comics that the Lady's beauty is also "her curse". The mirror that Six wielded is the only mirror where the Lady can actually see her beautiful face, but it will always hurt her if she stares for too long.
What we consider to be "ordinary" is "alien" to the world this takes place in
For Six is an "odd" thing and the Lady is "odd" as well. And that's why she wears a mask.
None of the characters are human
Six, the other children, and every other being shown in the game is not a human creature. Six has no problem devouring a live rat without any sort of knife or something to tear it into bite sized chunks, and the 'adults' are much, much larger than the children; it is unlikely the children will ever grow to be that size (However, Mono did). The species the 'children' such as Six and the Runaway Kid are are considered vermin and are being raised by the larger folk for food (if they are children, and their species aren't always that size at full maturity) They probably have sharp ratlike teeth to allow them to tear into food easier, and due to all of them covering their faces, showing your face or eyes is probably immodest in their culture. Maybe they all have the ability to copy the powers of those they kill and eat, which is why the empowered people want them all considered vermin and exterminated. The Lady, the Butler, and the Pretender are another species, as shown by their lean body types and their psychic powers. The Janitor, the Teacher, and the Craftsman are also members of the same different species, due to their long and bendy limbs. The Guests are a species of their own as well, and I'm not sure where the Chefs and others fit in, perhaps they are all separate creatures. This takes place in another world where many sentient species have evolved at the same time and place.
- They might not be human, but 'the children are too small to grow to adult size' has been jossed by Mono's transformation sequence that shows him growing up to be the Thin Man.
The Bellhop isn't committing suicide, but greeting the Guests
It is what a bellboy does after all. What if instead of committing suicide, the Bellhop slowly rises from wherever he is thanks to the pulley system and the noose around his neck and helps the Guests escort them to their quarters.
The Lady's reflection works like the picture of Dorian Gray.
It's possible the reflection is somehow enchanted to remind the Lady of her internal ugliness or the age she's avoided by artificially extending her youth, and her frustration with not being able to enjoy her beauty in the mirror has caused her to destroy most of them in anger. She doesn't fully believe she's that ugly in reality, but is insecure enough about the reminder in her mirrors that she set up the Maw so she'll be surrounded by uglier beings: employing monsters, destroying children who could grow up beautiful, and deforming adults through obesity from eating them.
The Shadow Kids are the souls of the petrified kids in the secret room of the Lady's Residence
They clearly have some connection to the Lady and judging by the shackles on their legs they were formerly imprisoned kids in the Maw, yet they don't seem to be created through the same process that creates more Nomes. Given that there's a secret room in the Lady's residence where a group of petrified children (and the ashy remains of presumably other children) are gathered around a table holding an urn, it's possible that the Lady has the ability to create them by taking some kind of essence from captive children, leaving only the distorted remains of their souls.
All of the children are trapped in a hellish zone where they are too tiny and weak for the world around them, and instead of trustworthy adults who can protect and comfort them, there are only deranged, grotesque giants who are invariably hostile to them. Even death is no escape, because they will simply wake up as if from a nightmare, forced to confront the horrors around them all over again. And even if they do prove themselves clever or lucky enough to overcome their current tormentor, there's always another monster just around the next corner. The only available option to stop being a victim of the horrors all around you is to become a monster yourself, but even then you're still trapped in an endless cycle of torment and fear.
The whole game is just Six's hallucination
Six is only a starving and frightened child who stowed away on a cruise ship, and her child's mind, deluded by hunger and fear, twists the figures around her into monsters.
