ComedianKlown

Origin of the name:

I started thinking about this game for a while now. I was curious on what the name "John Doe" meant in this context. As the guy doesn't really seems able to pronounce his own name in a way we can comprehend or it's kinda infohazardous to hear. So he just asks you to call him "John Doe".

But where did we heard that before?

Funnily enough, John Doe is what we known as a placeholder name used (i think only) in the UK. The feminine equivalent being "Jane Doe", it is a name commonly used for referring to people which name is unknown or intentionally concealed. Of course there are many variations of this placeholder name and in the context of law enforcement in the United States, such names are often used to refer to a corpse whose identity is unknown or cannot be confirmed.

A "John Doe" is what in some countries is called an everyman. A John Doe could be me, you, or whatever person we can think about, it comprehends any age or gender. It's the idea of "everyone can be anything". Of course, the everyman archetype is often used in media to portray a character we can all relate to.

Although the usage became obsolete in the UK in 1852, in the UK usage of "John Doe" survives mainly in the form of John Doe injunction or John Doe order.

8.02 If an unknown person has possession of the confidential personal information and is threatening to disclose it, a 'John Doe' injunction may be sought against that person. The first time this form of injunction was used since 1852 in the United Kingdom was in 2005 when lawyers acting for JK Rowling and her publishers obtained an interim order against an unidentified person who had offered to sell chapters of a stolen copy of an unpublished Harry Potter novel to the media.

("The Law of Professional-Client Confidentiality: Regulating the Disclosure of Confidential Personal Information, Update")

There's something we can keep from all this and is the fact that John Doe didn't chose a random nickname, he chose THE nickname, the name that would place him as any of us since, at some point, we could all end up being "John Doe"s and "Jane Doe"s or unfortunately, "Baby Doe"s (yes, this one is for children). And i think this right here delivers a strong message. But more on that later.

We begin this game with really weird imagery. The "backgrounds" are not what we would expect on a visual novel. It kinda reminds me of this viral "name a thing in this picture" image.

Like...you know these are stuff you know and see everyday, yet you cannot name any of them. It's like your perception is altered when you look at it and suddenly everything looks...familiar...but you cannot really identify anything. You feel...disconnected. You know your brain should be doing its job and placing everything together to help you recognize the full picture...but it just fails in doing so. So you just stay there, scratching your head and wondering what happened.

And this exact vibe is transmited by the backgrounds in this game.

And here in the second image we get a glimpse on the MC: Wakes up late, hasn't showered in three days and overall has this distorted vision of the world around her. And she is, oh so forgetful, according to John Doe. As she "forgets" she invited him to her home in the first place.

There is clearly something wrong with the MC, or at least something is not working for her. And i don't mean it in a quirky or funny way, i mean it as in "mental health related issues". The game doesn't tell us why, but I'm pretty sure MC suffers from depression.

Everything listed earlier are things that happen when your brain functions with depression: Cognitive detriment (You aren't quite aware of your surroundings as you know what you see but your brain cannot really "decode" what are those things), waking up late (as this could indicate an irregular sleep schedule, another very common thing for depressed people), poor personal hygiene (i think this one is the most known) and memory related issues.

But every single one of those symptoms by itself is really not an indicator of a depressed state. In fact, as it also happens with anxiety, you need to make a distinction between a depressed state due to a specific event and long term depression, the later caused by stacks of unsolved issues, non-adressed trauma and lack of skills to ensure mental wellbeing. I believe the MC suffers from this long term depression, as she feels life passes by as an endless loop.

Same day, same routine. And this right here is the premise of John Doe (the game). The day repeating itself over and over. The "wake up, go to work, I'm not hungry, go home, sleep (or don't)". She doesn't laments her situation directly, but this also happens a lot with depression. You don't "feel it", it "makes you feel".

And there is someone else in this loop, stuck with the MC. That is, John Doe himself. I think John Doe encapsules pretty well the concept of "what if".

What if i behaved in certain way, what if i did this, what if i didn't do that. He never loses interest in you. As i heard someone mention somewhere, his "Lost interest" ending is just him leaving you be just beacuse he knows things can be different in the next playthrough. Doe begings thinking that there's a combination of choices that will lead you two to be toghether in a way that pleases him.

As it happens with depression, none of them are focusing on "breaking the loop". And as a fun fact, usually a person doesn't see an exit to their problems not because there is no solution, but because they keep trying the same old solutions over and over.

John Doe does his best. At some point he passes the question "what if everything was normal?"

And this is what we begin to see:

"What if everything was normal"

"What if everything was fine"

This time, the MC has a decent schedule, she seems to be able to see her enviroment clearly and the way she perceives John Doe is not altered. I think this also reflects something among the lines of "When you feel like shit and the world doesn't makes sense, it's hard to focus on any kind of relationship" Often the social isolation becomes something usual in the context of depression and interacting with the people around starts to feel...scary, very much like John Doe and the faces he makes and the way he approaches us. But MC is not depressed this time and he is a "nice guy" this time. He should be accepted, he should be "loved".

I'm getting out of the analysis for a moment to involve a personal experience, to share a piece of myself.

Some years ago i was really in love with this person. I lacked the confidence and hated myself too much and that made me think this person wouldn't remotely like me back if i didn't craft myself carefully like his ideal type. What i believed he would like based on what i knew about him. So i changed. And it felt good at first, because the love i felt for this person was so big that everything else was literally a small price to pay to be by his side. We became a couple and lasted for a long time, but one day i woke up and i didn't recognize myself as a person. I hated myself for being myself.

The truth is, John Doe's story could be anyone's story at some point. That's why his name is literally a placeholder name. The MC's story could also be anyone's story, our story, since we are the MCs after all.

The idea that stuck with me was "Anyone could be this person".

We don't know who lives in a metaphorical endless loop, who lives in a constant depressed state, who is struggling with self-esteem. We don't know. And seeing it from this perspective, it seems like everything that happens is out of our control. That when we're depressed we have nothing more than this. There's nothing else we can do.

But that's when we're wrong.

There's a single thing in the game that seemingly has no effect but personally i like to interpret it as life giving us the ability to choose. Whe can choose to get a bath or not, meaning the personal hygiene is something we do have under control. It is not everything, but it's a start. From all the things listed before that made me think MC was depressed, "getting a bath or not" was the only instance in which we had a choice. If you don't choose it today (as sometimes depressed people don't have the strength to care about that), there is always a tomorrow. But if you do choose it today, that's something meaningful by its own.

And also, we have the fact that our words and actions matter a lot to others.

We matter a lot to others. We make a difference, at least for one person. And anyone could be this person.

...

Soooo if you notice this analysis is a bit more unorganized than others, that's because i didn't have a structure for it. It is more of a personal rant than an essay. But i like to keep it that way. Remember this is just my personal interpretation of the game.