Side Channel - FelixComplex K9
On the main The Walten Files YouTube channel, there exists an upload titled The Showstoppers (Official Album), an in-universe album of songs (both original and cover songs) performed by the in-universe animatronic band The Showstoppers. The channel FelixComplex K9 is notable for having posted many of these songs before The Showstoppers Album was uploaded to the Walten Files channel.
The channel was also immediately notable for it's name, "FelixComplex K9" seeming to relate to both the character Felix Kranken and the K-9 facility depicted in the series.
The description of the upload The Showstoppers - Slowly, the first FelixComplex video to be uploaded after The Showstoppers Album was posted to the main channel, appears to connect to the description of The Showstoppers Album.
Here, the unknown person running the FelixComplex K9 channel mentions having sold their only tape of The Showstoppers Album to "a kind gentleman", while on the main channel, the character Anthony, who is uploading the tapes to YouTube in the in-universe modern day, mentions buying the tape he's uploading from "a guy named Ronnie"
It can be assumed, going forward, that Ronnie is the person running the FelixComplex channel, and not the character of Felix Kranken as was often previously assumed.
This ends up being corroborated by Ronnie's appearance in the Official Walten Files Discord, where he introduces himself as "Ronnie Felix Bourgeoisie"
This is expanded on in a later conversation, where Ronnie informs another user about the origin of the "K9" in his username.
Looking back at earlier FelixComplex uploads, one of which being Dee Die, a song that later shows up in The Showstoppers Album, something interesting can be seen.
On the label sticker of what appears to be a 7" single, it reads "Written by Rosemary Walten for Bunny Smiles Inc."
Interestingly, the year on the label is 1978, four years after Rosemary's disappearance.
It was common in the Discord server for users to ask Ronnie questions about himself and about the origin of the music he uploads whenever he was active. In one such round of questioning, during which Ronnie provided increasingly cagey and uninformative answers, this alarming interaction occured:
On July 13th, 2021, in the Official Server, Ronnie shared the following audio file, titled "showstoppersradioad.mp3". It appears to be, as the title implies, a radio advertisement for what would be a second Showstoppers album, set to be released on April 15th, 1982.
Eventually, the main Walten Files channel would upload The Showstoppers II (Lost Album 1983), this time, the video description makes no mention of the album having been purchased from Ronnie, and talks about the album having "a rocky recording cycle", ultimately never being officially released.
It was after this that the content of Ronnie's uploads shifted, instead of posting music associated with The Showstoppers, he began posting music associated with the in-universe band The Ponzi's. In the description of the upload The Ponzi's - Runaway (1969 Mono Single), the band is described as "a popular local garage band"
In the video The Ponzi's (Live), an upload of a bootleg recording of one of The Ponzi's live shows, the song "Tonight" can be heard. This song is notable, as it is nearly identical to the song "Love Is (Linda)", which appears on the 2nd Showstoppers album, only with every mention of the name "Linda" removed. This live recording, being from 1972 (according to the video's description), predates the 2nd Showstoppers album by about a decade.
Later, Ronnie would upload Somberine and Clean (1972 Demo), which is similarly almost identical to both Love is (Linda) and Tonight, with only minor lyrical alterations. The decription of the video mentions it likely being recorded for the Ponzi's debut album "American Dream".
Ronnie would continue his activity in the discord server, enaging in conversation, posting updates about his video uploads, and occasionally saying strange, nonsensical or cryptic things. In one such instance, he posted the following message, which appeared to be a strange keysmash.
This message was, infact, encoded with the Caesar Cipher. When decoded, it reads "remembering things now"
On February 7th, 2022, Ronnie would post another audio file to the discord, this time with a far more cryptic file name. "rivermusic.mp3" (VOLUME WARNING FOR THE END OF THE AUDIO)
Transcribed, this audio reads as follows:
"Hello, my name is Bruce Callahan, Professor of Biology at the University of South Carolina. So, a couple years back, in the year 1963, I was alerted to a phenomenon, in the town of Brighton, Michigan, known as the "river song".
Now, this was reported by the locals as a "wailing" and "crying" sound which could be heard around the local streams and creeks of Brighton. Now, uh, this was first chalked up the the idea of bobcats, which, although are not to be as expected in that area, are a possibility. Bobcats are known for their very 'wailing' and 'screeching', almost screaming-like call, and have often sometiems even been confused with babies or women.
Now, we went up there with field recorders and several hours worth of reel-to-reel tape, in order to- in hopes of recording this sound and putting it down on tape figuring out, once and for all. what this sound was. However, we were surprised with what were f- had found, and what we had recorded, and uh, we are going to document what we showed here, and some highlights, so you all can hear it.
So, this was the first noise that we heard that we had never heard before at all. So here's a recording of what we believe to be the "river song" that the Brighton locals were referring to."
[There is a long silence, interrupted only by the sounds of crickets and wind. Suddenly, there is a gentle whistling, accompanied by the sound of barking dogs. As the dogs stop, the whistling grows louder. There is a sudden silence, then more whistling, now more rhythmic and musical. Again, the whistling stops, for much longer now. Suddenly there is a scream - robotic, stuttered and pained. It continues for several seconds before the audio ends]
On February 16th, Ronnie would post another encoded message to the Discord
This message would instead be encoded in Base64. The text, when translated, was a link to a Google Doc titled
"ARTICLE #412 11/10/81"
This Google Doc appears to be an archive of a newspaper article written by Ashley Partridge, detailing an incident involving one William Godley, lead singer of beloved local band The Ponzi's, where he developed "indefinite amnesia" as a result of "a severe anxious fit". At the time, The Ponzi's were hired to record music for a local restaurant, whose owner's name in the article is redacted, though it is obvious with context that the restaurant was Bon's Burgers and that the businessman who hired them was Felix Kranken.
The Discord message was followed shortly by a post from Ronnie in the "Community" section of his YouTube channel:
The article, in conjunction with this post, presents a lot of interesting information about Ronnie, henceforth refered to as William, and the nature of the content he has been uploading. His memory loss in particular seems similar to the memory loss experienced by the character Sophie Walten, who lost much of her memory of her childhood after being put on medication as a teenager.
The name Ashley Partridge also seems significant. It calls to mind the character Ashley Parks, who worked as a technician for BSI in 1978, and ended up going missing/being killed because she "learned too much". Maybe, like Ashley Parks, William learned information about the dark secrets behind BSI while he was employed by them, and was silenced for it. Only instead of being killed, he was impaired somehow with a prolonged state of amnesia.
The last name "Partridge" could also have possible significance, partidges are game birds, so are frequently killed by hunters. There is also the concept of "a partridge in a pear tree", which is Christian symbolism for Jesus Christ. This may relate somehow to William's last name being "Godley", though that is purely speculative.
The date of April 15th highlighted by William would come and go with no new updates from him, though he eventually would update the channel's Community tab with this cryptic post.
On May 4th, 2022, He would upload an especially interesting new video, Ponzi's - Please Please Me (1983 Session).
The first two minutes of the video are as to be expected, a (particularly nice!) cover of the Beatles song, recorded obviously by the lead singer of The Ponzi's, who we now know as William. However, once the song concludes, we hear the spoken voice of a man who sounds much like Felix Kranken, as we hear him in TWF3 and Guilty.
Felix says that this take of the song is good, but that he wants still to re-record it a couple of times. This seems to upset William significantly, as he gets frustrated and starts cursing. He says he quits, and they argue back and forth, culminating in a moment where William says "Yeah, maybe you should have thought of that before you kil-" (the cut-off word here presumably being killed.) After this is what appears to be the sound of William getting up and leaving the room. The video's description provides a small bit of additional context.
The context of this video initially seems obvious, with this being the last Ponzi's session recorded for BSI, and with the content of the video being William confronting Felix with information he shouldn't have known, before storming out of the room and presumably being ""attacked by a group of thieves"" while leaving a recording session as described in the Ashley Partridge article. The dates, however, don't line up. With the article being dated for November 10th of 1981, and the video being dated for 1983. Thankfully, William would clear up this discrepancy in another Community post.
On May 25th, 2022, William uploaded a video titled My Fav Bands to the FelixComplex K9 channel. The video's content is mostly straightfoward, with William sharing a compilation of his favorite bands in the style of old YouTube Windows Moviemaker slideshows. After one of the transitions, the video goes silent, and a single still image of three people standing is displayed for several seconds. There is another transition, and then the video continues with it's usual content.
William would also share this same still image in the Official Discord a few days before the video's upload. Unlike many of the images shared by William before, the file has a default "Untitled.jpg" file name.
It seems likely that the group in the image is The Ponzi's, who we know from the Ashley Partidge article consisted of William, his wife Deb (possibly his girlfriend at the time), and another woman, Alice McGrant.
William would upload another video to his channel, Bunny Smiles Jingle Sessions, which, according to the channel's description, is "Sessions from a Jingle that ended up not even being used". The recording features an audibly frustrated and restless William, who repeatedly interrupts the music with complaints about working conditions, (ie: "God, it's 4am." "It's super late... do you think we should actually keep going with this?" [paraphrased], ) ending eventually with William blowing up (cursing, shouting) at the other person in the room.
These "Jingle Sessions" would end up being relevant to a video posted to the Official Soundtrack Channel on July 30th, Where Genius meets Fun! (B.S.I. Jingle). A video evidently containing the finalized version of the jingle being recorded by William in the Jingle Sessions, the description reading "Composed by The Ponzi's".
On August 16th, 2022, William would make an interesting post in his channel's Community tab.
This would explain the strange, unsettling noise that played for several seconds before the track Slowly on the second Showstoppers Album.
On the 23rd, FelixComplex would premiere another video, Alice Mcgrant - La Bamba, a synth cover of La Bamba, performed by Alice Mcgrant. The video description reads in part:
"Alice was always better at us with synthesizers, she recorded this song in 1977 for the Bon's Burgers guys. She also did two others, one of which was written by one of the founder's wives."
"One of the founder's wives" seeming to refer to Rosemary Walten, who we already know to have written music for The Showstoppers.
During a Twitter Space on the 21st of January, 2024, series creator Martín Parédes answered a question related to Felixcomplexk9, which I have transcribed as follows:
"'Will we see The Ponzi's in 4, 5, or 6?' No, we won't. Um, just like Sy05, this, like- Most of the side stories in The Walten Files, uh, were from the voice actors. And that- the Ponzi's was entirely Coker's idea. I gave some instructions on what he could do and what he couldn't, on behalf of like, the actual story. But, um, nah, I don't think there's any way to continue on from that story without Coker. So yeah, he won't be appearing. The Ponzi's, yeah. No- Felixcomplex is canon. It just doesn't- that's a side stuff that simply just won't continue on, because it's just not- it doesn't have the person who was running the channel. So, yeah, I can't really do anything about that."
All of William's Discord messages, in chronological order, have been cataloged by me in the following Google Drive folder, as well as a folder of every file shared by him (image and audio files), with their original file names retained.
FelixComplex K9 Archive