The portrait of Carlo holds a strange secret.
The more lies that Geppetto's Puppet tells, the longer Carlo's nose will grow right
out of the portrait. And this of course, is a reference to the original novel.
Geppetto commissioned this portrait of his son from the artist D. Gray, and this
is a reference to the 1890 short story, the picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde, in
which the vain aristocrat Dorian Gray hides away a mysterious painting that's enchanted to
keep his appearance young and beautiful forever, while his appearance in the portrait continues
to grow old and more hideous with each of his terrible deeds. In the Lies of P universe, Dorian
was a genius painter that created vivid portraits infused with different magical qualities. And
some of these portraits even held the souls of their subject. Which might mean that a part of
Carlo might very well be hidden in this painting. Although Dorian died under mysterious
circumstances, more of these enchanted paintings might be floating around. So this
might not be the last time we get to see one of D. Gray's famous magical portraits.
The Black Cat carries the City Longspear, and upon closer examination, it turns out that
the spear is actually part of a signpost from Toy Land, which is a reference to the
Land of Toys from the original novel. The Land of Toys is described as a perfect
place with no schools, no teachers, no books, a place where you get to play and eat candy
all day. But it's also here in the Land of Toys that lazy children get transformed
into donkeys that meet horrible fates. So it's possible that the Black Cat escaped
a similar gruesome end from Toy Land. And by the looks at the signpost, he didn't
leave without putting up a fight. So Toy Land might just be a place that we get to
visit for ourselves in upcoming content. There's a statue of a woman at the Estella Opera
House with a dedication from someone named G.G. and it reads, "In honor of the happiest
days of our family because of her presence. I still miss you, Camille." We know that G.G.
stands for Giuseppe Geppetto. But who is Camille? We learn from a record book that Camille was
the first puppet discovered to have an ego, a sense of self. She was a maid puppet
that caught and saved a falling baby from its crib. Despite this function not
being found anywhere in her design, something deep inside her had
compelled her to save the baby. And when the Alchemists took her away to be
studied, she exhibited the first instance of a puppet speaking and said, "Send. Me. Back.
To. My. Child." But instead of returning her to her household, she was interrogated and
taken apart in the name of Ergo research to try and understand how it was possible for her
to have developed a personality. But Geppetto's tribute to her is a little too personal
for her to have just been a random puppet. We later learned that Camille was the name of
the genius engineer that was commissioned by the Alchemists to create the Saintess of Mercy
Statue. And this statue had the ability to bring puppets back to life. The female figure is
holding a P Prgan, ready to place it into the chest of the puppet lying in her arms. And on
the base of the statue is the same Workshop crest that Geppetto wears, meaning that Camille was a
part of the Workshop Union herself and possibly even had a more intimate connection to Geppetto.
The touching dedication may suggest that she was Geppetto's wife, which would make her Carlo's
mother. And when she died after Carlo's birth from the Petrification Disease, a heartbroken
Geppetto named his maid puppet after her. Because ergo is infused with human essence, Camille's
Ergo may have been used to power the puppet, and thus her personality had started to manifest.
It was her strong bond to Carlo that awakened her ego. But when the Alchemists took her away and
dismembered her, it was only after their research that Geppetto realized that Ergo contained a
part of a person's soul. And this is why he later created his plan to revive Carlo, the same
way Camille had been revived all those years ago by powering the puppet's heart with Carlos Ergo.
And the cruel treatment of Camille was probably another motivation behind Geppetto's master
plan to ultimately defeat the Alchemists. The Gold Coin Tree is another reference
to the original novel. In the story, the Fox and the Cat trick Pinocchio into burying
a bag of gold coins, promising him that it would sprout into a tree bearing branches full of
gold coins. But in Lies of P, the Gold Coin Trees are something much more sinister. They are
former Listeners, people like Sophia that have the gift to communicate with Ergo and they have
been turned into trees by terrible experiments, and their tears take the form of Gold Coin Fruit,
meaning that the Gold Coin Tree in the hotel enclave used to be a Listener. And from a certain
angle it very much looks like a kneeling woman with cascading hair, looking down to the ground,
crying. But the mystery of just who this Listener once was remains unsolved, at least for now.
Hotel Krat used to be an insane asylum, and before that it was a castle. But who
first built it and why? Guillaume's Ballad tells the tale of a King's knight who found a
shining tree on a rocky mountain, a tree with fruit that resembled gold coins that could cure
diseases and cure the plague. It was right next to this golden tree that Guillaume built a castle
and called himself the Holy Knight, believing the tree to be a sign that he should worship it.
But due to his growing obsession with the occult that began from finding the golden
tree, Guillaume eventually went mad, and the castle became a prison for him and
others when it was turned into a mental asylum. It was here that the Alchemists most
likely began experimenting on people with Ergo, and they created an underground tunnel leading
from their base of operations to the castle. Although patients of the asylum claim to see
hallucinations, a large fire engulfed the castle and all the records were conveniently
destroyed. When Antonia eventually purchased the castle and renovated it into a hotel,
it developed a reputation as being haunted, and people were eager to visit just
to catch a glimpse of the apparitions, not knowing that the ghosts were actually just
Alchemists, using it as a passage to their island. But after the puppet frenzy and the conflict that
arose between the Alchemists and the old families of Krat, Antonia decided to seal away the Gold
Coin Tree to prevent the Alchemists from ever accessing it again. But Guillaume's Ballad reveals
that the Gold Coin Tree existed here before the original castle was even constructed,
which means that the Alchemists or their predecessors might have been conducting their dark
experiments far longer than originally thought. There's a little detail that you may have
missed during the Scrapped Watchmen fight, as you were probably too busy trying to stay
alive. But the police puppet's arms are covered in little doodles. The gigantic mascot puppet was
nicknamed Murphy by the slum children of Krat, and although he was abandoned behind City
Hall after being deemed a mechanical failure, he came to be loved and cherished by the children
who continued to visit him. In this official image of Murphy as he appeared before the puppet
frenzy, you can see the children etching these very doodles onto his arms. And although
Murphy ends up losing his mind in the frenzy, it's clear that a part of him still remained, as
you can find, the word "friends" carved into the ground near a bench covered in gifts given to him
by the children. Murphy's nickname might also be a reference to Alex Murphy from RoboCop, who is also
a beloved police robot, just a far less scary one. You may have noticed that there are a lot of
fish emblems all over Krat. But Krat is known for its puppets, so what's up with the fish? Well
not too long ago, it used to be a fishing town, and the herring emblem is Krat's original
insignia. This also explains why the city is directly on the waterfront. In the mere
span of 30 years, Krat was transformed from a commercial fishing village into a wealthy
technological metropolis, all thanks to the establishment of Venigni Works and the Workshop's
wildly successful puppet industry. The herring is simply a reminder of Krat's origins and a
reference to the man-eating Dogfish fish that swallowed Pinocchio and Geppetto whole.
Champion Victor was once a great circus performer called the "Hercules of Krat." He was
one of the first victims of the Petrification Disease before details about the plague were
publicly known. His wrestling career was brought to a premature end with his death, but Simon
Manus saw this as an opportunity to experiment. Victor was submerged in an elixir, a chemical
solution created by the Alchemists, who had been working on a formula to create the perfect human.
This blueish chemical was refined from Ergo, and while extremely dangerous to those who were
exposed to it, the elixir granted inhuman strength at the expense of physical deformity. Victor was
among the first experiments to receive the elixir, and after some slight modifications made to
his body, he was resurrected from the dead and even scheduled to make a big comeback
appearance fighting an automated puppet. In return for granting him his life again,
Victor swore his loyalty to the Alchemists, even if he was nothing more than a puppet himself
for Simon to use. Victor might be a very clever reference to Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein, in
which the Alchemist, Victor Frankenstein, creates a monstrous man of unparalleled strength and size.
And if you look closely on Victor's back, you'll see a faint trail outlining where a surgical
procedure may have taken place postmortem. The Red Actress Adelina Corday was the most
beloved prima donna in all of Krat. That is, until her little sister Patricia was discovered
to have a beautiful voice all of her own, even believed by some to be more beautiful than
her sister's. Although Patricia admired Adelina and looked up to her, hoping that one day they
would share the stage together, Adelina was jealous of her sister's talent and despised her,
repeatedly stabbing Patricia's portrait inside her locket. We learned later on that Adelina
poisoned Patricia, ruining her voice and ending her career forever. A heartbroken Patricia gave
up her dreams of ever becoming a beloved singer, and instead became a Stalker, skilled guards
belonging to the upper class of Krat society. But Patricia never suspected her sister's betrayal and
even until her death, she defended her, vowing to hunt down the puppets that she falsely believed
had killed Adelina after the puppet frenzy. In a karmic twist, the Petrification
Disease eventually takes Adelina's voice and ultimately her life, reuniting the
two sisters on the final stage in death. The Golden Eye is a powerful staff that you
can obtain from Carlo's portrait once you have gained enough humanity. And it has a funny
little detail that you probably haven't noticed: the Golden Lie has nostrils. Yes,
you're fighting with an actual nose, and at the root of this nose is
a collection of Gold Coin Fruit, which we now know are tears from Listeners.
Which might mean that in this universe, Dorian Gray might have been a Listener and this
might be another clue about his mysterious death or his disappearance. Because, as Sofia tells
us, the Alchemists turn Listeners into Gold Coin Trees. So we may be coming across Dorian Gray in
the future just with a very changed appearance.
