authorised to use his firearm

So when Wiley appears to Linda, he tells her that he used to be a Colonel, a weird detail to mention.

General McNamara tells the President that he had a mentor who went into the Black and White, went insane, pledged his allegiance to the forces in the Black and White and disappeared.

His mentors name was Wilber Cross.

I firmly believe that Cross met Wiggly, and became his right hand man. He created the dolls and manipulated Linda to be the prophet.

He changed his name (or maybe was knighted with the name) Wiley.

edit: as @musicalsandfluff pointed out, when John enters the Black and White, Wiley shouts, “YOU!”, insinuating they know each other.

So the first explicit clue we have is this image of a mountain posted to starkids story following hitting 15k, and a following confirmation that this is intentionally important.

Personally I think its the trees that are most important in this image as they have been added after using emojis. Now emojis were used quite extensively in the backer kit announcement, and while not completely out of place for starkid, I do think it means its the trees that are important. Else they could have just found an image with a bunch of trees.

In case it's important, there are 21 emoji trees.

Now to bring this back to things we have already known. We know SK Labs will be a thing. What that thing is, who knows. But this mountain scene seems related to it, as the original insta post included the caption "Like A Boss" which @apothe-roses pointed out shortened to Lab. The full circle of "what the hell does Lab mean" is below, but its also worth noting that one of the original hexagon icons was a lab beaker.

If you look at the order of the emojis and then go counterclockwise you get

L O S E R S

which is in fact the password for one of the locks

He’s Not Vibing

He’s a-coming, (Who’s a-coming?), Paul’s a-coming, (Paul’s a-coming?)