0:01 If you've watched Severance, you'll know
0:03 that the work is mysterious and
0:05 important. So, I thought it would be fun
0:07 to put together some of the most
0:09 interesting hidden details and clues
0:11 littered throughout season 2. Keep in
0:13 mind, I have a separate video covering
0:14 just the ending, which I'll leave a link
0:16 to, as well as the biggest theories
0:18 video coming out shortly. So, make sure
0:20 you've liked and subscribed. And
0:23 remember, I love you. Deleted
0:25 behindthe-scenes photos from Zufu's
0:27 Chinese restaurant in episode 206 show
0:30 an article for lawsuits against the
0:32 ether plant in Salt's neck. It states
0:34 that thousands complained of chronic
0:37 illnesses from the plant's toxins. Dethl
0:39 ether, which is the inhalent Cobell and
0:42 Hampton take, spell out the word deer.
0:44 And it's at Deers National Park that we
0:47 see this mummified sealed by the water.
0:49 It's possible this seal's death is the
0:50 result of poisonous toxins from
0:52 Saltseneck or other such
0:54 factories.Wendalyn, one of MDR's
0:56 replacements, has a white ball and
0:58 silhouette of herself, which suggests
1:00 these were perks from her old branch. On
1:03 Mark's first day back at Lumen, Mark W,
1:05 gets in an argument with Gwendalyn,
1:07 stating he hates the color pus and that
1:09 it makes him sick. They were purple. No,
1:10 they were pus. I know because it makes
1:13 me nauseous. The next day, she comes to
1:15 work wearing a Pew outfit. After Mark
1:17 gets off the elevator in episode 1,
1:19 we'll catch a glimpse of a mysterious
1:21 man in the hallway behind him. We don't
1:23 know who he is, but if you go to the
1:25 episode's IMDb page, we'll see that he's
1:28 credited as man in hallway. Daario has a
1:30 wooden figure instead of Mark's glass
1:32 one because the branch he came from was
1:34 very poor. Each with a face made of a
1:37 plate. A plate? We were very poor.
1:39 Interestingly enough, the file he's
1:41 working on is Moroka, which is not one
1:43 of the files associated with Gemma.
1:46 Allentown, Mark's first completed file,
1:48 is the hometown of Ben Stiller's wife.
1:50 We briefly see that one of Milchek's
1:52 drawers has a set of Japanese pruning
1:54 tools. That's for his bonsai tree he
1:57 keeps over here. The Kier Chronicle is
1:59 filled with all sorts of fun details.
2:01 For example, the year it was published
2:05 was 1893. However, there are
2:07 51,93 volumes. Assuming there's been a
2:09 volume for every day of the year, it
2:12 would put our current year at 2035. I
2:13 wouldn't look too deep into this
2:15 considering the entire page is
2:16 photoshopped and filled with
2:18 misinformation. The photo of the innies
2:20 was taken from President Eisenhower's
2:23 1960s trip to Brazil. There's an article
2:26 about the Baird Creek bandit. Bear Creek
2:27 is where Mark lives and is the name of a
2:30 former Lumen CEO. The bandit was known
2:32 to steal one valuable item from his
2:34 victims, which leads me to believe it
2:36 might be Coobel, who once stole Gemma's
2:38 candle from Mark's basement. But it
2:39 could also be Irv. As the article
2:41 states, police think the culprit could
2:43 have a military background. There's also
2:46 mention of Dr. Rick and Hale with a nod
2:48 to his book, The U YouU, which you can
2:50 actually download to read or listen as
2:52 an audio book. The painting Kier Pardons
2:54 his betrayers was created by illustrator
2:56 Danny Avelis, who in the severance
2:59 security office is listed as a Daniel A
3:01 in the CE department. He can also be
3:04 found on Irv's list of Lumen employees.
3:06 The newly designed Lumen break room is
3:08 filled with all sorts of fun posters
3:10 including I'm a frolic aaholic. Frolic
3:12 being one of Kier's four tempers and
3:15 another poster be ever merry. Beehive
3:17 was one of the systems functions found
3:19 in the security room. And in the UUR,
3:21 Ricken has a strange story about how he
3:24 never saw a natural beehive even though
3:26 he interned at a honey plant. The hang
3:28 in there poster is a nod to Dylan
3:31 locking down the overtime contingency in
3:32 season 1. The voice of the Lumen
3:34 building in the macro refinement video
3:36 is Keano Reeves, while the water tower
3:39 is voiced by SNL's Sarah Sherman. Kano
3:42 says Lumen operates in 206 countries
3:44 around the world. However, there are
3:47 only 195 recognized countries according
3:49 to the UN. However, this is open to
3:52 interpretation as definitions of what
3:54 defines a country can vary. You can kind
3:56 of tell Heli is actually Helena in
3:57 episode 1 because she doesn't know where
4:00 the on switch is on her computer. The
4:01 name of Hel's new file she starts in
4:04 2011 is Santa Mirror, the setting of
4:06 Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Although
4:08 this might be a stretch, the white rings
4:10 found on Gemma's Cold Harbor profile
4:12 look a bit like the grains of salt used
4:14 by Regabi during Mark's reintegration
4:16 process. Milchek's license plate reads
4:19 Ramedium Humminibus, which is Latin for
4:21 cure for mankind. This can also be found
4:23 on Mark's license plate, as well as an
4:25 abandoned factory in Salt's Neck. While
4:27 going around town to fire the Audi's,
4:30 Milch passes a bar where the band Deer's
4:32 brother plays. Deer's brother, of
4:34 course, being Kier. Deer Egan is an
4:36 anagram for AI generated. And Winter
4:38 Tide, the award given to Coobel and Miss
4:41 Wong, is an anagram for deer twin.
4:43 Pips's Diner is named after foreman
4:45 Lumen CEO Philip Egan, while Irv's
4:47 apartment is named after another Lumen
4:51 CEO Leonora Egan. Mark has two fish, one
4:52 blue and one red, symbolizing the
4:55 distinction between Inie and Audi. Every
4:57 locker number except Marks is taken from
5:01 the famous loss numbers 4 85 15 16 2342.
5:03 If you listen closely when Coobel nearly
5:05 runs over Mark, you can hear a Wilhelm [Music]
5:07 [Music]
5:10 scream. Milcheek tells the Audi's that
5:11 during the overtime contingency, their
5:14 bodies were taken over for 39 minutes,
5:16 which is roughly the runtime of the
5:18 season 1 finale. At Mamalian's
5:20 Nurturable, Wyatt asks to see if Heli
5:22 and Mark have pouches. A call back to
5:24 season one when Bert reveals to Dylan
5:26 that other departments fear MDR because
5:28 they might have kangaroo pouches. Like
5:31 they say, you all have pouches. The
5:32 cartoon that plays at Dylan's Audi's
5:34 house is an episode of Danger Mouse in
5:37 which the villain Baron Silus Greenback
5:39 shrinks himself to a microscopic size to
5:41 invade the brain of our hero. Kind of
5:42 like a severance chip. There's a picture
5:45 of a seascape, most likely Montalk, as
5:46 there are several references to it,
5:48 which mimics the se-scape theme of
5:50 Dylan's Audi's visitation suite. And
5:52 here's a nice Kier Egan doll with
5:54 Natalie proposing Ricken rewrite parts
5:57 of his book for the innies in 203. It's
5:59 very possible that Ricken had a hand in
6:01 writing Kier Egan's fourth appendix that
6:04 we see in 204. His house also has weird
6:05 goat sculptures, and we know Ricken has
6:07 an affinity for climbing without any
6:10 gear, much like a goat. There's a Gan's
6:11 College mug in Mark's basement. That's
6:13 where he worked as a professor and met
6:15 Gemma. The four colors of the wires
6:16 attached to Mark's head during
6:19 reintegration match the colors found in
6:20 the bins of his macro refinement
6:22 computer. Natalie refers to Mark as a
6:24 quote good egg. And considering all the
6:26 egg imagery in the show, it's not a
6:28 coincidence. Gemma will be seen eating a
6:31 raw egg in 207, Kier's favorite
6:32 breakfast. You know, he used to drink
6:34 three raw eggs and milk each morning.
6:37 His favorite breakfast. And Regabi asked
6:39 Mark to pick him up eggnog at the store.
6:41 The painting found on the Ortbo
6:43 introduction is Kier invites you to
6:44 drink of his water which features a
6:46 bunch of lakes which look a lot like the
6:49 Great Lakes. Water is very important in
6:50 the world of severance. There's a
6:52 literal water tower outside of Lumen and
6:54 articles about Lumen providing drinking
6:57 water to underdeveloped African nations.
6:58 The song that's heard before they press
7:01 play is a rendition of Kier Chosen One
7:03 Kir which Miss Coobel sang in season 1
7:05 and a version of which is played by the
7:07 choreography and marrynt marching band
7:10 in the finale. The acronym ORPO is also
7:12 an anagram for robot. How is this TV
7:14 getting power? No one knows. Miss Hong
7:16 plays the theramin, an instrument that
7:18 creates sound through wavelengths.
7:20 Wavelengths are what Regabi uses in the
7:22 reintegration process. Sarah Bach, who
7:24 plays Miss Hong, actually took Theamman
7:26 lessons to prepare for the role. When
7:28 Irv has a nightmare during the orbo,
7:29 we'll see the final name he's working
7:31 on, is Montalk, no doubt a nod to
7:33 Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,
7:35 which prominently features this place.
7:37 The numbers that appear on screen are
7:41 517 and 4, which correspond to the name
7:43 Egan. And for a brief moment, you can
7:45 even see the numbers form a picture of
7:47 Hel's face. Episode 204 is the first we
7:50 hear the term Glasgow block mentioned.
7:52 However, the term Glasgow was also found
7:53 as one of the system functions in the
7:56 security room. In medicine, the Glasgow
7:57 coma scale is a system of measuring
7:59 one's responsiveness from completely
8:02 unresponsive to fully responsive. The
8:03 Audi's wear these Russian inspired
8:05 winter outfits. Russian culture plays
8:08 heavily in Gemma's life. As she's a
8:10 Russian literature professor in college,
8:11 there are Russian magnets on Mark's
8:13 fridge, and all the books in her room
8:15 are from Russian author Leo Toltoy.
8:17 Soviet era imagery also plays heavily
8:19 with the authoritarian control of Lumen.
8:22 The song Dr. Mau whistles in episode 205
8:24 is Gordon Lightfoot's The Wreck of the
8:26 Edmund Fitzgerald. All about the
8:27 mysterious final voyage of a freighter
8:29 that sank with the bodies of the crew
8:31 never being found. The dental supplies
8:33 he collects from O and D will eventually
8:35 be used on Miss Casey. However, with
8:37 there being a mouthwall in the
8:39 perpetuity wing, who is to say, these
8:41 aren't other Lumen test subjects. Lumen
8:43 has these pre-made bereavement mugs for
8:45 Mark, Heli, and Dylan, even though they
8:47 haven't died, which may suggest they
8:48 will sometime in the future, or they're
8:51 just on standby in the event they do.
8:52 The sign behind Dylan during Irv's
8:55 eulogy shows that Irv worked until
8:57 quarter 882. If you do the math, this
8:59 would mean Lumen was founded in the late
9:02 17 to early 1800s, which is decades
9:04 before Lumen even existed. Regabi finds
9:06 a necklace of Gemma's in Mark's
9:07 basement. The necklace we'll later see
9:09 her wearing at the fertility clinic in
9:12 episode 207. When Heli tells Mark that
9:14 she's breaking into the bathroom to see
9:16 Mark, it contrasts Mark breaking in to
9:19 see Hely in season 1. I'm coming in cuz
9:21 I'm coming in. The beers found in Mark's
9:23 fridge are called split log, just like
9:25 our characters minds are split in two.
9:27 In season 1, Miss Casey tells Mark that
9:29 his Audi can set up a tent in under
9:32 three minutes. In episode 206, we get to
9:33 see him show off this skill before doing
9:36 the deed with Heli. At Zufu Chinese
9:37 restaurant, Mark is given two fortune
9:40 cookies, but he only eats one. I like to
9:42 think one is for his innie and one for
9:44 his Audi. Fu in Chinese means father,
9:47 hinting that Mark is going to be a dad.
9:48 And the year this restaurant was
9:51 established was 1927, the same year the
9:53 Chinese Civil War began. I also found
9:55 that these trophies are for the Kier
9:57 regional racing pigeon club. Pigeon
9:59 racing involves pigeons being trained to
10:00 return home, which is what Mark
10:03 immediately does after this scene.
10:04 Pigeons are also controlled by an
10:07 external handler, much like Lumen's
10:09 control over our MDR employees. Bert
10:11 tells us he was led to Lumen by Jesus,
10:13 which is interesting because John
10:15 Touturo played a character named Jesus
10:16 in The Big Labowski. The machine that
10:18 takes blood from Gemma and Mark is from
10:20 Lumen. We'll also see Lumen has
10:22 connections to the fertility clinic as
10:24 well as a Dr. Mau cameo. Bootsman, the
10:26 name of the clinic, means boogeyman in
10:28 German. Although this is fairly obvious,
10:31 the flashbacks in 207 are all shot in
10:33 film to create what cinematographer
10:35 Jessica Lee Gier calls a separate
10:37 identity for our characters. The shot
10:39 where the camera goes from MDR to the
10:42 Watchers is all in camera and not VFX.
10:44 The cards Gemma got in the mail are the
10:46 same cards created by O and D that Dylan
10:49 found in season 1. The quilt in Mark and
10:51 Gemma's house is the same one Mark will
10:52 use to cover his face when trying to
10:55 imprint UV light onto his eyes. In the
10:57 Christmas room of the testing floor, we
10:59 see Gemma writing rather poorly, I might
11:01 add, with her left hand. While at the
11:02 fertility clinic, she writes with her
11:04 right. The room is also furnished with
11:07 various 3D printed objects from O and D.
11:09 Printed objects like the instruments
11:11 played by the marching band. The real
11:13 life town that stands in for Salt's Neck
11:15 is located in Newf Finland, Canada, and
11:17 is also a town that faced hardship from
11:19 a factory closing. Coobel lives
11:21 near a peninsula called the Nine, named
11:23 after Lumen's nine core values. The
11:25 mascot for the Myrtle Egan school Coobel
11:27 went to are the fighting kids. Kids are
11:29 the term used for baby goats. We see
11:32 various Myrtle Egan school locations
11:34 like the one in Kier, and this is likely
11:35 where Miss Wong went. has a
11:37 similar white night gown and has a
11:39 shrine to Kier, just like Coobel at her
11:41 home. Here's a plate depicting Mark
11:43 being pushed down by two women, one
11:45 wearing Audi red and the other in blue.
11:47 They wear black hats suggesting they are
11:49 controlled by Lumen. Black is the color
11:51 that symbolizes Lumen management as
11:53 we'll see Hang and Milchek with black
11:55 key cards. And both Drummond and Jame
11:57 almost always wear black. More egg
11:59 symbolism, a metaphor for both the
12:01 splitting of one's brain and fertility.
12:04 Jame remarks that he wishes she took it
12:05 raw. And there is one thing she likes
12:08 taking bra, and that's Mark. It's also
12:10 customary not to eat eggs with
12:12 silverware as the sulfur from the eggs
12:14 can tarnish the silver and give the eggs
12:17 a bad taste. The cold harbor ID number
12:19 is the same as helies. This hasn't been
12:21 answered in the show, but I'll get more
12:23 into this in my theory video. The ring
12:25 that in Dylan makes for Gretchen is from
12:27 one of his beloved finger traps. The
12:29 last words Bert says to Irv are
12:31 bonvoyage, the same words his Audi said
12:33 in his retirement video. Miss Wong is
12:35 being sent to the Gunnel Egan Center for
12:37 Empathy and Spalbart. In the finale, one
12:39 of the songs the marching band plays is
12:41 the ballad of Ambrose and Gunnel. So, we
12:44 can assume Gunnel was Ambrose's wife.
12:46 The madeup story of Cabel taking in a
12:48 Marsha White to the birthing center is
12:49 straight from an episode of the Twilight
12:51 Zone. It's about mannequins who come
12:53 alive to live amongst humans. If you
12:55 want a full breakdown of that, do check
12:58 out my episode 209 video. The existence
13:00 of a choreography and marrynt department
13:02 hints that the four temper dancers from
13:04 Dylan's waffle party in season 1 came
13:06 from that department. James tells Heli
13:08 that he quote sireired many children in
13:10 the shadows. The word sire was also used
13:12 by Dr. Mau to Gemma saying that Mark
13:14 will benefit from the world she is
13:16 siring. Of course, there are a lot more
13:18 details in the final episode like the
13:20 significance of the equator and meaning
13:22 of the new painting, but those are
13:24 covered in my season 2 ending explained
13:25 video, which I'll leave a link to in the
13:27 description below. So, now I turn it
13:29 over to you. What are your favorite
13:31 details, hidden clues, and symbolism
13:33 from season 2? I want to hear your
13:35 thoughts in the comments below. Thanks
13:36 for watching. Be sure to like and
13:38 subscribe. And for more bad takes, you
13:40 can follow me on Twitter and Instagram
13:42 at ThinkStory YT. Until next time,
