Mono: The Story You Never Knew (Little Nightmares 2)

Little Nightmares II. A game where Mono, the boy with a bag over his head, attempts to escape the Signal Tower and the Thin Man with his buddy Six. In 2017, we got our first look into Little Nightmares through the eyes of Six, and since then we've also seen the world through the yes of the Runaway Kid. But today, we're stepping back from the runaway kid, the girl in the yellow raincoat, and the nomes to focus on Mono and why he couldn't be left alive! I know that the title has spoilers, but the game has been out for MONTHS now so it's time to breakdown Little Nightmares 2: The Story You Never Knew!

#Treesicle #LittleNightmares2 #LittleNightmares

[Flowertine]

My boys! Are back! God I missed that intro, I'm so glad to hear that you two are well (': Lovely job, as usual. Missed seeing your lovely face and hearing your buttery voice (I would like to highlight that that is like 45% a joke and 55% serious). Anyways, beautiful game, very fun video, ciao <3

[penguin]

I read a lot of theorists saying the eye Monster rules over all others in the world and has a conscious of its own, it absorbs the viewers bodies and combines them with its own after draining their bodies of every last bit of their life force(souls). They said the eye was always watching mono and six through the TVs and had attempted to capture mono by using six as bait and a temporary host for the signal, it was always planning on getting to mono since his power allows its transmission to be broadcasted. They also said it felt threatened by mono and six working together because their teamwork would have allowed mono to end his loop, so it made plans to separate them by forcing them to fight each other. But that’s just what they believe, anything is valid at this point if you got the evidence to support it.

[MagicalPouchOfMagic]

Spoilers for the LN mobile game
↓ ↓ ↓

I feel like another contributor for Six to act on her more negative emotions would be because of the girl in the yellow raincoat’s death in the mobile game. There was a cliff at the end and, instead of saving herself and going straight for the raft in the water, she helped the girl by attempting to stop the pretender with the boulder. This is also in spite of the girl (unknowingly) locking Six out of the shed before this. But it didn’t work and the girl in the raincoat still died. Six also doesn’t attempt to save any of the children in the maw, even using a cage with a child in it to reach a rope. Saving others must have felt futile and the best course of action in her mind would be to not get close to anyone otherwise it could mean getting hurt again.

How Six ended up at the Nest in the first place also intrigues me. I wonder if she had any previous interactions with the Pretender that started this cycle of cynicism.

[RubyCarrots]

Imagine if there was alternate ending if she didn't lose faith in him.

[NiaJustNia]

I'd really like for Six to have a redemption where to succeed in the game, she has no choice but to learn to trust, and this gives her an opportunity to reconnect with Mono and stop him becoming the Tall man, but the game is choice based, if you make too many "don't trust" options earlier in the game, you get the Bad ending, but if you do take the chance to trust (which doesn't necessarily lead to a positive experience every time), you get an eerie Friendship ending where you realise it's just a handful of children facing a fairly doomed future together, instead of alone, like a bleak hope.

[Jm-kisu]

plot twist: you will never find out why six dropped mono
welcome back king!

[piecheese]

My theory is that the first Thin Man we encounter isn't Mono. He's just the last guy the Eye selected as its enforcer. When Mono killed the Thin Man, the Eye decided to make him into a replacement. "You killed the last guy, so you're clearly stronger than him. Congratulations... You've got the job."

[borbiscus]

40 days is at the high end of how long someone can survive without food if they have access to water...that could be why there were 40 marks, especially since there are so many references to hunger and consumption in this game

[reimichacha]

For some reason, I always thought of the beginning scene in the forest as the start of a new time loop. Like in Bioshock Infinite with the chalkboard, the TVs represent the amount of times a Mono entered into the loop. I could be reading between invisible lines though since nothing is truly definite in the game.

[redrookie]

Older mono can’t kill young mono because he would be killing him self stoping his own existence in time which means he’s never there to kill younger mono in the first place.
but Younger mono can kill older mono but must die the same way in the time line trapping Mano in a death loop of young mono killing older Mnon and becoming old mono/the fin man.

[zeflem]

“Why Treesicle came back: The story you knew ”

[motjon]

You know I never thought about this, but Six didn't know that the Thin Man was dead to begin with. She didn't see Mono kill him, so she probably thought it might have been a trick the Thin Man was playing on her.

[MacBunny]

Honestly death for Mono would have been a mercy for him.

[BaronofSouls]

Six worried so much about breaking the cycle and the danger, she ended up creating the cycle istself.

[sergeantsonso]

the only reason mono becomes the thin man is because he was dropped into the eye and corrupted by 6! she literally created the thing she was afraid of. it's a time loop. if she had broken the cycle, and chosen not to do that... Mono would have never become the thin man.

[GraceSavidesKeller]

Great video!

The thing I like about this ending are the different layers. From the most straight-forward, plot driven view, she dropped him because she realized he was the thin man. From a more character building lens, we can see how she comes to associate mono with being trapped (this came from another YouTuber, I can't remember who), and he keeps destroying her music box, her escape from reality. He also indirectly gets her captured by the bullies, taken by the thin man and even almost buried in rubble. In her head, mono destroys safety both physically and through the entanglement of having someone care about her. Then there's the sheer force of the trauma six has seen. The way the girl in the yellow raincoat died after saying her. The doubtless dozens of friends she's seen killed, kidnapped, and hurt. The shock of living through whatever made the world so horrible and knowing that children are literally killer and made into food.

The moment before she drops him is a long one. It's a moment of realization, hesitation, and even malice. I see it as her realizing Mono is the Thin Man, having the initial urge to drop him, contemplating and doubting her decision, and then making the decision and letting him stew in that moment of uncertainty for all the pain he caused.

I've always thought of Little Monsters as a metaphor for the ways society uses people, literally grinds people up, to keep the system going forward. In real life, lots of children end up as calloteral damage in this cruel world. It's the same for the Pale City and the Maw.

The name Little Monsters has always meant four things to me. One, it signifies children. People call children "monsters, " sometimes when they're out of control. But generally, when a child does something awful, whether from a moral standpoint or a societal one, it's because of what's going on in their life and not the same adult wish to cause harm. People are often afraid of children because there's a kind of undeveloped wildness to them. (Which, of course, is just part of growing up and healthy adults recognize that and meet children where they're at developmentally.) Two, Little Monsters refers to how the world changes us and shapes us and it's hard to escape unharmed. We have to do monstrous things to survive, but they're not the same kind of systemic crimes at the core of our society. It's just a little bit of evil.

Third, Little Monsters delves into the complex moral question of a child who does something truly bad or cruel. Again, Six is a product of her evironment. I don't blame her for things the way I would an adult. But there are things you do as a child that define you as an adult. And Six has certainly does those. She bears responsibility for that and has to figure out how to live with it and maybe one day confront it when she's older. Which, for me, comes at the end of Little Nightmares 1 where she kills the guests on the Maw and, exhausted, just sits on the beach and stares.

Last, Little Monsters is about intergenerational trauma. The way children can be an echo of the adults in their life. How the mistakes of one parent can be passed down in a toxic cycle with a, "This is how I was raised and I'm fine, " kind of mentality. How you can go from being the victim your youth to being a perpetrator as an adult. How abuse, neglect, and societal collapses creates these, "Little Nightmares." Children who have to do awful things to survive. Who make adults uneasy because they reflect all their personal misgivings and mistakes right back at a parent. And, as this YouTube video points out, the only way out is to break the chain of violence with love and trust.

The name Six is intruiging because it implies a One, Two, Three, Four and Five. It could be a callous way of naming children. It could be a name indicating generation. My favorite theory is that it refers to the time loop. This is the sixth rendition. In this one, Six dropped Mono and continued the cycle with the Thin Man. It could even apply to the Lady. Could the Lady be Five? Did her methods end in bloodshed too?

This begs the question, will there be a seventh cycle? In a perfect world I'd love to see a Little Nightmares 3 where Seven walks a new path. Maybe you play as Six and Seven. Six with her new powers, jumping into other dimensions and worlds and defeating the big monsters, as with the Lady and the Thin Man. Meanwhile Seven walks through some familiar paths, maybe on the heels of Six, making similar decisions, but having a more open and trusting relationship. The two finally meet at the moment when Six/Seven drops Mono and together decide to pull him up. Then Six and Seven merge, or Seven disappears because Six has changed the timeline, and Six and Mono walk off into a world freed from the signal, finally ready for a fresh start.

I can dream, can't I?

[jolo]

I think this is the one theory that I actually like the most about Mono's fate in LN 2.
I reckon, if they were to make another game, there would be another child. But this time, a child with power over TIME. The Signal Tower would want that power to both use and ensure that no one else can use it against the signals. So, we would like see Thinman (Mono) again. Would we see Six? I don't know. She's the icon of Little Nightmares, but I don't think she would have as much screen time as she has in the past couple of games.

But imagine that. A third game centred around a child who is learning to manipulate TIME. We have the child with power and strength (Six), the child who can bend and manipulate the desires and evil of others (Mono) and finally the child that has control over time itself...

Next time you die in any Little Nightmares game ever, ask yourself this: Did you wake up from a dream? Or a distant memory of an alternate time...

[PotatoPatatoVonSpudsworth]

The doctor didn't come across as taking advantage of anyone. Between his anxious breathing and close attention to his patients, he always seemed more like a victim.

This is backed up by the achievement you get if you spare him: "It's crueler to keep him alive."

[cedricsmith]

"Its been a while, hasn't it?" Yeah, understatement of the year

[fabiennevlcan-sparks]

I'm late to this but I think you excellently explain Six's character development. It's one of my favorite character developments in any media ever, and usually I see people do a disservice to it by acting as if she was always secretly evil. I don't think she even is evil, and I think you perfectly explained what I've felt this whole time. She's just a child in a horrible, horrible world, and it messes her up. We WATCH it mess her up over the course of the game. The note about revolution fits perfectly, as does the note about her being more fueled by hate at hateful people. Children only know what they see. Everyone I talk to seems to miss that a) she's a child and b) when taking into consideration what she's going through, all of her actions make sense. I think to say that she was evil all along does a huge disservice to one of the most subversive character development plotlines I've ever seen, because it's not often you see a character develop into something WORSE, and if you do it's usually done poorly. Six to me makes perfect sense as a product of her world, and I can't wait to see where Bandai takes her in the next game.