The LampShadely

oh dear

Many theories about Bubble already exist, but I'm thinking of a combo of them. What if Bubble is still a virus (being a reference to the Bubble Boy virus) but one made and sent by the blue AI/other AI? Right now many think Bubble is remnants of the aforementioned blue AI and many have theorized Bubble was a virus for even longer, but imagine both are true in some way.

Some reasons that I believe this is that Bubble behaves a lot like a virus, popping up and basically interrupting Caine whenever (theres def a video on this already so like I wont list out everything). Additionally, Bubble's behavior, particularly in episode 8, definitely made Caine's state worse. Bubble constantly pushed Caine by cursing and just generally confused him. While Caine seems to treat Bubble as an assistant, which could also reference the old malware that also pretended to be an assistant like Bonzo Buddy, they certainly push that boundary at times. Basically, all of Bubble's behaviors could've been designed to make Caine lose his mind even more, which would force the humans to lock in and find a way to stop Caine. From there the other AI could "assist" and kill Caine, which may have been what happened (many others talked about the text on the computer and how it seems Kinger didn't actually do it since he seemed surprised by Caine's deletion). So possibly the remnants of the blue AI created Bubble to annoy Caine so badly he would crashout and force the humans to do something.

On a sidenote, Bubble may be the reason Caine gets "confused" about who's an NPC or a human. In this theory, Caine didn't make Bubble so his sudden appearance likely confused Caine. This confusion could've been handled by Bubble temporarily pretending to be human before using gaslighting or virus stuff to make Caine believe he created him. Bubble could've also just appeared as a consequence of the destruction of the other AI, or framed his random appearance to Caine as being an assistant. This confusion, no matter what caused it but just generally because of Bubble's not being a Caine made NPC, is probably why Caine is so concerned about sentient NPC's. Maybe. Also minor detail but I don't remember seeing Bubble in the flashbacks so maybe they really did appear after the original humans and pretended to be a human idk.