Before reading the post, I'd personally advise that if you're heavily interested in the story events of Killing Floor 3, to avoid this post, as even though many points are theory crafting and conjecture based off of some context clues we've received, that in and of itself could potentially give some hint of the story, so it's best to be safe and avoid potentially spoiling certain aspects for yourself.
[h3][/h3]"It's 2091. Megacorporation Horzine has produced the ultimate army: an obedient horde of bioengineered monstrosities called "Zeds." Now, only the rebel group Nightfall stands between these infernal creations and the future of humanity."
We're all aware of the synopsis of Killing Floor 3, we've enjoyd playing as a group of survivors, mercinaries and soon rebels hacking and slashing bio-organic monstrosities that've been engineered by Horzine. As many us have simply enjoyed spilling blood and guts, popping heads and
From Kevin Clamley beginning the intial outbreak in England, narrowly avoiding death from the mercenaries and ultimately escaping to Paris, how he came back new and improved with the help of a previously horzine-partneres scientist Hans Volter, chasing Hans across Europe until finally finding his original body that has been kept in statis tucked away in his very own castle located in the Bavarian Alps. (And though not quite sure how exactly it fits in lore-related, when fighting Kevin Clamley as he's escaping we make use of the assistance of his very own daughter Rachael, who later returns to Killing Floor 2 as the Matriarch.) [Note: What happened between KF1 and KF2 that made her change from wanting to help us to mutating into the being we see her as in Kf2?]
With the future release of Killing Floor 3 in the near future, I've been watching trailers, reading news articles and scouring information as much as I can, In this post I'd like to focus on Killing Floor 3's most mysterious character who seems to have kickstarted the events of KF3, Dr. Emmanuel Moorcroft.
Straight from the Killing Floor 3 Announcement trailer, in the very first shot we're introduced to the name Moorcroft, at this time all we can tell is that they're an employee at Horzine and has high enough privlieges to be working on producing Zeds. Throughout the Zed Reveal showcases we can see that Moorcroft has been accessing files of all of the currently known Zeds, while we don't know how Horzine's employee structure is handeled I'd like to think that in something as complicated as mutagenics, bio-organic development, having access to the files of multiple different projects likely shows Moorcroft is positioned fairly highly, likely a senior scientist as opposed to the common rank-and-file scientists.
Other than this we actually get zero new information on this person until an entire year (and 2 days!) later! Finally, with the Creation of the Crawler blog post we finally get a new, and extremely important piece of information on Moorcroft;
Two very big pieces of information to take away from this; Dr.Moorcroft went rogue for reasons at this time unknown, and that he's working with a mutagenic substance named the Mire. Futher into the blog post we get a little more information on the Mire, though only that the Queen Crawler can use it to teleport;
Upon this blog post's release a lot of people were speculating why she would even teleport, and if it was just a gimmick to avoid her getting stuck in smaller corridors or to prevent her from being kited around the map by making use of doorways she wouldn't be able to fit through, we now have more information on the Mire which hints at there being a lore reason for this, but we'll get into that a little bit later.
For now, I'd like you to take a look at this image of the Queen Crawler and keep the circled areas in mind for later on:
Following the Creation of the Crawler blog post, we get the Another day at the Zed Factory blog post, which also has one curious line to take away;
Knowing that Moorcroft is the rogue scientist I believe it's valid to suspect that he is the one doing the internal sabotage too, if this is the case it would appear that Moorcroft isn't simply fleeing, but trying to harm Horzine for a reason unknown at this time.
The only other person that could potentially a suspect would be the recently revealed Specialist Obi, who's brief character summary is;
However I feel that the Horzine outbreak happened far too recently for it to be Obi, as we would need time to account for him being fired from Horzine then finding out about and joining Nightfal, so for this theory I'm going to say Obi is simply another fighter with ties to Horzine but not the saboteur.
Thanks to the Killing Floor 3 - Game Awards Trailer we have a fountain of new information we can speculate on, there is one specific scene where Moorcroft is mentioned and with a single sentence we can begin piecing together so much information."It appears Moorcroft's little project is a real as they say"
Immedietly, new information for us to work with; Moorcroft is clearly working on something important, and specimen's body is grossly disigured with the same pus marks you can see on the Queen Crawler, with just this information we don't have much to go off of however the trailer itself gives us a bunch of context clues!
In the background of the latter half of the trailer we can see some notes written on whiteboards and a few signs;
This first whiteboard has some interesting doodles, notably the middle being a paraboloid, which are often used in diagrams of fields, waves or trajectories. This kind of sketch is often used in physics or engineering to represent things like energy fields, particle movement, or even the shape of a lens or force field. (Shoutout to ChatGPT for explaining this to me)
On the bottom left we can see a chemical structure diagram, which fits in perfectly with the science of editing genetics and molecules, right above that however we have an interesting few doodles of what appears to be wavelengths? With "No!" jotted next to one of them and what I think may possibly be "Partial?" written next to another, but even with upscalers im unable to make that one out clearly.
Admittedly, the drawing and text on the far right has me stumped as I've never seen that anywhere before to even use as a base of referenceto start looking into.
Our second whiteboard has additional information which I believe is absolutely and fundamentally KEY to the story of Killing Floor 3;
"What is this creature?"
"Size estimate?"
"Exo or Endoskeleton?"
"Primary sensory system
>Vision & [unable to make this part out]"
"Can we bring it here? Will it survive?"
Theory crafting here, but I believe Moorcroft was working on some kind of technology which somehow allowed him to discover this creature, presumably in another dimension if we can use the paraboloid as a hint to what was was working on. I like to think of it similar to the Upside Down in Stranger Things, possibly? Where you're both in the same place, but it's a different space? (Visual example here)
The reason why I believe it's similar to the Upside Down in Stranger things is the Queen, we know she can teleport using the Mire, what if our "Upside Down" is the Mire? A alternate exsistence parallel to ours yet with it's own creatures and Dr.Moorcroft was able to discover it, immedietly noticing a creature and focusing on how he could bring it to our side. With this logic, when the Queen "teleports", she's simply shifting to The Mire which is identical to our realm then re-entering in a different location, this'd explain how she's able to teleport without getting stuck in a wall somewhere or something, the Queen can still see the walls, doors etc in the Mire.
"CAUTION: MIRE
DO NOT ENTER WHEN DOOR IS CLOSED"
It would appear that Moorcroft was successful in being able to form a connection to the Mire, and that there is now a controlled environment where he can continue his research.
If we take a step back and look at the area where you can find these posters, and keeping the idea of the Mire being an alternate parallel space you certainly see something for less than ONE SECOND that looks like some sort of portal, swirling around;
Time to get into the meat and potatoes of this theory: We've all seen the new Zeds that look horrific and sickly. Something else that they have in common with our other Mire-related Specimens? Those pus marks;
I firmly believe that Specimens using the Zed DNA that're (infected? Genetically spliced?) with a compound found from creatures in the Mire start to change their forms and grow pustules. (With this information in mind, please scroll back up to the Queen Crawler and notice how her whole back of her body is noticably different in skin texture to her front, I believe that's all Mire-infected skin.)
Finally we have our big reveal of the trailer, the new boss: The Chimera.
In modern days, Chimera is used to describe a being that is mixed of different animals, when you hear the word used you often think of the famous Chimera from Greek mythology. What exactly is this new Zed "mixed" with? Well we have some tell signs; There's puss marks under his claw armour which is a clear sign of traces of Mire, but also his appearance matches pefectly with what Moorcroft was writing on his whiteboard, "Exo or Endoskeleton?"
This is the first Zed we've seen with any kind of armour like this, and I'd wage to bet it's mixed with the "Creature" Moorcroft noticed in the Mire.
It appears that upon softening and destroying thre armour we get this monstrous creature underneath, spouting more pus marks, multiple arms and... Is that 6 heads all merged into one? Truly a freak of nature, this poor thing shouldn't exsist.
With all this sucess and an entire new realm, wealth of information and work, why would Moorcroft begin to sabotage Horzine? From the woman's voice in the trailer it seems that there were rumors of Moorcroft's project which I believe is the Chimera and he's clearly suceeded in his goal, so why would he be disgruntled and go rouge?
It's totally headcanon and theory crafting at this point, but I personally believe Horzine either stole his work out from underneath him, or cut him out of the Mire research team, something that would have had him so angry given he was the one to discover it that he'd rather destroy everything than let Horzine profit off of his work.
And that's my theory, please let me know if you have any questions, information or if you happen to know something that contradicts this!
