Understanding the lore of GTFO

This article details the commonly-understood approach to understanding the events, timeline and lore of GTFO with the goal of uncovering a cohesive end-to-end narrative — although inconsistencies do exist. The information contained on the wiki follows the below guidelines:

## Guidelines

1. The story of GTFO is told across two distinct timelines, or wordlines — "*original"* and "*alternate"* (or colloquially "*ALT"*), although many others may be visited by the prisoners during the rundowns.
2. The *original rundowns* and *alternate rundowns* represent two close but distinct "alternate realities," and that these differences represent intentional divergences between each reality.
	* The events occurring in the *original rundowns*, and all of the logs contained within, are considered the *original worldline*.
	* Conversely, the events occurring in the *alternate rundowns*, and all the logs contained within, are considered the *alternate worldline*.
3. Rundown 8.0 is told from the perspective of the prisoners from both the original and alternate worldlines.
4. It is commonly held that Rundown 8.0 exists within a collapsed state of multiple timelines — but for the avoidance of doubt, any logs contained within are considered part of the *original worldline.*
5. The content on santonianindustries.com is considered part of the *original worldline.*
6. For the avoidance of doubt, any other content is considered part of the wordline in which the most recent rundown was released. i.e. content released around the time of an ALT:// rundown is interpreted as being from the alternate wordline.

## Resolving gaps

Often, the logs contained within the original and alternate rundowns contain differences in dates, events, and details as well as additional or missing logs. Particularly with regards to subplots, these differences can create continuity issues or gaps in the story.

There are may ways to resolve these inconsistencies which affect how an end-to-end narrative is derived. By and large the GTFO community follows the **explicit interpretation** described below — as an implicit interpretation can quickly lead to contradictions and the exclusionary interpretation would lack significant context and motivation. These interpretation are:

1. The **explicit interpretation** stipulates that plot points and details in both the original and alternate realities only exist if expressed. Otherwise, they did not occur. For instance, as the "Daylight Mission" is only documented in the alternate reality — with a *explicit interpretation* — the "Daylight Mission" did not occur within the original worldline.

1. The **implicit interpretation** stipulates that plot points and details in both the *original* and *alternate* realities play out identically, unless there is a log or similar content which stipulates otherwise. For instance, the "Daylight Mission" is only documented in the alternate reality — and with a *implicit interpretation* — it is assumed that the mission also took place in the original worldline.

1. The **exclusionary interpretation** stipulates that inaccessible content is not canon. Therefore, the original rundowns and their logs are not canon, and as such, the original worldline only comprises Rundowns 7.0 and 8.0 (and potentially santonianindustries.com)

## Updated, removed, cut or data-mined content

* Content which was never released, subsequently removed, or data-mined from the GTFO game (but otherwise not accessible in-game) is not considered canon. The notable exception of course being the original rundowns.
* If a log or any such content is updated — only the latest version is considered canon.
* Rundown release trailers or other media are considered canon for the rundown in which they are related.