The Genius of 'The Milkman Conspiracy' (Psychonauts) 

If you liked this video then I wanted to let you know that I just posted another Psychonauts video looking at Black Velvetopia that you should definitely check it out! Link is here: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-IFdtJFRGUTU.html

Fun fact : if you cheat confusion grenades into the game early, using them on Boyd while he's rambling causes him to actually become lucid enough to figure out his exact mental issues before relapsing back into the insanity.

Despite what happened to Boyd, I actually respect him for one detail: Before the Milkman himself arrives, the G-Men and the Censors are clearly winning against the Rainbow Squirts. Which means he put up a good fight for his free will.

I really enjoy the fact that Psychonauts never makes fun of mental disorders or uses them for comedy or shock. All of the characters are just people who experienced trauma or happened to experience mental health issues. Plus it’s established that fixing these issues is difficult and nuanced. Raz gives the patients serious help in overcoming major obstacles, but it’s established that no one is just ‘cured’ one and done. The patients are now just able to care for themselves enough to move forward. You see this in Sasha and Milla’s minds as well. Sasha is healthy, but still has issues with repression. Milla has remaining trauma, but is coping with it in a healthy way. I think the main message of the game is that everyone has issues and empathy is important.

You forget that you can’t leave until *he* gives you the clairvoyance badge, which says even more.Basically you’d be stuck in the stable part of his mind listening to his ramblings until he allows you to see the rest of his mind which is pretty impressive

Fun fact: one of the things he says when you stick around in his house is "the truth is sleeping in a glass box" which I'm pretty sure is referring to the milk man

Something that I feel is important to note is that Boyd’s figments (those different colored line drawing Raz collects) are all of normal things and normal people. Children, roof antennas, barbecues, etc. Other figments of imagination you collect are generally stuff like dancers in Milla’s mind and stuff like that. But Boyd is so delusional that anything normal isn’t real to him, normal stuff isn’t real to him, everything and everyone isn’t normal to him and are instead agents working for who knows what

I love all the obvious secret agents acting as if they were common people, their quotes are the best xD the ones of the crew worker and the gardener: "Hello, fellow road crew worker. Welcome to the road crew." "My good landscaping adds to the property value of the entire neighborhood." But how to forget the one faking to be a housewife: "When my husband drinks excessively, I may threaten him with this rolling pin, although we are still very much in love." They did awesome with this level xD so much good humor.

its a cool detail that boyd doesnt have censors because he just doesnt filter any thoughts or ideas that come to his mind

Boyd's mind is a perfect representation of schizophrenia and paranoia. The twists and turns portray how warped his view on reality actually is.

I feel bad for Boyd tbh. He got fired from his job, went to an asylum, got hypnotized, and then lost all his free will because Raz couldn’t just climb the gate.

The Milkman is one of the strongest characters in fiction

"If a counselor imposes their will on a client or is incredibly unethical or manipulative in their practice it could do some lasting damage" I couldn't help but smile thinking about your videos on P5R

Ok, hearing this, if you really think about it, this perfectly fits the progression of how Raz interacts with the mindscapes; back in Sasha Nein's mind, Raz was reckless and messed things up twice, thus teaching him to be more cautious in the future. Here we see him searching for the Milkman because that will allow him to enter the asylum and rescue Lilly, his current goal, and not considering the consequences, even if he's seen the memory vault showing that Oleander has messed with Boyd's mind. And what happens after this level? Raz meets three other people dealing with mental issues, and this time he helps them overcome their mental issues, with the key being that, in the end, they're the ones who overcome them; Fred regains his confidence and starts helping Raz win the game, Jasper Rolls is ignored to the point he shrinks into insignificance, and Edgar chooses to let go of his past instead of obsessing over it

The Design of the quests is also really fantastic you have to walk such a convoluded path to progress showing how Boyd struggles with making his hundreds of conspiricy theorys fit into one unified worldview

The part where I felt like “oh wait this is what he has to deal with” was effectively like the ice bucket challenge. It’s when you have to put in the code to get to the mail room, then all of the things watching you (the mail boxes) creep in and you can see it but the whole keypad doesn’t feel like it’s quick enough. And that sense of “what are they going to do if they get me” for one second really set it into perspective what he feels literally every second. I know this is a bit deep for a game about what’s effectively a man wanting to be a brain tank but even then it’s cleverly done and I can’t wait for the 2nd game.

One of my favorite childhood games getting love but this brings up a question that's always confused me as a psychonaut you light things on fire with your mind, shoot lasers, go invisible, but what's your biggest obstacle? A metal gate

His milk is delicious, after all

Since you mentioned how unethical it is for a mental health professional imposing their will on their patients, I'm interested in you taking a look at Alice: Madness Returns. That game shows the horrors someone like that can do, without the cartoony aesthetic of something like Psychonauts to lighten the blow.

Dude I was actually super sad after finishing The Milkman Conspiracy. I really hoped Boyd would have been saved by the end of the game and, thankfully, he seems okay at the very end of the game.

Question why is the milkman not a MEME yet?

It seems, to me at least, like Boyd's conspiracy theories when you stay idle in his home are actually randomly generated. Something along the lines of "They obviously... (uh)... [verb] [object of importance]... (uh)... [reason for action]"

I just found I am the milk man my milk is delicious and confused I fell in this rabbit hole

I guess this is one of the things that people didn't quite get about the levels in the minds of the patients in Thorny Towers. Raz didn't fix any of them, and I think that's one of the key parts in how these levels work. Being able to go back into their minds and seeing that their mental landscape is very much the same helps us see that they still need to work on their mental health, despite everything that Raz did

Beautifully spoken and well explained. Psychonauts is a really brilliant game that doesn't get nearly as much attention as it should. Also, just curious, but all the jobs the G-Men are doing. . . . Do you think these could possibly be jobs which Boyd had been employed to in the past. His first mental reel is titled, "Boyd: Fired Again!" This suggests that he may have a history of losing jobs, and these little details - the stop sign, the plunger, the telephone - could be hints to his past.

The artistic direction in this level is amazing. It would have been very easy for the designers to get way off track and throw in a UFO or Bigfoot or other things within conspiracy culture isn’t actually conspiracy. This level gets Cold War Paranoia so right.

I hope you enjoyed the video but I need to know, what do you think about the Milkman Conspiracy?! And would you like to see me make videos like this one about the other levels in Psychonauts?

Can I just say that I love him at the end of this whole section, where after blowing up the asylum, the milkman goes away, and the first thing he says to the other people with him, in the cheeriest of voices... "Anybody wanna split a cab?! :D"

I like how you described a lot of Boyd's psychosis and in the end stated that it was presented in a good, not insulting way. I nodded a lot with your definitions of psychosis because I, too, am suffering from the same mental disorder. And lots of the things that you mentioned are very true. I see constant hallucinations, both audible and visual, have a paranoia of being watched, and constant fear of being hurt. It's not a fun time and it's lead to some very poor circumstances in my life. But, thankfully I've started to get medicine last year and just started going to therapy these last few weeks. I'm glad that people like you are talking about this mental disorder and explaining that it doesn't make us monsters. Just people who were hurt and need the right guidance to be better.

Ah I remember playing this level for the first time. Great analysis!

Actually, Boyd wasn't the guard either. He was a patient. Perhaps letting him activate the milkman and go through with the explosion set him free of the hypnosis of the coach.

"if a counselor imposes their will on a client or is incredibly unethical or manipulative in their practice it could do some lasting damage that could have some lasting ramifications on whomever they're working with" Totally not passively aggressively going after a particular counselor from the persona series!/s (not saying his name cause spoilers!)

I also like how in the little cutscenes when you respawn after death or something like this (i didn't play this game in a while, can't recall exact details) Raz get owerwhelmed by questions about why he was doing what he's doing. "Why did you hit the girl?", "where did you get the stop sign?" and so on. It adds up to the feeling of being watched so much.

Any Psychonauts analysis immediately has my attention. 👀

Fun fact: The reason there's ashtrays in Boyd's home is because nicotine addiction is a symptom of a variety of mental disorders, such as anxiety, depression, and...schizophrenia. While I'm not assuming Boyd has schizophrenia, it's a neat little placement due to the symptoms Boyd is experiencing that line up with some symptoms of schizophrenia.

Having just finished the original game and didn't completely understand the complexity of Boyd's mind, watching your video has helped me a lot, first of all to better appreciate Psychonauts for what it does, but also educated me a little on mental health which is a very important subject to me. Thank you so much for your video, it really means a lot !

It's worth noting that by traveling through the Collective Unconscious, it's possible to access Boyd's mind after he's (apparently) come out to shake this Milkman persona.

This was a really interesting video! Out of all the minds in this game this one stuck with me the most. It was so different from all the other ones and I loved how the story wasn't told directly to you, but rather you got glimpses of what was actually going on and it was told through the design and gameplay. You did a great job digging into and analysing it! Funny how I subscribed for your Persona videos and got pleasantly surprised to see you talk about another one of my favorite games :)

Things I learned from this: 1. He is the milkman 2. His milk is delicious

This video is always in the related section of one specific "Psychonauts out of context" video and I keep coming back to it, so it always gives me an excuse to watch this again.

This level has stuck out in my mind ever since I played it. The genius of this cannot be properly expressed in words.

I did NOT expect such a considered analysis when I decieded go surfing around for Psychonauts vids today. Excellent stuff, well done!

This kinda rewind me about Persona 5's Palaces. I'm interested now

Man I loved this game so much, this was such an awesome game, loved how many seriously dangerous mental issues they tackle since the beginning all without being an obvious exposition. Tanks for your take on this level and explaining what was actually happening mental health wise. Would really love to see a video of you talking about Milla's level, specially the room where her "nightmare" is with all the children. I know this level may seem a bit simple but it really hit home for me, I completely lost it in this level an was my favorite mind. And of course a video on levels when psychonauts 2 comes out. Great video m8!

I just started playing this game for the first time and have to say I 100% agree with you. This level is fantastic. You pointed out some amazing stuff that I didn't even think of. Great video!

Why not cover the rest of the patients at the Asylum? They deserve attention as well.

Interesting theory though I have one of my own. The milkman wasn't a hallucination implanted by Oleander, but the other half of Boyd's split personality which Oleander tried to subconsciously weaponize. Boyd knew something is wrong but wasn't entirely aware of his condition, probably blacking out when his more violent side takes over from provocation, and when reverting to his old self only to find he's suddenly and arbitrarily in trouble; that would give him the impression even those who are supposed to be acting in his best interest are against him, sparking the paranoia that everyone is out to get him. I think Oleander used this not as a fail-safe to destroy the insane-asylum, but to kill the other psychonauts who would be poking around, and at the time of the hypnotism Razz hadn't entered the camp yet, hence why he was ignored by Boyd since Oleander didn't know about him at the time. However the hypnotism backfired and stabilized his mental fracture by suppressing the pyromaniac milkman personality, until Razz interfered getting him stuck in an argument with himself; but due to Razz's meddling he didn't blackout during the personality switch, and after the milkman set fire to the asylum, Boyd came to peace with himself realizing what his problem was and let go of his misconceptions, still a troubled man but finally on the road to recovery. The vacant room of webs where the milkman was contained is what I suspect was in his subconscious, for who can explore everything of their own mind? As for the censors, Sasha mentioned early on that insanity and other psychosis tend to make them attack the characters of one's own mind, which could explain why Boyd's mind is so empty except for the paranoid thoughts.

“I work on the road crew. This is my stop sign.”

I always wondered if Boyd hesitating to throw the molotov to destroy the asylum was just a hail mary for the sake of comedy, or if he was on purpose supposed to hold off until he heard a trigger phrase like Fred accidentally says: "let's blow this popsicle stand"...

Brilliant analysis! I have a much deeper appreciate for the thoughtfulness and intentions behind Byod's level

So glad this video came into my recommendations! I hope you do more Psychonaut videos cause this is super interesting!! Keep up the good work ❤️

Excellent video! I always thought this was the best level in the game when it comes to represent a mental illness, this game is just incredible with the metaphors and I love it!

Such a good review! Was really interesting to listen to your thoughts, it's indeed one of the best designed game levels and literally whole game is a masterpiece, no doubts :D

You're the reason I started playing Pyschonauts. Thank you

When I finished The Milkman Conspiracy, the first thing I did was go back into his mind. With the state we left him in, I figured we weren’t finished.

This was really well done! Thank you for teaching me!

I am very glad to have found this video. It's very good and makes me respect this game anymore, after playing it recently. New sub!

I am so hyped for Psychonauts 2, it releases august and it is the one game I have actually ever felt this amount of hype. I learned about lucid dreaming from psychonauts. Lucid dreaming is the most fun thing to do in your sleep (and psychonauts is a good representation of what you get from lucid dreams.) When you dream you are put into your own reality, things will act and feel exactly how you expect them to. when you lucid dream, you can abuse this to some psyconauting within your own mind. (safely of course). For anybody who is also a fan of psychonauts, but is disappointed that they don't get to go to some psychic camp or whatnot, try lucid dreaming! Full sandbox, accessibly localized in your own mind!

What i like is the fact that it encapsulstes well that while it doesn't make sense looking in Going inside the mind allows you to see things more from his perspective as it makes sense in his mind

OMG that level. That level is my favorite part of the whole game. It is so batshit I love it.

Just played this level the other day for the first time, it's interesting to see a mental health professional's take on it.

saw the title and immediately clicked, psychonauts is a masterpiece

Something interesting to note that both the Den Mother's house and the island where the Memory Vault detailing his manipulation by Coach Oleander are isolated from the main streets and connected only by telephone wires, which Boyd's conspiracy obsession does not let him use as he would deem them unsafe or untrustworthy.

I always thought of Boyd as representing people that are, for lack of a better word, 'born' with at least a heightened chance of mental illness. They can life a normal average or even successful life but a single hardship can cause a spiral. It's just a big switch in their brains waiting to be flipped and things that most people just get sad about for a bit before moving on can be the beginning of the end for others.

I've been dealing with psychosis and paranoia for a couple months now it's gotten so bad I finally went to a doctor and was prescribed medication. I'm so grateful to this game for giving me something to cope with while also seeing and getting a better understanding of my symptoms in a form that I'm familiar with which is video games. I think all of my neighbors are watching me and two of them ride their mower really close to my house, I think to get a better look inside. the neighbor across the field from my back window that i refer to as simply, "white house," will do a form of snoop patrols and walk around his property pretending to pick up sticks while occasionally looking back. The neighbor next to him that I refer to as, "Tan house," likes to do another form of snoop patrols where he walks around his property but conveniently stops at the corner of his house and stares at my window with his hands on his hips. The other neighbor directly across the street just sits on her porch and will stare into my soul as I take the garbage cans to the curb. This is day three of medication and I think the anxiety is alleviating. But yes double fine and tim schafer did an excellent job at portraying the paranoid mental gymnastics psychotics and schizophrenics can play on ourselves. I really don't think it's just paranoia though I'm not imagining it when I see them stop and stare. I'm trying to rationalize that they're just nosey but maybe they all know each other and I'm dealing with some coordinated psychological torment and they know what they're doing and get a power kick out of having an affect over someone's life and mental health/ the synchronized numbers are another issue altogether I can't honestly say I know it's nonsense. What are the odds I keep seeing repeating synchronized numbers ie "444, 1111, 1144, 555, 414, 515, etc" i could look at the clock at anytime but I happen to look at these exact times without even really thinking about it prior to glancing. I'll probably be laughed at but I know how helpful it is for others going through similar situations to hear other's stories because we don't all share the same minds or thoughts. one's own paranoia can seem silly enough to another paranoid type that it brings them down for a bit but then again it can also add to it so I hope that's not the case I'm sure most of it's in my head and I can come back to reality soon or if it's true then at best maybe just become apathetic and numb to everything I mentioned /end rambling

To me this is the most memorable level in the entire game

The thing that got me was the music in the level

As soon as I looked upon the lamp I knew that it had to be a fledgling mason trying to do his masters proud

What I always found interesting about the Milkman Conspiracy were the figments. In fact, all the figments are interesting in one form or another but let's keep with Boyd for now. The figments of Boyd's imagination are just normal things: people going on jogs, kids playing, men in robes getting the morning paper. To Boyd, these are all can't be real since he thinks everything is in on the conspiracy. What we see as picturesque 1960s suburbia, he doesn't believe is real. However, there are figments of birds with cameras, if you use cheats to get the confusion grenade, Boyd becomes sane for a brief moment. I believe these figments is Boyd sane part of his mind trying to tell him the conspiracy isn't real and a figment of his imagination.

In Psychonauts 2, they actually address Raz running around other people's minds and messing things up.

They always ask "Who is the milkman?" But they never ask "How is the milkman?"

Loved this video!

I'm actually kind of surprise to see you have not done a video on Hollis' Hot Streak after seeing this one! I think hers is a really good follow up with regards to accidentally causing harm when going through someone's mind.

God:ima visit the world again lets see WHAT THE FU- Milk man: *wakes up like a fucking god* i am the milkman my milk is delicious

So, I commented on this video when it came out a year ago. And I wanted to comment again, because your video was so good, I never stoped hoping I could play this game one day. It happened. I recently bought it, and I'm playing. I've gone through the milkan level today. And I'm litterally crying as I'm writing this comment because I've just ended the level of Gloria and it was... psychologically rough for me x). But I'm happy, I am very happy to play this game, and wanted to thank you, because without your video, I would've never discover it. I will soon be able to watch your video on Black Velvetopia. I was waiting for the game to watch it.

we may not be able to jump into someone's mind but you have to admit that would make fixing things so much easier

Your video needs more views, it's good! Keep it up brother 🙂

This game changed my life. It was gifted to me as a joke and I played it so many times over. I looooved the lungfishopilis level. 👌

He is *the milkman* His milk *is delicious*

I was always so curious about qho the milk man was i only ever saw him as a meme till i noticed the psychonaut in the background, definitely a well put together level that most games dont have anymore

I would love to see you do a full analysis of this game

I am very excited to see Raz leaning this consequence better in the 2nd game!

This was amazing! Do you think you can talk about the other patients at the hospital?

He’s not the bad guy, he’s the sad guy

I know im 2 years late, but it should be noted that Whispering Rock’s campgrounds are built on an enormous chunk of psitanium. Its written in the wiki that psitanium enhances psychic powers, but worsens the symptoms of mental illnesses and disorders. So Boyd’s horrific mental issues are definitely in part due to brain damage caused by psitanium and not entirely due to his mental breakdown that put him in Thorny Towers (though that is a huge factor). Also, in an old (and questionably canon) backstory document, it explains more of his background and why he was sent to Thorny Towers in the first place: when he was a security guard, he started to regularly detain shoppers and interrogate them about their involvement in his conspiracy theories, which led to multiple lawsuits. Boyd saw his firing as validation of his theories, and so he burned the store down. When he went on trial he chose to represent himself instead of getting a lawyer (of course), and instead of actually defending himself he spouted his theories on why/how everyone in the court is involved in his conspiracy against him. This annoyed the judge so much that they gave him a life sentence in Thorny Towers.

okay but with the pretty obvious dig at Maruki there, it makes me wonder wtf HE'D make of this level I think he'd just nope right outta there tbh

There’s a very interesting detail at the end of the game. When all the other members of the asylum decide to leave. That is when the milkman finally finishes the trigger. Setting the place on fire. Now the interesting thing is right afterwards she says : “ the milkman has completed his route.” And then you see spiritual representations of the dead mother, the Girl Scouts in the secret agents completely leave him. I think in a weird way oleander’s meddling helped him. But basically tying all of his psychosis into the milkman trigger, and once it was no longer needed it went away and took his psychosis with it. Whether that actually cured him or not is completely up for debate.

I don't think I'd actually ever seen the second vault in this mind. That really does explain why he is where he is, and what he does in the real world.

I also loved this level. So good

It's like the Milkman is Boyd's Maligula

I never actually thought of this level like this before. Even being a fellow clinical mental health counselor, I now completely see this level differently. What did you think of the level with napoleon?

Raz wasn’t as experienced as I thought he was when I first played the game...

The concept art says "fake cobwebs and yarn" implying that those cobwebs were constructed by Oleander and did not occur naturally.

2:01 oh god, never noticed that those images of ashtrays are just textures with terrible perspective stretched on them. Edit: As a fan of psychology, I loved this game. Glad to see that a more professional take agrees it did its job well. I've seen other games that try to tackle these issues or one issue, and most of the time they come off as so laser focused and by the books that it misses the nuance and subtle aspects that pepper the issue. Only other game I could say that did this kind of well and I cared equally about the story was "what Remains of Edith Finch", or whatever that game is called.

i know this is an older video but i'm just replaying psychonauts for the fifth time or so recently and one detail has recently struck me as even more interesting about boyd's character as a whole despite being a man so deeply traumatized and taken advantage of and how he's currently trapped deep in the midst of his paranoid delusions, it's really interesting to me that the one thing he's fixated on is unraveling the secret of the milkman and what happened to him. especially once you consider his mind's "immune system" if you will in the form of the censors *couldnt* find the milkman until raz lead them to him, and the way he starts speaking coherently if the confusion grenades are used on him. to me it seems as if on some level hes AWARE of his circumstances and of whats happened to him and how hes been manipulated by oleander and ever since hes been actively trying to "hunt down" the milkman, figure out WHY this foreign presence is suddenly in his brain, and eliminate it, because he WANTS to be rid of it. but he just couldn't find it because of how it was hidden so deeply even from his own brain - which can be seen in how the milkmans house is so extremely far away from the main islands and is only connected by telephone poles (which it makes sense to assume someone whos paranoia is as intense as boyd's is would avoid the telephones for fear of them being tapped), and is also guarded by the den mother and the rainbow squirts, who are actively working against his censors and other mental defenses to keep them away from the milkman

In an old document called “Li-Po character backstory document” (It hasn’t been stated canon by DoubleFine, but is important nonetheless), we get some more backstory about Boyd. His childhood started off very well, with a father who worked as a milk man and would always finish his work to make time to spend with Boyd. Sadly, Boyd’s mother was caught having an affair, which resulted in a divorce, and Boyd’s mother getting custody. Boyd and his mother moved in with who his mother had the affair with, and Boyd suddenly found himself surrounded by many step siblings that left him very neglected. Over time he began to invent a false conspiracy that everybody in the family and outside it was working to make his life miserable. Years passed, and we get to where Boyd landed the job at the department store. Apparently, it started off fine, but Boyd fell into his delusions and began interrogating and harassing random customers for no reason. The customers complained, and Boyd was ultimately fired, which led to him burning the store down. During the court case, Boyd ended up having a complete meltdown, and he “revealed” that everybody in the courtroom was acting against him. Everybody in the courtroom realized that Boyd was mentally ill, and sent him off to the asylum. This leads into the Coach’s creation of The Milkman, Raz accidentally letting The Milkman out into the world, and Boyd’s eventual recovery with the help of the other recovered asylum patients. Once again, the Li-Po doc has not been confirmed canon, and should be taken with a grain of salt. Edit: The doc also contains a lot of contradictory information regarding other characters.

Funny thing I liked to do is try to help the censors reach the milkman. I’d grab and throw the censors closer to him in hopes one would survive to hit him. Even this was tricky because those Molotov cocktails would home in on them whether you threw the censors in front of or behind him.

Someone mentioned how in Boyd’s world all his figments of imagination are normal everyday things. To him, reality is a figment of his imagination.

one of the best levels in video game history

great commentary for a great level