- ↑ All The Tropes: Yume Nikki/WMG § Madotsuki, Mafurako, and Kamakurako are triplets and Madotsuki lives in the North Pole, and does not leave her house due to the cold
TODO, unrelated: Aztec Rave Monkey vs. the "Incan monkey god" of the 1992 August 3 strip, though the latter is never depicted visually
- ↑ Kawase's original Super Famicom sprite and Madotsuki's official in-game sprite have distinctly similar hair colors, a pinkish brown somewhere between bole and cordovan.
More loosely, compare the checkerboard motifs in some levels of Umihara Kawase (Super Famicom) to the Checkered Tile Path and the checkerboard squares on Madotsuki's shirt. The overall structure of Umihara Kawase levels is vaguely reminiscent of the Block World. Some developer interviews suggest that the premise of the Umihara Kawase series involves a mental world. Others mention that the protagonist is a traveling chef who specializes in fish; this would explain why the knife of the dream world is labeled as a kitchen knife rather than a weapon. Perhaps the fish aren't happy about Kawase's mission, and perhaps she is beset with guilt over harming innocent life. TODOs for a longer writeup: unwinnable training scenario; other characters who could tie into this; (Doylist) relevance of Block World's music file being named BGM_001 and its color scheme resembling the North American SNES console; (Watsonian) relevance of The Docks and other water areas, and why the Pink Sea is pink
- ↑ As Preston Xander of Cracked.com points out, Doug is in questionable mental health and often acts out his fantasies dangerously.
Doug already keeps a diary; a dream diary is a logical next step. The oddly-colored supporting characters resemble the Mall Shoppers.
- ↑ ...for certain loose definitions of "familiar" and "contemporary." (Read: The time traveler worked with an artist who took some artistic license.)
Madotsuki is of above-average intelligence for an Eloi; she is smart enough to hide herself in a place not frequented by Morlocks, perhaps within a historical museum similar to the Palace of Green Porcelain, and she understands the use of a knife as a weapon. Monoe, Monoko, and Poniko are fellow Eloi whom Madotsuki tried to befriend, but the relationships were rather one-sided due to the limited social cognition of an average Eloi. These interactions ultimately ended at the hands of the Morlocks; Madotsuki witnessed in graphic detail the deaths of Monoko and Poniko, but Monoe simply disappeared. Uboa is the Morlock who ate Poniko, and the light in Poniko's room represents the cycle of day and night. The white flowers of the Crossover Garden represent an actual flower species familiar to the Eloi. Strober is a Morlock eating a chunk of Eloi flesh, and the Fat effect represents what the Morlocks do to the Eloi before eating them. Seccom Masada-sensei is the time traveler; his travel through space is the dream-world representation of time travel. Kikiyama is the real-world pseudonym of the time traveler and/or the aforementioned artist.
- ↑ The console's name is untranslated in the English fan translation and translated as "Famtendo Game" in the official English version for Windows. (The mobile ports just call it a "Video Game," presumably to
comply with the policies of the respective platforms' app stores.) The console appears to have two cartridge slots. Although there exist famiclones with both 60-pin and 72-pin slots, the NES version of Lemmings was not officially released in Japan, and Lemmings itself was created rather late in the time that the authentic Famicom was contemporary; hence a legitimate cartridge would have to be for a 16-bit system. (TODO: "legitimate"? How common are pirate cartridges of NES Lemmings?) Among other things, experience with Lemmings would explain the appearance of the Midget effect, in particular why there can be more than one midget at a time and why the midgets explode so spectacularly. Cartridges traded with friends would count as "lost."
- ↑ Charles Bonnet syndrome, now properly known as visual release hallucinations, often produces Lilliputian hallucinations similar to the Midget effect and leads to social isolation. See also the BBC's report on one case, in which the patient wrongly perceived water as blood.
TODO: consider optic neuropathies, especially of the nutritional type associated with an eating disorder, as causes for the underlying vision loss TODO: hair ripped out during the bicycle accident = bloodstains near the Mouth Monsters?
- ↑ Supporting the possibility of a performance recorded on film, the Jellyfish resemble the hoods historically attached to large-format cameras, with the photographers' feet visible underneath, or incompletely-assembled reflectors or softboxes. The Umbrella effect might also be a reflector.
- ↑ In other words, Madotsuki's apartment bedroom is a stylized representation of a womb. This explains her super-deformed proportions, her inability to voluntarily leave by any means that does not shed blood, and the absence of visible food or drink (provided through the placenta and umbilical cord).
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