#also I hate this loser but gosh dang if he isn't fun to analyze

[babycharmander]

WARNING, THIS AUDIO FILE AND POST CONTAIN END-OF-THE-GAME SPOILERS FOR PSYCHONAUTS 2!

(The first half of the above audio is the music as heard normally in the game; the second half is reversed.)

During my playthrough, I noticed some very... interesting audio. At first I’d thought there might be something new hidden there--a hidden detail or something--and while I was not entirely correct, what I did find reinforced my interpretation of some themes the game presents.

Analysis under the cut, and, again, SPOILERS FOR THE ENTIRE GAME. This is going to get long, but stick with me!

What you hear in that audio clip is audio from Fatherland Follies--specifically the last part of the ride, shortly before you’re dumped out at the gift shop (specifically, the part leading up to the zoom-in to the giant Gristol head). When playing this level, I picked up on the reversed music immediately. As someone who finds backmasking fascinating (and as a Gravity Falls fan who participated in the puzzle solving while the show was running), I thought there must be something hidden here. But the wild ride that is the end of the game made me forget about it for a while... but last night I remembered it again, and this morning I decided to do some investigation.

It was definitely a reversed version of part of the song, that was for sure. I was hoping there would be some new lyrics here, perhaps hinting at something even more sinister going on. But instead, what I got was a reversed part of the song that we hear earlier:

“Grulovia, Grulovia, you’re always right!”

This initially disappointed me at first... but I quickly realized the fact that these specific lyrics not only being repeated, but being backmasked in Gristol’s mental world (I’ll get to that in a minute) was not insignificant.

(Or maybe it is and I’m just reading too much into things, but let’s assume I’m not for a moment.)

Before I can explain this, I’m going to jump into some analysis on some themes the game presents.

Firstly, let’s talk about Maligula. She’s a part of Lucy’s mind, and a dangerous one. I don’t have exact quotes from the game on-hand, but Ford talked about how Lucy’s mind was in a vulnerable state at the time she left to return to Grulovia, and how Maligula emerged as an overdeveloped fight-or-flight response (or something to that effect). Later, Raz states that what Maligula is is something that everyone has inside them--it’s just that most people know how to keep it “where it belongs.” During the fight, Lucy tries to admit that she was the one to kill her sister, but is stopped by Maligula. After the first phase of the fight, she’s able to admit it to herself... but the Maligula part of her mind decides she doesn’t care. Lucy, however, is able to break free, and then able to empower Raz.

My take on this is that Maligula represents the fact that every human is capable of committing atrocities.

This is a theme I’m very glad the game touched on, because it’s one of the most important things people can learn. Everyone (including me, including you) has the capacity to do horrible, awful things. This can manifest itself as something as extreme as the horrors we’ve seen throughout history, or smaller-scale like a murderer, or simple things like racism, ableism, homophobia, and so on. Ever notice how it’s usually the people who say “I can’t  be ___ because I don’t hate those people!” tend to be the people who are the most casually racist/ableist/homophobic/whatever?

It’s the people who insist they are not capable of doing something wrong that are the most at risk for doing that thing... and if they wind up doing that thing they think they’re incapable of, they’re more at risk of thinking “This thing I’m doing is not wrong.”

It’s why my hackles rise when I hear someone insisting that of COURSE they would never do something terrible to the wrong person.

Meanwhile, realizing “I have the capacity to do this awful thing” is the first step to making sure “I REFUSE to do this awful thing.”

Tying this back into Psychonauts 2... Lucy, against Ford’s warnings, insisted that she would be fine despite how vulnerable her mind was. That she would make things right, not worse. She did not believe she could do something terrible... and was thus easily manipulated into doing something awful--killing peaceful protestors. And among those peaceful protestors was her sister. The realization shattered her, but she could not let herself believe that this was her own doing, and placed the blame on her brother-in-law. The grief she felt combined with various other things (the stress of the war, the vulnerable state her mind was in, and her refusal to admit to herself what she’d done) is what ultimately created Maligula.

However... later on, after the help of Raz and Ford and the rest of the Psychic Seven, Lucy was able to piece together what had actually happened. And she was at her most powerful when she realized, “I killed my sister. I did these terrible things. And I want to stop this.”

Next, I want to talk about another very important theme in the game, which is that of helping other people. Early on in the game, Raz learns the importance of things like consent and responsibility in people’s minds--to not go into people’s minds to just mess around or try to change their thinking, but to “help them learn to fight their own demons.” I could go into just how wonderful it is that Raz learned to ask permission before entering the minds of others, but what’s more relevant to the point I’ll be getting to is just how Raz is able to help people. This is something that was present in the first game and midquel as well.

Raz doesn’t always enter minds to help them--in fact, in the first game, the first several levels are merely Raz being invited into counselors’ minds in order to learn psychic techniques and... well, to experiment with the brain tumbler. After that point, however, he does wind up helping all the characters whose minds he jumped into (minus Boyd, but that wasn’t really his fault). The same happens with Raz winding up helping Loboto in Psychonauts in the Rhombus of Ruin.

In the sequel, Loboto’s mind is entered more to pry information out of him, so helping him wasn’t the primary goal there... and of course, Raz messes with things in Hollis’s mind for all the wrong reasons, which brings him to the harsh lesson he has to learn. Past that, however, he genuinely helps each character whose mind he enters (with the exception of one).

All of the characters Raz wound up helping have something in common: even if they did not admit it outwardly, they knew they needed help on some level. Some examples: While Linda was unable to do anything other than what she was commanded to do, some of the mental figures in her mind knew that she was being controlled. Though Oleander outwardly showed desires to take over the world no matter what it took, his inner child was still suffering from the trauma of what his father had done and how small and powerless it made him feel. While Loboto outwardly refused to see anything was wrong,  inwardly some small part of him desperately wanted to find his moral compass again and defeat the absolute monster of a person he’d become, while his inner child wanted to show someone the horror he’d gone through. Though Compton outwardly wanted to keep himself hidden away from all the overwhelming voices and judgements, inwardly he wanted help facing those fears and anxieties so he didn’t have to keep isolating himself from his friends and colleagues. While Bob outwardly had isolated himself and chased away anyone who tried to talk to him so he wouldn’t get hurt, inwardly part of him desperately, desperately wanted to see people again, as evidenced by his attempting to grow plants again, and also begging Raz not to leave him.

All of this to say that in order for Raz to help someone, that character had to, on some level, realize their need for help and WANT it, even if they didn’t fully admit that to themselves. This rings true of real people as well--in order to help someone, they need to realize they need help, and want it.

But there’s one person in this game we could not help.

Gristol Malik was a prince who came from a very rich royal family. He was sheltered from the rest of his country, understanding nothing of the troubles beyond his own home. All he knew was the sanitized propaganda his parents had taught him, the comfort of his home, being waited on hand and foot, being constantly pampered, and eating caviar.

After the events of the Deluge, however, he and his family were forced to leave, and he was forcibly yanked out of his comfort. That comfort was all he knew, all he cared about... and he wanted it back.

Thus he began his mission to revive Maligula, use her to destroy the Psychonauts, and take back his home country once again so he could go back to his life of comfort and caviar.

This is the entirety of what we see in his mental world: the propaganda his parents fed him (and that he continued to tell himself), his love for caviar, and his desire to use Maligula to get back everything he wanted. And as shown earlier in this post, in part of that earworm of a song, Gristol tells himself (and likely, his parents told him) that Grulovia (and by extension, the royals running the country) is “always right.”

Earlier I had explained that Maligula represents the capacity for every human to commit atrocities. This capacity, while it can be subdued, grows more dangerous when someone tells themself they are incapable of committing those atrocities... and Gristol believes he is “always right”--that he can do no wrong.

As well, I have explained that in order for people to be helped, they have to, on some level, recognize their need for help and want to be helped. Very obviously, Gristol outwardly does not want any form of help other than that of Maligula to help him achieve his goals and return to his life of comfort. This is shown when Raz encounter him outside of his mind post-game, in the Psychoisolation Chamber--when Raz sees him, he’s singing his own little song about Grulovia.

But... inwardly... this is where things get interesting.

As I stated before, all of the other characters Raz has helped have at least inwardly realized their need for help, and desired it. But when Raz goes into Gristol’s mind, he hears the lyrics:

“Grulovia, Grulovia, you’re always right!”

He does not hear these once. He hears them twice.

The second time they’re heard is toward the end of the level, right before we’re presented with a giant version of Gristol himself and his brain. But do me a favor and scroll back up to the start of this post, and listen to the sound clip again.

Raz doesn’t just hear those lyrics a second time. He hears a backmasked version of them.

Let’s talk about backmasking for a second.

Wikipedia defines it as “a recording technique in which a sound or message is recorded backward onto a track that is meant to be played forward.” It can be done to achieve interesting audio effects--if you’ve heard the music in Haunted Mansion ride at the Disney parks, you’ll notice it has an eerie quality to it, because the instruments are actually played in reverse!

However, it’s also used to hide messages within music. While oftentimes this is just an instance of people hearing things (such as the “Sad Satan” phenomenon in playing “Stairway to Heaven” backwards), it is sometimes deliberate. Though it’s often used merely for fun, it’s believed by some that the human mind is still hearing the messages and is aware of them on some level, and may still be able to process the messages subliminally even if they’re not consciously aware of it.

Of course, the effectiveness of these type of subliminal messages is WIDELY debated in the real world... but this is Psychonauts we’re talking about. As seen with Linda and Boyd in the first game, in this world, mind control is entirely possible, which means subliminal messages aren’t out of the question.

However... it’s not hypnotism we’re talking about here.

This is Gristol’s own mind. This is his own song that he invented. And like a subliminal message, it is being played backward in his own mind.

Outwardly, Gristol sings his song. Inwardly, it plays in his head. And on a deep, subconscious level, it’s still there.

“Grulovia, Grulovia, you’re always right!”

There is no level of Gristol’s mind that believes he is wrong, or realizes he needs help.

And this, my friends, is why Gristol is the antithesis of the themes of the story, and the most dangerous character in the game.