Bendy and the Ink Machine was one of the most popular indie horror games ever made. While the next main installment in the franchise, Bendy and the Dark Revival, is in development, there are many spin-offs that fans can experience. Though some of these spin-offs are also video games, there are two books that every fan of the franchise should read.
These books were written by Adrienne Kress and take place before the original installment. Dreams Come To Life was the first book and told the story of a boy named Buddy who worked at Joey Drew Studios while the second book, The Illusion of Living, gave readers an insight into Joey's life, revealing how he met a lot of his employees and what his childhood was like. Here are ten things fans would know if they read these books.
10 Joey's Philosophy
Though The Illusion of Living is now an actual book in the franchise, it was originally a book that only existed in the game's universe. Written by Joey Drew, it reveals his philosophy. To summarize what "the illusion of living" is, it is essentially using real life experience to create "fantasy". These "fantasies" can have characters based on actual people and make fans feel real emotions, meaning that Joey doesn't believe that stories are fake, even if they technically didn't happen. With this mindset, he is able to control how people feel, which is what made him so outgoing (and manipulative).
9 Joey Witnessed Someone Die As A Child
When Joey was a young boy, he worked for his father, who made shoes. One day, he saw a man fall to his death. He didn't know what to do and hesitated to tell his father. However, others were around and crowded around the corpse, as Joey watched and pretended that it was a play, having a very different reaction that anyone else would have. Ever since he was ten, Joey viewed the world differently than everyone around him.
8 He Also Helped Solve A Murder Mystery
When Joey was in the war, he knew a man named Walter Richmond. Years later, he found out that Walter died when he met a detective named Adam Sinclair, who was trying to find the killer. Joey decided to work with Adam to solve the case.
After speaking with multiple suspects and learning more about Walter, Joey and Adam concluded that the killer was a woman named Isabel Newsome. She killed Walter because he left her brother to die and wanted to get revenge. However, Isabel was never truly caught and wasn't punished for her crime.
7 Henry Met Joey Through A Friend They Had In Common
When Joey first began working on cartoons, Henry was his partner. He didn't stay at the studio for long but would eventually return as he was the playable character in the first game. The Illusion of Living revealed a bit about his past before he worked with Joey. The two of them had a friend in common, Abby Lambert, who introduced them to each other. Henry was looking for work so Joey got him a job at the bookstore he was working in at the time. There, they started talking about art and became "friends" themselves.
6 How Bendy Was Created
After seeing Henry's artwork, Joey was inspired to start making cartoons. However, he couldn't draw what he had imagined in his mind and asked Abby to work with him on it. She wasn't able to draw Bendy the way Joey wanted either so she went behind his back and asked Henry to draw the devil. Henry presented his drawing to Joey, which was the closest thing to the Bendy they'd create. After making some changes and thinking of different ideas, the devil was born.
5 The Beginning Of Sammy's Career
Joey always liked seeing movies. Back when he went, there was someone that played music along with the film as there wasn't any in the movie itself. The man that played the music was Sammy Lawrence. From there, he started working with a singer named Jack Fain. When Joey heard the two of them at a party, not remembering that he had seen Sammy play years prior, he offered them jobs at his studio and they accepted.
4 Joey Hired People Solely Based On Their Work
Back when the studio was first made, it was common for men to work while women stayed at home and took care of the house, chores, and children. However, after the men went to fight in the war, Joey began hiring women. Some of the men that returned to the studio were surprised that Joey refused to fire his workers, not caring about their gender.
Joey only cared about how hard someone worked and how talented they were, causing the men that had a problem with that to leave. Joey's views on hiring people were ahead of everyone else's back then, and he had the best team possible as a result.
3 Boris Was An Artist Named Buddy
Daniel Lewek, better known as "Buddy", always wanted to be an artist and finally got his chance when he was hired by Joey to work as a gofer. However, Joey was easily able to manipulate Buddy and ended up using him to bring Boris to life. Buddy's mind went inside of Boris' body, causing him to turn into one of Joey's most popular character. Unable to speak nor be in complete control of himself, the only thing that Buddy could do was hide in the studio until Henry found him in the original game.
2 Buddy And Dot Found Out What Joey Was Doing
Before he turned into Boris, Buddy was friends with another employee named Dot. Throughout Dreams Come To Life, the two started to figure out what was going on at the studio as they explored it. They came across many strange things that caused them to wonder who Joey really was and ended up fighting against Bendy at the end of the book.
1 The Creation Of Bendyland
While Bendyland is known in the game as players get to see attractions that were in it, little was known until the books released. After the Bendy cartoons became a success, Joey started working with Bertrum Piedmont on the amusement park. There were four areas in it: Dark Land, Light Land, Tiny Land, and Big Land, each being the domain of one of Joey's characters and making visitors feel like they were seeing different sides of the world. They worked on it for six years before Joey revealed it to the public during a party that Buddy attended.