Poppy Playtime - TV Tropes

Explore the mysterious facility... and don't get caught.

—The game's description on the official Steam page

Why, hello there, and welcome to Playtime Co.! Once the king of the toy manufacturing industry - until that very strange incident years ago. Whatever did happen to those workers?

In this game, the player controls an unnamed protagonist, an ex-employee who receives a note inviting them back to the abandoned toy factory after the company's staff mysteriously disappeared a decade ago. In-game, the player navigates through a first-person perspective and must solve puzzles, such as requiring a gadget named the GrabPack, to progress while avoiding various monstrous toys in the factory.

Poppy Playtime is a first-person horror/puzzle/adventure game, created by MOB Entertainment. The first chapter was released on Steam on October 12th, 2021. Subsequent chapters are set to be released as DLC, with Chapter 2 being released on May 5, 2022. Chapter 3 was released on January 30, 2024. Chapter 4 was released on January 30, 2025.

• Abandoned Area:
  • Owing to an incident known as the Hour of Joy where its staff mysteriously disappeared on August 8th, 1995. 10 years before the present day, the Playtime Co. factory was abandoned and presumably just left boarded up. Once you enter it at the start of the game, it's naturally in really rough shape, with its cute, cartoony aesthetic having given way to obvious decay and evidence of plenty of chaos before that. Even if there is still electricity, some areas are in need of repairs to progress further.
  • Starting in Chapter 2, as you progress throughout the factory, you'll notice large cavernous pits and natural cave formations. Various hallways and corridors of the factory have also decayed significantly making it harder to navigate the facility.
  • In Chapter 3, you'll encounter massive underground caves with waterfalls and rivers flowing underneath the facility as you descend deeper underground.
• Achievement Mockery: In the PlayStation version of the game, trophies are "awarded" for:
  • Making Poppy sad by being a poor listener.
  • Getting immediately caught by Mommy when she starts chasing you.
  • Dying in the furnace's flames.
  • Getting killed in every possible way during Chapter 3.
  • Getting crushed in a trash compacter.
  • Getting scolded by Ollie.
  • Accidently hitting yourself with the GrabPack five times.
• Alas, Poor Villain:
  • It's easy to forget that Playtime Co.'s products, specifically their mascots, were once regular people until being kidnapped and made into unwilling test subjects of the Bigger Bodies Initiative. After being experimented on, having their humanity taken away, and being abandoned in the factory for over a decade, it's no wonder most of them went insane.
  • In Chapter 2, the tragedy of the mascots' situation is made very apparent with Mommy Long Legs's death. She cries out in complete agony as she's slowly pulled into a grinder after getting one of her limbs caught in it while chasing you. Made even sadder when she expresses horror at the thought of being "part of him" after her death. It can definitely make you shiver thinking what in the hell awaits you in this godforsaken factory that is so deadly and horrifying it has Mommy quaking in her boots.
  • Special mention goes to CatNap. He was once an orphan named Theodore Grambell, trapped in Playcare. The Prototype's badly thought out escape plans got Theo electrocuted, and turned into a murderous cat monster with Undying Loyalty to the Prototype. The Prototype eventually rewards CatNap's loyalty by killing him, and likely assimilating him.
  • Doey has to deal with constant mood swings due to being made from three kids instead of one. He loses his mind, understandably, when the entire safe haven he was protecting is literally blown to bits with all the other survivors inside, driving him into a rage-induced frenzy that forces the player to put him down - in a particularly horrific way, as he's nigh-indestructible, by freezing him and then slowly grinding him apart with industrial mining tools. His last words? 'I'm sorry.'
• Alliterative Name: Seems to be a theme with Playtime toys. You have Poppy Playtime, Boogie Bot, Candy Cat...
• All There in the Manual: The official website and social media accounts for the game contain information on Playtime's products that can't be found in-game, such as when they were originally released.
• Always a Bigger Fish: Towards the end of Chapter 2, a spindly metal hand crawls out from beneath a door to collect what remains of Mommy Long Legs.
• Ambiguously Evil: As the protagonist has only just met Poppy at the end of Chapter 1 and all she says is "You opened my case", it's uncertain whether she'll be the Big Bad, the Big Good, or neither. Later chapters cement her as both the Big Good and a deeply flawed person with destructive tendencies.
• Ambiguous Situation:
  • Was the letter that prompts the MC to return to Playtime Co. really written by their missing colleagues?
  • Is Huggy Wuggy chasing you because it's evil? Or is it part of the security system Leith Pierre warns you about and merely taking care of an intruder? Or does it just really want to squeeze you until you pop?
• Amusement Park of Doom:
  • The Game Station in Chapter 2, originally meant to entertain children, but now under the iron fist of a seriously deranged Mommy Long Legs. Each game you have to participate in is a Deadly Game in which failure or cheating is punished with being eaten alive by the toys. Most of them don't even work properly anymore, making it all the harder to stay alive.
  • Early on in Chapter 3, a poster teased an actual amusement park known as Playtime's New Park located somewhere within the Playtime Co. complex...
• And I Must Scream:
  • Poppy was trapped in the case you find her in for years, with no way of escaping or calling for help. You freeing her is the main reason she decides to help you in Chapter 2. She might have gone through this even before that, as her maintenance tape has the words "LET ME GO" spelled out repeatedly in a Freeze-Frame Bonus as a bloody voicebox is being pulled out of her neck by tweezers. The end of Chapter 4 has the very thought of going back into a case lead her to run off and abandon both the player and Kissy to whatever fate the Prototype has in store.
  • Harley Sawyer, the one behind the Bigger Bodies Initiative, was betrayed by the Playtime Co. execs and forcibly had his vital organs grafted into industrial machinery, effectively digitizing his consciousness. He then, in essence became the security systems for the entire factory, all while his physical body has long since perished.
  • If Riley’s journals are to be believed, then the conversion process for turning a human into a toy is incredibly violent and many patients can remember it happening to them. The pain caused by it can very easily drive people into madness, given how many rabid toys infest the factory, and the ones who aren’t are left broken husks trapped in bodies that aren’t their own.
• Antagonist Title: Downplayed. The titles don’t have the names of the toy you’ll be facing in the title itself, but a saying related to them. By way of example, Chapter 1 is "A Tight Squeeze", where you encounter Huggy Wuggy. As far as we know, Poppy herself is not an antagonist.
• Antepiece: The very first puzzle of Chapter 2 is crossing a short gap by using your GrabPack on a bar to swing across it. This small gap is very shallow and has an easy way back so you can try again if you fall down. This gives you a chance to learn the new swinging mechanic in a safe environment before the game starts requiring you to do it in more challenging or stressful scenarios.
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • Respawn points are placed rather generously. Dying to one of the bosses sets you back at the start of the chase sequence after the dialogue, so you won't have to watch cutscenes all over again.
  • Toys don't react to the flare gun, flashlight, or any sources of noise during the stealth sections, unless explicitly stated otherwise.
  • If you picked up a trophy before dying in Chapter 2, it will still be in your inventory when you respawn, erasing the need to find and collect it again.
  • In Chapter 3, if you died in a fall in a non-chase part, the game will skip the usual Have a Nice Death quotes and go straight to reloading to the last checkpoint to save time.
• Apocalyptic Log: The gray tape has audio of a scientist lamenting that something has gone awry with Experiment 1006, while screaming and banging noises can be heard in the background. It ends with the scientist claiming he isn't afraid to die, convinced he'll be back after "one more breakthrough".
• Arc Symbol: The red poppy flower. Chapter 1 has you look for a door with a poppy-mural around it, and the (possible) Big Bad is named after the red poppy. In Chapter 2, Elliot Ludwig's office is accessed with a key in the shape of a red poppy, and in a note on his desk it's revealed he used poppy-extract in an experiment, believing the poppy-flower had some kind of untapped potential that made it a key ingredient to his plans. In Chapter 3, the red poppy key makes a reappearance when Poppy uses it to unlock a power box to restore power to a maintenance lift within the Playcare. Chapter 4 includes a room with large planters filled with poppies.
• Arc Villain: Each chapter so far has had one, with Huggy Wuggy for Chapter 1, Mommy Long Legs for Chapter 2, CatNap for Chapter 3 and Dr. Harley Sawyer for Chapter 4.
• Arc Words:
  • "Isn't he wonderful?" Referring to Experiment 1006, aka The Prototype.
  • "The Hour of Joy." This phrase seems to be a reference to the date Playtime Co. collapsed. Confirmed at the end of Chapter 3. Poppy shows us a videotape of the Hour of Joy as it happened, which turns out to be the exact moment where all of the toys suddenly turned aggressive and butchered the Playtime Co. staff, then dragged the bodies into the depths of the facility for them to feast upon.
  • INNOVATION IS KEY. Shows up once per every chapter's death messages, supplementary material, and so forth.
  • Poppy and The Prototype would really like for people to "GET UP" and do their bidding. It shows up the most in the Game Over screen quotes, which start out vague but from Chapter 3 onwards are clearly Poppy demanding revenge and for the factory to be burned to the ground.
• Art Evolution: The gameplay trailer for Chapter 3 showcases new graphics that are improved from the previous two chapters.
• Artificial Outdoors Display:
  • There's a note that reveals that the windows in the Game Station are fakes, designed to give the impression of daylight in order to boost morale. If you look closely at the broken windows you can see that they are simply backlit panes of frosted glass. Taken even further with the Playcare of Chapter 3, with an orphanage being placed inside a dome in an underground cavern. One tape has two maintenance men discuss the ethics of having children in a place without actual sunlight.
• Artistic License – Biology: The video explaining the Wack-A-Wuggy game says that the game is designed to test the player's reaction times, which is accompanied by an animation of a knee-jerk reflex. Reflex actions are involuntary and happen before the brain has time to process a stimulus, so they don't depend on a person's reaction time.
• As You Know: The opening narration for the Chapter 1 intro-screen tells the player that they're a former employee of Playtime Co., who has returned ten years after an incident in which several of their colleagues went missing.
• Awesome Backpack: The GrabPack is a mechanical backpack outfitted with pneumatic-powered firing mechanisms that you can use to grab far-away objects and complete electric circuits thanks to the conductive cables. Presumably for the sake of fitting Playtime Co. branding, the "hooks" are cartoony red and blue hands.
• Backing Away Slowly: While you can do this after Huggy Wuggy decides to go after you, it's not a good idea. He wants to give you a hug until he squeezes the life out of you. So turn around and run!
• Bait-and-Switch:
  • In Chapter 2, while you're trying to navigate your way back from the Whack-A-Wuggy game, a door opens, an alarm blares and the music grows suspenseful as a familiar-looking tall figure appears and slowly approaches you... but then the music softens as the figure steps into the light, revealing its pink fur. It's not Huggy Wuggy; it's his female counterpart Kissy Missy. And it seems that she wants to help you.
  • In Chapter 3 it looks like Huggy has returned to take down the player for the final time... only to be Kissy again, who due to lighting looked blue instead of pink, and lets the protagonist go after Poppy reassures her that we have come to help.
  • The end of Chapter 4, pulls a bait-and-switch, but in reverse! After putting in the final VHS and being warned that you're about to be chased by something, a pink figure walks out of the shadows at the end of the hall, and it seems as though Kissy managed to catch up with you after the fall. It then rushes to the window, the lighting no longer obscuring its blue fur. It's revealed to be Huggy Wuggy, and he's back to finish the job.
• Big Eater: A small, but recurring character trait among several minor characters that are introduced in each chapter.
  • Chapter 1 introduces Bron the Dinosaur, one of the generic recurring toys throughout the factory, through a poster telling the viewer to eat healthy. With a notice at the bottom of the sign saying to eat 4,000 calories a day.
  • Chapter 2 formally introduces Candy Cat, a generic toy that can be found throughout the factory. In a funny subversion, you can inflict Death by Gluttony on it by repeatedly pressing the red button on its standee to "feed" them.
  • Chapter 3 introduces Picky Piggy in the Smiling Critters line. Her standee has her preparing a variety of foods, later dishes increasingly implied to be several other members from the Smiling Critters line, before lamenting that she's still hungry.
  • Chapter 4 introduces Maggie Mako in the Nightmare Critters line. However, because the Nightmare Critters only make appearances as The Goomba, almost everything about Maggie is limited to promotional materials.
• Black-and-Gray Morality: The conflict between Poppy and 1006. Poppy is far from perfect, she is willing to manipulate the protagonist and keeps them from leaving the dangerous factory. It is also questioned if her plan, which would destroy the entire factory, is truly worth it. However, we see that Poppy is not truly evil, she is simply a very desperate, highly traumatized girl who is shown to loath violence. 1006, the Prototype, is a cruel tyrant who forces his fellow experiments to submit to his control or be tortured and killed.
• Black Comedy:
  • The GrabPack's instructional video feels the need to remind employees to not aim towards their coworkers, with an accompanying pictogram of the potential injuries they could bring.
  • Next to the crane in Chapter 1 is a motivational poster featuring Huggy, reminding employees to take breaks. However, the fine text directly below it reads "Breaks longer than 10 minutes are not permitted."
  • In Chapter 2, there are several posters hung that have stock motivational phrases on them, only for the small print to remind workers that what the poster suggested they do must in no way interfere with Playtime Co.'s schedule or code of conduct.
• Body Horror:
  • It's all but stated that Playtime Co. turned either the orphans it brought in or their own workers into living toys. The toys seen scattered all over the factory, as well as Huggy Wuggy, Mommy Long Legs, Miss Delight and CatNap bleed when injured. Seeing the rather grotesque forms most of the toys take, the process was undoubtedly painful and horrifying for whoever went through it.
  • While the process of turning into an insane toy is not yet entirely clear, seeing DogDay torn apart and then being eaten from the inside is harrowing—only for him to fall entirely silent and his eyes to start glowing as he begins to chase you down.
• Body Motifs: The big hands on long limbs shared between the protagonist's GrabPack, Huggy, Mommy, CatNap and the Prototype are something emphasized throughout the game and its promotional media. For example, when viewing certain tape reports, you can tell when the subject is Mommy or the Prototype because the only visual is a picture of their hand.
• Bottomless Pit: Starting in Chapter 2, several of the factory's hallways have fallen into disrepair, with the floor breaking away to leave pits so deep you can't see all the way down. It's likely due to the massive freaking underground cave lying directly beneath the main factory where Playcare was built, as seen in the beginning of Chapter 3. Naturally falling into one is an instant game over.
• Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick: Press any button on a Playtime character standee and you'll get treated to a voice-over line from the character it features. The first line triggered by the first press is some sort of cute introduction, the second line by the second press is fully in-tune with their personality or major established character trait. Keep pressing it, however, and the implications of that personality turn dark very quickly before looping. For some specific examples:
  • Huggy Wuggy's own in Chapter 3 notes that he likes giving hugs. His first is about how good it feels for you. The second is about how good it feels for him. By the end, he's saying he never wants to let you go and will hug you until you pop.
  • Minor Smiling Critter PickyPiggy's nutritional information gets a more oblique one. The first is a cutesy note about how they're hungry. The second is about how they recently had some roast beef. Not only does their tone get darker, but the other species they mention having eaten correspond to other Smiling Critters (at least grilled chicken is commonly eaten by people, but upon her mentioning seared elephant and flayed unicorn, it becomes clear she was referring to KickinChickin, Bubba Bubbaphant, and CraftyCorn), with PickyPiggy's final lines implying you're next.
  • DogDay gets his own towards the end of Chapter 3, notably after you've met the real thing. His is the only one that isn't threatening... because he's trying to disguise your escape attempt through a game of fetch, and you didn't pick up on it in the earlier presses.
• The Cameo:
  • Jacksepticeye makes a brief appearance in one of the tapes in Chapter 2, playing an employee named Marcas who is informing and being ignored by the staff about seeing what he thought was a monster in the cafeteria.
  • One of the videos released during the ARG for Project: Playtime had The Stupendium appear as the instructor for a rules and safety video (complete with cameos from all their props from "The Toybox", their music video based on the game).
  • The Chief Marketing Officer of Playtime Co. (Jimmy Roth) is played by none other than Eli Roth, a close friend and associate of Quentin Tarantino who is probably best known for his role as Sgt. Donny in Inglourious Basterds.
• Cliffhanger:
  • The first chapter ends as the player opens the case in which Poppy is held, prompting her to suddenly open her eyes and the lights to go out. Poppy then expresses joy about the player opening her case and the credits roll.
  • The second chapter has you board the train after defeating Mommy Long Legs and freeing Poppy. After some time driving, Poppy thanks you for freeing her, then apologizes - because you're "too perfect" to let go. She re-directs the train, telling you she intends to use you to Set Right What Once Went Wrong, before getting interrupted mid-sentence and seemingly disappearing. The train goes out of control and crashes near a section called "Playcare" and you pass out.
  • The third chapter ends with Poppy and the player getting on a lift to take them down to further into the factory in order to take the fight to the Prototype, with Kissy Missy staying behind to operate the lift before coming down herself. Just as you start descending, Kissy Missy screams and the door to the shaft starts closing. Poppy desperately tries to get the lift to go back up as the door to the shaft closes leaving you both in total darkness.
  • The fourth chapter ends with The Prototype trapping Poppy, Kissy and the Ex-Employee in a ventilation block. He threatens to seal Poppy away again causing her to flee in terror, leaving the other two behind. He then sets off an explosive, sending the Ex-Employee down into the Labs, the lowest part of the facility, where they find a hydroponics facility and a bunker. They are automatically sealed inside and an alarm alerts a still-living Huggy, who tries to break inside to get them.
• Can't Move While Being Watched:
  • The "Statues" game in Chapter 2. You're only allowed to move while the lights are off and the music is playing. The whole time PJ Pug-A-Pillar is slowly crawling up behind you. Being caught by him is an immediate game over. So is moving when the lights are on, as PJ is a lot faster than you might think.
  • In chapter 3, Miss Delight chases you but cannot move while you're looking at her.
• Cataclysm Backstory: Of sorts. Multiple references are made to ‘The Hour of Joy’, an event in which, within the space of an hour, the toy experiments started an uprising against the staff of Playtime Co. This resulted in the deaths of many facility staff members and is the reason why the factory is abandoned and still crawling with living toys 10 years later.
• Cats Are Mean: Experiment 1188 aka CatNap, the purple toy that menaces the Playcare Orphanage in Chapter 3, was confirmed to be feline in the ARG for that chapter, making him the first instance of this in-game compared to Cat Bee and Candy Cat, who have yet to be encountered as monsters.
• Cat Scare:
  • In Chapter 1, a pipe suddenly bursts while you walk down a dark corridor.
  • Literally in Chapter 3, but not in the most obvious sense. You go through a door and have CatNap bound down from the ceiling... as in an inanimate plush that was strung up by its tail, presumably by the real CatNap to mess with you.
• Cerebus Syndrome: While Chapter 1 and 2 weren't particularly light-hearted, Chapter 3 noticeably takes a Bloodier and Gorier turn upon entering the Playcare under the facility. It gets even darker when it's revealed the Prototype masterminded the massacre of every Playtime Co. employee in the past, and Kissy Missy, the Token Good Teammate of the toys, is ambushed by someone at the very end.
• Character Title: The game is named after one of the toys, Creepy Doll Poppy Playtime. While it's not immediately clear if she's the Big Bad or the Big Good, later chapters seem to indicate that she's on your side—or at least the side of saving the lives of the living toys.
• Color-Coded for Your Convenience:
  • The various instruction-tapes you find around the factory have the same color as the VCRs they belong to.
  • The hands for your GrabPack have different colors depending on their function. Red and blue are normal hands. Green can store and provide electricity. Purple is used to jump over long distances via purple pads. The orange Finger Gun hand can fire off flares to scare away hostile creatures and illuminate dark areas for a brief period of time. The official handbook confirms the existence of a yellow hand that was only available to certain employees who apply for it and are judged to require it, which works like the purple hand in allowing them to jump to high places, presumably without the pads.
• Combat Pragmatist: Since they have little in the way of defending themselves from the toys (the GrabPack doesn't work against them), the protagonist uses whatever they can to survive. In Chapter 1 they pull a heavy crate down on Huggy Wuggy to push him off the catwalk, and in Chapter 2 they activate a grinder Mommy Long Legs got stuck in, with pretty gory results.
• Continuity Nod:
  • In Chapter 2, the room where you have to get a Bunzo Bunny toy off a conveyor belt has several spots of Huggy's fur and blood spatters on the walls and pipes, implying this is where he fell to.
  • In the beginning of Chapter 3, CatNap brings the protagonist to a garbage chute and dumps them. This is a similar behavior to how the other large toys in Project: Playtime would catch Survivors, bring them to holes and dump them in it in attempt to dispose of them. The difference is that the holes lead to areas where hostile small toys would try to finish the Survivors off while the chute CatNap dumps you in leads to a garbage crusher.
• Couch Gag:
  • Each chapter loading screen will have a small teaser of their respective Arc Villain, and one of their locations.
  • Each time you die in the game you are greeted with different game over quotes, such as "Thank you, science" or "Get up".
• Crapsaccharine World: Playtime Co. can be considered this. While they seem friendly at first, red flags followed by a code black appear via the VCR tapes played throughout the first chapter alone. That's not even getting started on what the company and its CEO were up to behind closed doors.
• Creepy Doll: The toys are all dolls who have gone murderously violent, but Poppy fits the best, since she's the most traditional-looking of them all. The game's teaser trailer emphasizes this.
• Cute Creature, Creepy Mouth: The large Huggy-Wuggy statue in the center of the main room during the first chapter looks pretty cute at first. At least until he comes to life and starts trying to eat you. He displays a mouth with rows and rows of needle-like teeth during the game-over cutscene.
• Darker and Edgier: While the rest of the game is by no means sunshine and rainbows, Chapter 3 takes a noticeable turn towards showcasing the horrors caused by Playtime Co. and the Hour of Joy. The environments become far more decrepit, with bloodstains and toy parts randomly strewn about. Messages on the walls implied that any survivors quickly lost their sanity as they tried to escape. And this is nothing to say about the toys themselves, who have become twisted after being trapped in the dark for so long. Chapter 4 kicks this up even further, with corpses and tragedies strewn about in every corner.
• Darkest Hour: In the ending of Chapter 4, the Safe Haven gets destroyed, killing presumably everyone in it. The player has to kill Doey in self-defense when he reaches his Rage Breaking Point and tries to murder them. And the prototype, revealed to be Ollie by the way, has the remaining heroes cornered. Poppy leaves the pipe, but it is unlikely she'll get far before the Prototype grabs her. And as for the player and Kissy, the prototype blows a hole down below them. Kissy tries to hang on to them with her injured arm, but it ends up ripping away. It is possible that Kissy will die from this injury. And finally, the player finds the garden where all the poppies are grown, and later finds a room, where upon inserting a VHS tape into its respective player... it sets off an alarm, traps the player inside, and begins pouring the Poppy gas in... and as for the cherry on top, it is revealed that Huggy survived the fall and has finally tracked down the player, being alerted to their location by said VHS. Huggy bangs on the door trying to get in as the Poppy gas makes the player presumably lose consciousness.
• Dead-End Room: The room in which you play "Statues" in Chapter 2 has its exit blocked by rubble, making the game unwinnable. You can't leave through the entrance because PJ is blocking it off. The only way out is to grapple up to the observation room and break though the window.
• Deadly Game: Mommy Long Legs has you play three of them in Chapter 2, in order to get the train code and escape. Also because she wants to see you suffer.
  • "Musical Memory" has you repeat a sequence of colors and later on letters and symbols, while Bunzo Bunny is slowly lowered toward you from the ceiling. When he reaches you, the game ends.
  • "Wack-A-Wuggy" consists of you fending off a bunch of Mini-Huggies, smaller versions of Huggy Wuggy, by pushing them back into the pipes they crawl out of. If a Huggy makes it to you, it'll snap your neck.
  • "Statues" has you take on an obstacle course, while being pursued by PJ Pug-A-Pillar. You're only allowed to move when the lights are off and the music is playing. If PJ catches up to you, either because you were too slow or moved when you weren't supposed to, you're eaten alive. Turns out the game is unwinnable, as the exit is blocked off by rubble.
• Death Is a Slap on the Wrist: The protagonist simply respawns every time they die, with not much progress lost.
• Destination Defenestration: In Chapter 2, you can only escape "Statues" by using the GrabPack to pull yourself up to the observation room and breaking through the window. Unfortunately, Mommy considers this cheating and starts to hunt you down after you escape.
• Destroy the Security Camera: Exploited by The Prototype in order to create a Fakeout Escape. A video log details how he constructed a laser pointer from an alarm clock and fired it at a security camera to disable it. Unlike in most examples, the surveillance team noticed immediately and the camera was fixed in under 30 seconds, but in this time The Prototype had seemingly disappeared from the room. One surveillance specialist went to confirm the Prototype's absence, but on entering the room she found that the Prototype had hidden in one of the camera's blind spots.
• Determinator: The player character is willing to risk jail time and their life to find their fellow coworkers after receiving the letter. Even the monstrous mascots aren't a deterrent.
• Disney Villain Death: You get rid of Huggy by bringing down a heavy crate on him, sending him flying off the catwalk. Naturally, this doesn't put a permanent end to them.
• Double-Meaning Title: The subtitle of the first chapter, A Tight Squeeze, refers to Huggy Wuggy's name and killing method of hugging people to death, and the vent chase scene, where The Player must run away from Huggy Wuggy in tightly constricted vents.
• Downer Ending: Chapter 4 ends on an incredibly bleak note. Poppy's plan to kill the Prototype fails; instead, it uses the bombs to destroy Safe Haven, killing all its citizens. The Ex-Employee is forced to put down Doey after he goes berserk, "Ollie" is revealed to have been the Prototype deceiving Poppy for years, and it threatens to seal her back in her case, forcing her to run away. To make things worse, the Prototype uses another bomb to send the Ex-Employee even deeper underground to Playtime Co.'s labs, where Huggy Wuggy is still alive and is hunting our protagonist again, more pissed than ever.
• The Dreaded:
  • The Big Bad of the series, The Prototype. One of the first successes of the Bigger Bodies Initiative, it is staggeringly intelligent and alarmingly willing to commit violence. It’s also the mastermind behind the Hour of Joy, which resulted in the staff of Playtime Co. mysteriously vanishing into thin air. It now rules over the factory’s decrepit halls with an iron fist, with Mommy being terrified at the mere thought of being assimilated into its mass, while CatNap worships it as if it were a god. It’s also the one thing preventing us from leaving the factory, meaning we’ll have to go through it to survive.
  • While less-powerful and prominent overall than the Prototype, the antagonist of Chapter One and the initial Series Mascot for the Poppy Playtime series, Huggy Wuggy, is this on a personal level for the protagonist. Several sequences, like the rising tension and initial dread upon mistaking Kissy Missy for him, and the Red Smoke-induced Nightmare Sequence, show that Huggy is a massive Trauma Button for them, the protagonist having seemingly conflated all the horrors of Playtime Co. with Huggy's visage after the climatic chase of Chapter One, and remain frightened of him even after facing off with, and even killing, stronger and more intelligent toys in subsequent chapters. Accordingly, the Darkest Hour of Chapter 4 ends with a wounded yet still-alive Huggy returning to menace the protagonist when they're trapped and alone in the labs at the deepest part of Playtime Co.
• Eaten Alive: Assuming that you're not falling to your death, Huggy Wuggy, P.J. Pug-a-Pillar, Mommy Long Legs, Miss Delight, DogDay, CatNap, Yanaby and Doey will eat you after catching you. What benefit they get from this is unknown. The notes from Miss Delight in Chapter 3 imply that the toys have the ability to feel hungry for a yet undisclosed reason, described as "the roaring."
• Elaborate Underground Base: Each chapter explores more of the factory, the size of which appears to be growing exponentially the deeper it goes. Chapter 3 reveals that the Playtime Co. factory goes far deeper underground than anyone expected with the Playcare being situated in a large dome located within a huge cavern.
• Empty Room Psych:
  • In Chapter 1 after opening the shutter with a Catbee-toy, you walk into seemingly empty hallway, only for Huggy Wuggy to amble out of the dark and start chasing you.
  • In Chapter 2 after escaping Statues you fall down a vent and land in an empty basement area. When you try to grapple up to a higher level, Mommy Long Legs literally drops in, furious and ready to make good on her threat to maul you.
  • In Chapter 3, CatNap tends to appear in previously empty rooms you wander into providing numerous scares in the process. In the Gas Production Zone after you restore power to the Playcare, CatNap stops messing around and finally decides to take you out.
  • In Chapter 3, when you restore power to a generator in the School, Miss Delight appears and begins chasing you down.
• Even Evil Has Standards: When Dr. White was having some experiments be cut up to salvage their organs and toy parts, some experiments that couldn't be salvaged were sent to the forewoman of the Misfit Pit, who had found a "use" for such experiments that the scientists found to be "perverse". To put that in perspective - the scientists who are turning innocent children into monsters, and cutting up some of said innocent child experiments, find whatever this forewoman is doing to be perverse. We're not told what she's doing that has made these scientists disgusted, but whatever it is must be pretty bad.
• Expository Gameplay Limitation: In the later chapters, the GrabPack hands disappear from in front of you during certain scenes.
• Fake Film Intro: Each chapter begins with an In-Universe commercial for a toy that serves as the focus of its respective chapter. The first begins with a vintage commercial for Poppy herself, the second with a 90s commercial for Mommy Long Legs, the third with a Merchandise-Driven cartoon for the Smiling Critters that transitions to a news report about CatNap toys being recalled en masse, and the fourth starts with a 90s version commercial for Doey the Doughman that occasionally glitches until the end when it suddenly shows a half melted hand covered in molding dough goo reaching out and instead becomes a tape showing Jack Ayers, one of the boys used to create Doey, accidentally falling into a vat of hot molding dough on a tour at the Playtime Co factory. Fittingly, all take a darker turn at the end.
• Falling Damage:
  • Weirdly absent. While rare, there are a few areas where the player can drop down a pretty large height (such as the catwalks in the Make-a-Friend room), but they don't suffer any negative effects beyond either getting disoriented or having to climb back up.
  • The player picks up the prototype GrabPack 2.0 at the beginning of Chapter 3, which, according to the introduction tape, has air jets to break long falls, preventing this.
• Faux Affably Evil:
  • Mommy Long Legs may have a motherly personality, but she's quite obviously insane and murderous. Also despite claiming she will let the player go if they win her games fair and square, she eventually makes it clear she wants them to die, and the games are revealed to be rigged in her favor.
  • Leith Pierre as a public persona of a charismatic, friendly, and outgoing business leader who is dedicated to ensuring the company's success. In reality, however, Leith is a strict, greedy, disrespectful and ferocious man who is not afraid to verbally abuse his employees or even have them killed off if they're too much of a liability, while also barely able to keep his murderous or sadistic tendencies under control. At the end of chapter 4, he makes an 'instructional video' that mocks the player for intruding in the deepest part of the Factory while expecting a friendly welcome, and how security is going to just shoot you, complete with evil laughter.
• Fauxshadow: Mommy Long Legs' commercial has a disclaimer saying not to bring her near extremely hot or cold areas, suggesting that those will play a role in her defeat. That proves to be wrong - she instead gets caught in a grinder. She originally was supposed to be defeated using the furnace you encounter, but it was too hard to properly animate to use and had to be changed.
• Fate Worse than Death: Playtime Co. made people into living toys for as-of-yet unknown reasons. And it isn't exactly clear if they enjoy being like this or not.
• Featureless Protagonist: The protagonist isn't seen at all, with even their arms being "replaced" by the GrabPack during gameplay.
• Fetch Quest: A recurring theme in the game's puzzles is something missing in the machinery or something being required to bypass the scanners, forcing you to look around to either fix whatever's broken or get a toy that will allow you to proceed.
• Finger Gun: Chapter 3 introduces a orange GrabPack hand that forms into this position by default, and can shoot flares bright enough to scare off CatNap and the other Smiling Critters. It also has regenerating ammo, but the player still has to aim carefully to avoid running out at a critical time.
• Flower Motifs: One of the main visual motifs of Poppy Playtime is — naturally — the poppy flower. The goal the player is presented with to find the lost Playtime staff is to locate the poppy, and sure enough, there's a huge gate emblazoned with a painted poppy logo deep within the factory. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it leads you directly to Poppy herself. Chapter 3 broadens the motif by exploring the application of poppies as opiates through the "Red Smoke" hallucinogenic gas produced by Playtime Co. that is used to make children fall asleep.
• Fluffy the Terrible: This seems to be inherent to the game's evil toy characters, with all of them having rhyming or alliterative names designed to appeal to children, with the versions we meet seeming decidedly ominous or deadly. The first chapter introduces us to a giant furry plush-style monster who is a representation of a character named Huggy Wuggy, for starters, and Poppy Playtime herself also has sinister tones. Justified since they are monstrous versions of in-universe toy characters.
• Foreshadowing:
  • On the first tape Leith Pierre warns the player that the facility has a state-of-the-art security system that is set to alert the authorities if triggered and will also do... something else which Leith slightly implies might take care of a hypothetical intruder all on its own. When the player manages to get access to the rest of the factory, the giant Huggy Wuggy-statue comes to life and starts to stalk them for a while, until it finally just flat-out tries to kill them in the Make-a-Friend section. And then in Chapter 4, it's revealed that Dr. Harley Sawyer (or at least, what's left of him) was made into the factory's security system.
  • To a Genre Savvy player it's obvious that the Huggy Wuggy statue will come to life, but there are also clues within the game that the statue isn't as inanimate as it seems. Even on first inspection it's possible to see the fur moving slightly, as if disturbed by its breathing.
  • Long before the Prototype is introduced, a drawing of his claw with the word "wonderful" can be seen on a wall near the first wiring puzzle. An image of the claw also appears later on while playing the final video tape in Chapter 1.
  • Before Mommy Long Legs is killed, a warning poster can be found showing an employee getting the hand of a GrabPack stuck in a crusher.
  • One video tape has a scientist talk to the Prototype. It's revealed then that it can perfectly imitate voices. Chapter 3 then has us meet an orphan that somehow survived...
  • Chapter 3 has images of Dogday all over the place. Most of them have him a pose with his arms over his head, and his lower half cut off or missing.
  • In the Chapter 4 Icepick ARG, most of the information found relates to Yarnaby and The Doctor. However, one of the shredded documents refers to an accident on a company tour that seemingly has no relation to either of them. The opening cinematic cutscene for Chapter 4 reveals that the accident in question was referring to how Jack Ayers fell into a vat of molding dough and became one of the children used to create Doey the Doughman.
  • A couple relating to Doey the Doughman having three boys' consciousnesses inside of him:
    • The three colors of dough that make up his appendages, each with a hand on the end and each of which represents one of the boys.
    • The VHS commerical contains the lyrics "So many toys in one" and "Triple times the friend and triple times the fun", both of which hint at his true nature. A family photo is turned into three Doeys with expressions matching each boy's personality, and the Doey figure at the end of the commercial stands next to three cans of dough.
    • One of his cutout's lines is "Good thing I have your imagination to give me shape! I can never make up my mind! In the case of Bigger Bodies Doey, it's a literal case of this, since he technically has three minds.
    • His voice and demeanor changing frequently makes a bit more sense when you consider that the three boys, each of which have clashing personalities^note , are constantly fighting for control.
• For Science!: What exactly Playtime Co.'s R&D department was up to is unclear, but the gray tape shows a scientist with this attitude, focusing on nothing but the perseverance of a well-maintained "experiment". Putting it over the top is the fact the tape was being recorded while said experiment was rampaging and tearing his nearby coworkers to shreds, recording until it catches him too.

  "I'm not worried about myself. One breakthrough and I'll be back. We must forge onwards in the name of science, whether those who are beneath us understand it or not!"

• Fun with Acronyms: The safety instructor played by Stupendium in the ARG states that fun is one part of "Fundamentally Understanding the Need For Awareness, Cleanliness, Timeliness, Obedience, and Regulating Yourself", or F.U.N.F.A.C.T.O.R.Y.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation:
  • The GrabPack is mainly only useful for navigation and puzzles, but it's active almost all the time. This means the player can slap Toys in the face mid-conversation, and they won't react to it.
  • Despite the segment being called "Hide and Seek", implying Mommy Long-Legs will be actively searching for the player throughout the maze, Mommy only spawns for scripted chase sequences, and the Player is completely safe from her when these aren't in effect.
• Glowing Eyes of Doom: All the toys have black eyes with a single glowing white light in the center of their pupil. Chapter 3 reveals via Kissy Missy that the light is NOT normal; the miniature Smiling Critters have their normal black eyes getting pressed out with the lights revealed behind them and DogDay finally confirms the light as something bad when he doesn't have it initially, only to get it once he has become corrupted.
• Gone Horribly Wrong: Whatever experiments Playtime Co. was running, the tape in Chapter 1 recorded during what is heavily implied to be a breakout of one of the living toys, along with the fact that the factory is deserted in the present suggests it didn't go quite the way they wanted it to. The end of Chapter 3 provides more context into what exactly went wrong.
• Grappling-Hook Pistol: The GrabPack is more of a backpack fitted with pneumatic-powered firing mechanisms, but it functionally serves like this, allowing the player to shoot objects and pull things toward them. The game also makes use of the cables connecting them as a puzzle element, as they carry electricity and can complete a circuit. GrabPacks were once used by employees within Playtime Co., and presumably to maintain branding, the "hooks" are cartoony blue and red hands.
• Have You Told Anyone Else?: Subverted. On the blue tape in Chapter 2, an employee named Marcas attempts to warn the Innovations department about a strange creature he saw while retrieving a mop that was blocking the door to their area. The interviewer asks him if he's shared this information with anyone else, to which Marcas replies that he hasn't. The interviewer then simply dismisses Marcas as either lying or crazy and tells him to get out of his sight.
• Heroic B So D: Doey experiences a catastrophically ruinous one after failing to save Safe Haven from the Prototype.
• Heroic Mime: The player character doesn't speak. Justified, since there's really no one they could be speaking to. In the second and third chapter, they still don't speak, despite occasionally having someone to talk to. By the fourth chapter, they end up in several situations where speaking would help explain the situation—for instance, explaining that they were forced to kill Doey in self-defense after he went mad.
• Hide-and-Seek Horror: In the second chapter, Mommy Long Legs has the player play several games to gain parts of a code to escape. The final game she has them play is hide and seek, though this is a thinly-veiled attempt to hunt them down and kill them after they were forced to cheat in the previous game, which is Mommy's Berserk Button.
• Humans Are the Real Monsters:
  • Despite being the main threat, the monsters that chase The Player through the factory are all sympathetic victims of circumstances, with The Prototype himself portrayed as an enigmatic savior. However, Playtime Co. itself alongside Harley Sawyer, all of whom are human, are portrayed as the true monsters in the story, being responsible for the events of the story.
  • In an Apocalyptic Log, one of the employees regrets that both sides became monsters, and that it clearly started with humans. A Cycle of Revenge cultivated by the most selfish of humans by locking both humans and monsters in a dark hole, assigning them asymmetric roles, and letting the nature of stress and inequality take its course.

    Cole: We made them. And they made us.

• Human Resources: Heavily implied. There's the employees who went missing under mysterious circumstances years before the game's present day and a lot of blood stains on both the walls of the factory and many of the toys.
• Incompetence, Inc.: While Playtime Co. initially seems to avoid this through its friendly veneer, the yellow tape shows an employee named Rich work himself up into an angry rant about how disorganized the whole company is and how the board always blames him and other employees for things going wrong before he is essentially Reassigned to Antarctica, implying Playtime Co. was actually a terrible place to work at behind the scenes.
• Ironic Echo: Harley Sawyer is heard in Chapter 3 VHS tape "Log 24459" telling the Prototype to "fight, or give in." Chapter 4 introduces the "Experiment 1354" VHS tape, recorded after Sawyer himself was turned into an experiment, in which Leith Pierre tells him the same thing.
• Ironic Nursery Tune: "Itsy Bitsy Spider" is played in Chapter 2 shortly before you encounter Mommy Long Legs and she starts to chase you down as payback for cheating.
• It's the Only Way to Be Sure: Poppy's master plan is to destroy the factory, the Prototype, and anyone left inside. She believes the factory has become hell, which the player will find egregious evidence of. The only thing holding her back is the possibility that maybe some unmutated orphans survived.
• I Will Find You: The Player Character comes to the old Playtime-factory in order to find their missing colleagues, who have previously sent them a letter in which they insist they're still in the building and beg the player to "find the flower."
• Jump Scare: Aside from the usual horror game ploy of the assorted monsters screaming in your face before killing you, there are a few scripted scares—
  • In Chapter 1, a pipe bursts when you walk down a corridor Huggy Wuggy disappeared in.
  • In Chapter 2, a box falls down a shelf as you enter a secret room behind Elliot Ludwig's office. It's just Poppy, though, and she immediately apologizes for scaring you. Later on, when you try to grapple upwards from a closed room, Mommy Long Legs drops down right on top of you while giving an angry roar.
  • In Chapter 3, a pipe bursts when you walk in a backstage area. In the Orphanage, a Smiling Critter plush falls from the roof and something bangs on a wooden door numerous times. CatNap likes to pop up and startle you before abruptly vanishing and appearing later on.
• Karmic Death: Mommy Long Legs dies by being Ground by Gears after trying to get the protagonist killed in various sadistic ways throughout Chapter 2.
• Killed Offscreen: Bunzo Bunny and the Mini-Wuggies are killed by Mommy Long Legs after failing to kill the protagonist. You can see their corpses webbed up on the Game Station's ceiling later on, and there are even audio files in the game for it. They later mysteriously disappear from the webs on the ceiling.
• Laser-Guided Karma: Deconstructed, as a huge recurring theme of the story explores how much it's really worth to get revenge and how vicious the cycle of harm is.
  • The Hour Of Joy massacre, while on one hand leaving anyone alive made the possibility that the government would get involved and the experiments wouldn't truly be free, Poppy does point out that innocent people died in it, and while many people who did have it coming to them met a gory end, many innocent people died in it, and had families they were taking care of and who would no doubt miss them.
  • One guard, Cole Vaughn, acknowledges his role in the horrors is unforgiveable, but feels like both sides have ultimately committed atrocities that need to be held accountable for regardless of the motives.
  • Then there begs the question of when truly unrepentant and fully responsible people suffer from their actions, there's ripple effects. When mad scientist and head of the BBI, Dr. Harley Sawyer, becomes an experiment himself, stripped down to a brain in a jar and completely immobilized, there's no question that it was coming well in advance and was immensely satisfying. However, the game also tells us that the man who replaced him was even worse and actively cut up experiments that weren't cooperating with the company in addition to continuing the same experiments The Doctor worked on. The people who inflicted this on him were also not his victims or anyone with any sense of justice, but the other higher ups who simply found it to be more convenient if his mind were an open book for the company and happily continued on in the same atrocities he spearheaded without him. This personal hell also ended up saving him from The Hour of Joy that wiped out nearly every other employee, allowing him to take an Omni-Chip that let him control the factory and persecute surviving toys in his domain. Thus posing the question: If a truly atrocious individual is punished, and shows no remorse for their actions, but this punishment had no positive changes, actively made things worse for the victims both in the long run and the short run, the punishment was inflicted by people who arguably deserved the exact same punishment themselves and decided to inflict it upon him out of pure greed and no great moral awakening, and barely any victims even learnt of what became of him, was this Laser-Guided Karma actually worth it?
• Light and Mirrors Puzzle: Chapter 3 has a variation of the concept- instead of redirecting lights using mirrors onto a target, the player has to adjust poles so that a powered Hand (from either the Grabpack or a "turret") wraps around the poles and applies power to the target.
• Living Toys: The game takes place in a factory full of walking, talking, animated toys, some of whom are hostile. And as it turns out, they are also quite literally living, as they were once human beings who were transformed into their current forms. Some of them even bleed when cut.
• Logical Weakness: Each Arc Villain has a flaw in how they’re made that plays a role in their defeat.
  • Huggy Wuggy’s arms are very useful for hugging people. However, his hands can’t grab onto anything, and so when he’s hit by a box and knocked off a catwalk, he is unable to hold on and falls to his death.
  • Mommy Long Legs has stretchy limbs that she uses to great effect while chasing you. But those limbs are also trouble if they get caught in machinery, and so she is unable to escape a grinder and crushed to death in it.
  • CatNap can breathe a special gas that can put people to sleep. But any kind of gas is flammable, and so when he’s electrocuted, he catches fire and is mortally wounded.
  • Yarnaby is made of yarn, and thus is flammable.
  • Doey the Doughman is made of a play-do like substance that allows him to squeeze through tiny gaps. But play-dough is freezeable, and this helps the player hold him in place so they can crush him.
• The Main Characters Do Everything: Even when characters willing to aid the player character show up in Chapters 2 and 3, they are still forced to confront the factory’s dangers alone. Partially justified since the ones who could help you are a tiny doll with nonexistent strength (Poppy), can only contact you via cellphone and turns out to be an enemy in disguise (Ollie), are elsewhere in the facility completing tasks only they can perform (Doey), or suffers a Face–Monster Turn before they can do anything (DogDay). Kissy Missy is the only ally without an excuse to not help beyond pulling levers.
• Meaningful Name: The poppy is a flower that is used in the opium industry. Small wonder that a doll named Poppy is revealed to be part of a sinister conspiracy.
• Meat-Sack Robot: The living Playtime toys might be this. While Huggy Wuggy's display claims he's a toy made of "polyester and string", he has very real-looking teeth behind that fuzzy blue exterior, and later when he's wounded and falls off the factory catwalks, he leaves big splats of blood on every beam he hits on the way down. Just what the hell is he? When Mommy Long Legs is pulled into the gears of a machine, she leaves a huge blood-stain as she's crushed. Later on in the Playcare, Miss Delight is crushed under an industrial door and leaves a huge blood stain on the floor. DogDay is shown to have a missing pair of legs revealing a large bloody hole in his upper body and when The Prototype impales CatNap through his skull, a large amount of blood erupts from his head. Several of the smaller toys strewn about are also lying in puddles of blood or have blood smeared all over the walls behind them. Chapters 3 and especially 4 hammer in that these living toys are made out of humans and either retain a lot of their original bodies, albeit heavily altered, or have much of their bodies replaced somehow with equivalent organic material. Bones sticking out of severed Smiling Critter limbs can be found, and one unfortunate toy's corpse can be seen having lost much of its exterior, revealing its skeleton.
• Medium Blending: The game's intro cutscene and teaser trailer are shot in live-action, including demonstration footage of a physical Poppy Playtime doll. Many other VHS tapes within the game continue this trend.
• Midseason Upgrade: The player picks up the GrabPack 2.0 early in Chapter 3, which gives extended wire length, the ability to swap hands, and airjets to cushion long falls.
• Missing Secret: One of the rooms in the hallway where Huggy is seen for the first time in Chapter 1 has scanners for both the blue and red GrabPack hands. However, by the time the player gets the red hand, they are unable to return to this room, meaning no secret can be found behind the door in the final version. Early versions of the map revealed that a series of tunnels leading to an office, that then leads to the room where Poppy can be found, were behind this door, with the implication that the final chase with Huggy took place there, but these rooms were scrapped, and eventually reworked in Chapter 2 to become the tunnels where Kissy Missy appears and the office of Elliot Ludwig.
• Mix-and-Match Critters: The Swap-imals, as the name suggests are toys that are mix between to different animals. Two examples are Cat-Bee, and PJ Pug-a-Pillar.
• Monster of the Week: In each chapter, the player character contends with a major mascot-turned-monster that actively hunts them.
• My Little Panzer:
  • Owen the Oven, a normal toy without any "enhancements", proved defective enough to give multiple children third-degree burns, and Playco pulled it from the consumer market.
  • Visualizations in a Chapter 1 employee video show that the Grab-Pack, despite looking like a flimsy plastic toy, is a piece of industrial equipment strong enough to potentially rip off a adult human head. Chapter 2 reveals that orphan children were also fitted with Grab-Packs (including a green hand capable of holding electrical charges) to play in the Game Station, and no mention was given of how dangerous they were.
• Mysterious Watcher: In the room where you get the red hand for your GrabPack, you can spot Huggy Wuggy in one of the air vents, watching you before quickly retreating. When he appears for the second time, he does a hell of a lot more than just watch. In Chapter 3, you can see CatNap watching you in a few areas before vanishing back into the dark.
• Non-Standard Game Over: In the remastered version of Chapter 2, not stopping the train causes it to crash, killing the player.
• Noodle Incident:
  • One of the posters strictly advises employees not to hide behind doors to scare Leith Pierre.
  • The Theatre Incident, which was first mentioned back in Project: Playtime. While the exact details are a mystery save that 66 people died, including company staff, it was the last straw for Playtime Co.'s executives and proof that Dr. Sawyer was now a liability to the company. The end result was making him a "participant" in his own Bigger Bodies initiative, only instead of turning him into a living toy, they made Sawyer into Playtime Co.'s security system.
• No-Sell: Using the GrabPack hands on Huggy Wuggy is no good. You can decapitate a person with them, but they do nothing against a large toy. Same goes for Mommy Long Legs, Miss Delight, DogDay and CatNap who don't even flinch when you fire the hands at each of them. The trope is downplayed when it comes to small toys. The GrabPack hands can push back the small Huggy Wuggy toys when they are coming out of holes while the GrabPack flare gun can scare off small Smiling Critters toys.
• Nothing Is Scarier: The game takes its time before presenting the player with scares, and thanks to the unnaturally silent atmosphere of the dilapidated Playtime Co. factory, it can afford to. In Chapter 1, the giant Huggy Wuggy statue in the welcome center is an imposingly ominous figure, and the game has fun teasing the player with it, especially once it abruptly vanishes with no fanfare. He doesn't attack until a more few puzzles in, probably when you forgot all about him.
  • In Chapter 4, one note mentions the forewoman of the Misfit Pit who is doing "perverse" things with experiments who can't be salvaged. The game doesn't tell us exactly what she's doing, but given the people who wrote the note are the ones doing performing the experiments themselves, it can't be good.

    Secondary Lab Instructions: FYI: The Foreman of the Misfit Pit asked for new meat. Whatever experiments can't be salvaged, keep it quiet and send them there. She can make use of them, however perverse it may be.

• One-Winged Angel: Each of the primary Bigger Bodies toys have a different form or appearance they can take when they’re on the hunt, or when you’ve pissed them off so much that they decide to get serious.
  • Huggy simply opens his mouth to reveal his two sets razor sharp fangs.
  • Mommy uses her stretchy abilities to elongate her fingers to resemble witch nails, while dilating her pupils to the point that there’s barely any iris or sclera left, and plastering on a permanent Slasher Smile.
  • CatNap can use his Red Smoke to cause his victims to hallucinate and make him appear far more terrifying than he already is. The Ex-Employee sees him as an emaciated, grey monster, with a mouth open so wide, it’s threatening to break off.
  • Doey can shapeshift into a humongous lizard monster, with three smaller bodies representing the children used to create him, clawing their way out of the mouth.
• Orphanage of Fear: Chapter 3 mostly takes place in the Playcare, Playtime's onsite orphanage. Given what kind of company Playtime was it obviously was not a fun place especially since they were using the kids as test subjects. It's been abandoned for a long time when you find it, but now its terrifying for a whole new reason…
• Peace & Love Incorporated:
  • Playtime Co. has the public image of a perfectly wholesome and family-friendly toy company, but in addition to secretly being responsible for mad science Gone Horribly Wrong, it's implied that even just below surface level, it was greatly disorganized and not a fun place to work at.
  • In chapter 3, one tape mentions that the body of a young boy, torn apart by the limbs has been found in the house of the late company owner. The company's defense? Can't have been his fault, he loves kids!
• Prisoner Guinea Pig: Revealed over the course of chapter 4 to be the fate of any child sent to Harley Sawer's prison.
• Red Herring: The commercial for Mommy Long Legs at the start of Chapter 2 warns the viewer to keep her away from extreme temperatures, suggesting you'll defeat her by burning her alive. The chapter even provides a massive boiler room that you have to start up at some point. You actually kill her by tricking her into getting her hand stuck in a grinder and then activating it, leaving her to be crushed.
• The Reveal: Poppy finally reveals the "Hour of Joy" in Chapter 3. To be blunt, it was a total fucking bloodbath. Under The Prototype's control, the mascots slaughtered every human in the Playtime Co. facility at once. We get to see a videotape of the killings taking place with Huggy, Mommy, CatNap, Boxy Boo, Miss Delight and her sisters, the Mini Huggies, and even Kissy Missy all murdering everyone who crossed their path, turning the factory into a mass grave. Men, women, the innocent, the guilty, even the kids, they all died. Why doesn't the Player come across their bodies while exploring the factory? They took the corpses below where no one would find them and ate the bodies to survive. Even though she didn't see the slaughter due to being locked in her case, Poppy recalls everything she heard on that horrible day in vivid, disturbing detail and is on the verge of tears the further she goes.

  Poppy: I remember hearing every moment of it. It went on so long… so agonizingly long. They tried to hide… to run… anything to stay alive… I remember their cries: "What's going on?"… "Why is this happening?"… "What are those things?" [sniffles] Senseless slaughter, that's all it really was. They killed everyone. The guilty, the innocent, didn't matter. All that death… it didn't fix anything. And then, once it was all over, they dragged those corpses down below where they'd never be found. And they… ate the bodies… to stay alive. The Prototype has to die. For this. For everything.

• Run or Die: Some of the toys in the factory have come to life through unknown means, and the GrabPack on its own is ineffective against most of them. If they're hunting you down, your only chance of survival is to make an escape until you can find something that can be used to ward them off.
• Sadistic Choice: Doctor Sawyer gives the player one in Chapter 4 after locking them in a room surrounded by Nightmare Critters as part of a "Not So Different" Remark that both of them are willing to sacrifice lives for what they want. The mechanism to open the door is right next to the player and easy to turn on, but it's linked to a machine that will overload and kill a non-hostile toy when activated. Sawyer asks: Will the player kill the child to save themselves and their mission, or will they die to keep up their "veil of morality"? Sawyer will allow you to progress if you kill the child, but a hole in the ceiling allows the player to save both of them.
• Schmuck Bait: Huggy Wuggy likes to give hugs. Don't hug him or you will die instantly.
• Schrödinger's Gun: In the fight with CatNap, he attempts to use his gas-induced hallucinations to appear as if he's attacking from multiple angles. Mechanically, there's just multiple CatNaps, but narratively, whichever one makes it far enough into the room to subvert your deterrent measures was always the real one. Unless you try to leave the room through an otherwise empty corridor, then he was just hiding around the corner waiting to pounce.
• Scenic-Tour Level: The beginning of Chapter 3 has the player take a tram down into Playcare, and the player gets a birds-eye view of the complex while listening to Elliot Ludwig talk about it.
• Scenery Gorn: Every chapter of Poppy Playtime features large scenic vistas showcasing ruined locations in the Playtime Co. factory. It gets more scenic in Chapter 3 which features large underground caverns and ruined maintenance areas located in between the main sections of the factory.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here!: After nearly getting ripped to shreds by Huggy Wuggy and having a lethal time with Mommy Long Legs, the protagonist tries to leave the factory. Unfortunately, Poppy has other plans and sends you deeper underground before explaining why she needs your help.
• Scripted Event: Poppy Playtime can skew towards immersion breaking with how heavily some moments are on rails. One noticeable example comes during the Mommy Long Legs chase. While it is meant to keep the player tense and always on the move, pausing in the smelting chamber while she is crawling along the wall reveals that the chase has actually paused as she waits for you to drop to the lower level so she can spawn from the rubble.
• Sdrawkcab Speech: In Chapter 3, a distorted radio with a reversed voice is heard, with 'GUILT HAUNTS YOU' scratched into the floor beside it. When the audio is reversed, this cryptic message to the protagonist can be deciphered...

  The Voice: "8-8-1995. I find your presence intrusive. After all this time you return. You come in here and yet you kill and murder. You pillage and destroy. Your presence was demanded 10 years ago, and yet you didn't show up. 8-8-1995. You were supposed to be here. Why weren't you here? You missed the event. You missed the meeting. You missed the party. You have no right to be here."

• Sequence Breaking: In earlier versions of Chapter 2, there was nothing stopping you from going to the train after getting the green hand and brute-forcing the code from the 10 possible answers^note . However, this was removed in an update, and entered codes are automatically considered incorrect until the chapter is played out.
• Shout-Out:
  • Poppy Playtime's invention as a doll that can talk to children may be a reference to My Friend Cayla, a real-life doll equipped with a Bluetooth speaker that could connect to the internet and hold conversations.
  • Mommy Long Legs seems to be based on Betty Spaghetti, a popular real-life rubber doll by the Ohio Art Company that came out in 1998.
  • The tape in the Reject Toy section has Rich calling it The Island of Misfit Toys.
  • The Playtime Co. factory isn't the first fictional facility to be located within a huge underground cavern. A certain science company has already done this before.
  • A certain character from a hallucination sequence that appears in Chapter 3 isn't the first time fictional mascots have been seen in a nightmarish form within a dream.
  • There are many nods towards the BioShock franchise.
    • The tram that takes the Player towards Playcare showing off a scenic background with a voiceover is a huge reference to the opening sequence of a ruined underwater city and a city floating in the clouds. Elliot Ludwig's corresponding recording to the Player is also similar to Andrew Ryan's corresponding recording to Jack when he first arrives in Rapture during the events of BioShock.
    • In the backstory for the game, the relationship between Elliot Ludwig and Harley Sawyer could be seen as being very similar to the partnership between Andrew Ryan and Frank Fontaine from the first BioShock videogame. Chapter 4 also reveals that Harley Sawyer is also still alive just like Frank Fontaine during the events of BioShock.
    • Even the settings of Poppy Playtime and BioShock have similar backstories. The abandoned Playtime Co factory and the underwater city of Rapture started off as positive and upbeat locations filled with happy people. Things only started falling apart after a series of events pushed ahead by greed and corruption which resulted in the downfall of Playtime Co and the underwater city of Rapture. As a result, both locations end up being filled with hostile monsters that try to kill the player on numerous occasions and become nothing more than decaying and haunting ruins left to rot.
    • The events of BioShock 2 and Poppy Playtime both take place ten years after their respective settings fell apart.
    • In one of the trailers for Chapter 4, the Player witnesses a television that showcases a large eye before multiple eyes stare at the Player briefly. This is similar to Subject Delta meeting Alex the Great in Fontaine Futuristics from BioShock 2 who often stares at Subject Delta with multiple eyes in his encounters.
• Silence Is Golden: With the exception of recordings from the tapes, almost the entirety of Chapter 1 is without dialogue until the player frees Poppy from her case. There are more lines spoken in Chapter 2, with talking characters like Poppy and Mommy Long Legs being involved in the plot. Though the majority of Chapter 2 is still silent. Chapter 3 continues this trend with even more lines of dialogue spoken, while retaining the mostly silent atmosphere, and chapter 4 has even more dialogue.
• "Simon Says" Mini-Game: Musical Memory in Chapter 2 has you repeat increasingly complicated sequences of colors, letters and random symbols, with a Bunzo Bunny-toy slowly lowering toward you all the while. Every time you get it wrong, Bunzo lowers faster with the banging of his cymbals acting as an indicator how close to you he is. The game gets deliberately unwinnable after a few rounds, forcing you to press a panic button to shut it down.
• A Simple Plan: The player character's plan is to find a flower, hope it leads to their friends, and get out. But of course, it's never that easy when you're warned the security system is still working in the Playtime factory.
• Spring Jump: The GrabPack's purple hand allows the player to make incredible jumps via the hand slapping special pads on the floor.
• Story Breadcrumbs: Regarding Playtime Co.'s Mysterious Past, the tapes found in each chapter implied they were involved in unorthodox experimentation. Along with the fact that the factory is deserted in the present suggests it didn't go quite the way they wanted it to.
• Super Drowning Skills: During Chapter 2, there's a sequence involving rotating bridges above a water tank in the water treatment area. If the player falls into the water, then it is an instant death and they have to start the sequence all over again.
• Swiss-Cheese Security: For all of Leith Pierre's proclamations of the security system being reliable, you can enter pretty deep into the factory once you get the GrabPack. As the player character, you left the company so you have no Employee ID or credentials to enter. You would think that the cops would have shown up long before Huggy decides to get feisty, even for an abandoned factory.
• Take That!: Sir Poopsalot looks suspiciously like Freddy Fazbear on the toilet, which is reminiscent of the infamous slime-pooping "Five Nights of Farts" toy. Sir Poopsalot was apparently rejected due to extremely negative feedback from focus groups, with an additional note from management saying "Whoever's idea this was should feel ashamed."
• Toy Time: You're exploring an abandoned toy factory and using the toy-like GrabPack to collect items and solve puzzles. It's also the only tool at your disposal that makes it possible to escape from or defend yourself against the Living Toys trying to kill you.
• Tragic Monster: The toys were subjected to experimentation and brainwashing, not to mention that they were originally people Playtime Co. had converted into toys. Yes, they're dangerous and bloodthirsty in the present, but after what they were put through it's hard not to understand where their aggression is coming from.
• Unseen Prototype: The first successful experiment the company had was Experiment 1006, the Prototype. What happened to experiments 1 through 1005 isn't mentioned, though there is a report lying around on Experiment 814.
• Video Game Cruelty Potential: Feel free to use your GrabPack to bitch slap the few toys kind enough to not kill you or even shoot them with a flare gun. If you’re feeling extra cruel, you can do this to a torture victim who had their lower torso cut off!
• Was Once a Man: As it turns out, all the toys in the factory were once people—in fact, most of them were orphans.
• Wham Line:
  • The introductory video to the factory in Chapter 1 has "Leith Pierre" starting with this shocker: "If you're here, then you're trespassing." He proceeds to explain that the security system is on and still working, so you better leave now before the alarms, the cops, and everything else come to get you.
  • In Chapter 2, as Mommy Long Legs is getting crushed to death, she utters this line that might send a shiver down your spine:

    Mommy Long Legs: WHAT HAVE YOU DOOOOOONE?! HE'LL MAKE ME PART OF HIM! YOU... CAN'T DO THIS TO MEEEEEE!!!

  • There's a secret VHS tape you can find in Chapter 4 that plays a monologue from Poppy, who laments what the Prototype's done and what the toys will have to do to survive, and at the end she drops this absolute bombshell:

    Poppy: I wish you were here, Dad. I could really use one of your talks right about now. You'd know what to say. When you were running this place, you always knew what to say.

• Wham Shot:
  • In Chapter 2, not long after Mommy Long Legs' death, nearby shutter doors open, and a large, metal, claw-like hand emerges to take Mommy's severed torso.
  • In the ending of Chapter 4, you encounter a tall fuzzy figure in the darkness as the alarms blare. But it's not Kissy—it's Huggy.
• Who Forgot The Lights?: Nobody, but since you're breaking into an old factory, presumably at night, most hallways and rooms aren't illuminated. Most require you to reconnect the light sources to electricity via the GrabPack.
• Writers Cannot Do Math: It's heavily implied that there were are only a few hundred living toys made. The Prototype, Experiment 1006, was the first living toy, whilst the latest known experiment was 1467. Whilst 1467 isn't necessarily the last experiment made, it was definitely one of the last, with 1424 being completed on January 1995 and the Hour of Joy taking place in August later that year. Whilst Chapter 3 already tests the limits by having dozens of dead toy corpses lying scattered around, in addition to having more living toys, like the Ruined Critters, Chapter 4 really takes the cake by having an entire Toy Graveyard with mountains of dead toys, accounting for thousands of experiments.
• You Shouldn't Know This Already: To prevent Sequence Breaking, later versions of Chapter 2 will ignore attempts to solve the train code early, treating entries as incorrect even if it's the correct answer.
• Zerg Rush:
  • Wack-A-Wuggy has you fend off a number of smaller but just as bloodthirsty versions of Huggy Wuggy by pushing them back into the pipes they crawl out of. A variant of this also appears in Project: Playtime when the monster dispenses survivors into a pit with vents full of them. The objective is the same, but the minigame won't stop until another player gets you back out or you're finished by the mini-Huggies, who get more aggressive the longer you're down there.
  • In Chapter 3, as the player navigates the Playhouse in Playcare, they have to use the orange Flare Gun hand to fend off Smiling Critters plushies, who menace the player in groups.

• And Your Reward Is Clothes: The more the game is played, the more the player wins prizes, most of them being clothes for the Survivor or skins for the monsters.
• Anti-Frustration Features: If you're playing as a survivor and get taken down by a monster, a teammate can either revive you or drag you out of the pit of mini-Huggies and get you back in the game, which is demonstrated in the tutorial. However, there's a Rule of Three to this, meaning that if a player gets deposited into a pit three times, they're out for the rest of the match.
• Asymmetric Multiplayer: Similar to Dead by Daylight, up to six Survivors can play against a single monster.
• Canon Immigrant: Killy Willy, a bigger and more dangerous version of Huggy Wuggy created by GameToons, was made officially canon as a rare unlockable Huggy Wuggy skin.
• Demoted to Extra: The titular Poppy Playtime has a far less important role in this game, though she appears on the Playco. artwork across the maps and in the loading screens.
• Fluorescent Footprints: Monsters have the capacity to see nearby Survivors' footsteps.
• Food Eats You: Some Monster Skins have food themes:
  • "Lunch Boxy" turns the living Boxy Boo toy into a hamburger monster with french fries for limbs. Complete with munching and burping sound effects.
  • Mommy Long Legs has the "Mom Spaghetti" skin; which gives her pasta limbs and meatball torso and abdomen covered in tomato pasta.
• French Maid Outfit: Two unlockable items are these, one for Survivors (complete with Cat Girl ears), and one for Mommy Long Legs.
• Gratuitous Ninja: The unlockable Ninja Costume (for Survivors).
• Gold-Colored Superiority: All three monsters have unlockable gold skins.
• Imminent Danger Clue: The monsters, due to their sizes, make loud stomps when they move. That's the sign you need to run if you hear it right next to you.
• In a Single Bound: Boxy Boo, due to having spring limbs, has the ability to do powerful jumps, which allows him to catch up to Survivors on higher levels in the maps. Even his normal jump gives him speed boosts while chasing his prey.
• Jump Scare: After three hits, Survivors will have one from the monster chasing them before they are downed (where they can either get revived by another player or be deposited by the monster). In the sewers, shall the players fail to smack all the Mini-Huggies or land in the hole for a third time, they will get jumpscared by one and officially be killed until the next game.
• Killer Robot: All three monsters have unlockable Robot skins (with robotic sound effects).
• Living Motion Detector:
  • Mommy Long Legs is able to look through walls for Survivors for a short period of time.
  • A variant; Boxy Boo's music box gets louder each time a player is nearby, which is effective when on the look for survivors.
• Ninja Maid: Mommy Long Legs' "Maid" skin makes her look cute, but not less dangerous.
• Odango Hair: Part of the "Neo Punk Girl" outfit.
• One-Hit Kill: Huggy Wuggy has this ability, unlike the other monsters.
• Play as a Boss: One player among the others is given the opportunity to play one of three monsters: Huggy Wuggy, Mommy Long Legs or Boxy Boo, and must down/kill as many as possible.
• Player Elimination: Players have three lives and can be pulled from the sewers by other players only twice. Otherwise, they will be killed by the Mini-Huggies and has the wait for the game to be over in order to win their tickets.
• Promoted to Playable: Huggy Wuggy and Mommy Long Legs were the past Arc Villains of their respective chapters; in this mode, they are the playable villains who must track down and kill as many survivors as possible.
• Remember the New Guy?: The character of Boxy Boo was introduced in the cinematic trailer of the gameplay. It sparked a lot of theories that he might be the next Arc Villain for the upcoming third chapter (he wasn't, and is currently only a cameo in the main game).
• Rule of Three: The Survivors can take three hits from a monster before they are put down, and have three lives in total (they lose a life each time they end up in the sewers, and permanently die in-game the third time they are deposited).
• Scary Jack-in-the-Box: Boxy Boo, who can jump the highest and whose music box allows him to track players nearby.
• Shout-Out:
  • One of Mommy Long Legs' skins, "Mom Spaghetti", is a Visual Pun on Eminem's song "Lose Yourself".
  • Another skin of Mommy Long Legs is an octopus form called "Octo-Mom", possibly referencing to the video game Octo Dad. Her name may also refer to Nadya Suleman, who appeared in various talk shows and documentaries with the nickname of "Octomom" for having given birth to octuplets.
• Unnecessary Combat Roll: Subverted. Doing combat rolls allows the player to escape faster when being chased by the monsters (or just be faster in general). However, it takes a short amount of time before they can roll again, so they must be careful not to do a truly unnessecary roll when the situation calls for it.
• X-Ray Vision: Mommy Long Legs is revealed to have this, though she can only see for a short period of time and must wait before doing it again.