Cursed Doll

The Cursed Doll serves as the mascot of The Classrooms, with its head featured as the game's icon. It also appears in the main menu, where a TV displays an image of it seated on a table in a classroom. This same image is used as the game's banner, further solidifying the doll as the game's most recognizable symbol.
=== Overview ===
The Cursed Doll is a short ceramic doll known for its behavior of becoming completely still when observed. It has the ability to teleport and will constantly pursue the player no matter where they are. It is one of the two entities encountered in The Classrooms and The Darkrooms.
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===Appearance===
====Head ====
The Cursed Doll is a 4-foot-tall ceramic doll with an entirely bald round head, two hollow, pitch-black eyes, and a blackened mouth, as though it had vomited ink, with the dark substance appearing to have seeped outward. Its mouth contains two sets of teeth, with eight in the upper row and fourteen in the lower row. Despite their dirtied and sometimes blackened condition, the teeth are perfectly aligned, although they may appear crooked from a distance.
The black, ink-like substance that originates from the doll’s mouth extends down its neck and onto its torso. Additionally, a well known scar-like mark runs through its left eye. This scar is appears to be made from the same dark substance. Surrounding the mouth, there is a splattered pattern of this substance, as though the doll had consumed something that caused the liquid to spray outward.
====Body====
The doll wears a vertically striped dress, alternating between blue and white lines. It wears a dark blue bow knot that is tied around its waist, and the dress has two broad horizontal stripes near the bottom. The upper part of the dress features four golden-colored buttons positioned just above the bow.
Its limbs are short and segmented into two distinct parts, reminiscent of a traditional doll’s construction. The surface of its "skin" is visibly dirty, with filth concentrated under its torso, a detail that is provided in clear view when observing the burnt dress variation in the Army of Dolls. Its ceramic body bears numerous scars.
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=== Behavior ===
The Cursed Doll is aware of the player's location at all times and will relentlessly pursue them, regardless of their position. Its walking speed matches the player’s, but its footsteps are played at a much faster pace. This auditory design can create the illusion that the doll is moving faster than it actually is, often causing unnecessary panic among inexperienced players.
==== Teleportation and Door ====
The doll is capable of teleportation, an ability it only uses in critical moments. For example, if the player closes a door to confine it in a room, the doll will eventually teleport to escape. However, the teleportation is not meant to be observed directly. Instances where the doll is visibly teleported—such as being able to see it disappear from the Doll Room when the janitor’s key is picked up—are considered bugs.
The doll is incapable of opening or intentionally breaking doors. That said, under certain conditions, it can accidentally break doors. For example, if the doll attempts to move through a door that is in the process of closing, a precise timing and placement may cause the door to break. This glitch is most frequently observed with the Hell Doll due to its fast speed.
==== Movement and Visibility ====
The doll follows a core rule: it does not move when directly observed. However, this mechanic has some exceptions and ambiguities. For instance, it has the ability to move in pitch-black darkness, regardless of whether it is being watched. This allows players to observe its walking animation as a silhouette if there is light behind it. Players may also observe its shadow moving under certain lighting conditions, such as when slightly looking away while keeping the shadow within their field of view. Similarly, its dress animation is unaffected by visibility rules, further complicating its behavior.
When the doll is stuck behind a wall, it may play its walking animation in place without producing footsteps or moving through the environment. During this state, it will laugh or giggle indefinitely until it stops moving, which explains why players sometimes hear it laugh seemingly at random.
==== Sound Effects and Audio Cues ====
The doll occasionally laughs or giggles when the player looks away and then back at it. These sounds are purely cosmetic and do not affect its behavior. The game uses stock audio clips for these cues, including the recognizable "Teddy Bear Laugh" originating from Call of Duty.
==== Head and Body Movements ====
The doll’s head is capable of unnaturally fast rotation, including the ability to turn 180 degrees in the opposite direction of its body. This unsettling movement was possibly unintended but appears to have been deliberately left in the game for its eerie effect. Interestingly, the doll’s ARC document depicts it in this pose, implying the developers had to manually adjust its model for the document image before this feature was implemented.
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===Mechanics===
====Visibility and Movement Rules====
The doll’s primary mechanic is its inability to move while being observed. For this rule to take effect, no part of its body must be visible on the player’s screen—any portion, even at the edge of the screen, will prevent it from moving. However, there is a small "safety window" where the player can position the doll slightly off-screen, and it will still register as being watched. This safety window is a bug and did not exist in earlier versions of the game.
The doll’s dress does not contribute to its visibility detection, which means it can partially “peek” around corners without triggering its movement restrictions. Despite this effect, the doll is highly responsive, taking any opportunity to move. Even a brief glance away—lasting less than a second—will at least cause it to fully turn its head to face the player.
The doll has an unnatural ability to stabilize itself when knocked over. If the player uses an object to push the doll upright after it has fallen, it will easily return to a balanced standing position. In reality, balancing such a small figure with two tiny feet would likely be significantly more challenging.
====Janitor's Key Interaction====
A key moment involving the doll occurs when the player picks up the janitor’s key. Upon collecting the key, the doll is teleported to a location near the janitor’s closet, often directly in front of it.
The elevator key acts the same way when bypassing the Doll Room. (Done by breaking the janitor's closet's glass with a movable object and retrieving the elevator key) It will trigger this teleportation too, though not if the player doesn't bypass the Doll Room, however the doll will spawn near the player since they are right next to the janitor's closet. This creates a high-risk situation, with the doll even having the rare chance to spawn directly on the player, which results in an instant death.
====Hitbox and Interaction====
The doll’s hitbox is highly precise and corresponds closely to its physical dimensions. This small hitbox can create situations where the player can maneuver past the doll even if it is blocking a doorway. However, such attempts are risky and require careful movement.
Some areas of the doll’s body do not cause death upon contact, allowing the player to stand on it under specific circumstances. For instance, if the doll is lying on its back, the player can safely climb onto its body without triggering its lethal effect. However, this interaction is inconsistent and highly risky, a minor misstep easily resulting in death.
This phenomenon occasionally leads to unexpected outcomes. For example, if a player enters a hallway quickly walks straight into the doll, the doll might fall over instead of killing the player. These unpredictable moments can be both confusing and startling to the player.
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===Kill Animation===
When the player makes physical contact with the Cursed Doll, its kill animation is triggered. This sequence, which plays in a third-person setting, shows the doll rapidly gouging the protagonist’s eyes with its hands while the protagonist screams in pain. However, the animation may appear more as if it was violently scratching the protagonist’s face rather than a precise eye-gouging action.
*Sound Changes in Updates: In earlier versions of the game, the kill animation featured sound effects that resembled punches rather than actions associated with eye-gouging. These sounds were later replaced in updates to better align with the intended depiction of the kill.
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===Environmental Interactions===
The Cursed Doll has unique interactions with its surroundings:
*Object Interaction Glitch: The doll can be glitched by positioning an object inside of it, effectively allowing the player to "pick it up." Once this occurs, the doll functions like a carryable object and can be transported to areas it typically cannot reach, such as the elevator, inside a poolrooms slide, or The Playrooms' void. This glitch provides an effective method to experiment with the doll’s mechanics.
**AI Behavior in Unintended Locations: When the doll is transported to these unusual locations, its AI often malfunctions. It generally becomes immobile but may occasionally attempt to stand back up briefly when the player looks away. Despite this, the doll retains its ability to teleport and remains lethal upon contact.
*Dress Physics: The doll’s dress features dynamic physics, meaning it reacts to environmental interactions, such as being struck by objects. Unlike a static component, the dress moves naturally in response to these stimuli.
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===Bugs and Glitches===
*Dress Clipping: The doll’s dress clips into one of its feet in specific frames of its walking animation, due to inconsistencies in the model's collision physics.
*Directional AI Error: When chasing the player, the doll may sometimes briefly walk in the opposite direction. This occurs because of a flaw in its AI wandering logic, often triggered when the player repeatedly looks away and back in a rapid sequence.
====Instances of the Doll Moving While Being Watched====
===== Broken Light Perception =====
*If the Cloaked Figure, while having its pre-elevator key AI, manifests in a room containing the doll and disappears in that room, the doll’s perception of light will break as soon as the Cloaked Figure's disappearance occurs. In such cases, the doll will chase the player even when being looked at under light, but it will freeze if illuminated by a flashlight. Interestingly, even after the flashlight is turned off, the doll will remain motionless until the player looks away, at which point it will resume its chase regardless of visibility. This broken behavior also used to be observed in specific rooms of The Poolrooms, such as the room with the Goober NPC or the one inspired by Backrooms Level 188 (modeled after a hotel at Holiday Inn at Terminal 4, London Heathrow Airport). However, these occurrences were patched, leaving the Cloaked Figure interaction as the only way to experience the glitch.
===== Doorframe Map Unloading =====
*In The Classrooms or The Darkrooms, a specific spot in certain doorframes of wooden doors causes the game to unload most of the map when the player walks through them. If a player positions themselves precisely where the screen "goes black" (indicating the map has mostly unloaded), they can see the doll through walls, that will continue moving, revealing its walking animation. However, the map will immediately reload if the player moves from this precise position.
===== Mirror Reflections =====
*The doll has not been programmed to recognize reflections as instances of being observed. If the player looks at a mirror while the doll is nearby, the doll will keep moving towards the player, thinking it is unobserved, allowing the walking animation to be clearly visible.
===== TV Cart Lighting and Collision =====
*In dark rooms containing TV carts, the light emitted by the TVs can illuminate the doll’s walking animation if it approaches.
*Additionally, the TV cart has an versized collider, cansing the doll to treat parts of the cart as walls that the player cannot see through. When this happens, the doll may move behind these "invisible walls," inadvertently revealing its walking animation.
===== Bathroom Privacy Screen Collision =====
*In The Bathrooms level, certain urinal privacy screens have collision boundaries that extend too far. This creates small invisible walls that block the doll’s visibility logic. As a result, being positioned behind the invisible walls will cause the doll to move toward the player while thinking it is unseen, exposing its walking animation.
These glitches offer multiple ways for the player to observe the doll's walking animation, even though such instances are not intended to occur during normal gameplay.
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===Custom Mode===
In Custom Mode, the doll’s icon exclusively features its head. This same icon is reused for the Army of Dolls and the Hell Doll. It is presumed that this was done to avoid creating additional renders for these entities.
In Custom Mode, the doll's default settings include "See Moving", "See Still", "Hearing", and "Always Aware". Alongside Smiley, the dolls are the only entities with "Always Aware" enabled. This setting, currently unmodifiable by the player, ensures the doll and Smiley always know the player's location. For Smiley, this awareness activates only after its first encounter with the player. The other settings, "See Moving," "See Still," and "Hearing," imply that the doll can perceive movement, stillness, and sound in addition to its innate awareness.
An unimplemented option labeled "Freeze When Looked At" was mentioned in the Playrooms release announcement, which introduced the Custom Mode overhaul. The announcement mistakenly stated "You can now customize the abilities of each entity in Custom Mode, including hearing, sight, smell, freeze when looked at, etc." This feature is likely inspired by the doll's mechanics, as no other entity behaves similarly. It suggests a potential for other entities to stop moving when observed, mirroring the doll's behavior, which could have introduced a unique and engaging gameplay element.
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===Lore===
Despite being used as the game's mascot, the Cursed Doll remains one of the most enigmatic entities in The Classrooms. It is notably absent from much of the in-game lore, with the sole source of information about it being its ARC document, which explains its mechanics to the player. Unlike many other entities, the Cursed Doll is not mentioned in any diary entries, referenced in environmental hints, or acknowledged in any way that suggests it has interacted with the world or people from The Classrooms' universe.
==== ARC Document ====
The Cursed Doll’s ARC document features an accompanying image with text below it, as is standard for all entities documented by ARC. The text in the doll’s case reads: “Footage of Λ-004”. The symbol resembling an "A" is the Greek letter Lambda, indicating that the doll primarily resides within the Lambda superstructure.
The document also explicitly mentions the Lambda superstructure at the beginning of the text, alongside a reference to the Alpha superstructure, indicating its presence in both areas.
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===Speculation===
====Goal of Eye Removal====
One theory revolves around the doll’s fixation on removing its victims’ eyes. It could suggest a deliberate effort to incapacitate individuals by stripping them of their ability to see. Since the doll is only able to move when it is not being observed, removing a victim's sense of sight would allow it to move freely and inflict further harm. This theory implies a malicious intent, with the doll seeking to exploit the disorientation and vulnerability of its blinded victims to maximize the additional suffering it is about to inflict to them—whatever it may be.
===="Red Light, Green Light" Behavior====
The doll’s strict adherence to its visibility rule raises questions about its true nature. One speculation is that the doll might be engaging in a sinister version of a game, akin to "Red Light, Green Light", intentionally ceasing movement when watched to toy with its victims. However, an alternative theory posits that the doll completely loses the ability to move when observed. This latter explanation seems more plausible, as under normal circumstances, the doll consistently abides by this rule without exception. If the doll were merely playing a game, it would presumably abandon the rule at critical moments to ensure its success in harming the player, which it never does.
====Black Ink-Like Texture====
The black, ink-like texture around the doll’s mouth and neck has led to further speculation. One theory suggests that this discoloration is dried blood from its past victims. If true, this would align with the theory of the doll incapacitating its victims by removing their eyes, then proceeding to harm them further in their weakened state—potentially even eating them. However, this theory is considered unlikely, as the texture does not even remotely exhibit the reddish tones one might expect from dried blood.
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=== Inspiration and Design ===
The Cursed Doll's design and mechanics are heavily inspired by SCP-173 from the SCP Foundation. This influence is explicitly referenced in its ARC document, which states:"For retrieval and containment operations, a minimum of three operatives is required, each equipped with high-powered flashlights and headlamps. Of the three operatives, two must maintain uninterrupted visual contact with the entity while the remaining operative concentrates on containment procedures."This mirrors SCP-173’s containment protocols, which specify:"If any personnel are to enter the container, no less than three personnel may enter. Two personnel must maintain direct line of sight with the statue at all times."Beyond the textual reference, The Classrooms as a whole is inspired by SCP and the Backrooms, so even without the direct ARC document reference, it is reasonable to deduce that the Cursed Doll draws from SCP-173’s iconic characteristics, particularly its dependency on being observed to restrict movement.
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===Evolution===
The Cursed Doll and Cloaked Figure hold the distinction of being the first ever added to The Classrooms, debuting together in the demo.
====Early Access and Demo====
*Decoy Dolls: In the first versions of Early Access, dolls resembling the sitting doll from the doll room were scattered across various locations, such as:
*The women’s bathrooms
*The cafeteria
*The removed basketball court
*Teacher’s chairs, tables, and couches
*The center of the elevator hallway (in the demo only)
These decoy dolls remained still regardless of whether the player looked at or away from them. Their primary mechanic was a chance to disappear when the player looked away, accompanied by a laugh or giggle. However, they could also despawn silently due to a bug. Once despawned, these dolls did not respawn. The decoy dolls were entirely harmless and despawned when the janitor's key was collected.
*Demo-Specific Decoy Doll: A unique decoy doll appeared in the hallway leading to the elevator in the demo. This doll was removed in the Early Access release since the doll with proper AI now performed the chase mechanic, rendering the decoy unnecessary. In the demo, all dolls were decoys; none had a functioning AI.
====Version 0.1.0.40 (Early Access Release)====
*The doll could phase through doors, allowing it to pursue the player endlessly with no physical barriers.
*If the player looked at the doll through walls, its AI mistakenly believed it was being watched and stopped moving. This allowed players to exploit the bug by looking in the doll's general direction through walls to prevent it from advancing.
*Looking at the doll through glass did not register as being watched, so it continued to move despite being visible, due to its AI treating glass as a solid wall.
*The doll’s head and body turned at the same pace, with the head always facing the same direction as the body.
*The doll’s body acted as an immovable wall, meaning it could block doors, lockers, and player paths, unable to be moved by objects.
*The doll spawned immediately after the loading screen ended, meaning it could appear in front of an AFK player who hadn’t left the starting elevator if they were in-game for long enough.
*In the game’s second section (which was nearly identical to the first level except for a different key color), the doll would spawn and chase the player even if the janitor’s key had not been picked up yet.
*The doll did not move in complete darkness. It stopped moving as long as it was in the player’s field of vision, even with no visibility.
*Players could interact with the doll safely as long as they were looking at it. They could touch it, climb on it, etc without triggering its kill animation.
====Version 0.1.2.46====
*The doll could no longer phase through doors.
*The spawning bug was fixed so the doll only appeared after the player exited the breaker room or the elevator.
*The doll could now move if it was not directly visible, even if it was being looked at through walls.
====Version 0.1.3.56====
*The bug where the doll moved while being observed through glass was patched.
*The doll’s head movement was decoupled from its body, allowing its head to turn faster and always face the player. This created the behavior where its head could appear to be rotated to 180 degrees, independent of the body’s slower movement.
====Version 0.2.0.80====
*Most decoy dolls were removed from classrooms, except for one rare instance that could spawn under specific circumstances in a particular room.
*Touching the doll while looking at it now triggered the kill animation, preventing players from interacting with it harmlessly as they could with decoy dolls.
====Version 0.2.2.97====
*The doll could no longer block wooden or locker doors.
====Version 0.2.4.129====
*The doll could no longer block metal doors.
====Version 0.2.6.169====
*The Doll Room was added to the game.
====Version 0.4====
*The doll received improved textures, fixing issues such as the low-quality appearance of its left ear.
*Line-of-sight mechanics were updated, improving its AI recognition of when it was being watched.
*The doll became an interactable physics object when visible. This now allowed players to knock it over or move it with objects. However, this feature only applies when the doll is not actively walking.
*The ability for the doll to move in complete darkness was introduced.
====Version 0.4.3.255====
*Line-of-sight mechanics were further refined.
*It was assured that the doll could not block vent entrances.
====Version 0.5.5.293====
*The decoy doll from the cafeteria table in The Classrooms was removed.
====Version 0.6.1====
*A where the doll occasionally moved in lit areas was patched, likely occurring in The Poolrooms.
====Version 0.6.3.464====
*In The Poolrooms, the invisible wall in the room with three slides and cloud-themed wallpaper no longer caused the doll to behave as if it was unobserved. Previously, the doll would move despite being visible due to the wall being incorrectly treated as opaque.
*A staircase was added to this room to prevent dolls and other entities from becoming stuck on a specific ledge.