Catherine/WMG

Catherine is a game based off abstract metaphor for relationships from the Male's P.O.V..

The puzzles represent the state of mind Men would have in these type of situations.

Catherine takes place in the same Universe as Black Swan

The "Ballerina" in Justin's backstory who committed suicide is Nina Sayers.

- Also, Catherine is Lily. Why not?

This game is the result of Persona 3 protagonist scoring with all of those women at the same time.

And then he turned into Crystal Dragon Jesus before they shared stories. All that usual Freudian sexual guilt was displaced and noone to inflict it on. Oh, the Universe tried to fix the situation by rewriting the PSP game so he only chose one woman, but it was too late. The twisted karma went barreling back in time into the PSP Alternate Universe and hit Vincent in the form of Horny Devils and Sheep.

This game is not being worked on, it is a pure Troll of Atlus's fanbase to get them speculating endlessly.

No game could actually make that trailer make sense.

Considering the other titles Atlus has made this probably isn't the strangest yet.
- And considering how they revealed screenshots of the gameplay...
- I think it's safe to say that this is Jossed.

Catherine is a Hermaphrodite. Or a transvestite.

Looking at the logo, you can see the male and female symbols. I'm taking this to it's illogical conclusion and saying Cathy's a hermaphrodite.

Actually, it's Katherine on the male side...whatever that could mean.
Or maybe Catherine is Birdo. "She" is called Catherine in Japan, so maybe.
Spoilers, you've been warned: Succubi are considered either hermaphrodites or genderless

Catherine is a Succubus.

Come on, she's had dreams where she kills people and there's a whole mess of sexual imagery.

There's also a murder in the exposition; the victim was a lonely young man and his corpse looks rather...sucked out.
And tying in the male and female symbols on the game cover, she might switch genders to impregnate women with the sperm she receives from guys like Vincent.
Confirmed via the endings where Vincent chooses Catherine.

Catherine is an artificial Persona.

Artificial Persona users have to take suppressants in order to keep their Persona from going rogue and potentially killing them or others. Given the link to the Persona 3 universe due to Vincent's appearance in P3P, this may not be so out there.

It has sheep in it.

At least one WMG will be right, damnit!

Jossed, they're rams.
- A ram is a male sheep.

The final boss of at least one ending will be Katherine's unborn child.

And it will require bullets laced with Catherine's cells to defeat.

Or...Catherine is Katherine's unborn child. Somehow.
Well, one of the trailers does have a giant unborn child chasing you...
Jossed. The final boss is The Dumazid, AKA Thomas Mutton, AKA Boss.

Katherine is Catherine.

Katherine-as-Catherine is simply a manifestation of Vincent's repressed libido, the senseless sex he and Katherine used to have, and Vincent's fear over being forced to settle down.

Considering, as the main page points out, that both names are the same in katakana, a connection between the two women of some sort is a strong possibility.
Alternatively, Catherine is Katherine's Shadow, and wants Vincent to choose her instead.

Catherine is a Blank Slate whose exact nature is determined by the decisions of those who interact with her.

This... being responds to the desires of its victims by changing its appearance to whatever the victim wants to see -- at its core, it is neither male or female; both symbols appearing is a subtle hint at this. Upon finding and infecting a host, it puts them through a series of psychological tests via the nightmares in order to determine the victim's strengths, weaknesses and Fatal Flaws. Failure means death, or an even worse fate...

One possible explanation is that this is, as speculated above, an artificial Persona -- specifically, one that is searching for a host. This may tie into the plot of Persona 5 or yet another Spin-Off.

The Sheep are dual symbolism.

One the one hand, its shows Vincent's relunctedness to settle down after hearing Katherine has his baby, with this either his silent refusal to "follow the herd" into a family, or him wishing to rejoin his fellow sheep as a bachelor. One the other hand, the way the goats are bipedal symbolizes satyrs, goatmen who are traditionally sex addicts who enjoy the company of woman, showing how Vincent meeting Catherine is the first time he could indulge in his own sexual fantasies, repressed by both his own lack of ambition in romance and his impending commitment with Katherine.

Jonathan and Tobias are characters from the Persona series.

That is, Jonathan is the main character who is now non-dead for some reason of Persona 3 and Tobias is Teddie from Persona 4. Well, why not?

Catherine is paving the way for Persona 5 and/or another megaten game.

Persona is a big name franchise, and atlus obviously doesn't want to do things wrong. What's the solution? Try out the next-gen platforms with a new game, then use what they've learned to make sure the big name sequels go smoothly. If it goes wrong, they've lost a bit of face and kept their franchises intact, if it goes right, they have another successful game to spin off at a later date. And considering the graphics seem rather similar to the Persona games, I wouldn't be that suprised if they re-used the engine, or at least parts of it.

Catherine is a Shadow.

This works for two reasons. Reason one: people have said that Catherine's design is somewhat similar to the Priestess shadow of Persona 3, what with the odd Princess Curls and prominently sitting spread eagle. Considering how the Priestess Arcana also represents the subconscious... The second reason is that she's a mysterious blond-haired, blue-eyed person who seems to inspire a lot of speculation on her true nature. Sound familiar yet?

All the sheep are actually men trapped in the nightmare world just like Vincent.

The only reason Vincent is the only one that is human is to differentiate him from the rest of the flock, as it were. It also connects with the deaths of males in the real world as well, as those people that died are those that have failed to escape. However, judging by the possibility of Nintendo Hard, most of the sheep have a set number of "lives" as it were, where they merely wake up after getting killed and have a second crack at escaping, but they die PERMANENTLY when they lose all of them. The helper sheep who are Keepers of the various checkpoints within the Nightmare world are those who have failed to escape and can no longer attempt to escape due to their bodies in the real world dieing off, but have certain criteria that allows them to stay instead of going into oblivion.

This may be true, given how some of the sheep closely resemble some of the people you meet at the bar.
It's also likely that they all see each other as sheep, and Vincent looks human because we're looking from his perspective.
Confirmed.

Katherine has a Multiple Personality Disorder.

More specifically, there are three: her 'normal' persona, 'Yandere' persona, and the 'Catherine' persona. Her 'normal' persona is the usual kind Meganekko Vincent is engaged with. Her 'Yandere' persona is that freaky screaming-head thingy we kept seeing in the Nightmare World in the trailer, born from the mind of insecure woman who desperately wants to marry Vincent as quickly as possible (with the thought that if she terrorizes Vincent enough, the Vincent in the real world will turn to her for a quick healing and ended up marrying her). 'Catherine' persona is, you guess it, the blonde, mysterious, mind-alluring, Catherine. Catherine is the persona born from Katherine with the thought that he'll like her more that way (it has been mentioned that they're some kind of childhood friends. Katherine must have known what type of girl Vincent like). Katherine herself may or may not realise that she has an MPD, so Catherine's existence is either just Katherine sporting a wig/dying her hair and curling it, or an Enemy Without because of whatever Applied Phlebotinum they're going to use in this game. And now, for the reason why Katherine has an MPD is probably because of trauma Vincent has induced to her in the past. And for the reason why the 'Yandere' persona can cause Nightmare and 'Catherine' keeps clinging to Vincent may be explained because of something akin/similar to Sera in Digital Devil Saga and Maki/Mary in Persona, respectively.

Vincent's sheep horns indicate that he starts transforming into a sheep man.

Probably he'll keep transforming if he doesn't get out of the nightmares or something like that.

In dialogue with other sheep, it seems Vincent appears to others as a sheep with an afro.

The screaming giant baby symbolizes his fear of becoming a father to Katherine's baby.

It's probably a given.

No matter what ending you choose, it will be a Downer Ending.

If you choose Katherine, you will be trapped in a loveless marriage with a possibly Yandere wife. If you choose Catherine, she'll probably end up being some sort of crazy psycho-Jungian thing anyways, and you'll end up drained of life. If you go neutral, you may just end up with a Bittersweet Ending.

- Jossed, it is more reflective of the Order/Chaos/Neutral endings with various degrees of happiness, Katherine represent the order side of romance, a stable if sometimes boring romantic life and in the true ending. Accepting that you want to marry her while Catherine represents never ending excitement as you become a devil lord with her or at least enjoy a life of complete hedonism. Neutral is rejecting both and just living for the day, filling out your personal desires by either pure materialism or finally letting go of your past for the future (Literally).
- Double Jossed, Earn Your Happy Ending.
  - To explain the above, even after Vincent chooses either girl (or if he somehow does not end up with a girl), the state of the meter and his answer to some questions will determine the events that will follow.

Katherine will die.

Either by Catherine deciding to Murder the Hypotenuse or Vincent losing control of his nightmares. In the best ending, it'll just be a Disney Death.

Jossed Catherine dies, but it's All Just a Dream
Technically, Katherine CAN die during the stage that commences after Catherine's death, but it's treated like a player loss.

The Nightmare world will begin spilling over into the real world.

Hence why some of the sheep in the trailers look like your bar-mates.

In a fan-subbed version of the first trailer, some NPC dialogue heavily hints at this. (I can't find it right now, but it was somewhere on youtube.)

The Nightmare world is somehow connected to the Tartarus/Dark Hour in Persona 3

Think about it: In every Nightmare Vincent climbs a very tall, bizarre tower that has multiple sections, each part unlocking after a certain amount of time passes (in Vincent's case, it's every night). Also, the only time when the player can enter it is at night.

The Giant Hands are Katherine's

In the second trailer, you can see Katherine's fingernails are painted blue, and the giant hands in the Nightmare World also have blue fingernails. They most likely represent Vincent's fear of Katherine's anger at being cheated on.

confirmed

The rams are actually Fomorian

Appearance wise, they do look somewhat similar, and this game appears to take place in the Persona/Shin Megami Tensei universe,and "mor", which may have derived from a word meaning terror.

The other rams in the Nightmare are other men who cheated on their wives/lovers

Which is why Vincent is down there. He cheated on Katherine with Catherine (man thats confusing). Catherine is actually an supernatural being that tests men to see how loyal they are. If they sleep with her, the men go to the Nightmare place at night. In the nightmare world they look like rams because they are sheep to their lust and the monsters are just Catherine's minions that manifest as the mans fears. The ones who died are the ones who did not make it.

Confirmed

It has absolutely nothing to do with Persona

There is nothing about Catherine that has anything to do with any of Atlus' other games. It isn't in the same world as Persona 3, Philemon and Nyarlathotep aren't meddling in human affairs and God isn't trying to kill humanity for being defiant. When you look at the game you'll notice that it's far more personalized about a man's current life rather than going out and meeting people, plus the fact that coming to terms with Vincent's issues appears to be what's most important instead of reaching the truth or stopping Armageddon.

Jossed as soon as we found out who the characters are, Vincent makes a cameo in P3P.
- Just making a cameo doesn't mean that it has a canon connection to the Persona franchise. If it did then Dante is part of Shin Megami Tensei canon.
  - Does anyone actually have a problem with this idea? I think that'd be awesome, and c'mon, we're us. Enough meddling with canon facts in both series could make it make sense.
  - Well yes it would be awesome, but the point of the WMG was to guess that it had nothing to do with any Persona series. Make another WMG suggesting that it does have a connection to Persona if you want.
- While it doesn't pull any of the true self stuff, Vincent's Shadow is a boss, so it's safe to say there's at least some sort of connection between the origins of Vincent's nightmare monsters and the Shadows.

The Bartender is Igor's Evil Twin.

He runs a hangout frequented by people who are searching for their true selves - but while Vincent, the protagonist, is among them, most of the patrons are normal people or guys who are lost in the Nightmare world as sheep. And while Igor just watches and coaches, Thomas Mutton tries killing Vincent before going One-Winged Angel.

Or what if the Bartender is actually Nyarlathotep? It would make sense, further proving this WMG (As Nyarlathotep is Philemon's Evil Counterpart and Igor was? working for him).

The worst ending involves Vincent somehow causing the destruction of the entire universe.

This is merely going by that one scene in the trailers where that giant black hole appears in front of Vincent right inside the bar. HOW exactly this happens probably relates to either a specific event in the game, involves doing and INCREDIBLY piss poor job at the Nightmare sections, or both.

Jossed, there are 8 definite endings with a similar path to Chaos/Neutral/Order, with various degrees of good and bad.
- And that "Black Hole" is Catherine's father appearing.

Catherine is the offspring of Tammuz and Mother Harlot.

On the father's side, another name for Dumuzid is Tammuz. As for the mother...well, Cathy's got her hair.

Jossed: She's the daughter of... A completely different demon lord, who has nothing to do with anything
And according to Wikipedia, her mother would be Laz, so this is Jossed.

Catherine's spiraling hairstyle is really a cover for demon horns.

Just... just look at the hair. I've never, in real life, seen a hairstyle that defies gravity so much. Those spiraling curls shouldn't be able to do that, instead just hanging limply no matter how many hair products are used. With her being a succubus confirmed, this seems very likely.

Kinda Jossed, she can send the player a picture of herself with her hair down.

The person in the confession booth is Vincent's future child...

...with Catherine. The reason he is there is to see whether or not, in this reality, his father will go with his mother or go with Katherine. He's curious. As to why he's in a nightmare in itself, the Bartender/Thomas Mutton/The Dumuzid created Catherine, so it must run in the family, being a meddler within dreams.

Jossed, the person in the confession booth is actually an aspect of Midnight Venus/Trisha.

Midnight Venus either is or is linked to Ishtar

She also seems to go by the name 'Ishida☆Ruu', which sounds something like 'Ishtar' when spoken in Japanese (Ishutaru). Plus the Dumuzid is already in the game, so it wouldn't be too out of place if she was (although the Dumuzid is apparently Sumerian in origin and Ishtar's Sumerian counterpart goes by a different name).

Well, Venus and Ishtar are both goddesses of love, so it isn't that far a stretch.
In the English version, her name is Trisha, a simple anagram.
Confirmed, once you beat all the Babel levels.

The game takes place in Iwatodai, but a certain part.

Since Vincent makes a cameo in P3, it could be figured it takes place in Iwatodai. However, in P3 the characters have Japanese names while in Catherine the characters have English names. Thus, Catherine takes place in a part of Iwatodai where a group of English speakers live.

Jossed. The game takes place in a generic American city.

There are no supernatural elements in the game. They are just Vincent trying to cope with cheating on Katherine.

We don't see any actual proof that all the supernatural elements in the game are a result of Vincent's nightmares. Vincent just dreams that he's meeting people in a nightmare world, but it's just him dreaming. Catherine is not a succubus, that's just how Vincent deals with the fact that he's cheating on Katherine with her. We don't get any actual proof that men are dying because they're falling in their dreams because they're being unfaithful, or dying at all. After the boss fight with Catherine is just a dream and it never really happened. Catherine's true ending is Vincent coping with the fact that he left his true love for some floozy.

Jossed. Boss confirms the supernatural aspect, and a goddess (Ishtar) is involved, as can be seen after beating the Babel stages.

Catherine takes place in the same universe as, or is a not-too-different retelling of, Murakami's The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle.

Every Man protagonist? Check. Infidelity? Check. Strange cast of characters? Check. Weird dreams? Check. Sex? Check. Weird sense of Magical Realism, or at least a lot of things unexplained and interconnected? Check. I haven't played the game yet, but just the demo playthrough and the opening remind me a lot of a Murakami book, especially The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle.

- And a couple of his earlier novels feature a sheepman. The only thing that's missing is cats.

Vincent's dreams are representations of his fears regarding Katherine.

Think about it, the first dream he encounters is the one with giant hands holding a fork. On that day, he was in the cafe with Katherine - she was eating cake. We also see a giant baby chasing him. Given that Katherine is pregnant, (as mentioned above) it can show his fear of becoming a father.

But why are his dreams a threat of death? It might be a case of Your Mind Makes It Real, or some punishment for his actions (Maybe the blue/red meter will affect the gameplay somehow?).

- Because it is stuck in his mind. Similar to the Shadows in Persona4 which represents the hidden side of his personality. When he is on the red side of the Karma, his whole desire to be "Free" hides the fact he is still committed to Katherine and must move on. The "Lawful" side shows that deep down he still got some desire to break out of the upcoming monotony of marraige and that there is still a few kinks to work out to make the marraige work and that he doesn't leave behind a scorned woman or become a miserable man's who as quoth "Love is over", only when he "Overcomes" his inner shadow does he have the courage to actually face both C/Katherines.

The dreams causing men to die in their sleep started because a rumor was spread.

It started happening because rumors are becoming reality, like in Persona 2.

Vincent is the serial killer.

While you're doing the platforming sections he's actually going around murdering the shit out of people because he's so torn between Katherine and Catherine that he went Arkham Asylum-levels of batshit insane. 'Dying' in the dream world doesn't cause him to physically die in the real world, but it removes what's left of his sanity, metaphorically killing him.

This game will be the first in another SMT series.

Specifically, all the games in this future series will be The Golden Playhouse. It will be a videogame version of the Twilight Zone, where every game has a different plot and/or different puzzle type with the only similarities between games being that they are all puzzle games, they have the Order/Chaos/Neutral themes inherent in the SMT metaseries, all are hosted by Midnight Venus, and all will have the title of the story on the box but will NOT reveal is it part of the Golden Playhouse until that specific intro plays out.

- This is an independent game, not another entry into the Shin Megami Tensei line.

Catherine is this universe's version of Mami's Witch Form.

My evidence: just the hair and her making humans (and the player/viewer) despair.

Erica and Trisha are the same person.

They are both red-headed, Erica seems to move the plot somewhat and as an added bonus, both the Japanese dub and the english dub have them been voiced by the same seiyuu/voice actress.

Additionally, Erica is transgender; she has both male and female aspects, just like Trisha/Ishtar/Astaroth.

Vincent is a Dwarf.

The game tells you that the more drunk Vincent gets at the Stray Sheep before delving into the Nightmare sections, the faster he'll move during that night's puzzles. So there more hammered he gets, the better he works. He is also capable of manipulating physics defying cubes for a variety of impossible building feats. And Vincent is apparently strong enough to bat around monstrous demon-sheep with a pillow while wearing no more protection than his finely crafted boxers.

Erica, Orlando, Jonny, and Vincent (and possibly Katherine) used to be a Persona team.

They talk about how they were an inseparable group of friends in high school who went out and had all kinds of adventures and stuff. You may assume they were generic kid adventures, but actually they were Persona-users who saved the world and forgot about it. They probably did so some time after Persona 4, and in the time between their adventure and the events of the game, Junes' mascot Teddie become so famous he appears on bear cans.

In the True Cheater ending, Vincent is able to take over the Netherworld because he gained so many levels from sleeping with Catherine.

There is another woman for Vincent.

Her name is Qatherine.

On the third night, Vincent gave Catherine a rim job.

Catherine said it was the first time she's done "something like that" and calls Vincent "kinky", and the previous night, Vincent was chased by a monster that looked like a butt with a tongue coming out of it.

The sequence "46, 37, 14, 31, 5, 53, 21, 59" is somehow significant . . .

. . . because the levels in Rapunzel's Extra Mode with those numbers spell out "R A P U N Z E L."

Erica was put inside the nightmares because she refused to date the Boss.

Erica makes it pretty clear during the game she had no intention of dating the Boss and deities are known for not taking rejections very well. So the Boss justified putting her into the nightmares using the valid reason that she was preventing Tobias from getting with women and having kids.

Alternatively, she was punished for being transsexual, and thus not being able to reproduce.

If you see someone in a dream whom you've also seen in real life, they appear with their most memorable features as a sheep.

Presumably the bar patrons you can save have been coming to the Stray Sheep since before the game, and Vincent has seen them before, but never bothered to talk to them. When he meets them as sheep in the dream, he subconsciously recognizes them, and sees them as he remembers them in his mind: "Man with sunglasses", "Man with Regent Hair", etc. The sheep with no identifying features are people he's never seen outside the dreams.

In the case of Steve, either Vincent saw him at a Dentist's appointment and didn't remember anything about him but the tie he was wearing, or Vincent wanted to remember the sheep who helped him, so his mind just stuck a tie on him as an identifier.

The "weird texts" Katherine received weren't from Catherine, but from Jonny.

Probably declarations of love sent while drunk. Support for this theory is that as far as we know, the texts didn't mysteriously disappear from Katherine's phone.

Alternative theory: They're the messages Vincent thought he was sending to Catherine.

== Lindsay and Martha, the old ladies in the bar, are related to Elizabeth, Margaret, and Theodore from Personas 3 & 4. == They have the same color scheme, very pale with white hair and blue clothing, know far too much about what's going on, and have a similarly CloudCuckoolandery way of speaking.

Vincent is Awake

All the stress of his girlfriend wanting to marry him and his job and the general misery of his life led to long and terrible insomnia, and at some point he slipped through to the other side without anybody noticing. The "dreams" are all trips to the Mad City. The overall theme of grinding fatigue and madness, the surreal backgrounds, the "dream" denizens acting just like Mad City people (stereotypical, apathetic and weird), and towards the end of the game he starts to lose the ability to distinguish dream from reality... It just fits! One has to wonder what his Madness Power is... His Exhaustion Power is obviously "climbing".

The first player to view the secret ending actually became a god

Rather than becoming a consort of Ishtar, the first player to get a gold prize on all the unbelievably Nintendo Hard Babel stages (which are already nearly impossible to unlock) immediately ascended as the Virgin Casanova, the archetype of the one who knows all about love and sexuality, but can never get any themselves. In so doing, he banished from the Statoshpere the last holder of the title, Keima Katsuragi, who himself took it from Cyrano De Bergerac... Okay, so this theory doesn't make any sense whatsoever, but it's cool, so who cares?