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Night Mind is an analytical YouTube channel hosted by Nick Nocturne, exploring and dissecting various pieces of horror-themed media, from web series, to video games, and more.

After initially starting off with analysis videos on Slender Man-related works (including Marble Hornets, Everyman HYBRID, and Tribe Twelve), he started exploring many other works with a Surreal Horror bend to them, thoroughly investigating past their initial surface level to crack their puzzles and obtain their deeper meanings.

He currently hosts four separate series exploring different media:

  • Night Vision features obscure, inventive, and mysterious web series, usually with an Alternate Reality Game attached to them.
  • Dark Arkade uncovers mysteries about and involving video games.
  • Case Files explores intriguing ARGs that defy explanation that even he can't crack.
  • Cat's Eye explores any other miscellaneous oddities of note.

     Works analyzed include: 

His YouTube, as well as his Twitter, Tumblr, and Patreon can be found with the links above.

All of Night Mind presents and discusses the following tropes:

  • Actually Pretty Funny: While going through the July 2023 update for Welcome Home, Nick bursts into laughter at Barnaby's Hurricane of Puns in one of the secret tapes. This then causes accidental Mood Whiplash, as the tape distorts and cuts out right after.
  • Alternate Reality Game: The subject of many videos, with more obscure ones popping up in Night Vision. He's also looked at works such as This House Has People in It where there's no "game" per se, but still present themselves as reality.
  • Art Shift: Nick's coverage of Don't Hug Me I'm Scared featured Nick as a cat puppet being performed live in a constructed set resembling his office in the style of DHMIS, as opposed to the still images of the office and corkboard with NM logo and voiceover that Nick had been using (and continues to use.)
  • Author Avatar:
    • Nick himself is yet to be fully seen, and is usually represented by an anthropomorphic black cat with four eyes; two green and two purple.
    • For an example based off interpretation, in his House Of Leaves analysis, he sees both Johnny Truant and Zampano as ones for Danielewski himself.
  • Animalistic Abomination: The aforementioned Author Avatar has elements of it in its design. Quite fitting for a horror YouTuber, really.
  • Berserk Button:
    • Always Watching: A Marble Hornets Story, to the point of it being the target of a rare Precision F-Strike.
    • Outside of his videos, Nick's been shown to have... strong reactions to MatPat. This has since gone down, since he believes that MatPat has gotten better.
    • YouTube's copyright protection systems, which Nick's efforts to analyze more mainstream works, like Donnie Darko and Black Mirror, have run afoul of, also set him off, given that his work should be protected by Fair Use.
    • He's also not a big fan of jumpscares, as he feels they are cheap methods of getting a shock out of the player/viewer. Though, he does praise ones that are done right, as shown in his analysis of Anomalies.
    • He really despises gamejacking, trying to overtake part of an ARG without noting it's fan content. It's why he was so reluctant to overview Daisy Brown, because he thought it was a gamejack of alantutorial due to some references it made to Alan Resnick's work, rather than just a Shout-Out.
  • Breather Episode: He says Dad is one since nothing horrifying actually happens onscreen.
  • …But He Sounds Handsome:
    • Inverted in his coverage of 10 Tapes. Near the end of the series, the antagonist "X" getting a power boost due to taking the protagonist as a host is demonstrated by him dropping his original, heavily distorted voice for a much clearer one... which happens to sound very familiar. When Nick gets to this part in his own video, he remarks that X's new voice sounds a bit weird, and says that the series creator probably just got some crazy fan who has been following the series obsessively to do it.
    • During his live exploration of Welcome Home's 2023 update, he comes across a talk show recording where he very obviously provided the voice of the host, predictably causing the Twitch chat to freak out. Nick insists the host doesn't sound anything like him and feigns confusion over why everyone thinks he does. After all, he isn't nearly cool enough to be asked to take part in the project. Which would technically make this trope both inverted and played straight at the same time since he's simultaneously complimenting and insulting himself.
  • Content Warnings: Nick typically doesn't have these, presumably because anyone who would be watching a channel dedicated to horror content in the first place likely doesn't need them. When he does have one, though... it means he's about to show some serious shit.
  • Cozy Voice for Catastrophes: Nick's smooth, soothing voice is many fans' favourite part about his channel. Even the Laconic page felt it was important enough to mention!
  • Cult: "Children of The Mirror: Joining "A Cult" & "Occult" with Wham City Comedy" is all about one living in fear of "The Return" of some kind of being(s) — implied to be The Hounds of Tindalos — that reinforce the need for absolute cleanliness and a wariness of angles. Portions of the video is dedicated to the methods and implications of such a cult, and the first few minutes of the video even has Nick acting like a solemn, all-knowing cult leader to introduce the mood of the series.
  • Deliberate VHS Quality:
    • In 2017, his second video on the SCP Foundation was treated as an exploration of an old VHS-tape he found, complete with VHS-quality footage, to create the story of a 90s company called "Dilley's" leaking SCP-information through the use of a bargain-bin tape.
    • In 2018, viewers were allowed to submit horror work under the theming of "90s Nightmare". Not only were many short-films filmed in VHS quality, but the Show Within a Show these projects were shown on off in, "Three Guys For Six", was also treated as a work straight from the 90s, again, in this same quality.
  • Early-Installment Weirdness: In early videos, Nick would talk very rapidly and his voice had an almost robotic distortion to it. He explains the reason for this in the "Marble Hornets: Explained" marathon livestream he did in celebration of the channel's 4th birthday.
    Nick: The "Marble Hornets: Explained" series, back when I was starting, I knew that what I had made was going to be super-long, and I was the only one I knew about who cared as much as I did about this entire idea. YouTube was much more used to short content. The longest it seemed that you could go on YouTube making content was about 25 minutes to half an hour. I created something that was going to be at least an hour long, and then some. For every installment. So, naturally, I was a little bit terrified that nobody was going to care. The shorter the video, the more luck, it seemed to me, that I would actually have in people watching the video and... frankly, giving a shit. So, what I did, was speed up my voice, and this is why I sound robotic. As well as the microphone being of poorer quality than what I have now, this is why I sound robotic in these videos, because I sped up my voice in order to make up time, because I was terrified that the longer the videos were, the less people would be interested. That's why.
  • Everyone Has Standards: He admits it took a while for him to cover POSTContent because the initial video of someone struggling tied up in a body bag as another person monologue was too weird and creepy, even for him.
  • Executive Meddling:invoked Discussed regarding Alantutorial and Don't Hug Me I'm Scared. Nick sees them as stories talking about how something that starts out beautiful or creative can be abused by powerful people for monetary gain, all at the expense of the mental health and artistic integrity of the original creators.
  • Forced Creativity: In one of the Halloween Candybowl fan-content specials, there was a scene about two people forced to perform a sketch while being threatened into complying by an unseen third party.
  • The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You: An interesting variant in "Ben's Playhouse," where the titular Ben kidnaps Collin Henson, a Viner who had decided to explore the Abandoned Asylum Ben was hiding in. Collin's Vine account existed for a while before the Youtube series actually began, and he had already posted vines that did appear to be genuine attempts at entertainment rather than flat-out parodic Stylistic Suck. This gave off the impression that this was a legitimate case of some unfortunate sap desperate for an audience who was actually abducted by a completely unrelated psychopath, but rest easy, it's all fiction.
    • Ended up happening to Nick himself in his personal investigation of the Jack Torrance ARG, in which he and several of the viewers ended up becoming key players; two moments from the ARG particularly stand out in regards to this trope. The first is when Nick and his camera crew went to investigate one of the locations from the footage, an abandoned mill; despite being in the middle of nowhere, and the mill having sat empty for years, someone (or something) could be heard making noises inside and at one point apparently moved a box withinnote , absolutely terrifying Nick and the crew and convincing them to leave as fast as possible. The other comes near the end of the ARG, where one of the folders on the USB drive found at the final geocache turns out to contain Google Street View photos of the home addresses of everyone who sent Jack Torrance mail as part of the previous stage of the ARG; Nick even admits, with uncharacteristic seriousness, that he was not in any way prepared for that little twist.
    • In the House of Leaves retrospective, Nick himself pulls a bit of the Unreliable Narrator Johnny Truant does in Part 1, claiming there to be a supplementary You Tube channel, Pelican Black, supposedly made by him, played by a friend of the author... when in fact said channel is run by a friend of Nick's when they found a fake footnote and decided to fake there being one.
  • Genius Bonus: Invoked by Nick on occasion, telling the audience to go and see whatever work he's discussing at the time before moving ahead, like with the hidden ARG of This House Has People in It or certain episodes of EverymanHYBRID. Exaggerated with Nick's covering on House of Leaves. He gave his community nine days to get the book and read it for themselves, and making a challenge to beat his time of 3 days.
    Nick: "Yes, I'm challenging you to a Speedrun of a novel of all things."
  • Hard Truth Aesop: Albeit delivered with his warm, soothing voice:
    • The music video "Mono", created by the CatGhost crew and premiered in Candy Bowl 2017: a crush on someone who sends signals that they aren't interested is not healthy. It's also not cute, regardless of gender; the rabbit girl gives silent refusals to the cat girl, who eventually skins the rabbit girl to wear her face.
    • "How to Make A Web Series": You can't create content just for the money or the fame. For one, not every project will get that level of success, especially if you have high competition. For another, viewers will know if you're just creating a web series for the success and not for the passion of creating it. There has to be a genuine desire to create good content.
  • Horror Host: Nick functions as a more modern take on it when you think about it, calmly leading the audience along explanations of horror-themed works, taking them on a journey to explore their themes and meaning.
  • In Name Only: This is Nick's biggest problem with Always Watching: A Marble Hornets Story, in that it blatantly ignores much of the original series' mythos and much of the elements that made it work, then fails in re-creating the elements it still retained.
  • It's Been Done: Conversed during the subplot in "Don't Hug Me I'm Scared: Explained," where Mikey the Microphone repeatedly points out to Nick that several people had already made analysis videos of the series and that he should just quit for being so late. Nick retorts by saying it's his own analysis based on his own research, and new, differing interpretations and opinions of a work are healthy.
    • Not that he doesn't resort to this criticism; he hates most Subverted Kids' Show Creepypasta, simply because they follow the same exact formula, "Paint It Black and pretend you scratched off the paint to find something evil/creepy/whatever."
  • Jumping the Shark: Nick feels this way In-Universe about the "THIS VIDEO TAKES YOU TO HELL!!! (WATCH AT YOUR OWN RISK)" upload of The Human Pet, as it features a telegraphed Jumpscare involving a Creepy Child who giggles evilly. What's worse to him is that 1. the series had been solid and intriguing up until that point, and 2. this was the last upload.
  • Meta Fiction: When they're not just trying to provide mystery, many of the projects he explores are this, talking about the nature of art and their respective media within the context of said media itself.
  • Mind Screwdriver: The ultimate goal of the channel. While there are usually still some mysteries left unsolved whose solutions are entirely up to the viewer's interpretation, Nick's job is to compile all available information in order to decode the ultimate meanings and purposes of the works.
  • Mirror Universe: Nick's video on Welcome to Night Vale ends up crossing over with the equivalent video by his mirror universe counterpart: David Diurne, the perpetually sunny and chipper host of Day Brain. Naturally, the two have complete opposite opinions on the show (at least at first).
  • Ominous Visual Glitch: The works beings analyzed tend to have these and these glitches are often replicated within the analysis videos themselves.
  • Pastiche: Videos exploring major works tend to have intros parodying or otherwise imitating the work in question.
    • "Marble Hornets: Explained" intros are all reminiscent of totheark videos.
    • "Everyman HYBRID: Explained" intros are all police evidence tapes submitted by Officer Matten (a Posthumous Character in EMH). Part 1 contains a cheesy low-budget ad for EMH as a fitness series (with a few frames inserted by HABIT). Parts 3 through 6 have HABIT up to his usual tricks of trolling, torturing, and murdering people (although Parts 4 and 5 had to have their intros removed due to copyright claims on the music). Part 2 only has the evidence tape opening screen (which doubles as a content warning), while Part 7 doesn't even have that and just goes straight into the video proper.
    • "Tribe Twelve: Explained" Part 1's intro is a Florida tourism ad that is hijacked by the Observer partway through and turned into an ad for joining the Collective. The other parts all have no intro.
    • The entirety of "Don't Hug Me I'm Scared: Explained" is hugely similar to the series itself, with a puppet version of Nick hosting the show and an increasingly sinister subplot.
  • Prophetic Names: As mentioned above, "Nick Nocturne" is apparently his real name, so the fact that he ended up analyzing horror works for a living is quite prophetic indeed.
  • Running Gag:
    • On his Tumblr, Nick seems really fond of using this fanmade Eyebrow-Waggling GIF image in response to certain questions, describing it like his version of a Lenny Face ( ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) ).
    • He discusses this in his Welcome to Night Vale review, pointing out how one of his major problems with the series is their overuse.
  • Shout-Out: Also doubling as a Take That!, in his Lasagna Cat video, Nick describes Garfield's motivation from the 2017 trailer as such:
    Nick: Because he hates mondays... but also he's apparently a Terminator and that's just what robots from the future really need to do if they want to kill John Connor. Spoilers for the next sequel no one's going to see, I guess!
    "Rust in peace, Terminator franchise" ~ with apathy, Garfield
  • Shown Their Work: Nick's research is ridiculously thorough, in that he'll go beyond what's simply presented or suggested in the work and look for what appears to be minute trivia in order to uncover hidden themes that the work might have contained, from Twitter accounts connected to ARGs all the way to obscure historical events the work itself mentions.
  • Signing Off Catchphrase: "Thanks for joining me in the dark this evening. I'm Nick Nocturne, and like a(n) [insert thing relevant to the topic of the video here], I'll be seeing you again real soon. Sleep tight."
  • Subverted Kids' Show: a few examples:
  • Surprisingly Improved Sequel:invoked Nick straight-up calls SIMULACRA a "Superior Sequel to Sara is Missing" in the title of his video on it.
  • Wham Line: In 2017's Monster Hunt, Nick lays out the urban legends of the Cropsey Killer, most of which involve a normal man losing a member of his family because of careless young people, sometimes at camp, and going on a vengeful killing spree targeting teenagers. Does this sound familiar to you? It sure did to Nick, and what really put the last nail in the coffin for him was an interview about the Cropsey Killer published in 1977, where the interviewee mentions a Crystal Lake Camp.
    • The second part of the House of Leaves retrospective, when "Johnny" reads the line "Are you fucking kidding me?" and immediately following, when Nick speaks directly, in an interview, to "Johnny."
  • "You Used to Be Better" Speech: Gives one at the end of part 2 of his Just Acquaintances analysis, mainly since the series's quality took a nosedive after episode 23.
Thank you for visiting the Night Mind TV Tropes page! And like a troper looking for a new trope to read about, I'll be seeing you again real soon. Sleep tight.

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