New Findings on the "What's in the Box" phenomenon.

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Corialos

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Nov 12, 2009
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Most of you have already heard about the viral film, "What's in the Box," found on the website, whatsinthebox.nl

From this website, there is a section, where you can click on the bottom part of the red ring, where it will ask for a password. Entering "operation2347," sends you to some old ad for Babel Research, and when you take off the extraneous bits of the URL, you will find babelresearch.eu, Babel Research's main website, where you might find references to the Black Mesa and Aperture Science logos, if you look hard enough.

Here's what I've found after perusing the site's contents:

*In the section titled "Introduction and History, we're given a small glimpse of what B.R. is all about, with some promotional article. At the bottom of the article are three logos; the ones for Black Mesa, Aperture Science, and something called the Hanso Foundation, which applies some sort of affiliation.

On the far left of these logos, however, a small picture of a black cat in a box appears when you wait long enough. Clicking on this cat sends you to an MP3 file, where you'll hear some gibberish. Intrigued, I ran the audio file through audacity, and this is what I heard:

"Found: Project *something* has failed."

The *something* was difficult to determine, but I think what it said was "detainment," because it was the only option I could come up with that made sense.

Anybody know what to make of this?
 

The Shade

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Mar 20, 2008
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The Hanso Foundation is a reference to the show Lost.

Related to the Dharma Initiative.

-------

Also, this is pure speculation, but the cat in the box could very well be a reference to Schrödinger's cat, but that could just be coincidence. Don't know what that would prove, anyway.
 

PinkiePyro

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Sep 26, 2010
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as the logos for Black Mesa and Aperture Science appear
perhaps its viral advertising for a sequel to the orange box?
 

Scabadus

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Jul 16, 2009
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I noticed a login box near the top of the Babel website, I tried the operation2347 password again but no luck. Maybe there are some more clues in there?

The Shade said:
Also, this is pure speculation, but the cat in the box could very well be a reference to Schrödinger's cat, but that could just be coincidence. Don't know what that would prove, anyway.
Less speculation: if you look at the page source the image is named schrodinger.gif
 

EternalFacepalm

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Feb 1, 2011
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Half-Life and LOST often referenced eachother, if that explains The Hanso Foundation. Can't figure out much more from this, though.
 

One Seven One

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The Shade said:
Also, this is pure speculation, but the cat in the box could very well be a reference to Schrödinger's cat, but that could just be coincidence. Don't know what that would prove, anyway.
Didn't GLaDOS kill a cat in a box with Neuro Toxin in the short comic?
 

PinkiePyro

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Sep 26, 2010
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Scabadus said:
I noticed a login box near the top of the Babel website, I tried the operation2347 password again but no luck. Maybe there are some more clues in there?
following my orange box 2 theory I tried
gordan freeman
freeman
potato
cake
as well as
2011 - 2018
blackcat
Schrödinger
 

The Shade

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Pretty sure it's not viral advertising. I saw an interview with the creator, a Dutch student named Tim Smits. As soon as his identity was revealed, a couple of the major Hollywood studios called him to see who he was. Quite an experience for the man.

Anyway, he may be a huge fan of things like Half-Life, Lost, and Portal, but a viral marketeer? I think not.
 

FalloutJack

Bah weep grah nah neep ninny bom
Nov 20, 2008
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Sorry, I've no idea what you're talking about. I thought this was about Warehouse 23.
 

SinorKirby

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May 1, 2009
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Is it just me, or does the Babel Group logo look a lot like the Aperture Science logo...

EDIT:
On a second look over, it does not look like it.
 

PinkiePyro

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Sep 26, 2010
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well I might of found another clue the mp3 the cat sends you to is called discedoMalum which roughly translates to break up evil
 

SnowyGamester

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Oct 18, 2009
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I found this mp3 from some html digging on the main page, though I havn't seen the cat yet.
http://babel-research.eu/snd/hidden.mp3
It's reversed, though when you fix it up it says "Yankee November" from what I can tell. I'm gonna keep looking.

edit: Seen the cat but missed it, dug through some javascript files, found the one for schrodinger's cat (http://babel-research.eu/global.js), another mp3 inside, says "operation 2-3-4-7," so that's where that's from.
http://babel-research.eu/snd/uec.mp3

MP3 OP is talking about: http://babel-research.eu/snd/discedoMalum.mp3
Sounds like 'found: project attainable has failed' to me

On about page I saw this list of names:
?T. Borgny, head of Acoustics.
?L. Cole, head of Astrochemistry.
?E. S. Williams, head of Biochemistry.
?F. Bern, head of Computational Neuroscience.
?L. Giles, head of Geomagnetism.
?A. K. Deene, head of Quantum Mechanics.
?H. Egberts, head of Second Harmonic Generation.

The first letters on each line spell 'half' from down to up. I'm not good with word puzzles so it may be nothing, but it may be everything!

Found another mp3 on about page
http://babel-research.eu//snd/ragekage.mp3
Translates to 'we have a 14 juno situation'

edit: eh, I don't care anymore, it's all been done before
http://wikibruce.com/2009/04/a-big-box-of-babel-research/