Dave
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Dave Algebra Class, simply known as Dave in the mod, is a main character in Dave and Bambi. He appears in the songs Warmup, House, Insanity, Polygonized, Splitathon, Interdimensional, Rano, Vs. Dave Rap, Vs. Dave Rap 2, Bonus Song, Five Nights, Overdrive, and Memory. He also appears in the background of the entire Festival week.
Appearance
Dave is a human man in his mid 20's in a wheelchair. He has incredibly short, almost shaved, brown hair, with slightly longer rounded sections on the sides. He has large eyes with small black pupils. His eyebrows are black and appear to be over his hair. He wears a blue sweater with rounded shoulders and darker blue pants. The pants are cut off about halfway down by his prosthetic legs, which are dark gray rectangular plates that are pointed at either end. Dave's wheelchair is a simple dark gray chair with two light gray wheels attached underneath.
Polygonized & Insanity
In Polygonized and small segments of Insanity, Dave is portrayed as a 3D model created using Paint 3D. Throughout these segments, his physical appearance remains consistent, but his demeanor shifts to convey fear and panic.
Corn Festival Week
During the Corn Festival week, Dave wears an outfit to mimic Bambi's, he wears a large green hat, a short-sleeved green shirt, and black overalls featuring a small corn image in the center. During Interdimensional, Dave reverts to a 3D model once again, and his character is depicted as distressed- he returns to normal afterwards.
Extra
In the two Vs. Dave Rap songs, he has a slight shift in attire, featuring black rectangular sunglasses and a blue hoodie. Aside from these additions, his overall appearance remains unchanged from his default look.
In Five Nights, Dave wears a security guard uniform reminiscent of those in Five Nights at Freddy's. This ensemble consists of a light purple shirt, a black tie, a gold badge, and a black hat with the word "Security" written in white letters. Notably, he carries a white mug with the phrase "I <3 [image of pizza]."
In Overdrive, Dave is visually represented with poor drawing skills, but his basic features remain consistent with his usual appearance.
During Recursed, if Dave is chosen as the playable character and a sufficient number of notes are missed, his hair and sweater undergo a transformation, turning white, while his pants change to a dark gray color.
Personality
Dave is very friendly but competitive, and he can be rather cocky in competitions. He makes friends with Boyfriend and Girlfriend almost immediately, and trusts Boyfriend to help him calm down from a stress-induced 3D incident almost immediately after meeting him. He is described in external sources as an "American midwestern white dad stereotype" that knows all of his neighbors, spends his day in his yard cooking hot dogs, and says things like "no more mister nice guy".[2]
Dave is incredibly stressed out when he turns 3D, as this occurs as a stress response. Moreover, it's implied that turning 3D is an analogy for PTSD; Dave appears to relive traumatic memories he had as a scientist, as he says "NOT THE LAB AGAIN" in the glitched dialogue from the song Polygonized. This implication was later confirmed explicitly that polygonization was intentionally written to be similar to PTSD.[3] He is also very afraid of hurting other people while he is turning 3D; he cares about people even in his stressed-out state.
Dave can be a bit irritable at times, as he gets annoyed with Bambi when he jumps to conclusions. He can also be occasionally sarcastic.
He tends to say things he doesn't mean to say aloud when he is upset. For example, he says "Those are real people, I could've got in lots of trouble!" when he finds out his son called emergency services.
The full extent of Dave's relationship with his son isn't showcased in the mod, but he is described as a great parent, but a bit strict. He truly loves his son, even if his methods are... strange. This includes chasing him while he picks up presents Dave hid around the house.
Abilities
- Dave can interdimensionally dislocate. The exact effects of this ability are not well-described, but it may be a form of teleportation. In the Terminal, Dave describes this (emphasis added) as "appearing in a void"[4], while in-game dialogue in Polygonized describes it as "the world [...] becoming three dimensional".[5] This ability is activated by a "mass amount of stress"[6], but it is possible for him to escape when aided by Boyfriend through rap battles.
- Dave can also polygonize, where he turns himself three-dimensional. He is the only one in the game able to do this[7]...allegedly[8]. It is unknown what triggers this ability, but it may be related to interdimensional dislocation, as the two have occurred simultaneously in both Polygonized and Interdimensional. It may or may not be related to stress; the only reference to its method of occurrence is being described as happening "randomly" again in LOG 2, implying it has happened more than once prior to this writing. Some elements in the game suggest he can turn more than just himself 3D, including the rest of the world if not stopped quickly enough.[9]
These powers seem to be related to each other, but can occur independently. In LOG 2, Dave states that he "randomly turned 3-Dimensional again, but things were different this time" appearing in the Void.[10] This indicates that it is, or once was, possible for him to just polygonize without interdimensionally dislocating, thus these are two separate powers. However, in some tweets, Dave is described as having "3D magic"[11][12], and it's unclear whether this is referring to his polygonization or to both powers collectively as one ability. Multiple times Dave describes these powers as having the capacity for harm[13][14] and are physically exhausting.[15] Girlfriend, whether humorously or seriously, after the events of Polygonized states that Dave inviting them to a picnic "makes up for him almost killing us with that whole 3D thing".[16]
Background
Dave's background is the most complex and detailed out of any character in Vs. Dave and Bambi. Much of it originates from the Terminal, while some was confirmed through tweets.
Dave grew up raised by typical American suburban parents.[17] He used to work at a small research facility as a rocket scientist, but while occupying one of the rockets intended to go to space, an accident occurred that cause him to lose his lower legs.[18]
Some time later, Dave adopted Tristan from an orphanage. Either at the same or a different facility, Dave began writing logs in his lab six years ago when Tristan was 3. These logs were a series of text files describing his research.[19] This research was focused on his powers; in his second log, he records having experienced interdimensional dislocation for the first time, curious as to what the Void is and whether he can visit it again.[20] He proceeds to study this particular power, trying to ascertain a root cause or trigger, while hoping there aren't any long term side effects.[21] He ran tests on his polygonization as well to figure out its cause, which concerningly "[hurt] a lot", but he hid his pain for Tristan's sake.[22]
Most alarming is his sixth log, which while being rather vague, alludes to an incident that occurred with his powers and Tristan, who was almost lost in the Void.[23] His powers, evidently, were not able to be contained in front of Tristan. In the log immediately following it, Dave finally isolates that the root cause of his interdimensional location is a mass amount of stress, suggesting that something stressful must have happened for the incident to occur with Tristan. While not directly stated, it could have been the accumulation of stress Dave developed due to the painful experiments he was running on himself. He wonders if it is possible to isolate the ability's effect.[24] All research on the cause of his powers is halted and pivots to working on a new project initially called "the prototype"[25], after which Dave stops naming his logs numerically due to them being confusing.[26] The estimated build time of the prototype, also called the P.R.A.E.M (Power Removal And Extraction Machine), is two years[27]. He enlisted the help of Muko, but did not tell him what the prototype does.[28] He's unable to figure it out even from the blueprints, but Muko does manage to convince him to take him, Tristan, and Maldo to Cici's Pizza for a break[29], perhaps implying that Dave is a bit of a workaholic and had a hard time separating himself from his work. It takes longer than expected to complete the project and is finished a month before Tristan's 7th birthday.[30] While it's unknown how much time passed between the beginning of his research to the incident with Tristan, it can at least be ascertained that the beginning of his research to the completion of the P.R.A.E.M lasted for four years. Clearly, Dave intended to remove and extract his powers for the purpose of them to no longer harm his son or perhaps anyone else again.
In an unknown period of this timeline, Dave begins discovering artifacts containing remnants of the Bambi religion and records their characteristics, noting that they have suspicious relation to Bambi.[31][32][33] He notes that the third artifact, a notebook found in the floor of the Void, is written in a cypher that he hasn't bothered to decode yet, as he has more important matters. This notebook was possibly owned by Madden (per dubious canon)[34], but this is not confirmed.
The experience of using the P.R.A.E.M is downright horrifying. Dave describes it as "every ounce of [his] being torn to shreds and reconstructed with some parts removed [...and] every fiber in [his] being [begged him] to STOP".[35] However, it did work - his powers stopped appearing. With it came strange dreams of "a reflection that is always wrong"; a part that's missing, a chunk out of his soul.[36] During Tristan's 9th birthday[37] (~2 years after using the P.R.A.E.M and close to the current time of the game's events), Dave's powers suddenly activated again and took him to the Void; Tristan, distressed, turned golden and teleported to Dave as well, where the two encountered Expunged for the first time, the entity that had been appearing in his dreams.[38] Either during this meeting or some time after it, Expunged requested for Dave to create Blade[39], an entity that would theoretically result from using the P.R.A.E.M on Tristan; Dave outwardly agreed to this, but in reality, he lied and had no intention of ever putting Tristan through "the torture that is P.R.A.E.M [...] Not now. Not ever."[40] This was written in a log numbered 331, indicating that Dave at some point resumed making numbered logs and quite a few of them - or skipped to the 300s for an unknown reason, given that only logs 5, 8, 9, 11, 12, and 13 are deleted in contents, not 15 through 330. This incident worsened Dave's disdain for Expunged. At some point, Expunged discovered that Dave lied and became enraged[41].
In his final log (336), Dave recounts meeting Recurser in the void, whom Dave asked for help regarding Expunged despite his uncertainty with whether he can trust Recurser; there weren't any other options.[42] This "help" likely means keeping Expunged from disrupting or harming anyone, and is perhaps the reason their power and influence is restricted to the 3D realm unless granted admin permissions. After this happens[43], Dave receives a final artifact - an email with image attachments written in the same cypher as the last one[44], sent by an unknown person to warn him that he may view these to satisfy his own curiosity about Bambi, but digging any further isn't safe.[45]
Relationships
Bambi
Dave is best friends with Bambi. They met while Bambi was stealing corn from a corn maze. Some may describe their relationship as rather one-sided on Bambi's side, with Bambi taking more from Dave without giving back, but they are still friends regardless. Dave often visits him at his farm. They sing Splitathon together, and Bambi later invites Dave and his son to his corn festival. Dave often gifts Bambi bricks painted as phones, that function like actual phones anyway.
They are both incredibly virtuous to truth or dare and never want to lose a game.[46][47] One time, Bambi dared Dave to ignite a stack of fireworks at a Walmart, and he went through with it.
Tristan
Dave's son is Tristan. Dave may be a strict father, but he truly cares for his son. Dave is an algebra teacher at Tristan's school (hence his name), where Tristan attends as a student. The full extent of their relationship isn't shown much in the mod itself, with the only real interaction showcased being Dave yelling at Tristan about how he called the cops and that they would find out something he did that was illegal. In the side game Dave's House, it is shown that Dave is strict once more, with him having hidden presents around the house on Tristan's birthday and threatening to spank him if he collects them. Despite this, Tristan does collect them.
Dave apparently adopted Tristan simply because he "just had a feeling"; he felt a connection to him immediately.[48]
Muko
Dave's other best friend is Muko, who he is roommates/housemates with. He and Muko are lab partners, and work together in Dave's lab. He is seen in the corn festival week, having went there with Dave. In the Baldi Mod games, Dave's computer wallpaper is he and Muko together, with Muko holding up a peace sign. The two of them share a non-canon but official series called Dave and Muko, in which they are in a romantic relationship. As far as we know, Muko and Dave are not romantically involved in the games, nor is Muko present in the Vs. Dave and Bambi mod aside from a small debut in the background of the Festival week.
Boyfriend & Girlfriend
Dave is friends with Boyfriend and Girlfriend. They meet over the course of his week, and become close enough to be invited to Bambi's farm, and then to Bambi's festival. Boyfriend saves Dave from being 3D multiple times and helps him calm down from the stress. Later, in Memory, Dave tells Boyfriend that no matter where he goes, he will always be there to support him. In Splitathon 2, Dave calls Boyfriend a good friend of his.
Ruby Man
Dave's other roommate/housemates is Ruby Man, who appears in the background of the festival week and the background of the song Bot Trot. Not much else is known about them other than that Ruby Man goes to the corn festival with Dave. He is also seen in the game Dave's House as an obstacle Tristan must avoid.
Play Robot
Dave is the creator of Play-Robot, a robot that plays games and teaches students lessons. She is seen in his house, in the song Bot Trot, and in the games as well.
Parents
Dave's unnamed parents have only occasionally been mentioned and do not have designs. They have been described as typical American suburban parents.[49] Dave visits them during the holidays.[50] No further extended family has been mentioned, even when inquired about.[51] They're most likely to simply be irrelevant and/or never developed as characters.
Pico
Dave and Bambi have apparently met Pico before.[52] Nothing else about their relationship is known, but it does confirm that Pico exists in the Dave and Bambi universe, as do the rest of the characters in the broader Friday Night Funkin' universe.[53]
Trivia
- The story of the rocket accident had to be changed, as its initial iteration was heavily based on the first Half Life game.[54]
- In a QnA, Moldy stated that Dave's Fun Algebra Class! will likely be the closest thing we'll ever get of Dave's appearance before the accident[55] (although DFAC is not canon to Vs. Dave and Bambi[56]). Thus, it's uncertain if this means Dave was already disabled and a wheelchair user before this incident or not.
- Despite it being confirmed that Dave is the only character with the ability to turn 3D[57], Boyfriend and Girlfriend are also depicted as 3D for a few moments during Polygonized. Rapparep's response to this is simply "bf and gf crazy like that." [58] This may, however, be a result of Dave causing others to polygonize.
- The idea of Dave becoming 3D originated from him coming from a Baldi's Basics mod, Dave's Fun Algebra Class, and his sprites are meant to replicate that style. [59]
- In Dave's House, Dave lives in Winnipeg, Canada.[60] Moldy grabbed a random house address in Canada for it.[61]
- In Vs. Dave and Bambi, Dave lives in Fort Geraldson, USA, along with Bambi and the others.
- Formerly, Bambi lived in Brazil and teleported to see Dave, but this was retconned because "it was cringe." [62]
- Dave wears a robot suit in Dave's Fun Algebra Class 2.
- Dave originally had full legs before DFAC 2; however, they were replaced with gray spikes and this is now the case for every iteration.
- If he ever got the right prosthetics for it in the future, Dave would probably be able to walk[63], which also confirms he cannot do so with his current set.
- Dave's favorite Wii game is Wii Party.
- Dave likes and listens to Tyler the Creator and Pink Floyd.[64]
- Dave likes SpongeBob Squarepants[65] and Smiling Friends.[66]
- Dave owns sixteen copies of Parappa the Rapper for the PlayStation.
- Dave was formally known as Dave Sussus Moggus, before his surname was changed to Algebra Class.
- Dave is "as straight as a straight white man gets".[67]
- Rapparep has created multiple concepts of alternate universe Daves, most notably including Insane Dave. Insane Dave is the result of Dave never using the P.R.A.E.M. on himself, "going down the wrong path" as a result.[68]
- At the ending dialogue of Splitathon when Tristan dials the emergency services on Bambi's phone, Dave exclaims "Those are real people, I could have gotten in lots of trouble." Girlfriend then asks why he would get in trouble, and Dave blanks out before changing the subject. This implies that Dave has done something illegal that would get him in trouble with law enforcement.
- Additionally, in the 2.5 build at the end of Bambi's week, Dave said "You may think you're stupid, but at least you're not the people that got cryogenically frozen in my basement." This was later removed and has been confirmed to no longer be canon.[69][70] His basement in general was described as "just kind of an oddity".
- Dave has maybe done 1 or 2 war crimes.[71]
- Dave (and Bambi) are unaware that they're popular. This was described as being like The Truman Show.[72]
- Dave would be the type of guy to float in the air when he smells something really good.[73]
- Dave's McDonalds order would be "something basic", like a quarter pounder, a six piece, and a medium fry.[74]
- There was no particular reason behind Dave's shirt being changed from its light blue color in DFAC to a darker blue in Vs. Dave and Bambi. Moldy stated that it was mostly just a design choice.[75]