Larry may have been involved in the murder, and used Sal to mislead the authorities
In the second half of episode one, Larry, the metalhead son of the maintenance woman, convinces Sal that Charley, their brony neighbor, was the one behind the recent murder of Mrs.Sanderson. So, he has Sal go do several dubious things to obtain the "evidence" that would prove this to the police, and consequentially, Charley is arrested. Surprise surprise, years later it turns out he didn't do it, and now Sal has been arrested and is going to stand trial for murder.While jumping to conclusions in any murder mystery is risky business, it's hard not to look at Larry and be suspicious. First of all, there's plenty of evidence that he's a troublemaker. He isn't exactly depicted as a model youth. His mom says she sometimes "worries" about him. More importantly, he not only somehow obtained a police scanner but then has no qualms about using it to mislead police and direct Sal to tamper with police evidence. Never mind the fact that he hadn't told his mother "yet." Second, the description of the murder he claimed to have witness does not fit with the body seen in the back of the coroner van. Larry claimed that Charley barged in and slit Mrs.Sanderson's throat. In the coroner's van, though, we see a dead woman with her skull broken open. It is possible that the throat wounds were merely not visible due to the angle, and it is unclear what Larry, assuming he was the killer, would have gained from providing false details like this, but it casts strong doubt that he is telling the truth.
- To add to this, it's worth mentioning that Sal has a dream at the beginning of Episode 2, where he is at Mrs. Sanderson's apartment talking to a very much alive Mrs. Sanderson. She refers to Sal as Larry and thanks "Larry" for fixing her toilet for her. Being Lisa's son, Larry most likely knows a thing or two about maintenance and cleaning. And right after Sal enters her bathroom, he witnesses Mrs. Sanderson getting murdered. Who knows? This could be a narrative hint that Larry probably had something to do with the murder or is at least not telling the full truth.
- In the second episode, Larry being the killer at least is proven untrue. During the "In Seeking Providence" minigame with Mrs.Sanderson, it depicts Charley bursting into her room to kill her, but he is possessed by the Red Eyed Demon at the time. Mrs. Sanderson does in fact also have the wound to her throat Larry describes, her ghost even talks out of the wound instead of her mouth.
Sal did technically kill someone, but, like Charley seemed to be, he was possessed at the time.
And the person he killed was Larry.- Jossed as of Episode 4. Larry committed suicide, which Sal had nothing to do with. In addition, while Sal wasn't possessed when he murdered the residents of Addison Apartments, it wasn't at all what he wanted to do.
Sal's Mom didn't die from the dog that took Sal's face
...at the very least not right away.Sal is fifteen by the time he and his father move out of Jersey, but based on his size and the way he talks during the dream sequence where Sal's mother presumably was attacked by the dog that Sal wanted to go see, the kid couldn't have been any older than eight, maybe nine. That puts at least a five year distance between that incident and the move. But Sal and his father, when discussing her, talk as if the death is still relatively fresh. This Tropers best guess is that Mom was either in a coma for the rest of the five years, or had battled with medical problems from the incident until finally succumbing to the injuries half a decade later, though considering the nature of the game, the actual cause of death so much time later could be significantly darker.- Jossed as of chapter 5. In chapter 5, you learn that Sal's mother was killed by (and his face is blown off by) a presumed cult member wearing a dog mask shooting Sal. His mother protected him from most of the blast, so he was severely injured instead of being killed.
Sal knows that Larry is dead.
Maybe they even hung out together after Larry's death. That's why Sal was hesitant to talk about him.- Confirmed by Episode 4 - Larry commits suicide shortly after the start of the episode, and Sal encounters his ghost not long after and talks to him.
Sal is a transgender boy, or perhaps an intersex boy raised as a girl.
He has a traditionally feminine name and happens to be very short. He could have kept his hair in pigtails due to preferring the style, rather than cutting it into a more masculine style; your style of dress or interest in certain things doesn't always correlate with what gender you identify as, after all.- Jossed. Sal is a biological male raised as such. His birth name is Sal, and was only called "Sally" by bullies (presumably to emasculate him). Men who don't exceed 5'5 do exist, or some boys simply don't hit a growth spurt until later in life. Also in Chapter 3, Sal finds a picture of his mother with a note on the back claiming "I can't believe we're going to have a little boy."
4th and 5th episodes will be called "The Trial" and "Memories and Dreams", respectively.
According to Steam trading cards.- Confirmed for Episode 4.
- And for Episode 5.
Mrs.Packerton's death is not a coincidence.
Well, that's just wishful thinking on this troper's part, but it would be cooler if such a plot-convenient event turned out to be more than Contrived Coincidence. On the other hand, sometimes bad things just happen - the fact that would fit well in the game's dark atmosphere. (Though we'll probably never know at this point.)- Here is a cool theory from Youtube comments: Mrs.Packerton was a witch (or at least knew some rituals), and linked her life force to her husband's. Sal and Larry pulling the plug on Mr.Packerton directly lead to Mrs.Packerton's death.
Sal will die at some point.
And we will play as his ghost.- Confirmed in part by the ending of Episode 4 - Sal is executed via electric chair.
- Sal is playable in the afterlife in Chapter 5, and later inhabits Ash's arm to have influence in the physical world.
The game will end with a Downer Ending.
Rosenberg's dialog with Sal might be one whole piece of foreshadowing, especially considering that Rosenberg seems to know more than it immediately seems and is later revealed to be a ghost all along, stuck between realms of living and dead.Rosenberg: Most story endings are a lie we tell to ourselves to create a false sense of hope. There are no happy endings in real life, Sal. We all get the same terrible ending...Death.
Sal: You can't know that for sure, Rose. And even if that were true, doesn't that make life even more precious? It's our one chance to shine as brightly as we can, before the long night claims us. That's why I try to live the best life I can, just in case it's the only one I get.
Rosenberg: Not for you, my boy...
- Jossed, kinda. She was referring to the fact that he gets to come back from the dead... kinda... to help stop the cult. Most of the party, especially Ash's new party, is dead or Deader than Dead, though.
We will meet a new neighbor in Episode 4.
In Episode 3 Mr.Addison mentioned a potential new tenant that was going to look at a room.- Jossed, sort of. The only new tenant is Maple, the girl from Nockfell High, who moved in with Chug, but otherwise empty flats stayed empty.
18:33
"They will flog him and kill him. On the third day he will rise again." - Luke 18:33. Which is, coincidentally, Sal's time of death. Foreshadowing?- Indeed. Confirmed.
The woman from the tapes...
...is Jim's sister, Evelyn.1) When we first see the woman from the tapes (beyond the door #4), she's engulfed in flames. Jim reveals in his diary that he has the same nightmare of Evelyn burning alive, over and over.2) When Evelyn disappeared upon landing, Jim caught a glimpse of her, followed her and stumbled upon Addison Apartments. Later he mentions that he caught some more glimpses of Evelyn in the building. The woman from the tapes resides in the apartments, most probably in flat 404.3) The woman from the tapes, in turn, says that she can't shake off the feeling of loss and despair (exactly what Evelyn has been feeling since the escape), and refers to a shape of a man that she feels is important as "phantom" (exactly what Jim is called whenever he appears). Sarah, of all people, is going to play a role of some importance in Episode 5.
Well, "people" is a bit of a stretch, but Episode 4's Nightmare Sequence gives us reasons to believe that she's sentient. Sal will meet his mom in Episode 5.
Alternately: a sweet post-mortem family reunion of Henry, Sal, Larry, Lisa, Diane, Jim, or any combination of them. We will get to play as multiple characters in Episode 5.
Ash in the real world, Larry or Sal in the ghost world, etc.- Confirmed on all three counts.
Travis' friendship with Sal will come into play at some point.
With Travis getting some interactions with Sal or his friends - it's not a stretch to assume that Sal persuaded his friends that Travis wasn't that bad of a guy.- They were never friends, and Travis wasn't open to the idea of being friendly when Sal tried talking to him in Chapter 3. It's still possible he'll get some kind of conclusion in chapter 5, though.
- Well, maybe "friends" is a bit of a stretch, but Sal offered his help as someone to talk to/hang out with, and Travis apologised for his behaviour and admitted that he doesn't actually hate Sal and his friends, and even backtracked from "don't tell anyone or you're dead!" to a regular "don't tell anyone", so that's a start. Maybe their friendship kinda developed in the background.
- The conversation is entirely optional and it seems it can go multiple ways, so that means there is no canon path to their relationship the game can go off of. To use Travis further, the game will have to choose how that scene played out.
- In Chapter 5, Travis is a member of the cult but works against them to an extent to try to help the heroes.
In Chapter 5, we will finally see the face behind Sal's mask.
Neither Ash nor Larry seemed to think it was so big of a deal, anyway. Alternatively, we'll see Sal as a ghost, with his face restored to what it would have looked like if it wasn't damaged as a child.- Jossed. As a ghost, he's visually scrambled, and when trying to regain a body, we never see his whole human appearance.
The executioner was part of the cult.
This is why he didn't pay any mind to Ash and proceeded with the execution. Sally Face will live again.
Sal: That's why I try to live the best life I can, just in case it's the only one I get.
Rosenberg: Not for you, my boy...
- Semi-Confirmed. It's not a full second life, but he manages to return with influence on the living world by taking over Ash's arm, and manifest as a living being in parallel dimensions.
Larry's means of death
While it isn't made clear how Larry dies, there seem to be clues. Unlike the many mutilated ghosts, the most we see on Larry's are some prominent veins, and there was a bottle of booze in the treehouse where he died. It seems likely then that it was some kind of chemical intake or overdose- either too much alcohol, or alcohol mixed with poisonous substances or medication. Perhaps this is obvious, but the game doesn't address it, so...- Confirmed. When Sal sees visions in the afterlife of the people who died around him, Larry is marked by a bottle and pills.
In Episode 5, Sal will have one eye or no eyes at all if we will play as his ghost.
Since being electrocuted can make your eyes melt.- And if that's the case, we might get to play a section of the game in complete darkness.
- In a similar vein, Sal might get a bald patch since electrocution requires having your head shaved for electrodes to connect properly.
- Jossed. However, Ash gets a one-eyed appearance when Sal partially possesses her, with one of her eyes becoming ghostly.
Time travel/time loops are involved.
1) The Endless One said that Sal would try and fail to stop him, as it always was. 2) In Episode 1 Lisa said that she'd been living in Addison Apartments for 10 years, but Jim reveals in his diary that he moved into AA and met Lisa before Larry's birth (who is about 15 in Episode 1). Despite seemingly being back to normal, the tenants of Addison's Apartments were still being affected by the Final Boss.
They all acted very normal when Sal came around to see them. A bit too normal for people who were faced with a bloodied up version of a friend/family member holding a knife. Addison Apartments tenants won't go to Heaven/afterlife after dying.
Ray, Todd's father, says that "One day, we'll all return to the stars". Later that day, Sal tells Ash that the storm is coming, and so there won't be any stars that night. A coincidence coupled with a poetic word choice, or a foreshadowing for AA tenants' fates, since Addison later says that their souls were damaged beyond repair. If there is such a concept as Heaven/afterlife in Sally Face universe, looks like it's not in store for Sal's victims. The teeth that Sal was collecting belonged to the woman from tapes.
She's the only character in the whole game to not have any teeth shown, and her mouth looks like she lacks at least some. However, that doesn't explain her speech being intelligible enough for Sal (and players) to understand what she says. The "doggy" that little Sal wanted to pet was...
- Actually a wolf.
- Actually a cultist wearing a dog mask (in a H.O.U.N.D.-like twist) - in Episode 4 we see that the cult leader is wearing a dog mask. Though this begs the question of how far does the cult's influence reach.
- Confirmed. It was a masked cultist with a shotgun.
- Actually a regular dog possessed by Red-Eyed Demon, sicked on Sal by the cult. After all, who would think twice about a dog attack?
- It actually was a cultist in a mask with a shotgun. If you get the special achievement in episode 5 you’ll see what really happened.
The events of Episodes 1-4 were All Just a Dream
A prophetic one, to be precise. A plot twist like this would pack less of a punch, but it's possible that Sal was seeing the bad future all this time, and now has a chance to avoid/fix it.- Jossed.
- They actually all happened it’s Sally telling either his therapist or the interviewer what happened throughout his life.
Sal has actually been innocent all along.
As this post
and the comments point out, there are a lot of inconsistencies in Sal's memory of the events. Here's some: 1) First of all, as noted in a WMG above, everyone was back to normal and chatted with Sal as usual, despite the knife and the blood.
2) Mrs. Gibson is seen on the floor outside her flat and asks Sal for help; however, her door is chain-locked, and she lives alone.
3) Sal's guitar (and his other items, but the guitar is the one that can be easily seen on his person) is present throughout the second half of the episode, but not during the massacre itself.
4) We only see the murders themselves, but not the transition between flats.
5) For that matter, how did Sal visit all the floors moving upwards when the elevator was broken? We don't see any stairs at any point of the game, and when going down the holes in the floor the player is asked for a confirmation since there's no going back.
6) At the beginning of the episode Sal is seen playing the guitar while red images flash over the screen, with more blood appearing on the background after each image. It undeniably looks cool, but doesn't match the story.
7) Last but not least: the murders themselves. If Sal killed out of necessity, then why all the different stab wounds? A stab in the head, a stab in the eye, a slit throat...why make Mercy Kill creative?
The bottom line is: the cult could tweak Sal's memories and make him believe he was the one to kill everyone.
- Jossed. Larry reveals in the afterlife that Sal had to kill them or the eldritch corruption would eat their souls, and definitely did so because all souls are present.
In Episode 5 we'll see Gizmo eating after midnight.
As a direct Shout-Out to the eponymous gremlin. We've seen him watch TV, we've seen him take a bath - only one more left.- Jossed. You don’t see Gizmo do anything of the sort. He’s just a cat with very human like quirks.
Sal and young Sal are, somehow, different characters.
Or at the very least are separate from each other. This has been bugging me since Episode 1, but why does the game's Steam page image depict two Sals - the one we play throughout his life in the apartments and the one from the hospital? Was Young Sal used to fill the empty space on the pic? I don't think so. It almost looks like both Sals are important in some ways, separately. Different timelines? Will the two be interacting? Could Adult Sal be the one to call Young Sal at the beginning of Episode 1? Why depict this version of Sal, which we get to play as for five minutes at most, along with main!Sal and Larry, two main characters?- There's no indication of them being separate characters, but they may have thought it was important because that's Sal after the disfiguring accident that changed his life.
There is a connection between Sanity's Fall and the cult.
"Void", the song from Episode 3, is quoted verbatim by the cult in Episode 4 nightmare. Could other songs have some connection to the plot too? Could the band itself have some connection to the cult? There will be a spiritual sequel that takes place in one of the alternate dimensions
Jim isn't actually an alien
In his journal, Jim claims to be an alien, but we only have his word for it. The facts are: he's biologically identical to humans (something he himself notes the improbability of), both he and his sister have human first names, he claims that everything on Earth is very similar to his own planet, and most importantly, he describes the Drifters (the type of spaceship he and his sister escaped on), as being capable of bending spacetime. It's very likely that instead of travelling to another planet during his escape, he had either accidentally travelled in time or jumped to an alternate universe.