Little Nightmares II: The Storyline, Timelines, and Theories

Little Nightmares became one of the most beloved puzzle-platform and survival-horror video game series. A few years ago, they released a video game that revolved around a little girl named Six, wearing an iconic yellow raincoat. She journeyed through the Maw, trying to satisfy her insatiable hunger. Recently, developer Tarsier Studios released Little Nightmares II. It’s a prequel where you play the role of Mono, a young boy trapped in a world distorted by the humming transmission of a distant tower.

SPOILER ALERT!!!

Little Nightmares II: The Plot.

Mono saves a little girl from the Hunter.

The game started when Mono awakened from a dream of a door marked with an eye at the end of a long hallway. Then, he journeyed through the Wilderness and entered the masked Hunter’s decrepit shack. Mono finds a little girl held prisoner playing with a music box. Together, Mono and the little girl escape the shack and run from the Hunter. Until he cornered them in a shed, and they shoot him with a rifle. Then, they use a wooden door as a raft drifting across a body of water.

They washed up on the Pale City. Mist and rain shrouded the city as old televisions scattered around the place. Throughout their journey, Mono would attempt to use the televisions as portals. These gateways, on the other hand, enter the hallway that only existed in his dream. However, the little girl always pulls him back before he reaches the door with an eye on it. Aside from that, he also encounters several glitching ghosts of children.

The little girl turns out to be Six.

With one touch, Mono can absorb the glitches. These seemed to have a deeper kind of meaning at the end. He and the little girl enter the School. Unfortunately, they are separated when a group of porcelain Bullies captured her. These enamel-made characters are the School’s rabid students. Mono rescues the little girl from the Bullies, and together, they escape the long-necked Teacher who rules the institution. Mono and the little girl leave the School, running into the rainy night.

Outside the School, they recover a yellow raincoat that the little girl wore. This finally lets us know her real identity as Six and revealing that Little Nightmares II is the prequel of the Little Nightmares. Mono and Six, then, reach the Hospital where they encounter dismembered, mannequin-like Patients and the bulbous Doctor. After defeating the Doctor, they leave the heart of the Pale City, spotting the Signal Tower, which emitted a pervasive Transmission.

The Transmission controls the Pale City’s inhabitants.

The Pale City’s residents, or also known as the television-addicted Viewers, had distorted faces due to exposure from it. Once again, Mono tries to reach the door through a television. The spectral Thin Man emerges from it and captures Six. Using various televisions as portals, Mono navigates the Pale City until a glitchy ghost version of Six leads him to the Signal Tower. He confronts and disintegrates the Thin Man.

Mono entered the Signal Tower and reunited with a now-distorted giant Six. He damages her music box, becoming hostile. However, Mono turns her back to normal when he destroyed the box. The Signal Tower begins to crumble. The core of the Signal Tower – a gelatinous mass of flesh and eyes – pursues them. They outrun the mass, Six running ahead from him. She catches him but allows Mono to fall, letting him go into a chasm, and she escapes through a television portal.

The end of Little Nightmares II.

The mass surrounds Mono – alone. He sits in a solitary chair and resigns himself to his fate. Time passes, and Mono grows older and taller. Ultimately, he takes on the form of the Thin Man. The camera draws back to reveal Thin-Man-Mono in a room at the end of the hallway, and the door closes. If little-Mono found all of the ghostly glitchy children, it would show a post-credits scene. It will show Six encountering a shadow version of herself. The other version of herself gestures to a pamphlet on the floor, advertising what appears to be the Maw. Six’s stomach, then, growls with hunger.

Little Nightmares: The Storyline

To determine the entire storyline, we have to put everything together. These would include Litte Nightmares (and its downloadable content – Secrets of the Maw), the mobile spin-off Very Little Nightmares, and the full-fledged sequel-slash-prequel Little Nightmares II. To nail down a rough timeline, I would contextualize various elements using fan theories that seem most logical.

Very Little Nightmares

Released as a mobile by-product, Very Little Nightmare was a touch screen puzzle game with a very different art style from the other two video games. Using hand-drawn visuals, it tells the story of a character wearing a yellow raincoat. Although Six exists in this game, she was not the one wearing the iconic clothing. Players, controlling this character, explored an old mansion built at the top of a tall cliff in the middle of the ocean known as the Nest.

The Girl In The Yellow Raincoat

The girl, on the other hand, didn’t have a name. She was just called, “the girl in the yellow raincoat.” However, she loses that raincoat as she plummets to her death in the middle of running from a monstrous child known as the Pretender. Six was also in the game, a fellow prisoner who ends fleeing the Nest, alongside the girl in the yellow raincoat, and escaping on a raft after her companion met a watery grave.

Little Nightmares II

Many assumed that Six acquires the raincoat, and arrives at the Maw with the said insatiable hunger. However, when Little Nightmares II came out, it turned out that this was not the case. There are several reasons to make such a connection. One of these would come from the digital comic, which acts as a precursor to the events of the sequel-slash-prequel. We see a raincoat-less Six getting off the raft before the Hunter ended up capturing her. Then, her would-be companion Mono encounters the Hunter. That later resonates as to why he sets off to rescue her at the beginning of Little Nightmares II.

The Music Box.

In her prison room, we see Six playing with a music box that seems to calm her down. We see a representation of this music box at the end of the game. Monster-Six holding it with extreme importance. In fact, the Signal Tower uses this box to corrupt and bind her to its spell. Although referenced beforehand, this seems to be the first time she encounters this object. She connected with it as a coping mechanism during a time of emotional trauma in her childhood. Aside from that, she also drew tally marks on the walls indicating the length of her stay.

The Signal Tower.

She also drew the Signal Tower. This sketch would perfectly match the Bullies’ illustrations at the School. Fans theorized that this could possibly note that the Transmission from had already started affecting her. It would be possible that it had been hypnotizing her with its corrupt broadcasting much like how we could see it affect the other wretched creatures in the entire universe. In fact, later in the game, Mono and Six passes by four Viewers staring up at the Signal Tower.

The Viewers fall one-by-one as if they were spellbound. Six, on the other hand, gazed up at it as well. It was as if the Signal Tower had made a mental connection with Six before Mono even met her – gaining early control over her fragile mind. This may well be the reason why she was easily manipulated, distorted, and corrupted while held prisoner within. The tower already had a hold over her mental state.

The Signal Tower’s Real Form.

Skipping to the end of the sequel-slash-prequel, Six was imprisoned once again. This time, by the Thin Man within the walls of the Signal Tower itself. It corrupts six in ways all-too-familiar to anyone, such as Roger the Janitor, the first monster we encounter in this universe from the first-ever Little Nightmares video game. This signals how this uses Thin Man’s power to warp and distort reality. His powers ravage the world and do the same to Six. More importantly, the tower pulls from her memories to create a prison for her.

Mono eventually cures six when he destroyed the music box. He destroyed the same item that brings her comfort but, at the same time, binds her in her monstrous form. This leads to the Signal Tower revealing its true form – a living mass of flesh made up from the bodies of those it consumes. Thus, revealing the reason why there were a lot of clothes and shoes hanging around the Pale City. Much like the Tweet from its developers, they wouldn’t need it anymore. Because they become one in a pile of gelatinous monstrous flesh.

Six’s Betrayal.

While escaping, Mono drops behind Six. She grabs his hand to prevent him from falling. However, in a cruel turn of events, she let her friend fall. Fans theorized that Six sensed darkness calling him from within. Aside from that, she had witnessed Mono’s dangerous powers, which made her feel threatened. It would also be imperative to point out that Six has been imprisoned twice during her journey with Mono.

Although he would always come for her, it was because of him why she was captured – first by the Bullies and second by the Thin Man himself. He would always go towards a television, using it as a portal from their reality and into the hallway. Six would always be there, pulling Mono out of the gateway – saving him from opening up the door. But, he does anyway and leads to her unfortunate capture.

Mono is Thin Man.

Of course, Six unknowingly and unwittingly dooms the world. Mono is imprisoned by the Signal Tower, using his powers to distort and warp the world throughout space and time. These events give birth to a time paradox where the nightmarish world was created. A cycle, then, begins in order to salvage it.

The loop reveals that Mono has always been Thin Man and calls out to his past and younger self. This way, he could be freed from the prison within the tower and finally have the chance to break the cycle, saving the world and its inhabitants from this terrible fate.

Little Nightmares

Although Six escapes from the Signal Tower, a part of her belongs to it. Just like the glitching remains of the children throughout Little Nightmares II, her connection to Mono and the tower separates her soul from her body. Now incomplete, the loss of Six’s soul leaves a great empty void that must be satisfied. This is the birth of her hunger; the same hunger we contend with throughout the very first Little Nightmares game.

As previously said, a post-credits scene from the sequel-slash-prequel shows a shadow version of Six. Shadow-Six gestures to a pamphlet on the floor, advertising the Maw just as her stomach growls with hunger. This meant that the television she escaped through would either be inside the actual Maw itself. Or, it had given her the idea to head there in order to gain access to the power she needs to be cured. Of course, she eventually procured these powers from the sorceress, the Lady.

Her hunger requires soul energy to properly quench its thirst, replacing the elements of the soul Six herself has lost. This could explain why in a cruel twist of fate, Six eats the gnome child and not the sausage that it offered up to her. It could also explain why, upon killing the Lady and consuming her dark magic, Six uses the power to drain everyone else aboard the Maw. She has become a monster herself, sucking the life out of everything that stands in her way.