Film, TV, Book and Game Theories

Sarah killed Nick (Murder House)

This is a theory for the popular and infamous Puppet Combo game, Murder House.

Quick catch up if you're not familiar with the developer or the game. Let's start with the developer. Puppet Combo is a game developer who has gained considerable notoriety over the years for his PS1-era styled horror games. Some of those games being Nun Massacre, Babysitter Bloodbath, Murder House, Power Drill Massacre, Night Watch, The Night Ripper and Night Shift. His games are meant to be PS1/PS2 style games with an aesthetic of old 70s/80s horror movies like "Friday the 13th" and "Nightmare on Elm Street."

Now onto the game. Murder House is about a sadistic, Gacy-esque serial killer named the Easter Ripper, real name Tom Smith, who kidnaps kids from his job every Easter as a mall Easter Bunny in the 1970s and 1980s. He tortures and kills them over the course of several days, in ways I can't mention here unless I want the FBI to think I'm sus, or the admins to remove this book. He eventually gets caught when one of his potential victims escapes and exposes him. But instead of him getting arrested, his brother, Andrew, willingly takes the fall, and is executed two years later. A few years later, in 1988, Tom still can't control himself and feels the urge to resume killing. He returns to his childhood home, and crime scene, to find a real estate agent there. He finds out that the agent rented the house out to a news crew to do a haunted house story.

Enraged and seeing an opportunity, Tom kills the real estate agent and joins the news crew, masquerading as a cameraman. One by one, the news crew gets picked off by Tom, until it's just him and Emma, the protagonist, left. He reveals himself to Emma and forces her to take place in his infamous "egg hunt," which is what he'd do shortly before killing his victims. Emma finds all the eggs and wins, but before Tom can kill her, the zombies/spirits of his past victims rise from the ground where they were buried, and maul him to death. Case closed, the real culprit is dead and all's well that ends sorta well. Right?

Well, not exactly. It's revealed in an extended ending that none of the events of the game were real, and that it was all the plot for a cheesy horror movie. Tom is actually Devante, Emma is actually Sarah, etc. Well, the dialogue and subsequent ending seem to indicate one thing, that Sarah is not as good as she seems.

Through talking to crew members, you find out that the original suit actor for the Easter Ripper disappeared just a few days prior, and that Tom/Devante was a last minute stand-in. When you get to the final cutscenes, it's Sarah driving away, with a severely bloodied Easter Ripper costume in her trunk. My theory is that that is Nick's dead body.

Let's go over some of the clues and red flags. When going in the house and examining the costume rack, you'll notice that a few are missing. Not one, a few. It can't be Devante's costume, because he's still wearing it when Sarah leaves the wrap-up party.

Through talking to Dan, Gary's actor, you find out that there is actually a rumor that murders took place in the house this is set in, in real life. Dan dismisses it as rumors, but Sarah mentions it with such a "You know this, right?" tone to her voice, like she knows that these aren't just rumors.

Some people may think that Nick wasn't dead and was actually targeting Sarah, or that someone else killed him and is targeting Sarah instead. I'm not so sure of that. If he wanted to kill her, why didn't he just wait until the movie wrapped and skip the party with Sarah? It just seems rather extra and unnecessary to "skip town" a few days before the movie wraps, steal a costume and sickle, and then hide out in your potential victim's car trunk.

Sarah killed Nick with one of the sickles, hid his body away where no one would find it, then stuffed his body in her trunk to dump him elsewhere after she leaves the movie set for the final time.

But hey, all of this just speculation, and nothing else. In the meantime, addio, until next time.