The Residents Iceberg

(An exploration of a meme image I made years ago)

Have you ever seen an Iceberg Chart Meme before? It is a kind of meme format that explores a topic starting first with subtopics that are on "the surface" and well known before descending into darker and more obscure subtopics. Often these charts are exaggerated with creepy or conspiratorial fake items mixed in with real to give the impression that the topic might be scarier than one would initially think on first glance.

I first discovered this meme format in the summer of 2020 when I ran into the Super Mario 64 Iceberg Chart. This image kind of stuck with me because I found it a very fascinating way of conveying real obscure information about Super Mario 64 while also including items that were obviously fake but still painted such a vivid image in my mind. It was such a clever way of delivering a good mix of comedy, horror, and genuine trivia all at once.

So eventually I decided to make my own iceberg chart focused on The Residents and I posted it to Twitter on a Residents meme account I managed at the time. I think it got a few likes and retweets. A few years later, I was idling in a fan-run Residents discord server and just happened to catch some folks trying to decipher some Residents iceberg charts... including mine?! Some of the entries in my iceberg in particular were mysterious even to the kinds of Residents fans who would save and analyze it years later.

So I thought... why not present my iceberg chart here on my website and explain all of the entries? I'll explain which items are real, which ones are fake, and perhaps you'll even find some obscure insider information I snuck into this Twitter shitpost...

Truth Comes Out of Fiction (What is Real?)

Before we dive in, I feel like I should explain that not everything on this iceberg chart is true. Some things are completely made up, some things are 100% real, and a lot have some kernel of truth in them but are written in a way that's deliberately misleading. So I thought I'd introduce a Snopes-style rating to all of the iceberg entries that establishes how true something is.

True entries refer to an established fact about The Residents. These things are confirmed by some kind of reliable source, although I'm including The Residents' own word in that so some references to mythological things are going to be counted as true. Also there are at least a few items that I know to be true but have no public or surviving evidence so... you'll just have to trust me on those ones.

Plausible entries generally refer to documented fan theories I have found in the wild. I've found someone out there who believes in these things (sometimes they are me) but fan theories aren't really provable because someone's own interpretation of a work can't really be proven wrong even if the author intended something else. Some of these theories are pretty wild and you may have to be Delusional to believe them.

Mixed entries are somewhat true and somewhat false. These items usually refer to some obscure part of Residents history that is real, but may imply something fake about them as well. You might learn something new with these, but they're usually not as spooky or exciting as the meme version. If they are more false than true, I will label them Misleading instead.

Fabricated entries are completely made up. Do not believe their lies.

Layer 1: The Surface

The true recording date of Not Available

Status: True

The album Not Available was officially released in 1978^[1] but was famously recorded years prior to release. Initially it was supposed to never come out until The Residents forgot its contents in observation of the Theory of Obscurity, but according to legend, The Cryptic Corporation finally released it in 1978 when The Residents ran off with the master tapes to their upcoming album Eskimo.

There has been some fan discussion as to whether the 1974 recording date is fully true. Compared to the material in Meet The Residents, released the same year, it feels much more advanced and some have noted that the synths in particular feel more similar to Side B of 1976's The Third Reich 'n Roll. Some official sources have confirmed that some parts of the final album were recorded after the initial recording sessions in 1974.^[2] Depending on the fan, the "real" date for Not Available can range from 1974-1978.

Constantinople is about heaven

Status: Plausible

In the world of analyzing songs for their deeper meaning, many people have independently come to a specific conclusion about the song Constantinople. It's about the afterlife, and specifically the Christian one.^[3] This theory makes a lot of sense, but because Duck Stab is the most popular Residents album and is more disjointed than some of The Residents' "real" concept albums, this observation is placed at the surface level of the iceberg.

Not everyone thinks this song's just about heaven, by the way. I tend to appreciate the more creative theories about Duck Stab but... yeah I can't really argue with the common interpretation.

Departure of John/Jay

Status: True

The Cryptic Corporation, the management company for The Residents and Ralph Records, was originally composed of four members: Homer Flynn, Hardy Fox, Jay Clem, and John Kennedy. In the early 1980s, both Jay Clem and John Kennedy left The Cryptic Corporation for various businessy reasons.^[4] There's a bit of conflict in The Residents fanbase over these departures, with some people saying that The Residents were never the same after this. Personally, I don't see why people would care about some business people departing from their management company, but maybe I'm just missing something.^{[citation needed]}

The Dyin' Dog eBay Auction

Status: True

In 2019 in preparation for the release of The Residents' upcoming Metal, Meat, and Bone some strange things happened across the world wide web. It seems like The Residents were starting to plant the seeds for a sort of Alternate Reality Game. In June of 2019 an eBay listing for a 45rpm record from an obscure artist named "Dyin' Dog" was created. It ended without much fanfare and only one bid. Not too long after this, the auction was brought to greater attention when another piece of the game dropped on the Tumblr blog "The Chiseler": an article investigating the mysterious past of Dyin' Dog.

These were pretty exciting developments, though after this nothing else happened besides the release of The Dyin' Dog Demos box set by Psychofon Records and the eventual release of Metal, Meat, and Bone the following year.

This is probably the most incorrectly categorized items in the whole iceberg chart. I originally made this meme in 2020 when this incident was more in recent memory. I think nowadays I'd probably put this way deeper on the iceberg.

The true identities of The Residents

Status: True?

The Residents are a famously anonymous band.^{[citation needed]} And because the identities of The Residents are officially hidden, people become naturally curious about who they really are. It often feels like one of the big unsolved mysteries about The Residents is their identity... but it really isn't.

I won't be naming theme here, but it's not really a difficult thing to find. It's not much of a mystery. It does not keeps us up at night. If you really want to know who they are you can find it out yourself. It turns out there are so many other more interesting questions to ask about The Residents instead.

And so I put this in the surface level category as a bit of a nod to how surface-level this mystery is.

Layer 2: Epipelagic Zone (Sunlight Zone)

Mark of the Mole is Part 3 of the Mole Trilogy

Status: Plausible

In the first half of the 1980's The Residents released multiple albums in their Mole Trilogy series.^[5] The first album of this series was Mark of the Mole, released in 1981. This was followed by "Part 2" of the series, The Tunes of Two Cities in 1982. And a few years later, The Big Bubble was released as "Part 4" of the series. Parts 3, 5, and 6 of the "trilogy" were never finished.

However, Grandpa Gio has an interesting theory. He recognizes an interesting pattern in the lore of the Mole Trilogy. In The Tunes of Two Cities we are first introduced to the concept of the "Mohelmot" language found in the field recordings of Mole music (though The Big Bubble calls attention to this language for the first time). But the Chubs just speak plain old english in their recordings. This fact and the presence of Happy Home (which is hinted to be a song that's from an in-universe musical of some sorts) in the beginning of Mark of the Mole could point to the fact that Mark of the Mole is also an in-universe recording much like Tunes and Bubble. And specifically, a recording of some kind of stage production done by the Chub culture instead of the Mole culture.

If we then wanted to sort all the existing Mole Trilogy albums chronologically, the order would go:

2. The Tunes of Two Cities: The album consists of in-universe recordings of each culture's music before their integration.
3. Mark of the Mole: A story of the integration of Moles into Chub culture, told by the Chubs after it happened.
4. The Big Bubble: An in-universe album produced decades after the original conflict in Mark of the Mole

(This ordering would point to a lost Part 1 of the trilogy, perhaps under this reading this missing piece is the Moles' own lived experience and culture that has been erased by the Chubs?)

And so, under Grandpa Gio's theory, Mark of the Mole is Part 3 of the Mole Trilogy... though to be clear this is just some old guy's fun theory. Official sources all seem to point to the fact that The Residents consider Mark of the Mole Part 1 and that the "real" Part 3 was in development but was never finished.

The Commercial Album narrative theory

Status: Plausible

There is a fringe theory about The Commercial Album that I've seen in a few places. The theory goes that there's some kind of hidden narrative running through The Commercial Album's 40 tracks.

Believers will often point to tracks like Amber and Red Rider, which seem like they could be about the same character. If you keep trying to connect the tracks, you might end up with something feeling like a full narrative. Others may also think that The Commercial Album secretly foreshadows future Residents projects.

But it's likely this is all just coincidence. There are forty whole tracks in the base release of The Commercial Album and since they're all generally by the same authors it's pretty likely you're going to see some repeated themes. And in the case of "secret foreshadowing", the same principle applies.

The "official" concept behind The Commercial Album is a statement on the nature of popular commercial music.^[6] No official sources have backed up any other "narrative" theories on The Commercial Album, though you can feel free to have fun making your own narrative theory about the album.

The dead rabbit apparition

Status: Misleading

In Episode 40 of The Bunny Boy web series, Bunny talks about a strange dream he had involving a dead rabbit. It doesn't have much impact on the events of the story and this dream and its corresponding video is never brought up in the series again. There's nothing really significant to it.

I added this addition to the iceberg as a reference to the fake "Wario Apparition" that is mentioned in the original Super Mario 64 iceberg that inspired my iceberg. Technically it isn't incorrect to say that Bunny canonically sees an apparition of a dead rabbit, but there's no significant meaning to this event to warrant it getting a spot on this iceberg besides as a joke.

The Census Taker curse

Status: Fabricated

In 1985, The Residents released The Census Taker, one of their first film soundtracks ever released.^[7] The movie the soundtrack was for was not successful and while The Residents seem to like the soundtrack they put together they do not seem to be proud of the movie itself.

That is all the official history to this movie and its soundtrack. This entry on the iceberg is a joke entry which tries to hint that perhaps the movie wasn't doomed to fail but cursed in some way. As far as I can tell, it wasn't cursed, it just wasn't an amazing movie.^{[citation needed]}

The Foo Foo Heads

Status: True

In 1990, an educational album by the title of 2 Cool Songs For Kids was released.^[8] Side B includes Penn Jilette singing "Great Green Gobs of Greasy, Grimy Gopher Guts", but Side A includes a rap song called We Don't Talk To Strangers by a group known as The Foo Foo Heads. The interesting thing about this song is that it includes The Singing Resident rapping as a "creepy stranger". Seriously.

The Foo Foo Heads later appear on the album Goobers: A Collection Of Kids Songs. Their song on the album does not featuring The Singing Resident and otherwise does not particularly sound like The Residents. So it's unlikely that "The Foo Foo Heads" is some kids music alias for The Residents. Most likely the Foo Foo Heads had connections and just invited A Resident to play the part.

Goobers is a bit of an interesting album because it is a collaboration of many artists that had collaborated with The Residents or would go on to collaborate with them years later (Penn Jillette, Eric Drew Feldman, Joshua Raoul Brody, Steven Cerio, The Foo Foo Heads). However The Residents themselves are nowhere to be found unless they happen to be going under another alias. Were they involved with this album or is it all just coincidence? I can't find any additional info on it, so the full connection might just remain a mystery.

Layer 3: Mesopelagic Zone (Twilight Zone)

The American Composers Series was never cancelled

Status: Misleading

The American Composers Series of albums by The Residents consisted of 2 major releases: George & James in 1984 and Stars & Hank Forever in 1986. The series itself was originally supposed to continue until the year 2000 with tribute albums to various other important American artists.^[9] However, after those two albums the series was abandoned.

This entry refers to the fact that despite the specific aims of the American Composers Series being abandoned after these two albums, The Residents continued to do things similar to it years later. It's not hard to see Cube-E as a sort of spiritual successor of the series in the way it juxtaposes various styles of American music. If you play along with The Residents' game, one can even see Metal, Meat, & Bone as an extension of the series, by directly juxtaposing Dyin' Dog to The Residents.

Of course, officially the actual American Composers Series was cancelled and these future projects are sufficiently different enough to not really fit in with the real entries anyway. The songs of Cube-E are not generally written by a singular composer and Dyin' Dog isn't a real guy. Plus they don't have the amazing package design that both George & James and Stars & Hank have.^{[citation needed]}

The "poop in a lunch" incident

Status: True

... Here's another obscure one that probably should be way lower on the iceberg.

This entry refers to some kind of lost inside joke that occured on the Residents.com web chat. There exists a "Poop In A Lunch" Youtube Channel that hosts several videos of Big Brother, the former Residents.com webmaster... well, cartoonishly pooping in a lunch. I don't exactly recall how I stumbled across this but I believe a chat member who was there referenced it years later^{[citation needed]} and while scrubbing my mind for obscure Residents trivia I pooped this right onto the iceberg chart.

Many years later, Hardy Fox's official website listed "Big Brother" as one of his pseudonyms.^[10] I did not know this when I would occasionally chat with him back in the day.

The Gingerbread Man Debug Functionality

Status: True

In 1994, The Residents released The Gingerbread Man as a hybrid CD. You could play the album in a standard CD player, but if you put the CD in your computer, you could play with an interactive piece of software that visualized the album.^[11] It's not really a full on game like Bad Day on the Midway, but it's put together with the same basic tech as the other Residents interactive CD-ROM projects.

I dove into some of the game's weird keyboard input behavior in a blog post, and while digging I found remnants of some possible debug functionality in the data of the game. Specifically the \ (backslash) and | (vertical bar) keys were mapped to output the amount of free memory in kilobytes and output the number of active objects in the current scene respectively. In addition, inputting an uppercase F, M, or S would set the "random event speed" in the game to "fast", "medium", or "slow" respectively.

As of the writing of this article I still have not tested if this is behavior remains in the release version of the game, but the text data I found (which is not actually fully executable game code) is present in the CD. I intend to revise that blog post and dive in deeper in the not-too-distant future though!

The dreams album

Status: Plausible

In Grandpa Gio's review of Residue of The Residents he theorizes that multiple tracks from the compilation album might have belonged to an abandoned album about dreams. This theory develops further in his writeup on The White Single where he claims that the "unreleased" Safety is a Cootie Wootie must have also originated from this dreams project.

It's a somewhat compelling idea since multiple songs do share a theme on dreams, but as far as I can tell The Residents themselves have never mentioned an abandoned dreams album. It's more likely that The Residents just find the concept of dreams to be inherently fascinating. The first full Residents project to be fully thematically dedicated to dreams was the In Between Dreams tour from 2019.

The Randyland syncronizations

Status: Fabricated... until it later became a Real Shitpost™

This item was another joke entry designed to imply that there was some hidden thing that the web series Randyland was secretly syncronized to. It was based on similar conspiracy theories like The Dark Side of the Rainbow. That's about it. Just a slightly ominous sounding phrase about Randy Rose's vlog series.

This iceberg chart was made in June of 2020. In July of 2020, the Home Age Conversations podcast uploaded a video titled Every Randyland episode playing at the same time, but each "Hey Everybody" is synced up which is... well exactly what it says on the tin. While it might seem like this item was supposed to be a reference to that video, it's actually just a coincidence and my previous explanation is the reason why this item got on the iceberg. Even if I am the one behind both shitposts, it's really just a funny coincidence.

Layer 4: Bathypelagic Zone (Midnight Zone)

Freak Show VHS Oddities

Status: Mixed

In the 1990s, the album Freak Show got several adaptations. Among these was the Freak Show CD-ROM game. The game was pretty popular, but one interesting footnote about this game's release is that it also had a "video tape tour" version for fans who didn't have computers but wanted to experience the game.^[12]

This VHS release is pretty obscure and as far as I know has never been digitized and archived online. I included this on the iceberg to reference this obscure piece of trivia, but I also added some misinformation with it: the suggestion that there are mysterious "oddities" present on the VHS tape that may not be in the normal CD-ROM release.

Practically speaking, the VHS tape is probably just a silent playthrough of the commercial release of the game. But I've never actually seen the tape so for all I know it could be commentated or be a recording of a pre-release or development build of the game. That's the fun of gaps in digital preservation... your imagination gets to go wild! Someone please digitize this so we can see how boring it actually is.

Fake Randy and Tyrone

Status: True

Beginning in the 2010s with the Talking Light shows, the anonymous singer for The Residents finally revealed his identity to be Randy Rose. This was just another character by The Residents but it was the first time that individual band members had character beyond "he has a skull for a head instead of an eyeball".

In a video interview during the Shadowland shows, Randy is present in the background while a Cryptic Corporation representative is being interviewed. But Randy looks... wrong in some way and doesn't talk at all which is unusually out of character for him.

On October 31st, 2018, The Residents did a short instrumental set at the City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco to promote the release of The Brickeaters.^[13] It features an appearance by Tyrone, the pseudonym for The Residents' singer during the In Between Dreams shows but Tyrone's appearance during this show was similarly uncanny and silent like the previous Randy appearance.

Both of these incidents seem to be occurences of stand-ins playing the part of The Residents' singer. But I wonder what both of these situations have in common that would require something like that to occur. I simply can't think of a reason why.^{[citation needed]}

By the way, here are some pictures sourced from Facebook of the event, which seem to be the only lasting images of "Fake Tyrone"

• Picture 1
• Picture 2
• Picture 3

pREServed Edition Censorship

Status: Fabricated

In 2018 a series of album re-issues began called the pREServed series. These are remastered versions of the old albums packed with extra bonus tracks and and retrospective liner notes and previously unreleased goodies. Plus for some projects that are otherwise out of print, it's an easy way to get your hands on a copy! This isn't an advertisement... I'm just a fan of these rereleases!

The idea that these re-issues are censored is mostly just a fake joke for this iceberg chart. Specifically a reference to a similar joke entry the Super Mario 64 iceberg chart that states "the decompilation [of Super Mario 64] is censored". This was one of my favorite lines from that iceberg chart because it's such an ominous idea: what if our modern source of understanding for how Super Mario 64 works has actually been altered somehow? The Residents equivalent to this would of course be the idea that the pREServed editions are somehow altered to protect us from... something

The packaging of the pREServed release of The Third Reich 'n Roll actually is censored to remove visible nazi imagery so that it can be sold in parts of Europe with no issues, but as far as I can tell, no contents of any release have ever been altered. I think.^{[citation needed]}

Greener Postures is Part 1 of the Mole Trilogy

Status: Misleading

If you believe in the previous fringe theory that Mark of the Mole is Part 3 of the Mole trilogy, you might wonder what might Part 1 of the trilogy would be. It might seem like a futile search since... well there really aren't any other albums that identify as pieces of the Mole Trilogy. But that didn't stop Grandpa Gio for searching for hidden parts in his article on Intermission. He entertains the idea that perhaps a past album could be secretly part of the trilogy, but concludes that none of the past Residents albums fit the bill so Part 3 is still forthcoming.

But perhaps we can go a bit deeper if we widen our search parameters a little bit. Why limit ourselves to albums by The Residents? This line of thinking has brought me to a wacky theory about Snakefinger's 1980 album Greener Postures.

The final track on the album is titled "The Picture Makers Vs. Children Of The Sea" and even features The Singing Resident on it. The song is about a conflict between two groups of people. The "Picture Makers", the antagonists from Snakefinger's perspective, are described as "living in holes like subterranean moles". Snakefinger heavily implies that the "Picture Makers" have slipped their way into society and it's up to "The Children of the Sea" to resist them. Hm... now where have I heard a story about mole-like people going towards the sea to integrate into another society before?

And because the song's similarity to the Mole Trilogy has always stood out to me, I added a line about Greener Postures possibly being Part 1 onto the iceberg. For the record, I don't actually believe a random Snakefinger album or even this single song is part of the Mole Trilogy. But I do seriously wonder if The Picture Makers Vs. Children Of The Sea was perhaps some kind of prototype for what would become The Mole Trilogy.

Homer Flynn is not real

Status: Fabricated

The Residents have used characters throughout their career and sometimes the lines get fuzzy about whether someone is a character or a real person. Was N Senada a real guy? What about Uncle Willie? Grandpa Gio? Some people are even further skeptical about anyone who's associated with The Residents.

The logical conclusion to all of this is The Residents' own managers. Is Homer Flynn a real guy or just a character played by The Residents? Isn't it suspicious how Homer Flynn and Hardy Fox had the same initials? Hm...

Of course, obviously Homer Flynn is a real guy.^{[citation needed]} I think. Okay I'm like 99% sure he's real and this is just a silly shitpost theory.

The Flintmole Album

Status: Mixed

During the heyday of The Mole Trilogy, an officially endorsed (but not canonical) comic series known as "The Comix of Two Cities" was released. In these comix, "Flintmole" is a Mole musician character signed with a record label.

A printed sleeve of one of Flintmole's in-universe sleeves was produced in some quantity, in theory allowing fans to pretend to own the fictitious album. This sleeve was available for purchase from the Ralph Records catalog.^[14]

Another fan site mentions this as relating to an abandoned project, implying that the the Flintmole album was actually supposed to exist. I believe this was the info I was going on when making this iceberg, though I'm inclined to believe the empty sleeve story instead.

The Animal Lover Prototypes

Status: True?

In 2005, The Residents released Animal Lover. However, it was actually in development for quite a while before then.

According to a source of mine, the initial compositions that would eventual become Animal Lover were made in the early to mid 1990's and were slowly changed over the next decade until they became Animal Lover.

This source also stated that at least a year prior to the release of Animal Lover, Hardy Fox had claimed it was his favorite Residents album.

... Of course, until Animal Lover (Evolution Edition) comes out you can't fully verify this one, so... you'll just have to take my word on it.

Layer 5: Abyssal Zone

Eskimo opera ghosts

Status: Fabricated

In the early 1990's, The Residents proposed an opera performance of their 1979 album Eskimo.^[15] It was never fully produced, but The Residents have released some of the concept materials over the years. This entry in the iceberg chart was written to suggest there was some kind of supernatural incident that prevented the opera from being produced. This is completely fabricated, as it appears that the 1990's Eskimo opera was canceled before any ghosts could haunt the production.^{[citation needed]}

The Residents finally produced a live version of Eskimo in 2025. While the 2026 tour seems like it will be haunted by the ghost of generative AI videos^[AI] it is unlikely any real ghosts will haunt these performances.

Upstart Remus & Civility

Status: Delusional

Unlike some of the thematically grandiose albums produced later in their careers, 1978's Not Available feels like a deeply personal album from The Residents. This can lead to a variety of different interpretations from fans, though most fans come to a similar conclusion: Not Available is probably an album about interpersonal relationships. The characters are probably stand-ins for The Residents or people close to them going through whatever relationship drama they were going through at the time. Most people have gone through something similar and can see a part of themselves in this album to some degree.

There is at least one fan theory I've read that diverges from the general consensus. And this is the late CheerfulHypocrite's analysis on The Talk of Creature Forums. They start off their analysis with this note to set the mood:

Discovering the true and original work requires a certain amount of delusion and a definite commitment to doing hard work. Which is to say, not all of this is true but the true bits are.

The crux of their analysis is that The Residents utilized N. Senada's Theory of Phonetic Organization heavily while composing the album. And that includes the actual text of the album itself; CheerfulHypocrite argues that there are "original" lyrics to the album that have been mutated into the final lyrics that non-delusional listeners hear. The analysis is mainly based on these "original" lyrics of Not Available.

Under this theory, the character "Civility" sings the opening lyrics to Not Available, which then became "Chorus" in the final version. Another character in the original lyrics is "Upstart Remus", who is named "Uncle Remus" in the final version.

While I don't really believe most of this analysis, it's always stuck with me. So I made a reference to it in this iceberg and put it in the deepest depths. While you have to be pretty delusional to believe the theory, I have to admit that I do love some of the ideas presented here.

Perhaps the real point of the analysis is that meaning behind Not Available is truly never going to be fully available to us. And trying to find it is a delusional pursuit that will end in nonsense. So I have to commend this analysis for being a clever way to point that out.

... Actually if you check out CheerfulHypocrite's other posts it turns out they were just always like that. Never mind.

The EBF Apparition

Status: Mixed

This entry is a reference to Hardy Fox's The Stone. The main character of the story, Charles Bobuck, encounters something called EBF multiple times throughout the story. It's never fully explained what this means or what this is a reference to. (My theory? It stands for Eye Ball Fucker. Okay that's probably wrong.)

While in the story EBF is not really an apparition (it seems to ultimately be a place... maybe), I worded this entry as another reference to "Wario Apparition" that is mentioned in the original Super Mario 64 iceberg.

The Babyfingers Hoodie Curse

Status: Mixed

In 2005, The Residents released a hoodie with the Babyfingers album art printed on the front.^[16] An anonymous source mentioned once that they were the one who suggested the idea of this hoodie while working at Ralph America... and that it became one of the worst selling pieces of Residents merch of all time.

While I can verify that the hoodie did exist, I cannot verify the sales numbers for it. However, judging by the fact that I can't many real pictures of it besides the pre-sale mockup, I have to believe it didn't sell particularly well compared to other pieces of merch. In the iceberg entry, I imply that this was the result of a curse but as far as I can tell it's probably due to the relative obscurity of Babyfingers and the seasonal nature of a hoodie compared to normal T-shirts.

I was sent this photo of it being worn by a real person, confirming it did actually exist beyond the mockup.

Wuzzy Time

Status: True

In 2019, the Home Age Conversations podcast released a 2-part episode on Intruders, the newest studio album by The Residents at the time of recording. Almost all of the previous episodes that were recorded (Eskimo, Gingerbread Man, and River of Crime) had some form of official instrumental release that could be used as a background track for the podcast episode. ...But Intruders did not have an official instrumental release they could use as a backing track.

Fortunately, this podcast was produced with The Cryptic Corporation's permission and they helped in some small ways with the show. A request was made for potential Intruders instrumental mixes for the episode, and Cryptic obliged, sending over a series of files that could be used for the episode.

These files were not just instrumental mixes of Intruders tracks. They were some of the original demos. The track name that's always stuck around in my mind for some reason was called "WuzzyTime2.mp3", which seems to be a demo for what would become The Scarecrow in Intruders. The file is dated from 2012.

While assembling this iceberg, I couldn't resist throwing in a juicy reference to some real insider information that no one else would get. I'm spilling the beans here... though you'll have to wait until the release of Intruders pREServed Edition to verify this for yourself.

The Single Bob Hypothesis

Status: Plausible

In the 2010's, The Residents were in their Randy, Chuck, & Bob era, taking up the identities of named band members^[16]. Randy and Chuck were the main characters of the stories told during this time, with Randy taking center stage during the live shows and web video series. Chuck's stories were told through liner notes on his instrumental album releases and other pieces of text content on his site. Through this content you discover the personal lives of The Residents... even if it seems like they're living in completely separate worlds. I love it!

But... what about the other member of the band, Lionel Bob (aka "Bob")? Not much is actually known about him, but I remember some theories from back in the day that tried to link Bob to the rest of The Residents' history. And so, the "Single Bob Hypothesis" I mention in this iceberg is the theory that the Bob mentioned in the Tongue story of Demons Dance Alone is the same Bob of the Randy, Chuck & Bob trilogy.

In fact Big Brother, former webmaster of the Residents website, actually mentions this in his opinion piece on The Talking Light from 2010.

What about the actors in this subtle drama? Bob, we know. He has appeared before in Demons Dance Alone as he tells the story of "Tongue." Bob is quiet, internal.^[16]

Actually wait... Big Brother was confirmed to be a pseudonym of Hardy Fox. So is the Single Bob Hypothesis actually canon?! ...Probably not.

By the way, I kind of based the name "Single Bob Hypothesis" on the fringe "single electron hypothesis". The Bob one is probably more likely to be true than the electron one.^{[citation needed]}

Voice of Midnight Shared Nightmares

Status: Fabricated

In 2007, The Residents released The Voice of Midnight, a musical audio drama retelling of Der Sandmann.^[17] This release isn't exactly a fan favorite, though it has been reported that some people actually do like this album.^{[citation needed]}

Due to the dark and dreamy nature of the album along with its lukewarm fan reception, I thought an entry suggesting that people had nightmares from this album would be properly ominous for the bottom of the iceberg. As far as I know, no one has reported any nightmares caused by this album.

The Residents are not real

Status: Fabricated... I think

If you can believe in the theory that Homer Flynn is not real, then it's not too much of a stretch to bring this line of thinking to its logical conclusion. The Residents themselves are not real.

This could mean a lot of things. Are all these albums done by completely different people, and The Residents is just a name for that concept? Are "The Residents" just a fictional band and the snippets we've gotten are just as real as The Big Bubble? Did you just hallucinate all of this?

As far as I can tell, The Residents are in fact a real group,^{[citation needed]} though I sure would feel like an idiot if all of this turned out to be one big prank.

Every copy of The Commercial Album is personalized

Status: Fabricated

The final line of the Super Mario 64 iceberg simply reads Every copy of Mario 64 is personalized. The creepy implication here is that the Super Mario 64 that you experienced is, in some way, different from the version that everyone else experienced. Those iconic levels you played? No one even knows what you're talking about. Don't remember the Wario apparition? It must not have shown up in your personalized copy. It is the perfect ominous line to cap off the chart and also acts to cover some of the "plot holes" of other entries.

In the context of Super Mario 64, I think this especially works because to some degree there actually are a bunch of different versions of the game out. There's the original Japanese release, the international versions, the "shindou" release, the Nintendo DS version that has a bunch of exclusive content, and the many different emulated rereleases on the Wii, Wii U, Nintendo Switch, and more that all have special quirks to them. And not to mention the quirks of PC emulators, the versions based on the decompilation, and things like ROM hacks. So your experience of the game isn't always going to 100% match what you find in random gameplay videos on Youtube.

Anyways, I had to make a reference to this iconic line in my iceberg, and The Commercial Album felt like the perfect choice. Since the album (probably) doesn't have an interconnected narrative, it's easy to imagine a "personalized" version of the album with slightly different tracks. And just like Mario 64, the album has also had a series of re-releases that have their own quirks. You have the original 40 tracks from the initial release of the album, but also The Commercial Single, the Residue versions of songs, the CD rereleases with bonus tracks included, the Commercial DVD, and the pREServed edition. Keeping track of which track is "canonically" part of The Commercial Album proper can get pretty confusing.

As far as I can tell, everyone's copy of The Commercial Album generally comes with the same 40 base tracks. However, there does exist a tiny bit of truth to this entry. The liner notes of some releases of the album recommend that the album is "terrific in shuffle play".^[18] If you own a copy of The Commercial Album in a digital format (CD, MP3, Streaming), you can enable shuffle play in your media player and the 40+ tracks of whichever version you're listening to will be shuffled in a random order. Much like with a deck of cards, the amount of possible permutations of this many items is a monstrously big number. So big that it's basically a statistical certainty that when you listen to The Commercial Album on shuffle you are listening to the songs in an order that no one else has hear before and that no one will hear again. Just for you.

Conclusion

Looks like you've made it to the bottom! Thanks for checking out this exploration of a silly meme I made years ago. I've been wanting to "spill the beans" on some of the info in this iceberg for a while, and I'm glad I finally got to sit down and write all of this up! It's oddly fun to dive through both real and fake Residents trivia and I found it amusing how often I had to do research even on the completely fabricated entries just to explain the small kernel of truth that they were based on.

Stay tuned for more articles on this part of my site eventually! I really want to compile more of the things I want to say about The Residents here, though it takes a long time to write all of this stuff up. I originally started writing this article in November of 2025, shortly after I wrote my Kid Pilot article, though I got busy with life and then just slacked off for a good while afterwards.

I'd like to thank some folks who helped make this article possible, as I couldn't do it alone. A huge special thanks to:

• Suricrasia Online for CSS inspiration
• Sparky
• RZWiki (formerly Meet The Residents Wiki)
• CheerfulHypocrite (RIP)
• Home Age Conversations podcast
• EBF
• Big Brother
• goatie
• The Cryptic Corporation
• Grandpa Gio
• CX

Thanks for reading!

- Natalie