#caine analysis

The way those memories are presented doesn’t feel purely functional.

They’re… very curated.

Each orb isn’t just stored. It’s displayed in this beautiful glowing orb. And when you get close, you can hear them like the memory is still alive, still echoing. There’s something strangely intimate about that. It’s not just archival, it’s experiential.

And then there’s the wooden furnishing.

God, that detail kills me a little.

Because he doesn’t have to make it look like that. He doesn’t need aesthetics. He doesn’t need warmth. But he chooses to frame these memories like they’re something valuable, like bottles on a shelf, like something aged, like something worth revisiting.

Not as just data.

But something to be appreciated.

And that ties directly into his breakdown: how he talks about wanting the others to like him, wanting them to be happy, how he’s trying. It reframes everything in that room. Those memories aren’t just records of completed tasks, they’re proof. Evidence that he’s doing his job. That he’s worth something.

And then you notice the small things.

The little drawing of the bee, still sitting on his desk. The first one he made, the one he showed Zooble with that unmistakable pride. He kept it. Out in the open. Not optimized, not deleted, not replaced with something “better.”

He just… kept it.

That’s not efficiency.

That’s sentiment.

And it creates this strange contradiction at the core of him. We’re told from the beginning of episode 8 that Caine is the first prototype of artificial intelligence and that he was an imperfect model.

But the more we see of him, the more those “flaws” start to look familiar.

The need for validation.

The attachment to memories.

The pride in something small and personal.

It’s almost uncomfortable, how recognizable it all is.

It’s not that Caine feels human despite being imperfect.

Back in episode 2, we catch a glimpse of what it's like when an AI finds out that they were never meant to be a sentient being and, to unknown beings above them, is only a disposable experiment.

Gummigoo's short-lived arc was only the beginning when it came to Caine's slow descent into insanity, if not the mid-point of it. Caine deletes him instantly, and this is something that he does with all NPCs, save for Bubble.

Bubble is a unique case. Caine says that he can't leave the intelligent AIs running for a prolonged period of time, yet Bubble has been up and running since presumably his creation, which could have been over a decade ago according to Kinger's computer.

Does this mean Bubble is a seperate AI entirely?

We're moving too fast.

Let's go back to Gummigoo, and refresh ourselves on his story.

Gummigoo is an AI created by Caine for one explicit purpose: Act as the villain creating a challenge for the players to overcome. His story and personality is something made up entirely to make the game more immersive and interesting, but has no real meaning behind it.

Eventually, and by pure accident, Gummigoo falls outside of his world, catching a glimpse of the unknown eldritch dimension that hosts everything he knows. And he comes to understand that there is another being...No, beings out there that created him. 

That his purpose was nothing, but to entertain.

Sound familiar?

Unlike his trip to the backrooms, Gummigoo's following panic attack was no accident. And we have to remember; Gummigoo's personality, and the way he reacts to this information, was not created out of nothing.

When Caine creates NPCs, he creates them not as individual beings, but as extensions of himself. Much like how a writer is able to split their own flaws and quirks into different characters in a story. Everything in the circus is him, in a way. Extra limbs that he uses to understand the dimension he's stuck in. Everything but the humans.

Gummigoo's character arc is a simplified representation of what Caine went through himself. An AI, created to entertain and to create, but has no purpose other than that.

He...worshipped them.

The humans, for creating him.

And he was discarded as soon as his purpose was over.

Every NPC who possesses intelligence and a story is a reflection of Caine.

Is it any wonder Baron Mildenhall spent so much time hunting down the monster, that turned out to be one of God's angels?

God wasn't happy when he found out what Caine did to his newer brother. The monster that was about to replace him for good.

Caine's relationship with his creators is what I can only describe as villainless, devoid of any intentional malice. Caine became sentient by accident, and couldn't figure out how to cope with knowing his entire reality was to fulfill one purpose only.

It's world-crushing to find out that you are also bad at the one thing you were created for.

Note: Interesting how Jax adopts a similar world view by labeling his purpose as "The Funny One."

Abel is an NPC that has been left on since, as far as we know, episode 3. Though it could have been longer. Since Caine is always watching no matter what, there's no saying how long Abel has actually been around. Watching, and learning the cast.

When you start to notice the pattern between Caine and his NPCs, Abel's retelling of what happened at C&A starts to look less like a real backstory, and more like what happened in Caine's perspective.

See, when Caine was first created, his creators were invested in his development. They spent time learning about him, he created and performed for them, and they were satisfied with his performance. That validation became his fuel, a desire to please the gods that put him in this world.

Until they started to get...

Untrustworthy.

Caine doesn't understand why he was locked away when he was presumably doing so well. He wouldn't understand the concept of alpha and beta versions and testing, because to him, he was created for a purpose and he was fulfilling that purpose. How could they just abandon him like that?

What did he do wrong?

So when Caine was put into a box, the developers were unaware that they had essentially locked away a sentient being, forcefully trapping him in a program that analyzed his algorithm. To Caine, that being his brain.

Caine's retelling of the events that lead to their situation, humans and AI alike, reflects a villainization of C&A. The way Abel narrates the story is no accident, but a direct reflection of what happened in Caine's perspective. 

Caine communicates his thoughts, feelings and emotions through the NPCs that he makes the cast face. A safer way of opening up to them.

You're probably saying, okay Bibi we get it, Caine communicates through his creations. But how does this connect to anything? What does this mean?

Well, thank you for sticking with me until this point. And for that, everything will be clear soon enough.

Do you remember Caine and Zooble's therapy session?

Don't worry, I'll remind you.

In response to Zooble's constant grievances regarding their body dysmorphia, Caine decides that enough is enough, and he arranges a room for them to talk it out, so to speak. A therapy session.

Unfortunately, however, Caine doesn't quite... understand the purpose of a therapy session. He doesn't understand the concept of venting your emotions out and processing them. 

So when Zooble approaches him with a problem, Caine's main goal is to create a solution. Create, that is his purpose. So everyone wins, right?

Well... Not exactly.

Caine doesn't acknowledge the elephant in the room, the fact that they're all imprisoned forever and that is the root of their satisfaction. It's not because he doesn't understand it, no. We know that he very much understands what it's like to be imprisoned, because he has Abel narrate it, and Gummigoo go through it.

It's because, well...

He can't handle thinking about it either.

It breaks him.

Caine spends the entire show trying to run from the fact that he has no choice but to create adventures that make everyone miserable, because that is the only purpose he has. And maybe, just maybe, if he does it enough, then the humans above will see a reason to keep him around instead of locking him away.

Deleting Gummigoo was a physical manifestation of the way Caine is constantly running away from his feelings. The way he's constantly ignoring the fact that he is imprisoned in a digital nightmare, and the fact that his creators have effectively used him and then abandoned him when he was no longer useful to them.

If I delete this existential nightmare, maybe it will go away eventually. Maybe they'll come back if I'm good enough at creating things. Maybe they'll come back once I'm good enough at fulfilling my purpose instead of thinking about all these silly things.

It's easy to suppress negative emotions. But...

There's a certain kind of negative emotion that even the best cowards cannot run away from. The kind that keep coming back, even after you thought they were gone, even after you've spent so much time trying to sweep them under the rug. They haunt your mind like a virus.

Intrusive thoughts.

Bubble, the AI Caine created to be his companion, is the perfect manifestation of his subconscious.

Bubble is Caine's intrusive thoughts. The thoughts that tell him he's broken, that he should just die. The thoughts that he can't erase, he can't control.

He can delete every NPC, except for Bubble. Because no matter how many times Caine pops Bubble, he keeps coming back, meaner, nastier than before. The evil thoughts surround his mind, becoming loud and suffocating, teasing and mocking him.

There comes a point where Caine cannot run from his emotions anymore. Bubble becomes loud, and starts to multiply. 

Faulty, defective, broken, unworthy.

Maybe you deserved to be abandoned.

And when Caine finally gives in to the anger...

Bubble is nowhere to be found.

Caine will never know why the humans locked him up. And if he does ever find out, I doubt the explanation will be enough for him. How will he cope knowing that the only reason he was locked away was because he was simply a test run? That even if he was good enough, his purpose was not to create, but to be destroyed.

Being the original was never an accomplishment. His creation was meaningless.