A Figure in Grey

Why is the 15th July 2015 so important to this post? No, it's not because that was the day before we began here with a look at how many games Dopefish appeared in, and that was only his first decade! This is when this tale of maybe macabre was posted to the internet by someone who had been doing their research (but maybe not enough in the gaming history aspect) about a mysterious figure in an otherwise bright and colourful game.

Paperboy on the NES, one of the great classics for the system and one of they few in its library I have actually played! The game is about, you guessed it, a paperboy doing his daily paper round in a suburban American town. Sounds pleasent, except that everyone wants this boy dead and will stop at nothing to stop him completing his round! What did this kid do to make the town hate him so? Well in the game you do break a few windows here and there but still! Don't worry though because he'll survive, he's still got two more games ahead of him. This may sound picky but this is where I could tell the person that posted this wasn't a gaming historian as he eluded to the fact that Paperboy 2 was the first console port of the series. Anyway, Paperboy 2 had much the same atmosphere, the only real difference this time was that you could control a girl character completing her daily paper round. With all of that out the way let's look at what all of the fuss is about already!

Amongst the brightly coloured sprites that are out for your blood there exists one being who seems to be the only one not after the kid on the bike. He is the only character coloured in monochrome only, he just seems so out of place in the game. All he does is take his rubbish to the wheelie bin (although in the game it's actually the American trash can but I wanted it to be more relatable) and walks back into his pixelated home and into the unprogrammed gaming netherspace. That's if you leave him alone, if you accidentally (or intentionally) he freezes in his tracks. That's it. No attacks, No surprises. How unusual in a game where this kid seems to have a bounty on his head, this guy seems to just do nothing, why?

This is where Lex Joy's, the one who made the post, research could give us an insight into who this guy actually is. The story is of Mr Dennis R who woke up one night and dismembered his two twin infant sons and his wife of 8 years! He took the remains in the wheelie bin garbage can amongst the other refuse of suburban life. The wheelie bin garbage can was taken by the mechanical arm of the rubbish collection van and so no significant weight was detected. The remains were taken to a landfill and Mr R walked away. Well no, he didn't, Mr R made one slight mistake, his wife Mrs. R had an overdue library book and the local libraray began investigations. Mr R was arrested and killed in prison. Just as a small digression I just find it weird that a library caught a killer and over in our look at GamerGate the FBI was only watching the death threats. Oh well, back to this story. Why mention Mr R, it's not like the man in grey is him? Well, according to the post there are similarities between Mr R and this man in grey and think about the grey guys actions. Taking out his rubbish, being very mundane as he walks back to his unprogrammed home, Mr R took out his families bodies in wheelie bin garbage cans and he, apparently, led a rather mundane lifestyle.

What makes this mysterious figure even more mysterious is that no one who developed the game remembers putting him in. He just appeared, maybe the ghost of Dennis R! DENNIS Drowned? Maybe, maybe not. if nothing else it makes you think how these seemingly unimportant characters could hold dark secrets. Although I doubt characters like Bug Catching Kid from Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past or Old Lady from the Bomb Shop from the Legend of Zelda series (real names by the way) hold that many dark secrets, or do they? No, they just have weird names.

#Paperboy