done pretending the backrooms isn't a puzzle box I want to crack open during a genocide so here is my theory to: what is the monster of the backrooms movie and why is it different than other things
My idea that Pirate Clark is an "illegal copy" (aka pirated) because the wordplay is very much Kane's style.
A huge sound motif was the NASA audio we sent into space, but people might not know it wasn't the first broadcast sent, that was a Hitler speech. Now the Backrooms doesn't just randomly copy physical architecture; it clones reality based on electromagnetic signals, (think MRA machines, think about how the series is found footage, how Pirate Clark how an emotional flare of the embarrassment, shame, and then angry when Bobby doesn't stop recording.
All this human memory, and media data spills through the Null Zone boundaries. On the wall Clark writes "the here and now is a two way street." Implying this quantum physics like viewing of time where now is the only memory because the past and future are memory. (See the still lives being made out of memory foam -- another pun)
Focusing back on Pirate Clark, when Clark first goes into the backrooms, right before we he flees from unknown danger he spots a camera. Later we see this camera smashed but now who is not clear.
I raise this point because Pirate Clark like Clark in that emotional recorded moment did not want to be filmed. It may be why he was more aggressive towards the Async staffer and Bobby because they both were actively filming.
When Clark runs into it however he had set the camera down, and Pirate Clark had picked it up. That may have saved him.
This short of Pirate Clark wants no witness besides Clark may also be why Clark earnestly choked Mary out in order to protect her. And why when Clark brought a living witness, this non still life of a painted memory guest, it got aggressive again.
Mary also didn't have a camera when she was fleeing, which helps highlight Pirate Clark is non-hostile if alone (motif), very hostile if on film, and aggressive but someone still can physically able to run away - if even injured - if you aren't filming.
In conclusion, I don't believe Pirate Clark is a still life. "They are like furniture", and "tables don't bleed". I think he is a pirated copy echo of an emotional outburst caught on camera. This quantum retrocausality of signal fits both narratively to trauma being discussed and scientifically in a way that if aliens first 2000 years ago but never hear Earth until Hitlers speech then the later NASA message. This also messes well with why is a cave man cutout broadcasting the sound it should be a mismatch otherwise.
TLDR: Pirate Clark neither a bacteria based monster nor a still life, it is both an electro magnetic emotional echo recording shattered across the movie's time frame.
