![]() What “saw the man but not the dog” means isn’t relevant or useful. It’s obviously important to Anna, since it’s her final message in the game, but it isn’t important to the story – Anna and Maggie are nearly superfluous, only filling in backstory and boosting the plot a little bit forward at times. Maybe it’s a reference to Maggie and Anna’s failure – a message saying that they’re going to do something before the rift, then after it a message saying they tried and failed. So maybe this is Maggie/Anna tracking which stage of the time loop she’s in – there’s some way of telling involving these men and dogs? Or maybe the flashes of images are Anna herself intruding on Alex’s thoughts, trying to get the same message across. On the first playthrough you see flashes of images, some of which feature humanoid figures – but that doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with the graffiti, right? Well, on the second playthrough, you also see a few flashes of new images, these ones showing dogs or wolves. Similarly, the theory that it’s the Sunken referring to people as dogs – no thanks, I’ll take something with actual evidence. I’ve heard a theory that in “saw the man but not the dog” seeing the man refers to leaving and seeing the dog refers to having a reason, but that’s really flimsy. ![]() The second part – “saw the man but not the dog” – could be Maggie/Anna’s way of saying “you didn’t listen to the warning.” I find this to be doubtful, though – it just doesn’t fit with the meaning of the original phrase. ![]() Similarly, it could be Anna trying to communicate from beyond, if we assume that “see a man about a dog” is an in-joke or phrase with special meaning between Anna and Maggie. If that phrase means something special to Maggie or Anna, they would see it and know, even if they had forgotten this wasn’t their first time through, that someone who knows them well wants them to get out of that cave. It’s possible it’s a warning to themselves, if they’re aware of the time loops. The first graffiti is before a point of no return, after all. Why, though? Well, it could be a warning to others, but the phrasing isn’t terribly useful. Since Anna uses the same phrase, it’s almost certain one of them left the graffiti. We only know of two people that have been this far in this cave – Maggie Adler and Anna Shea. Go! It doesn’t matter why you leave, just that you do. It’s telling you to do something – in this case, get out. The first graffiti is phrased as an imperative. Saying “I need to go see a man about a dog” means “I need to go now and I don’t want to say why, probably for decency’s sake.” With that, we can develop one possible meaning. So, first off, the phrase “see a man about a dog” is used as an excuse while leaving when you’d rather not say why you’re leaving. Spoiler alert: I have no answer, although I do have answers. It’s so tantalizing, so well-hidden, and so, so unnecessary. In the cave near the start (and end) of the game, you find red graffiti: “SEE A MAN ABOUT A DOG.” Just a little bit later, in the lower area of the cave, you find similar graffiti: “SAW THE MAN BUT NOT THE DOG.” The last mention of it is hidden – Adler’s friend Anna can still communicate over radio through Morse code, and her message in the finale is not only in Morse, but that Morse is a base64 string containing more Morse, which then becomes binary, which then finally becomes the phrase “ask a man about a dog.” The phrase also shows up in the ARGs, but those are so cryptic as to be meaningless. There are spoilers ahead, and it won’t make much sense without context. If you wandered into this without first reading the earlier posts, please read this first.
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