excessively long and complex read on pillar john, and the larger john collective
there are a lot of things in pizza tower that, to one extent or another, Are John. some, like the pillar johns, have known and stated canon; but there's a myriad of other things, from mini-johns to the tower itself, that could also be argued as Being John. this post aims to reconcile all of those things as different facets of the whole being that is "John".
now right out of the gate i want to be real. i want to level with you for where im coming from with all this. i do think john is akin to some kind of god. i don't mean this in a super literal sense, but this dude is absolutely [conditionally] immortal to me. he's been around for a very very very long time, and will likely continue to exist almost indefinitely. barring specific circumstances.
i don't have an exact image for the first type of john, so i'm using this scrapped type of block from betas bc it illustrates the concept well enough
this is what i'll henceforth be referring to as "john tower"
this is john in his purest essence; the tower itself, and/or a power or a presence or just a vibe contained in and by the tower's walls and bricks. john tower is 'where' it could be said john's true consciousness and memories lie, but by itself it isn't really "alive" and doesn't have a will its own.
i'm not taking the brick itself Too seriously/literally since it's from beta, but i think it works for the general idea of "John is, and is within, the tower at its most fundamental level; and left to its own the tower will just sorta start making John-type things." Such as the following:
this one i will be calling "real john"
this john is the physical, living manifestation of john tower, and what i would properly consider to be "John, Brother Of Gerome". he's a sapient guy with a personality and will and all the stuff that usually comes with being alive. this john is probably the most important type, and under normal circumstances there's only ever one of them at once.
these are just "dead johns". yknow because of the.
yeah. past incarnations of real john that died or got killed, or perhaps just wore out after awhile. real john dying isn't a particularly huge issue because, again, the tower just sorta Makes these things. and boy have there been a lot. they never seem to look quite the same between bodies, but they're all the same john with the same memories nonetheless, and so long as the tower stands, there will be more johns.
these are the pillar johns. this is known.
these, as far as i know, are canonically clones of a cursed state of real john, and are mentally all the same guy by way of a hivemind. no speculation to be done here!
this "original john" is also stated canon
the current real john, under a curse from pizzahead. physically the same being as real john, so the tower isn't just going to make a new one because this one's not technically Dead. i like to think john is closer to just being another brick of the tower like this, in something of a suspended state between being john tower and real john. still alive and sapient like real john, but much more connected to and in tune with the general sense of Energies of john tower. Has direct control over bits of it, which is primarily expressed as:
mini-johns!
as real john is to john tower, so mini-johns are to pillar johns. there is no way to make this less confusing.
mini-johns are essentially just random ass bricks and blocks of the tower that pillar john went 'ok little fucker you're gonna be alive now'. they're not part of either the pillar john hivemind OR the john tower collective and operate on their own agenda, which is i suppose is why they attack you, despite john generally seeming to be on your side about what you're doing to the tower. the little guys are a little more removed from their host, and aren't too thrilled about you tearing everything down. or maybe john is just pissed about getting killed over and over since there's no doubt that shit hurted. the john ghost certainly doesn't seem too happy about it either but honestly he's allowed to be a little vengeful in my book.
an aside note but there's also definitely some weird connection between them and [pillar] John Being Dead since they only ever appear during escape, except for in the graveyard-themed level [scrapyard] where everything is already dead... though interestingly not the JOHN graveyard level [john gutter] until pizza time? whatever. i don't have much of a sensible framing for this aside from it just being a general thematic thing and the mini-john section is too long already so i am moving on.
this john i frankly have no fucking clue about and am generally leaning more toward the idea that it's maybe not a literal thing that exists. more just a visual representation of one thing or another?
since it dies when you kill the final/original pillar john my initial read on it was that it's just sorta like an alternate view of original john so you could get a good look at the whole thing not restricted to the space in the 2d plane the player is on, but, crucially, it is missing real/original john's hat, which feels like too central a detail to leave out.
my alternate read on it is that it's a representation of the... overall state of the tower. emotionally, or perhaps structurally, which really might mean thing when you are talking about an arcane structure that is an undetermined amount of alive. either way, it's clear john, the tower, its energies, anything relating to such have been under duress and steadily, irreversibly decaying for....however long it's been since pizzahead took over. bit of a dour note to end on i suppose but that's just the way the tower crumbles man.
you may ask me what all this means for gerome. and i would answer, hell if i know?!? they're said to be brothers and clearly the same Kind of guy, but they don't seem to be cut from the same cloth, as it were. gerome doesn't seem to have Powers:tm: like john does, or pizzahead certainly would have been using him for shit as well, and there's also not a million versions of him lying around to land him in that weird pseudo-immortal space like john.
my best guess is he's something more intrinsically connected to the treasures, and something of a life support system or failsafe for the tower. i'm not sure how to Coherently articulate my thoughts here, but it's something like...little guy fundamental to but also entirely separate from the tower, made to help with its general upkeep [janitor stuff] and also to protect itself in dire straits [treasures]. not in any way attached to the john collective so that if something goes wrong there, at least gerome's small part of the tower's vibe remains untarnished. something about shaping and fragmenting the tower's energies into and across each of the levels by routing and/or stabilizing it through cloned johns; by proxy still this taps in to the gerome part of the tower's energies which manifests as its own separate door/room within that space that can't be altered by any other force re: the background in the treasure rooms always just being normal purple tower brick. treasures being condensed physical standalone bits of the tower's energy, enough of whatever's been channeled into that area to keep john going when given back to him should something disconnect/destroy the energies of the rest of that area. something like that.
honestly, i still have a bit of a hangup in saying gerome is of the same tower origin as john simply because he's not same shade of purple as all the other john tower stuff, but that's really kind of nitpicking at that point, so. hwatever.
ANYWAY all that said and done the most important thing you should take away from this post is that at one point gerome might have had a brother that looked like this
