Little Nightmares 2 has taken over the internet with its release earlier this month. There is gameplay footage, commentary, and theories to your heart's content if you only open up your internet browser. One of the reasons this game has sparked so much interest is the ambiguity and confusion that the game leaves us feeling after we play it.
Players often want answers to these big questions, and sometimes, there aren't explicit answers that can be found in a quick search. There are so many things to learn about the Little Nightmares universe by posing questions of all kinds, from silly level design ideas to the deep lore that defines our experiences as a player.
10 Who Hung All Of These Beds?
While this is a small and relatively inconsequential question in the overarching story of Little Nightmares 2, many found themselves pausing upon the discovery of the hanging beds in the hospital section of the game. Mono and Six hop, climb, and run across these beds like this is nothing special. On one of the beds in the background, you can make out a body in one of the hanging beds.
Why are these beds outside of the otherwise functioning hospital? Who hung them? It's true that the answer might just be "game design" but it's one of many unanswered questions about the world that we might never get a straight answer to.
9 Who Are The Glitchy Children?
These collectible children appear periodically through the game for Mono to discover. Interacting with all of these children unlocks the secret ending cutscene, but there's nothing in these interactions that gives you clue as to who these children are and what's happened to them.
Are they echoes of victims like we see Six displaying after her altercation with the Thin Man? Are they like the porcelain children in the school? Understanding the identity of these children and their relationship with the Broadcast could help us untangle the depth of the influence the Broadcast has on its victims.
8 How Did Mono Get His Television Abilities?
When the player meets Mono for the first time, Mono is implied to have been interacting with a television due to the dreamscape with the door that Mono visits repeatedly throughout the game. Clearly, this would imply that Mono had these abilities before the start of the game.
It feels like this is integral to the story of the world with the final antagonist of the game also being a character that interacts with televisions in the same manner as Mono. And yet, this is completely unaddressed. It's intentional, but we can't help but wonder what the origins mean for the lore.
7 Where Are All Of The People?
Little Nightmares doesn't have a lot of human characters, or at least, not explicitly human adults. The first game showed (arguably) human figures wearing skinlike masks while going about their harrowing meals and wreaking general havoc aboard the Maw. However, in this game, the closest thing we encounter to a human that's not Mono or Six is the Teacher with the stretching neck.
The world shows signs of human life once being there: clothes, televisions, humanoid figures with twisted faces falling from buildings to their deaths. It really looks like they just... disappeared. Are we to assume that all of the people committed suicide like the people we see on the rooftops? Or has something even more massive eliminated most of the population? And why did they leave their hats behind?
6 How Does Six Get From Here To The Maw (Or Vice Versa)?
It's widely debated whether Little Nightmares 2 is a prequel or a sequel to the first game. There's evidence for both in the game and the unanswered questions help solidify the ambiguity of it all.
If this game is a sequel, Six would have had to get from the lighthouse area and then to the woods and lose her raincoat along the way. If this game is a prequel, Six would have to go from the urban landscape outside the Broadcast Tower to the depths of the Maw. How would she accomplish either of these? She's impressive, sure, but you'd think that in a world like this, that could only get you so far.
5 Why Is Six Hungry After She Escapes The Broadcast?
In the first game, we accept Six's hunger as fact. It's just a thing she does. But throughout the entirety of this game, there is no sign of Six's insatiable hunger until the secret ending. Why does she leave the television with this unearthly hunger? And why doesn't Mono experience this on his ways in and out of the dimension? It feels like this moment tries to answer the unanswered question of the hunger from the first game, and yet, the vagueness leaves us pondering.
4 How Is Mono So Kind?
You'd think that a place so dangerous and brutal would make its survivors cold and selfish. That's what it takes to survive sometimes. And yet, when Mono comes across another child who actively runs away from him, he takes time out of his running from ever-present death to consolidate and befriend the child later revealed to be Six.
Clearly, this kindness isn't widespread (you saw Six warm herself on the flames of a burning man and break the fingers of a mannequin for fun). Ultimately, it seems this kindness doesn't award him any special sympathies from anyone in the world, so how did he get this far?
3 What Really Happens In The Television?
The televisions play a major part in the climax of the story and the worldbuilding in the second version of the game, and despite the importance, the details of what occurs inside the television dimension go relatively unexplained. The Thin Man operates in this domain, that much is obvious, but it's the effects that this world has on its victims that are most troubling. Six's demonic long-armed self is the perfect example of this. How does the television dimension turn familiar Six into a monster guarding a music box? And why?
2 Was Mono Always The Thin Man?
Mono's ultimate fate is one that surprised many players. You never want to see your beloved protagonists turn into the bad guy, so we can't help but wonder if there was any way to avoid Mono's ultimate fate. Not gameplay-wise, as we know there isn't much choice, but perhaps in the lore. Was Mono fated to become the Thin Man? Are we trapped in a time loop in which Mono's rise to becoming the Thin Man and the Thin Man's presence overlap? Did Six's betrayal doom Mono to become the next Thin Man, assuming the first one is gone?
1 Why Does Six Betray Mono?
This question is perhaps one of the driving theory makers online right now. Little Nightmares lends itself to this with its shocking betrayal and the ultimate implications of it. Just as Mono believes Six saves him, she drops him into the abyss below without much warning. Ultimately, we don't have a clear explanation as to why she chooses to do this. Did she see something in the television dimension that changes her allegiance to Mono? Did she have no allegiance towards Mono and just needed him to further her own survival? Or is there something here that we're missing?