Poppy Playtime Ch. 2 came out months after Poppy Playtime Ch. 1, and that gap gave players plenty of time to speculate about the lore with the few hints they'd found. With the release of Poppy Playtime Ch. 2, some of that speculation from players was confirmed. Then, new information from notes and VHS tapes scattered throughout the map gave players more lore to mull over, painting a more sinister picture about what was really happening at Playtime Co. during the prime of its operations.
[Warning: This articles contains spoilers for Poppy Playtime Ch. 2.]
Poppy Playtime Ch. 2 takes place deeper in the Playtime Co. factory, primarily at a playground where children played as they waited for their turn for the three games that tested their abilities and suitability for experimentation. The player, a former Playtime Co. employee, learns that this area is not as innocent as it first appears, and instead was vital to answering part of the question about how Playtime Co. made humans into toy monsters. The player character originally returned to the Playtime Co. factory to find out what happened to the workers who vanished a decade earlier, and Poppy Playtime Ch. 2 brings with it an abundance of answers and new questions about the fate of those missing employees.
In Poppy Playtime Ch. 2, players are able to find a new set of VHS tapes and notes that reveal more and more about the unethical research conducted at Playtime Co. on both adults and children. One of the biggest suspicions from Poppy Playtime Ch. 1 was that the missing employees are the toys that antagonize the player in the Playtime Co. factory. Poppy Playtime Ch. 2 confirmed this theory with the chapter's primary antagonist by including a note about Marie Payne, who became Mommy Long Legs. Yet this wasn't the biggest lore reveal to come out of Poppy Playtime Ch. 2.
Huggy Wuggy Is Not Experiment 1006 In Poppy Playtime
One of the player theories from Poppy Playtime Ch. 1 that was disproved in Poppy Playtime Ch. 2 was that Huggy Wuggy was Experiment 1006, which was said to be violent and rebellious by the Playtime Co. researchers. Huggy Wuggy was actually Experiment 1170, and Experiment 1006 was the claw-like mechanical hand that is also referred to as the Prototype. Not only does the Prototype remain rather mysterious throughout Poppy Playtime Ch. 2, players are made aware that it is planning something with the toy monsters that have died as evidenced by it coming to drag away part of Mommy Long Legs' body after she was crushed. Mommy Long Legs seemed to be aware of what the Prototype is doing since she screams that he'll make her part of "him" as she's dying.
Poppy Playtime's Name Refers To The Poppy Flower
Poppy is not the flower in Poppy Playtime that players are told to seek in the opening of the first chapter. Instead, the message is more literal in meaning, asking the players to find actual poppy flowers. This is shown in the note that players can find in Elliot Ludwig's office that details a failed experiment. Elliot writes about a poppy flower and gelatin mixture, and then in the lower part of the note he mentions that he believes the poppy flower are they key to the experiments, which involve resurrection.
Poppy Playtime Ch. 2 also reveals some insight into Elliot Ludwig's motivations. Like in the first chapter, finding every VHS tape in Poppy Playtime Ch. 2 is a good way to find a lot of the lore. One VHS tape includes what seems to be part of a documentary on Elliot Ludwig. The narration of the tape mentions that Elliot lost a loved one and threw himself into his work at Playtime Co. after that death. In combination with the notes about poppy flowers in the experiments, players can reasonably theorize that Elliot conducted these experiments with the end goal of resurrecting his loved one. This goal was so important to him, that he was willing to sacrifice the lives of both his employees and of orphans in experiments - condemning some to live as toys - to accomplish it.
Poppy Playtime Ch. 2 Shows Poppy's Dark Side
This is another reveal that players had already been theorizing about. At first, Poppy seems like she's helping the player escape from the Playtime Co. factory by giving them the code to operate the train in the playground area. The player rescues Poppy from Mommy Long Legs, and she repays them by adjusting the train tracks and forcing the player to go deeper into the Playtime Co. factory rather than allow them to leave. In a matter of minutes, the game set up Poppy as an antagonist in Poppy Playtime, but the extent and motivations behind her antagonism have yet to be revealed.
Though it can't be considered canon, Poppy's original dialogue at the end of Poppy Playtime Ch. 2 - which is in the game files - has her say that she's the reason that so many people have died at from Playtime Co.'s experiments. This dialogue may no longer be relevant to the game's story, or it could have been removed in order to be used in a later chapter. Either way, these unused lines bring with them more questions about Poppy's motivations and her identity before she became a doll.
As with the ending of Poppy Playtime Ch. 1, new theories are already being made based on the lore reveals from the second chapter. From theories about the glimpse of the Prototype in Poppy Playtime Ch. 2, to what players will find in the Playcare area, there is no shortage of fuel from Poppy Playtime Ch. 2 for devising new theories and speculating around Playtime Co.'s dark secrets. Though players have learned a lot about Playtime Co. in the first chapters, they seem poised to dive into the heart of the Playtime Co. factory and closer to where the experiments were performed and where the subjects were held. Chapter 3 could instill true horror in players by putting them through the toy monster creation process, which would be deeply unsettling given what information about the process was found in Poppy Playtime Ch. 2.