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In other words: the items are there, you just haven’t found them yet.

This sent The Binding of Isaac community into overdrive. Right now, there’s a “live thread” keeping tabs on what people have discovered and what theories are being proposed (and quickly debunked), as more information comes in.

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The first theory surrounds the number 109. With a bit of fuzzy math, it’s believed it took 109 hours for The Lost’s discovery in Rebirth to make its way to McMillen. Infuriated, he took the 109 number to heart used to some Afterbirth’s secrets. Some speculate a patch coming to the game soon—specifically, 109 hours after the release of Afterbirth—will unlock more of what it has to offer.

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People really went down the rabbit hole with this one, grabbing specific passages from various psalms in the bible and digging into religious history:

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While the 109 theory sounds like something out of a conspiracy handbook, it gained serious traction when Tyrone Rodriguez of Nicalis, the game’s publisher, had his Twitch stream of Afterbirth conveniently crash at...well, 10:09 P.M.

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And when someone asked how much fun McMillen was having?

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At one point, McMillen shared what appeared to be a Steam code for the game, but as it turns out, that code—UM3lm-4Nx0-109x—was really an Imgur link.

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What’s in that link? 109! There’s other stuff embedded in the image, too, like a hidden enemy (Monstro) and strange series of items found in Isaac’s eyes. Nobody knows what it means, but right now, everything could mean something.

Like, you know, the game’s price on Steam: $10.99.

Or the fact that Rodriguez was asking about police codes in his Stream. What’s the police code for 109? Suicide. How do players unlock The Lost? Suicide.

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There are other ideas, too.

Afterbirth introduced Greed Mode, which is a boss rush-style way of playing the game that heavily relies on buying items from the shops to stay afloat. This has people thinking deeply about money, also known as the Nine of Pennies theory.

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You encounter the boss Ultra Greed at the end of Greed Mode, and if you donate to the machine that’s part of that encounter and have the number 9 on-screen at the same time, the 9s flash. How come? Right now, nobody really knows.

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All of this points to the idea that McMillen and company have gone out of their way to prevent people from unlocking secrets through pure datamining. But how? While it’s not confirmed, there’s another theory that sounds interesting.

By datamining the game—yes, the very thing they’re theoretically working against—players have speculated it’s possible for the game to initiate the downloading of new content when certain requirements are met while playing.

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If true, it would mean the only way to unlock the game’s ultimate secrets would be involve doing certain things in-game, thereby avoiding the datamining issue.

If this all sounds completely ridiculous, that’s because it is, but it’s also incredibly fun to watch The Binding of Isaac fans (and creators) lose their shit. If you want to keep track of the latest development, the “live thread” and this testing megathread are the best places to see what people have come up with.

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We’ll just have to see how this all plays out. Stay tuned.

You can reach the author of this post at patrick.klepek@kotaku.com or on Twitter at @patrickklepek.