Expunged
 |
|
[DATA EXPUNGED], or more commonly called Expunged, is an antagonistic 3D Entity and the driving force behind major events in the storyline. It appears bearing different forms across the secret songs Cheating, Unfairness, and Exploitation.
Appearance
Expunged is a jarringly 3D character with an undefined appearance and identity, often stealing parts of itself from the files. She takes on three distinct appearances in-game, one for each song she features in. Each form is constructed entirely of primitive 3D shapes with an expressive 2D plane for a face. She also has additional appearances outside of the game.
Cheating
In Cheating, they are shown to resemble a 3D variation of Bambi, wearing the same outfit shown in Splitathon: a round green hat, red shirt, and blue pants. Their face is mostly neutral in expression, eyes coloured with white irises and black pupils that are never shown to blink. Various poses show a smile lacking any teeth with a white tongue. He lacks arms and hands in this form. While other illustrations by rappareplol have depicted it with both teeth and hands[3], these may or may not be canonical.
Unfairness
In Unfairness, while still resembling Bambi, it strays further from the source. Their entire outfit becomes a crimson red, a point juts out from the top of their black-rimmed hat. This form has hands (unlike the previous one) covered by black mittens. She has a strikingly manic expression, a wide smile exposing sharp teeth and unblinking eyes with white pupils. The same white tongue can be seen briefly in a few frames. This form is a result of Expunged corrupting 3D Bambi's sprite sheet, which she can do with any character or asset.[4]
Exploitation
In Exploitation, the body morphs into a slimmer and taller shape much closer resembling Dave. Four limbs are formed from two black cone shapes, hands and feet made of simple red spheres and capsules, and a red thumbtack-like hat sits on his head. Their skin is now an off-black colour, a single reptilian eye is printed directly onto the right of its face with two thin black 2D eyebrows. Their mouth is a 2D plane separate from the body, lacking a tongue and lined with triangular teeth. She retains the same manic smile through each pose. This is their true form, and the one they use the majority of the time. [5][6]
Extra
Expunged has a Proto form that appears exclusively in BIRTHDAY. There is no visual depiction of this form yet, but it is described in this document as looking like Dave but "all wrong", with skin blacker than charcoal, a vibrant red shirt, no hair, and a single lizard-like eye.[7] This was confirmed to be a separate form from their true form[8] and is what Expunged looked like when it first existed.[9] It is unclear at what point Expunged transitioned from the Proto form to its true form.
-
Expunged as seen in Cheating
-
Expunged as seen in Unfairness
Personality
Expunged is goofy, cruel, and likes to scare people.[10][11] He is aggressive and sarcastic towards others, frequently insulting the other characters. Their terminal entry reads "[FILE DELETED] [FUCK YOU!]"[12]; they call Exbungo "fat and ugly"[13], Dave "pathetic"[14], and mockingly refer to Dave extracting his own power as a "tragic backstory".[15]. They "hacked" the background image of Exbungo's home for seemingly no reason.[16] They are prone to laughter, which occurs during Cheating, Exploitation, and as randomized messages in their takeover as admin[17] and in Exploitation's text file popups[18].
He is strongly fixated on and values power, hating those who give it up and expressing interest in those that have great potential for it. This single attribute governs many of his relationships with other characters; he can't understand why anyone would give up any amount of power at all.[19] When granted admin in the terminal, various messages from Expunged flood the screen that further indicate this obsession with power and ego, such as "THIS IS MY WORLD NOW", "EXPUNGED'S REIGN SHALL START", "THIS REALM IS MINE", "TAKING OVER....", "I WIN, YOU LOSE.", and, more humorously, "I HAVE THE PLOT ARMOR NOW!!". After given such power, they are confident in and gleeful to see the player lose, stating on the menu screen "Play my song as I wish and fail". They gloat every time the player dies in popup messages such as "nice try.", "do that again. i like watching you fail.", and "i could do this all day.".
Expunged is described twice in BIRTHDAY as a creature.[20]. They are also referred to numerous times throughout the terminal and its external materials as an entity that must not be named, including "the one whose name shall not be stated"[21], "the unnamable [sic]"[22], and "the unnamable [sic] one"[23]. One of Expunged's lines when taking over the terminal is simply "[DATA EXPUNGED]"; Dave exclusively refers to him as [DATA EXPUNGED] as a name[24][25], as well as (formerly) Recurser in the 3.0a build.[26] It is ambiguous whether [DATA EXPUNGED] is their literal name, or a redaction of another name that has not yet been revealed. It is worth nothing that Expunged's characteristic typing style of all-caps letters surrounded by brackets shares the same syntax as a large number of terminal entries containing the similarly phrased text "[FILE DELETED]"[27][28][29] and "[REDACTED]"[30], and the command open deleted is specifically talking about Expunged (which goes as far as to call them an "accident").[31] Even Exploitation's song creator icon, which is the same as Expunged's health icon, is titled "whoAreYou.png".[32] All of these seem to point to something about Expunged, whether it be its name or some other characteristic of them, was and actively is suppressed or expunged by others, perhaps out of fear or disdain for them.
Expunged has various styles of writing beyond their primary typing quirk. In some areas of the game, the brackets are omitted or the text is written in normal sentence casing or all-lowercase. Some of these have been changed in the source code to instead be written in their usual typing quirk.[33]
Numerous artworks outside of the game from rappareplol illustrate Expunged as having issues with identity or purpose. One image depicts Unfairness Expunged saying "I was once something and now im a husk of what I once was!".[34] Originally their stated purpose (which they made up themselves because it was fun[35]) was to torture whoever accidentally entered the 3D world[36], but this has possibly been retconned[37], and the ambiguity of their purpose is emphasized in another image showing their true form asking what their purpose is.[38] It's unclear how serious or canonical these illustrations are, but given the context of their associations with being deleted, redacted, or avoided in conversation, this could be interpreted to mean that these things also quite literally reflect on them as a person feeling incomplete or missing something, not feeling truly fulfilled by their pursuit for power.
Abilities
- Expunged can create sentient beings. He is the creator of the Bambi Minions[39] and Nimbi[40].
- Expunged can teleport, as seen in the end of Exploitation when they suddenly disappear from the screen.
- Expunged can take any asset from the game and use or mess with them however she wants.[41] She can also corrupt these assets; her Unfairness form is created by corrupting 3D Bambi's spritesheet.[42]
- Expunged can hack and modify various elements of the game, such as the background sprites of Exbungo's home. This power is increased when he is granted admin in the terminal, enabling him to alter the game's UI, song choices, and create popup messages when the player dies in Exploitation. He can even escape the game window briefly during this song.
- However, if not granted admin, Expunged is stated to be "powerless outside of the 3D dimension." This implies that admin power carries out to other dimensions. [43]
- Expunged is possibly able to visit Dave's dreams, mentioned in the terminal entry "stop" ("A reflection that is always wrong now has appeared in his dream") and in the BIRTHDAY document ("The creature in Dave’s dreams").[44]
- Expunged has been depicted playing various instruments, including a guitar[45] and an electric piano performance of Moonlight Sonata.[46] These may or may not be canonical/serious.
Relationships
Dave
Expunged has a hateful and antagonistic relationship with Dave, her unwitting creator. In the terminal command open power, she outright states that she hates him for throwing away the power he could've had (interestingly using they/them to refer to Dave). This "heap of unwanted power" is what created Expunged.[47] This is referencing the events of other logs - after an unspecified incident with Tristan winding up in the Void[48], Dave created the P.R.A.E.M. to remove his unwanted magic so that it would not cause further harm to others. Expunged seems to believe that Dave could've become much more powerful had he not done this, and loathes him for it, even though it is the reason she exists. She either doesn't know or is unwilling to understand that Dave removed his power so as to not endanger Tristan again; if she does know about this, she may see it as a trivial reason to give up the pursuit of power. When a Twitter user figured out that Dave separated his power, Expunged sarcastically called it his tragic backstory[49] before backpedalling that "it's not really tragic, just pathetic"[50], as she'll never understand why anyone would give up any amount of power.[51] She bears additional resentment against him for refusing to and lying about creating Blade, who she similarly saw as having great potential for power.
Other terminal commands consistently describe her as a reflection of Dave, one as "always wrong"[52] and another as "broken"[53]. Similarly in BIRTHDAY, his Proto form is described as "[looking] almost like [Tristan's] dad but it was all wrong".[54] These suggest Expunged's appearance is a literal and figurative warped reflection of Dave's, though it may also be implying that Expunged's personality is reflecting Dave as well. This interpretation has tentative support in Insane Dave, a hypothetical and manic-looking version of Dave that never used the P.R.A.E.M. on himself, going "down the wrong path" as a result.[55] This could imply that Dave's potential for malice and power-hungriness was removed alongside his power via the P.R.A.E.M. and became part of Expunged. Indeed, it's left ambiguous what exactly Dave's motivations were for initially researching his powers - he only pivoted to remove them with the P.R.A.E.M. after it endangered Tristan. It could be speculated that he initially began his research, whether overtly or subconsciously, out of a desire for power, which could explain his willingness to endure great pain for his studies[56] - or if it didn't begin with this motivation, then it could've become driven by power later in time had he pursued his research further and never removed his powers.
Blade
Expunged has the most positive attachment to Blade out of any character, a hypothetical entity that would've resulted from using the P.R.A.E.M. on Tristan to extract his golden magic.[57] Expunged seems to value Blade's (theoretical) capabilities for power, as they refer to them as "the golden warrior" in source code. He suggested to Dave to create them[58][59], claiming in the terminal entry cGVyZmVjdGlvbg ("perfection" in base64) that Blade "would've been perfect [...] but Dave had to refuse. He had to lie to me. Liar. Liar."[60] Blade does not actually exist due to this; even so, Expunged maintains a connection to it, scolding those who use its name disrespectfully.[61] Since Blade doesn't exist, any and all characteristics of Blade come from what Expunged attributes to them, including its name.[62] Blade has been described as technically being Expunged's OC.[63]
Expunged wanted Blade to exist due to how extremely powerful it would be, though additional motivations are left open to interpretation.[64]
Exbungo
Expunged describes Exbungo as fat and ugly in the terminal command open exbungo.[65] Additionally, they appear to have modified one of the backgrounds in the game with a scrambled image of Exbungo's sprites and the text, "Expunged is hacking this image as you read it!! You better watch for he will hack you too with his crazy powers!!!!!!!". [66] In the terminal's source code, however, Expunged also remarks in a commented-out sentence that they only have access to their own and Exbungo's file[67] - meaning this threat may be a bluff, and he can only "hack" Exbungo's assets specifically.
Their relationship appears to be antagonistic, though it is unclear why. Exbungo is one of only three characters that Expunged has made an explicit declaration of their opinions for, the others being Dave and Blade, lending it some significance that they harass and insult him with no known provocation. While this could simply be how they would interact with anyone and it isn't special to Exbungo, there is room for speculation on whether Expunged dislikes him because he's a joke character in her likeness.
Tristan
Expunged encounters Tristan in the Void in BIRTHDAY, though they do not directly interact. Expunged's feelings towards Tristan are unclear; at most, they requested for Dave to create Blade, which would entail using the P.R.A.E.M. on Tristan. Given their fixation on things that have great potential for power, it's possible that they see Tristan more favorably than Dave, as he has not particularly rejected or thrown away his power unlike his father, but this is merely speculation. Tristan is described in the terminal command open tristan as "the key to defeating the one whose name shall not be stated"[68], which is referring to Expunged; it's unknown what this defeat entails, or when it would happen.
Bambi Minions
Expunged can summon Bambi Minions at will.[69] The only implication to their relationship is a render by rappareplol of Expunged and a minion standing next to each other, where Expunged is looking down at the minion with a confused expression.[70]
Nimbi
Nimbi does not appear in the game anymore, thus his canonicity is uncertain. His creator has stated that Expunged created him as a special minion after the events of Exploitation in order to find and get rid of Boyfriend and Girlfriend. The reason Nimbi does not have a face is because Expunged forgot to give him one.[71]
Bambi
While several of Expunged's forms are heavily based on Bambi and use the same soundbytes, they are not related to each other as people, including familially.[72]
Cell
Cell is not canon to Vs. Dave and Bambi, though there is an illustration by rappareplol that shows them interacting with Expunged. She insists them to "JOIN ME BOY" and questions them when they say they're on their own terms. She becomes pensive and dodgy, however, when asked where she lives (implying the Void).[73]
Trivia
- Expunged cries out of their mouth.[74]
- According to rappareplol, Expunged would be a good therapist.[75]
- The reason why Expunged has their eye is because Rapparep thought it looked cool.[76]
- Expunged is a being of pure 3D energy[77] and chaos[78]. They are not, however, a chaos god[79][80].
- An illustration by rappareplol shows Expunged playing baseball with themself, one as the Cheating form and one as the Unfairness form.[81] Unfairness is holding the bat right-handed, while Cheating is holding the ball left-handed; this may be a visual error, a silly/non-canonical drawing, or indicating that Expunged is ambidextrious.
- Canonically, the Cheating form does not have hands.[82]
- While Expunged has recursed sprites, they are canonically incapable of being recursed, as this would break this game.[83]
- The 3.0 Unfairness sprites were the hardest and most complex for Rapparep to make for Vs. Dave. He was anxious about even changing them at first.[84][85]
- Additionally, 3.0 Unfairness was somewhat inspired by their fanon designs. Most of the look came from Rapparep wanting to make him look more like a brute, and gave him hands to have more to do with his poses.[86]