This episode is sponsored by NordVPN. Dear Lady Etheridge, I formally invite your attendant... A new theory, Mr. Fingers. It's been so long, but we have a new theory. I must ask that you hush. Pipe down, sunshine. Theorize faster! Yes. Hello, Internet! Welcome to Film Theory, the show where salad is back on the menu. Hey, does anyone remember Salad Fingers? This is one of the classics of internet horror, created by David Firth 20 years ago for the OG animation website Newgrounds before it migrated over here to YouTube.com. No joke, I first heard about this thing back in high school, when kids were daring each other to go and watch it. And you know what? It's been going strong ever since, releasing a new episode once every few years to terrify a brand new generation of viewer. What say you about it, Lee? Yeah, I love horror cinema, and it takes a lot to unnerve me, but Salad Fingers has to be one of the most off-putting things I've ever watched. In a good way, that's clearly what the creator intended, and it just gives me the ick. It's the art style, right? Yeah. That and the mouth sounds. We'd best get you in dreaming, Squirtybox. For me, it's all the squelching noises. But not only does Mr. Fingers have a soft spot in my heart as a series that's grown up alongside me, it's also just one of my favorite mysteries that we've ever covered on the channel. Since the beginning, the fragmented mind of Salad Fingers has been endlessly fascinating to pick at. Kind of like a festering scab erupting with black pus. Why is this world a desert wasteland? What are the real identities of Salad's puppet pals? And why are we rubbing so much rusted cutlery? Despite the creator saying that they were gonna trash all the theories, then saying that I was wrong, then saying it was all meaningless and made up in a drug-fueled binge, and then ultimately saying last year that I was doing a good job before ultimately going off the rails like I tend to, this is just one of those stories that sticks in your head by virtue of how unique it is. That's why, when we were discussing ideas for my final ten theories on the channel, I knew we had to come back to the wasteland one final time. In case you missed or forgot our older Salad Fingers theories, which, despite them being seven years old at this point, they hold up so well. To be honest, I had also forgotten a lot of the things that we said in them, and man, it was a joy to go revisit those. Editing was on point. Anyway, here are the bullet points that you need to know in order to understand today's theory. On the surface, Salad Fingers is just a creepy series about a green mutant thing flirting with dead animal corpses, birthing black blobs, and just a whole lot of cannibalism. A whole lot of cannibalism. But pretty quickly it becomes clear that there is more under the surface here. Strange dialogue, references to real-world locations and events, even the use of repeated themes show us that there's more substance buried under the surface of this leafy green dish. And when you start to piece together the clues, you learn that what we're really witnessing here is the fractured psyche of an Englishman in a post-World War I Britain, specifically the year 1939. Salad Fingers is trapped in a sort of arrested development, struggling with a slew of mental disorders caused by a life of parental abuse and grief from losing his brother. A lot of these issues manifest in the form of dissociative identity disorder, with Salad Fingers slipping between various personalities and personas, including several finger puppet representations of real people from his earlier life. First, we've got Hubert Cumberdale, Salad Fingers' core personality, representative of his desire to become a real boy worthy of acceptance. I've suspected for a while now that Hubert Cumberdale was Salad Fingers before he became Salad Fingers. This is actually further supported in the new episodes that we're going to be talking about today. Notice the hair on Hubert Cumberdale, and now the hair on Salad as he dresses up for his date. It's practically the same. Even here, we see him turn a mirror onto Hubert, only to reflect back his own image. Other finger puppet personalities include Jeremy Fisher, based on Salad Fingers' biological father, and also Marjorie Stuart Baxter, a representation of a female presence in Salad Fingers' life. It's not entirely made clear who she is, but I suspect that it's his wife. Throughout the series, it becomes clear that Salad Fingers didn't have the best relationship with the rest of his family. From everything we can tell, he was born out of wedlock to a mixed-race couple, the result of a romantic tryst held during the war. This immediately makes him ostracized in the family, being seen as unclean. It also becomes clear, thanks to the frequent mentions of The Beast, that he was raised in an extremely religious household so the fact that he's an illegitimate child just makes him more of a target. Throughout the series, we see him slip into the persona of angry father figures, abusive mother figures, taunting siblings... and that's largely where we left things five years ago. However, since we last chatted about Salad Fingers all the way back in 2019, Firth has released two brand new episodes of the series, Post Man and Harvest. Not only do these two uploads give us more detail about Salad's origins and broken family, but shockingly, it also shows us the death of Salad Fingers. So what's it all mean? Well, don't get all bilious on me, friends. Grab a rusty kettle and let's go. So I think the best way to start here is by breaking down exactly what happens in each of the two new episodes, starting with number 12, Post Man. This episode follows Salad Fingers as he plays the role of a postal service worker delivering mail to various imaginary folks around the wasteland. However, things change when Salad meets a new hire at the postal service, a young girl, represented by the half-decayed carcass of a dog. But there's a bit of a problem. Salad Fingers quickly becomes infatuated with this girl, despite the fact that she seems much younger than he is. After sharing several romantic moments together, at least as romantic as you can get with the rotting flesh of a dead animal, Salad is confronted by the girl's father, a dog-baby hybrid that looks like it's a failed full-metal alchemist experiment. The father starts dragging the daughter away as Salad Fingers laments that the relationship was never going to work out. So what's going on here? Well, this episode isn't about Salad Fingers, it's actually about his father, Jeremy Fisher. It's all about how Salad Fingers imagines Hubert Cumberdale's conception. How do we know this? Well, throughout the episode, there's a lot of suggestive imagery. For example, at the end of the postman's date, he takes the girl to a secluded area where he suggestively pokes her with a stick. Obvious symbolism is obvious. But just to make sure that you really get it, he then plucks and eats a nearby flower. In this case, he is metaphorically deflowering this girl-dog thing. What's more, the entire interference of an ominous father figure in a romance isn't the first one that we've seen in the series. In episode 6, present, there are a pair of seemingly disconnected dialogue sequences where Salad Fingers has a one-sided conversation with himself. Splice them together, and you get this. It's an exchange between Jeremy Fisher and the intimidating father of a girl that Jeremy is accused of attempting to deflower. There's that word again. The story of Post Man, then, this date between Jeremy Fisher and a younger girl, is exactly what the angry father from episode 6 was referring to. But that's just a bit of extra context for a story that we largely knew the broad strokes of. Episode 13, meanwhile, well, this is where we encounter something entirely different. Episode 13, Harvest, is all about exactly that. Salad Fingers prepping for a harvest, but lamenting that he doesn't have enough food for everyone due to the poultry crop this year. Notably, we also see Salad Fingers slipping back into the role of Hubert Cumberdale's parents. And let's just say, his home wasn't exactly the most loving place. It's here where we get the sense that Hubert's mother was all about striving to achieve a higher social class. That's why this harvest dinner that they're preparing is so crucial. Hoping to help the situation, Salad Fingers sacrifices an old finger puppet, burying it in the ground. What's especially interesting is that this puppet, named Melvin Wishcake, is someone brand new to the series, but wasn't meant to be. After doing some digging, we were able to learn via a 2021 tweet that Melvin was actually an unused character originally planned to appear all the way back in episode 2. We also know based on this document that he was intended to be unemployed. Just a fun little side note there. By burying him in the ground, Mr. Fingers is able to summon a supernatural being known as Grandmother Growth. She feeds him vines, and then offers up an eyeball for Salad Fingers to eat. An eyeball that eventually causes the growth to appear on Salad Fingers' back. This eventually spawns into a brand new character, Mini Fingers. Salad Fingers quickly takes this new offshoot, known as Boy Fingers, under his wing, teaching him about the area they live in and training him to do various menial tasks that they prepare for the grand feast. However, as Salad Fingers is speaking to his finger puppets and encouraging them to embrace Boy Fingers as part of the family, Boy Fingers sneaks up behind him and hits him in the head with a large rock. When Salad Fingers regains consciousness, he realizes that Boy Fingers is turning him into a stew. Before he dies, Salad tries to pass on some last bits of knowledge to Boy Fingers, but is largely dismissed. And with Salad Fingers truly cooked, Boy Fingers serves him up for the greatest of feasts. Only for no one to arrive. So, he just begins to eat Salad Fingers himself. Now, this is a weird episode, which, you know, is saying a lot considering the series that we're talking about here. But for as esoteric and disconnected as Harvest first appears, it's actually continuing a recurring theme that's been happening throughout most other episodes, parenthood. As we've pointed out in previous theories, a lot of Salad Fingers' narrative grapples with what it means to have children, and practically every time, Salad Fingers is afraid of that responsibility and ultimately runs away. After he leaves the embryo-shaped stitch-head broken-hearted in episode 4, he decides to give his daughter Yvonne away in episode 9, after also walking away from the infant-like Mr. Branches earlier that same episode. But here, we get something different. This time, Salad Fingers stays. When Boy Fingers emerges from his back, Salad doesn't run away or abandon him, instead he does his best to raise him, which, while a noble gesture, is also the thing that eventually gets him killed. But before we continue unraveling the mystery of Salad Fingers, let's talk about another terrifying topic, cybersecurity, and how you can keep yourself safe online with the sponsor of today's episode, NordVPN. If you somehow don't have a VPN yet, we really need to have this conversation. When you're browsing the web, so much of your private information is at risk. Any hacker motivated enough can easily get a hold of that information and use it for whatever nefarious purpose they want. But with a VPN like Nord, just like Salad Fingers slipping through his different personas, you can protect your private information from any bad guys wanting to get a hold of it. When browsing with a VPN, it's harder for them to even know who you are, let alone grab anything harmful, so your internet data stays safe behind Nord's encryption. Plus, NordVPN has a strict no-logs policy and masks your IP address. That means that they don't collect your private data and that no one can track what you're doing on the internet because your business is none of their business. Whatever you're doing online is between you and your finger puppets and no one else. But NordVPN can do so much more than just hide your internet activity. It can also make websites think that your internet connection is coming from somewhere else, even from an entirely different country. We're actually using NordVPN for this exact purpose right now, believe it or not. We have to watch a lot of content for Film Theory, and it sucks that all the movies and TV shows are split up amongst the streamers. I'm re-watching Rick and Morty right now for another upcoming theory, and I'm annoyed because it isn't available on Netflix here in the States, but it is over on the UK version of Netflix. So I just open up Nord, click one of their British servers, and all of a sudden I'm hunting down Rick Prime without needing to sign up for a brand new streamer. All in all, VPNs are essential. If you want to keep yourself safe online these days, and there's no better choice right now than Nord. It works on basically any device, whether it's your phone, PC, laptop, or tablet, and you can connect up to six devices at once. And best of all, if you use my link right now, you're gonna get an insane deal on a two-year plan, with Nord even throwing in an extra four months for free. Yeah, you heard that one right. So if you want to start protecting yourself right now and see everything that a VPN has to offer, go check out NordVPN.com slash Film Theory for a huge discount on a two-year plan, plus four additional months for free. Plus, it's all risk-free with a 30-day money-back guarantee, all by going to my link at NordVPN.com slash Film Theory, or, you know, just click the link down in the description below. Thanks again to NordVPN for sponsoring this portion of the video, and now let's scuttle on back over to that fascinating and creepy world of Salad Fingers. So Salad Fingers gives birth to this new boy, but unlike him abandoning childlike figures in the past, this time he stays. And this continues a theme that we've seen in the latter episodes of the series. In episode 11, we see him rejoice in making Hubert into a real boy, even fighting off his family to protect him. And again here with Boy Fingers, we see him making a real attempt to raise this child. While he's firm, he's not violent or demanding like the other father figures that we've seen throughout the series. Even when Boy Fingers is preparing the Salad Fingers stew, Salad Fingers doesn't once say anything negative despite being cooked alive. Instead, his concern is all about continuing to pass on knowledge to the next generation. I'll need to show you where we keep the spare towels, and of course Hubert's swollen ankle requires ointment. He's trying to approach raising Boy Fingers with a new perspective, a new point of view. In short, earlier episodes showed us Salad Fingers playing out the reaction Hubert's mother had to her son. Disowning him, abandoning him, telling him to toughen up, saying that he's not fit for them. And now these more recent episodes are showing us Salad Fingers' approach to his own kids. He's loving, compassionate. He's trying his hardest to break the cycle of neglect, even if it figuratively and literally consumes him. Except, rarely do things end happily in the world of Salad Fingers. The true tragedy of all of this? Despite his efforts, it doesn't work. Boy Fingers is still trapped in this cycle of self-hatred, still consumed by the sins of his past. Why do I say this? Well, not only does he literally kill his own parent that looks identical to him, that right there, that's a pretty big red flag, but more importantly it all comes down to this rock. Yeah, I'm serious. You see, this rock, it isn't just any rock, it has a name. And he's the weapon that Boy Fingers uses to strike Salad Fingers in the head before boiling him in the stew. Bartholomew here? He was the murder weapon used to end Salad Fingers' life. This is important, because in the previous episode, Post Man, Salad Fingers says this. Bartholomew is facing legal troubles, almost as if he killed someone. As if he was the person who killed the previous Salad Fingers. Now, you might think that this is just an unrelated moment, but we have proof that the murder and the legal troubles are one and the same. See, when Post Man was first uploaded, people were curious about what these legal troubles were. Enough so that one person named Wilkinson X went so far as to ask David Firth if they were going to get a backstory on them. And David Firth confirmed that they would find out more in the next episode. Cut to Harvest and the violent murder of Salad Fingers. This proves that the Salad Fingers who are following in Post Man is actually Boy Fingers all grown up. They're happening in reverse order. Which means that this new Boy Fingers, he's still confronting the dark truth of his father's conception as Hubert Cumberdale. He's still having to deal with the inappropriate relationship that his grandfather Jeremy Fisher had with a much younger woman. And he's still grappling with the fallout of what all of this did to Hubert's family life growing up. This is all about the ripple effects of trauma, and how it tends to carry through generation after generation. Maybe if Boy Fingers had listened before boiling his dad alive, then yeah, maybe this could have been avoided. But at least for now, there doesn't seem to be any sort of escape for Salad Fingers from this vicious cycle. What he needs here is to process the pain of his past, in order to not pass it along to the next generation. In order for Salad Fingers to truly grow, to move on, he has to bury the puppets of his past. But hey, that's just a theory. A film theory. Aaaaaand cut.
