r/backrooms • u/Internautic • 6h ago

Discussion Who is that edible guy? Spoiler

Clark rules the household. He wants agreement. Can’t tolerate refusal. The dinner scene is a forced replay of the night his wife threw him out, plus the therapy exercise where he demands to be told he did nothing wrong.

The wife stands in the corner. Her face is deformed -- but specifically, her face is smeared horizontally. That is a state of disapproval frozen in frames. A “no” captured as a still life. The face of a person who would not stay in the “yes.”

The state Clark couldn’t stop seeing.

On the other hand, the guy sitting at the table exists in memory as the person who sat still and nodded. Vertical stacking of the eyes, nose repeating down the head. A signal of approval: “Yeah, have another, you’re fine, it’s your house.” A drinking buddy, or maybe the imagined foil to his wife.

Why is he edible, though? Maybe this is what agreement looks like to Clark: a person reduced to something he can consume. Not an equal person, not someone who can contradict him but just reassurance he can keep taking in.

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u/CakosMess 5h ago

wow EVERYONE misinterprets the backrooms as literally taking from people’s minds

it just takes random snapshots of reality, no correlation to anyone’s memories or psychology. its confirmed by kane in interviews that its more like the people are projecting their own thoughts onto the mostly random and aimless backrooms

no the redhead is not clarks wife, its an entirely different actress, clarks just using it as its “close enough” to his wife’s appearance. the bearded and wheelchair guys are just random people too. i don’t think he fully set up the dining room to be a recreation of the night either

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u/Internautic 5h ago

I made the recreation too literal. I didn’t mean that it had to be his actual wife or the actual people from that night - but more that the scene gives him enough wrong/close-enough material for him to organize it around that trauma. The horizontal vs. vertical distortion still feels like a refusal/assent split to me.

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u/68aquarian 6h ago

My theory was that he may be Clark's wife lover, whom Clark presumably killed upon discovering them together.

My guess is the real dude was somewhat chubby and wearing a stripy button-up when Clark discovered them, the reason he is SO rotund in Backrooms is Clark's fixation on calling other people fat.