A Psychological Analysis of Fran Bow

I am so happy people are covering this!! Fran Bow has been one of my favourite games for years :)

I always tought it was set in Germany because of Fran's last names, the twins experiments and, ofc, the year.

absolutely amazing analysis. great watch and high quality, look forward to more of your stuff❤️❤️

I like to think its a mixture of both. It's been hard confirmed the other worlds are real, that was shown at the end of Little Misfortune, but some things in the game are definitely hallucinations. While the medicine allows you to see into other worlds, the human mind can't handle the other worlds before death so it slowly drives you insane.

I simply do not believe Fran died. That's all.

Great video, though not convinced about your "it could take place in the US" excuse, Americans like to believe the world revolves around them when it does not, in fact the young and immature US is significantly culturally flaccid in comparison.

I prefer the theory where Fran didn´t actually killed her own parents but the aunt and another worker (probably the pederast) of the psychiatric clinic where the real culprits under the orders of Dr. Oswald.

If you check the flashback of the crime scene it looks too orchestrated to be something done by a young child.
How she could beheaded and mutilated her own mother corpse when she looks too skinny and frail to cut bones? And how she knew how to draw a demon pentagram in the first place?

Is likely they gasligthed her to think she was the murderer while also lying to the public too by making look like she became part of a satanic cult to make it easier to hide the true intentions of the hospital.
What better way to keep human experimentation as a secret by using religious panic as a cover up, uh?

I personally always belived that it was aunt grace and oswald who killed fran's parents for interfering with oswald's plans- it makes more sense to me and helps reframe fran from "oooh creepy crazy girl" to a girl who was exploited and framed by those with power over her as dangerous.
See how when she lashes against Aunt Grace in chapter 5, how oswald immidetiatly decides to use lethal force against her. Its because of how Oswald and Grace have dehumanised her, now seeing her as just a dangerous crazy girl so they can justify all the violence they inflict on her

Slight correction: the Other Fran in Chapter 5 is not a Past Fran, it's a Fran from a universe where she was never given Mr. Midnight and thus never had the motivation to escape the asylum. Kinda puts a hole in the Fran Was Raised In The Asylum theory, but other than that the video was wonderful!

This game is always so cool and also kinda scary and creepy but it’s cool to see a video about it

I like to believe that it's all real. The game itself is the metaphor, but not her actual journey. No 10 year old could imagine all that, and also she knew about Dr. Deern's past. I also choose to believe that Remor killed Fran's parents and was just gaslighting Fran. The way her parent's were cut cleanly with that little knife by a 10 year old girl, who somehow had no idea she did it while they also didn't expect it seems impossible. Their bodies were lying on the floor (out of their bed) meaning they would have had to struggle with her or see her coming in with the knife. But reports on the murder said there was no signs of struggle, which i interpret as Remor coming in, using his powers to lift them out of bed and slicing them both at once into pieces. It's the only way it could have happened.

Even if they creators were to say "fran killed her parents and the rest is in her head," I would still believe the opposite because it makes me feel better. This is a great game.

For the timeline, I’m not sure if this is relavent but near the end of the hospital sequence, if you click on the mop Fran says « a mop that will dance on the floor » which could be a reference to Disney’s fantasia. It could be an in-universe reference (meaning fantasia was out and Fran has watched it) or just a fun thing the game devs put in.

This is an amazingly well-worded video. Fran Bow is really relatable for me and it's definitely comforting to know it's based off of something even one of the developers went through. Thank you for making this :))

This game was highly disturbing, and I have a little message for a certain set of people:
If you are someone who sees things like this, and tells yourself that you enjoy it, that you want to see more, you need to break out of that mentality.

I was like that. I enjoyed thrills and horror, and would subject myself to whatever horrifying things I stumbled upon. Whether it was a terrifying ride at an amusement park not meant for kids, a scary game like this that presented disturbing imagery, or books that gave me ideas of the truly terrifying, I subjected myself to it all. It wasnt healthy. It only made my own mental health worse. I realized that I can overcome bits of my depression by stopping the onslaught of these horrors. Its like when you're crying, and you dont want to stop crying, so you keep subjecting yourself to the sadness. All you need to heal a bit is to stop, take a second to breathe, and stop doing whatever it is that is making you cry. Its all self awareness.

Dont keep forcing yourself to suffer, or you'll never get out of it.

Omg Killmonday games are so fun yet so dark

Fran Bow has always been my favorite horror game, and there's never been anything quite like it. The constant questioning if whether or not what Fran is experiencing is real or not, even to the point that the players don't know by the end of it, was so expertly done. Did she really find eternal happiness or was it just a crude experiment? The mystery adds to the appeal.

I'm glad this video ignored Little Misfortune, I've always felt it was a disappointing "sequel"/new exploration of the world of Fran Bow, quite possibly undermining or even ruining the original. Even to this day, I like to think of Fran Bow as a stand-alone game.

It’s so weird to say that I grew up with this game, I used to love watching ihascupquake play it when I was around 10 or 11. I never really understood the full meaning, but it was always intriguing and I always wondered what it meant. I kinda wish the creators would explain to us what happened so we understood it a little more, ofc I know it’s based off of Natalia’s experiences, but I’m curious on what Fran actually has.

i feel like the fact nothing in the game can be easily defined as real or not real is intentional. thats what mental illness feels like, after all. so many things that i cant tell if actually happened or not, sometimes the lines between reality and my own imagination are so blurred i can barely interact with others...or interact with myself. everythings incoherent, but it makes sense in a way, yet i dont understand what any of it means. its a painful, confusing and traumatic experience. i dont know if im just too weak, if its normal to be a slave to your own mind or if this is simply what i deserve for some sort of sin ive committed. heck, sometimes i find myself questioning if anything is real at all or if ive been living inside my own head for all of this time. you see, it feels like i lost touch.

It is genuinely easy to look up how to pronounce the names of known historical figures, Wikipedia has the phonetically spelled out and often there's even an audio clip. Choosing to say them wrong and then apologize does nothing for the quality of the video.

As unsatifying as it may be i think most things take place in her mind due to the drugs and in the end she attacks her aunt gets shot and dies going to heaven, as for the parent murder and how she ended up in the asilum idk

“You can break something in two seconds , but it can take forever to fix it”

SO THIS IS THE GAME I WATCHED SO MUCH OMG.

love this game🥺 it's my comfort game with its colourful fantasies and different dimensions which seem so so creative to me!! honestly absolutely love the aesthetic and feel of it, it's so... I don't know, weird in a good way😭 i want to replay it again, even after so many times i can't get enough, it's that great!! thank you for covering it, great video!!<33

I thinkyou've improved upon this (I'm checking out your little misfortune video and it's not there as far as I can tell,) but there's a buzz in the background of the video, perhaps it's your computer/mic setup?

Either way I'll be subscribing, I like your stile of videos.

This is one of my favorite games ever

I remember when this game out and I have been a fan ever since. Natalia (the artist/animator of Fran Bow) said this game is almost biographical for her, so it really is a personal one... I love killmonday Games, I have some pins and a Killmonday Games Shirt from when they had an etsy, as well as a makeshift palontras plushie :) My favorite is the Vegetative State chapter with the season clock, but I like the Asylum and Forest areas as well.

New to your videos. Do you really have a PH?
(Checked your channel. You did Sanitarium?! I'm excited for that after this. What about American McGee's Alice and its sequel?)

This aint the PH i was planning to watch tonight...

will contain spoilers??!
*has watched multiple different playthroughs, countless times*
OH BOY

I believe her hallucinations were real, the way the doctor reacts to her telling him his story is odd…. I mean he agrees to it and it would be highly weird that he would ever speak of his tale during his work. So it’s odd for her to nail the hammer on the head.

To me, what makes this game so powerful is that it doesn't shy away from the horror of trauma or mental illness but also doesn't just use it for shock value. A lot of games will just use the "aesthetics" of mental illness without actually portraying the experience of mental illness. I think the game's strongest part is being made by someone that has this experience first hand. great video!

i don’t think fran killed her parents. I think Grace and Oswald did it

This game still sits with me today, so many emotions just ripped out of my heart by it.

Wow I must’ve dissociated a lot watching gameplay of Fran Bow because I’m 99% sure I watched all of it but I don’t remember so much of it and I can see why. The game is good don’t get me wrong but there were so many triggering moments as someone who has battled severe depression, anxiety, C-PTSD, and OCD. I’m in a better place now but man it still hits home so hard. I was in the psych ward at age 15 and I can attest I probably left there with more mental illness than I came in with.

I’m so happy that this game is still being talked about in 2023

This game beautifully embodies the saying that art is meant to comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable… It really hit some spots in a younger me, that no game before or after ever has.

There is a positive view of mental illness that I feel like you should have included, as different conditions are sometimes viewed as blessings or communications from deities and spirits, giving the person who has them an important amd respected spiritual role in a community. It is less commonly seen in the psychology side because the positive is a cultural view that is more based in the humanities so often dismissed, and not part of a medical science view that the science latches onto. Hyperfocus on the bad can lead to ignoring the obvious solutions found in the good, like treating people with mental illness can have very insightful and enlightening perspectives that can help make life better and should be treated as equal members of society in terms of their value and capabilities to contribute. Equally capable of knowing and teaching on their own terms and own ways.

You should definitely make more content like this! Games I could recommend are Danganronpa (Junko Enoshima's mental state and her personalities), Doki Doki Literature Club (How smiling depression is represented via Sayori), and Omori maybe if those are things you would be interested in. I enjoyed the video very much <3

the art is gorgeous and the story is really cool but i just gives me the ick how casual ped0philia themes are laid out both in Fran bow and little missfortunes

I love this game, I've had this in my watch later for a bit and I'm really excited to see people still covering it!

Using clips of people screaming to represent mental illness is... not great, for lack of better terms. First of all because there is a stigma around mental illness for being annoying, or those suffering being unsympathetic to those who do have to deal with them. If anything, most illnesses go completely untreated because those afflicted stay entirely silent.

My personal idea was some aspects actually happened, however some didn't.
[Spoiler for Little Misfortune as well, as it's a part of the same universe, be warned.]










Thanks to the fact Little Misfortune and Fran Bow are part of the same universes, and Little Misfortune confirms the five realities' existence, the idea I have is the only way to access / see the 5 realities are Death [as seen in Little Misfortune] and Tainted Duotine [as seen in Fran Bow, the duotine she has is full of something i don't remember the name of, but it starts with ecto.], which allows you either permanent or temporary access / sight to the ultrareality and the other 4 realities [Pandora, which has earth and stuff, would be the 5th reality.]

However, I'm pretty sure the murders in the opening cutscene didn't happen, but rather something tainted by fran's mind after seeing her parent's corpses, as the skeletons in the coffins weren't apart, and I doubt they'd put the time and effort to stitch two grown skeletons back together after multiple limbs were severed. However, the idea Fran killed her parents would make sense if this was the case. A young girl couldn't sever limbs of grown adults, but could definitely deliver a fatal stabbing.

I feel like part of the game and it's story touches on misdiagnosis and how that affects someone who is being treated. The medication is clearly the wring one and at the time where the game takes place there was extreme explanations for mental illnesses and so extreme measures were taken. Fran has been giveing multiple differnt medications (if I remeber correctly) at this age but she is very young, and thar also impacts how a child grows up, she was expected to be obident, and 'insane' so, that's what her reality turned into. Her story is sad because she was never in control truely, her options allways lead her to the same end, atleast when she gets there, she finds her own happiness away from the judgement and dictation of the adults who failed her and pushed her into the position she was in during the game

I love psychological analyses, and you delivered!

the music is kinda loud, its distracting D:

a little off topic but regarding the Where aspect of Fran Bow;
starting off, I think there's more merit to the game possibly taking place in Sweden than the fact that the developers are from here. Our history with mental health and "asylums" especially is horrific not to mention our parts in the history of the scientific community (eugenics and such).
But even more importantly I think getting hung up on where the game takes place misses the point of it. Because all of these countries have a long history of abusing mentally ill/neurodivergent/disabled people, which is why I think at least the studio were so vauge about location. Their other game explicitly takes place in Sweden so if they wanted to define where this all happens they would. But I think the crituiqe extending past borders and into the modern(ish) research practices of European science is an important aspect of the game. They're not making it to take a look at any specific country, but a specific medical practice that a lot of countries have adopted.