Bigger Bodies Initiative

Initiative

Bigger Bodies

Bigger Bodies Initiative
Known Performers	Harley Sawyer (former leader) Bruno White P. W. Claire's Scientist Carmine McKabe Jessica Newman Scientist #1 Scientist #2 Scientist #3 Scientist #4
Date	1990 to August 8, 1995
Location	Playtime Co.

“	Giant toys! We can increase our workforce and simultaneously decrease the number of lawsuits and people on our payroll if the people we have working aren't people.	”
— Harley Sawyer's proposal of the Bigger Bodies Initiative, Can you hear us? Can you see this? noicon

The Bigger Bodies Initiative, otherwise referred to as the Initiative or initialized as BBI, was the driving force of Playtime Co.'s human experiments and the catalyst of the company's eventual downfall. It was proposed by Harley Sawyer to address the ongoing declining profits, failed experiments and accidental sightings at Playtime Co., which rose after the Smiling Critters fiasco.

The Bigger Bodies Initiative entailed illegal and unethical experimentation on humans, mainly orphan children. The bodies of these subjects - when used in tandem with poppy flowers, believed to process life-altering properties - would bring about organisms modeled after the toys produced by Playtime Co.

History

Prelude

Prior to the Bigger Bodies Initiative, the company was experimenting on animals to attempt to try and revive them, with at least 814 experiments being performed. However, it was eventually realized that animals were not yielding any noteworthy results, leading to the idea of potentially using humans. It is speculated that 1006 was the first successful human experiment hence his name: "The Prototype". This experiment was extraordinarily aggressive and violent, unlike another experiment, Poppy Playtime, who seemed to be perfect In the early 1990s, Leith Pierre hired Harley Sawyer, an ABNS-certified neurosurgeon, to help out with the experiments. He did just that, however, the field that him and the other scientists were working with was very new and they still generally had lots to learn about the biology of the organisms they were trying to create.

Founding

“	So the company was struggling after the Smiling Critters disaster. Profits were way down and there was trouble at the factory. Employees saw things they shouldn't have, and there were accidents leading to lawsuits. Dr. Sawyer figured we could solve all these problems with an experimental program. Giant toys with a living consciousness. He said he could create them, and they'd work at the factory.	”
— P. W., Orientation Notebook

Harley Sawyer approached Playtime Co.'s executives in 1990 with a solution for the company's ongoing short comings. Declining profits, failed experiments, lower-level employees bearing witness to confidential projects, and publicity incidents such as the recall of all CatNap toys were causing Playtime Co. to enter into a stage of rapid decline. Sawyer proposed the creation of organisms known as Bigger Bodies, oversized vessels modeled after the company's toys, created with the purpose of replacing the human workforce at the Playtime Co. toy factory in order to cut the company's costs and avoid future lawsuits. The initiative was accepted and Sawyer was promoted to Head of Special Projects. However, to create such creatures, hundreds of human test subjects would be needed, and it was decided that the orphans in Playcare would be perfect candidates for this. That said, it is possible that Sawyer presented this idea immediately after being hired and prior to the initiative’s proposal. Either way, most evidence points to the orphans only being used for experiments after Sawyer’s hiring. Although, ironically, despite the initiative's aim, Leith Pierre would have to rely on investors for the experiment funding.

Post-Introduction

After the Bigger Bodies Initiative was accepted, Playtime Co. hired Warrenbach Construction to build the Game Station, which they used to test their orphans, as their minds could be easily molded into subservient workers. An orphan was assigned a toy and had to complete three minigames, which tested the child's brain speed and efficiency, reaction time and physical endurance and strength. As they played the games, scientists monitored their progress from nearby observation rooms, recorded their performance, then sent the assessments to Stella Greyber. If they did well, the orphan would be sent back to Playcare, where they would stay until eventually being turned into their assigned toy. At night, Red Smoke was released which would make the children fall asleep, allowing the scientists to carry out their duties and take any children out for their toy procedure. However, these procedures sometimes had unexpected side effects: some experiments could not remember who they were or what had happened to them.

The first successful experiment created from the Initiative was Experiment 1160. Although 1160 was living proof of the BBI's potential, he possessed a voracious appetite and, more importantly, lacked sufficient cognitive function for workplace eligibility. Due to Special Projects' inexperience (at the time) with creating intelligent Bigger Bodies, this problem persisted through Experiments 1160 to 1169, though Dr. Sawyer found another use for Experiment 1166. Experiment 1170's creation was the turning point, as he possessed both intelligence and obedience. Another breakthrough emerged in November 1990, with the creation of Experiment 1188, who Sawyer himself believed to rival the success of Experiment 1170. Before this, they had also created experiments 1174 and 1176 to serve as obstacles in the Game Station.

By March 30, 1991, via Sawyer's leadership, Playtime Co. had created multiple experiments to aid in different parts of the factory. Experiment 1170 served as the factory's security, Experiment 1222 served as the Game Station's host, Experiment 1188 served as the caretaker of Playcare and the current method for Playcare's Red Smoke disposal, and Experiment 1160 served as Playtime's primary disposal method for troublesome employees aware about the initiative. Most of the experiments were made from orphans at Playcare, whereas some experiments were made from volunteering employees. They also created a Bigger Bodies Handbook and Relocation Guide to implement into employee training. Presumably, in case the experiments ever rebelled (or to keep lower-ended employees in the dark), Playtime Co. placed Toy Parts inside the Puzzle Pillars so they could continue to build more giant toys. However, Experiment 1006: The Prototype, did not want the Bigger Bodies Initiative to continue and began to sabotage Playtime Co.'s progress.

In 1993, the Playtime Co. Theater was set ablaze and the experiments ate dozens of Specialists. The incident resulted in the death of at least 66 visitors. After the incident, the higher-ups hired the investigator Gerad Lockehart to look into the case, and he found that Sawyer was responsible. It was later ordered by Leith Pierre that Sawyer would be turned into an experiment himself. After the procedure, Experiment 1354 served as the source of direction and knowledge for Playtime Co.'s scientists.

On August 8, 1995, at precisely 11:00 AM, The Prototype incited a massive uprising known as The Hour of Joy that led to the deaths of nearly all of the Playtime Co. employees. Multiple employees across almost all of Playtime were massacred in various and gruesome ways. (Some had their heads bitten off, while others were dropped from fatal heights, torn to pieces, or eaten whole.) Once the event had concluded, the experiments dragged the corpses of the deceased employees to the deepest reaches of the factory and consumed them to survive.

Aftermath

After the incident, the sudden disappearance of all the employees led to the closure of Playtime Co., though it remains unclear if any investigation was ever launched. During a time believed by countless fans to be after The Hour of Joy, Leith Pierre sent in Resource Extraction Specialists to collect the Toy Parts in the Puzzle Pillars, while The Prototype sent savage monsters such as 1170, 1222 and 1160 to stop them and use their bodies to feed the experiments who were beginning to starve around the factory, such as the Wuggies and Ruined Critters. Eventually, Playtime Co. stopped sending in Resource Extraction Specialists, bringing the Bigger Bodies Initiative to a close.

This left the experiments without a steady source of food. Though The Prototype did not require sustenance to survive, the other toys could only survive on larger portions of food. The experiments, now desperate and out of options, began to consume the smaller toys to survive. This method kept the malnourished experiments alive for a decade until the eventual return of The Player in 2005.

Biology

While little is known of the exact process and details, much can be discerned through evidence in-game and from outside sources. The experiments appear to be organic in nature, containing several biological components behind their toy exterior, which can result in them bleeding if dismembered or damaged. Additionally, the experiments can get infections if their wounds are not properly cleaned. (Wound infections can lead to a variety of symptoms, including fevers.) The exact nature of these components is unclear, with Experiment 1199 confirmed to have several organs, including a larynx and thyroid. Experiment 1188 is also confirmed to have contained an esophagus as well as a nervous system and a spinal cord. Destruction of these organs will result in death, as seen with Mommy Long Legs and Miss Delight. Their condition also allows for movement though they are restricted to what their toy body is capable of - CatNap is known to have had the ability to contort his figure. While it seems to depend on the experiment, a few of them are capable of speech, implying that they may have vocal cords or in cases like CatNap, devices that permit speech. Some like The Prototype, Huggy Wuggy, and Miss Delight are literate and can write as well.

Documents and tapes found in The Shelf gave more insight on how the Bigger Bodies were created and how the procedures affected its subjects. Most notably, multiple subjects can be placed within one experiment, causing their minds to merge. This is seen in Doey the Doughman who is made up of three test subjects. There is also some speculation that subjects might also be split into multiple bodies for the smaller instances.

All Bigger Bodies require some form of food to survive and starvation seems to be a real threat, implying that some biological processes are still intact. However this seems to not be the case for Poppy, as she seems to differentiate between herself and the toys when it came to using the human corpses as food. The same goes for the Prototype, whom is explicitly stated to not require food to survive. But this is likely due to the fact that neither Poppy nor The Prototype are technically Bigger Bodies, meaning they were probably created using different methods.

Trivia

• The Bigger Bodies Initiative was teased in Rowan Stoll's Computer Database before PROJECT: PLAYTIME came out.
• In PROJECT: PLAYTIME, at the Playtime Factory level, there's an Easter egg about a real-world book called The Best That Money Can't Buy. The contents of this book thematically match up with the purpose of the Bigger Bodies Initiative.
• The Premise of the Bigger Bodies Initiative is similar to the Dinosaur Cloning process from the Jurassic Park franchise. Both projects involved creating giant living organisms for different purposes: InGen created dinosaur clones to act as theme park attractions, while Playtime Co. created large organic versions of its toys to serve as laborers. While InGen created dinosaurs by extracting blood from preserved ancient mosquitoes, Playtime Co. created its monsters by surgically transferring the minds of orphaned children into bioengineered bodies. Both of these projects would come to a halt after acts of sabotage, with Dennis Nedry deactivating the park's security systems, causing the dinosaurs to break out and murder several people, and The Prototype orchestrating The Hour of Joy, a massacre in which the Bigger Bodies experiments attacked and killed the workforce as an act of both revenge and rebellion.