Null

****Main****
**Audio**
**Gallery**

*"NULL" redirects here. For the game style, See NULL Style.*

**Null** is a mysterious corrupted character and later revealed as the overarching antagonist of the *Baldi's Basics* series.

## Description

Null appears to be an almost invisible entity in the `ull.png` image. He appears to be nothing more than a T-posing set of photo-realistic clothes, hair, eyebrows, and eyes. He wears blue jeans and a red T-shirt.

In *Baldi's Basics Classic* and *Baldi's Basics Birthday Bash*, compared to the other characters, Null seems to have the highest quality sprite in the game with the least amount of dithering added to his appearance. There is also what appears to be a very thin line under where his feet would be.

In *Baldi's Basics Classic Remastered*, Null went through some slight changes. He is more dithered than he was before, with the line underneath his feet no longer being visible. In addition, his face was slightly altered and some specks and gray lines have been added around him. For his sprite, anti-aliasing is no longer on. In the rare fake error screen, it is revealed that Null has light skin and a mouth pulled to his left. In the rare post-NULL Style crash screen, his design in the lake has him wear cargo shorts instead of jeans.

## Personality

Null breaks the fourth wall, feeling obviously aware of why or how he is in the game. He claims that he is corrupted for classified reasons, in reference to his voice being glitched: His voice from *Baldi's Basics Classic* sounds as if he is speaking through a radio, and interrupted with loud beeps every few seconds. In *Birthday Bash*, his glitched-up voice may have gotten worse, inferred from the fact that he coughs a lot, the radio-like static's quality lowered, and a lot of now-even louder electronic noises playing randomly on quick occasions, making his voice much harder to understand, including the fact that his voice seems to have gotten louder.

His main goal is to encourage the player to destroy the game before something terrible happens.

In *Baldi's Basics Classic Remastered*, probably because the player does not take what Null said seriously, he turns into an aggressive character and wants to end the game like Baldi. However, what happened after that is unknown after disappearing in mystman12's Office.

## Role

### *Baldi's Basics Classic*

Null is only encountered in Story Mode from both endings.

Null's voice is first heard once all 7 Notebooks are collected, interrupting Baldi by yelling "***GET OUT WHILE YOU STILL CAN!!!***". He is then heard once again during the normal ending screen, when he congratulates the player but informs them to do worse when replaying the game, presumably so they can meet him.

In the alternate ending after answering every question wrong in all 7 notebooks, once the player reaches the last exit, they are transported to a short hallway near Baldi's Office. When spawning, the player is facing a wall with a gray image of Baldi and the text "**You won! There's room for improvement though. Go see Baldi in his office for some tips!**". The HUD disappears upon entry, making it look like a real screen. Upon entering the room, Null will be seen standing behind a desk with a banana to his right floating above it, accompanied by Baldi with his sprite distorted and stretched out. Null will seem to be surprised by the player's arrival, and warn them to never tell anyone about the game, close it, destroy it, and never play it again. Once he finishes his speech, the game will crash.

### *Baldi's Basics Birthday Bash*

Null is found in the Principal's office, if the player uses a Teleportation Teleporter, or inputs **53045009** into the You Can Think Pad after the glitched school turns dark.

He is once again surprised by the player's cleverness in finding him but is disappointed that they have not destroyed the game yet. As he is fully aware of the game itself, Null mentions that *Birthday Bash* is a demo for *Baldi's Basics Plus*. He warns the player again that something bad will happen if they do not destroy the game in time. After he is done speaking, the game crashes just like in *Baldi's Basics Classic*.

### *Baldi's Basics Classic Remastered*

Null appears more in this game than the others.

In Classic Style, exiting the school with all answers wrong will bring the player to a hallway leading to Baldi's Office, which when entering the office, Null will explain the same things as he did in *Baldi's Basics Classic*.

In Party Style, the player can get two interactions with Null. Unlike in *Birthday Bash*, using a Dangerous Teleporter in the glitched school is the only way to see Null in this style. Once it is used, they will get sent to the normal school, then head to the Principal's office where Null explains the same things as he did in *Birthday Bash*, except with slightly differed audio, notable to the volume. However, when the player uses a Dangerous Teleporter after the red `Baldloon`s start spawning, Null yells at the player and tells them to stay away from the game, also as to how he told the player to do so. Both of these interactions crash the game once finished.

Null is also found in Baldi's Basement, once the player gets to the shrink machine room. There, Null quotes that he knows why the player continues playing the game to find the lore about it, despite him asking them to stop. After this, the game crashes.

Null's most major appearance is in NULL Style, which is unlocked by completing any style with all Fun Settings (except for the Free Run setting) active at once. Once the first two notebooks have been collected (which can only be done if Null has been encountered in all three main styles), he will begin to chase the player in a similar way to Baldi, but there are a set of differences from him:

* He does not make any noise while moving.
* Every time the player collects a notebook, he will be attracted to the location where the notebook is.
* He moves around 1.5-2.5 more tiles than Baldi for each interval, where the player can only outrun him with the use of stamina or a BSODA, maybe even the Swinging Door Lock if need be.
* He can open any door for half a second in the hallway when he passes by.
	+ He always opens doors next to him for 0.5 seconds, giving a hint about his location.
	+ He might be able to spot the player from behind a window by doing this, and promptly use it as a shortcut.
* He can see the player through windows and break through them to gain a shortcut to the player.
* He may occasionally say something while chasing the player. Very few are context dependent, like his "*Hey! Wherever you are I'm gonna find you,*" line.
* As he moves, the lights around him get darker, giving a hint at his location.
* If he catches the player, a loud sound will play, the school will glitch out (textures changing color, parts of the school rotating and moving, etc) at an increasing intensity, and the game will close.
	+ This also happens when the player hovers their cursor over the "YES" button when pressing "QUIT" after one or more notebooks were collected or attempting to use the game's debug menu.
* He may also sometimes taunt the player upon catching them saying "*Ha haa!*".

Once all 7 notebooks are collected and 3 out of 4 exits are reached, his speed will increase immensely and he will run to the Principal's office, but he will not harm them. However, once the player approaches the final exit, Null will be visible and suddenly run towards it and close it before the player can reach it. He will begin to ramble and taunt the player, and objects will appear in front of him which can be thrown at him to begin the boss fight.

During the boss fight, he will chase the player at a constant pace (and always know where they are), and occasionally block off certain pathways by creating barriers with random objects. He is able to block off broken windows as well. These barriers despawn after a few seconds. If Null ever somehow barricades himself, he can go through the barrier himself while it's still being blocked. Floating objects will start spawning around the school during this, such as chairs, desks, potted trees and bananas, which can all be thrown at him, increasing his speed and the tempo of the music. More occasionally, he will break through windows to get to the player faster.

After he is hit 10 times, the player will be brought to an empty black hallway connecting to mystman12's Office, in which lies a journal congratulating the player. After reading the journal on the table, Null will appear one final time, calling the contents of the journal lies and yelling at the player, before glitching intensely and disappearing.

After NULL Style is completed for the first time, Null will no longer appear in the game in almost any way, which causes the following changes to the game:

* NULL Style will be replaced with Glitch Style, which is identical to NULL Style except Null is replaced with a red `Baldloon`, with a lack of voice lines.
* When all 7 Notebooks are collected in one of the three game modes, his "***GET OUT WHILE YOU STILL CAN!!!***" scream will be replaced by Baldi saying "*Find a way out before I catch you!*" after a short pause.
* In the Classic Style normal ending, Null's voice line telling the player to do worse has been removed, leaving the ending screen in silence.
* Null's encounters in the three main styles are replaced with Baldi encounters.
	+ In the Classic Style secret ending, Baldi gives the player some advice on subtraction, teaching the player about negative numbers.
	+ In the Party Style secret ending, Baldi lets the player listen to some music he made, as a surprise.
		- If using a Dangerous Teleporter after the red `Baldloon`s start spawning, Baldi will still let the player listen to the music he made, instead of a different interaction.
	+ In the Demo Style, after entering Baldi's Basement, Baldi can be seen in the shrink machine and lets the player help him test it out. However, it fails, and Baldi says the machine still needs a few tweaks.
		- None of these encounters close the game, instead bringing the player back to the menu as normal.
		- It should be noted during these three secret endings that Baldi will not make an attempt to try to harm the player. In fact, he appears quite friendly.
* Secret codes used in the You Can Think Pad to access hidden modes can also now be found in the Baldi encounters and mystman12's office, although defeating Null is not necessary to activate them.
	+ However, **09241993** does require NULL Style to be unlocked, to activate Debug Mode.
		- The code is only shown after Glitch Style is completed, in the closet of mystman12's Office.
* Null is seen one last time after NULL Style has been completed, when getting a rare fake error screen after a game over. Instead of closing the game, the error screen will glitch out, playing random sounds and becoming dark, after which a photograph of Null by a lake is seen, accompanied with a loud static noise with random "beep" notes playing. The photo will then begin to glitch out with Null's arms and the rest of his face (as opposed to the regular sprite, where the arms and the other part of the face aren't seen) appearing in front of the screen, glitching and screaming before disappearing. The photo will then appear with Null no longer in it. The image then fades out in chunks, with dithering, until the background is completely black (with the exception of a extremely hard to spot `PlaceFace` in the background), before the game closes.

## Trivia

### General

* Null is the first character to be corrupted in the *Baldi's Basics* series.
* Null is actually an edited image of mystman12 in chroma key, by using GIMP.
* In the Kickstarter video, Joshua Valent can be seen doing a T-pose in a striking fashion to Null, during a short sequence after mystman12 starts laughing about the "lore".
	+ Many people thought Null's origin was Joshua Valent at first because of this. However, `n.png` easily disproves this, as it resembles more like mystman12 than Joshua. Joshua also seems to wear cargo shorts, in comparison to Null in the photo of the lake.
* When voicing Null, mystman12 used a distorted version of his natural speaking voice while using the audio-editing program Audacity. It was encoded by GSM 6.10 and set the sample rate to 8000 while editing the voice. He spoke into a cheap microphone and sets the sample rate to 8000 after giving it a lot of harsh clipping effects. It creates a non-sound file with the occasional "BEEP" sounds via raw data by setting the GSM 6.10 and sampling rate to 44100.
* mystman12 made the voice line for the "*GET OUT WHILE YOU STILL CAN!!!*" quote by screaming into his laptop microphone from a few feet away, with some distortion added afterwards.
* mystman12 has Null's unedited voice files.
* There are feet in Null's unedited image.
* Red is Null's favorite color.
* It is highly possible that the Zalgo-texted parts of the *Classic* and *Birthday Bash* descriptions were written by Null, telling the player to not download them, as he does not want the player to play the game.
* Null's voice is heard at the end of the Kickstarter video, congratulating the player on finishing the video.
* Null breaks the fourth wall as he tells the player to delete the game. This does not land him into detention despite the fact that one of the school rules is "No fourth wall breaks", as Principal of the Thing is not around at the time.
	+ However, Null being found in the Principal's office in *Birthday Bash* and Party Style of *Classic Remastered* might imply that he was caught for breaking the fourth wall.

### *Baldi's Basics Classic Remastered*

* From the trailer, during the glitching part, Null can be seen in a few brief frames when the scene transitions from the cafeteria to the hallway. He is also mentioned on the chalkboard during the final scene.
* By combining `n.png` and `ull.png` from the game assets, Null's almost full body will be made.
* In the secret game crash sequence, when Null first appears, he is not wearing his blue jeans. Instead, it looks like he is wearing brown shorts, blending in with the dock on the lake.
	+ Judging by the brown shorts and overall appearance, this is likely Joshua Valent posing as Null instead of mystman12, similar to the Kickstarter video.
* All of the text in the game relating to Null (located in the `Subtitles_En.json` file) is encrypted using the Unity addon UnityCipher using the password: 'baldi'; this was done to prevent players from instantly datamining Null's dialogue when the game released and spoiling secrets.
* mystman12 promised that Baldi would be the only character who could end the game. However, Null/red `Baldloon` are able to end the game. The reason for this is unknown.
* In NULL Style, when using the Principal Whistle, Null will start darting and dashing across the schoolhouse, making it almost impossible to beat the style this way.
	+ When blowing the Principal Whistle after getting 3/4 exits, Null will be faster than normal in the bossfight, making it impossible.
* Depending on if the player has "Reduce Flashing" enabled or not, Null will either make the lights in the school flicker or simply go dim.
* If the player can somehow make Null move in the exit boundaries, Null will be able to break through the windows of the exits.

## Glitches

### *Baldi's Basics Classic*

* In V1.3, the alternate ending was broken. Null was supposed to say his dialogue and then the game was supposed to close afterwards, however, a coding mistake caused the game to close the moment Null started speaking.

## Gallery

The old version of Null's sprite used for *Baldi's Basics Classic* and *Baldi's Basics Birthday Bash*. It is in much higher quality with seemingly no dithering, and anti-aliasing on.The other half of Null's body as seen in the secret game crash sequence.A photograph of Null by a lake, seen in a secret game crash sequence.The photograph of the lake without Null.
## References

1. ↑ Q: "*Where did you make the image of null?*" / A: "*It was just a photograph I took, which I then edited with GIMP.*" - Gmail (question), Gmail (response)
2. ↑ Baldi's Basics in Education and Learning Kickstarter Video - 2:57
3. ↑ "*I recorded them all in Audacity with my mouth up close to a cheap mic, which resulted in very distorted sound. I then used clip distortion to make the recordings even worse! That was the intended sound though so it worked out well. Audacity was the only software I used.*" - Gmail
4. ↑ "*I just used my laptop mic. I think I stood back from it a few feet and screamed as loud as I could! Then I did some editing afterwards, like adding some clipping and other distortion effects.*" - Gmail
5. ↑ "*I still have all the original, unedited recordings, yeah! I can't share them, but I keep them on-hand just in case I ever need them.*" - Gmail
6. ↑ Q: "*Do you have the feet image from null? Like, does it exist?*" / A: "*Yes, they are in the original image!*" - Gmail (question), Gmail (response)
7. ↑ Q: "*What is his favorite color?*" / A: "*Red!*" - Gmail (question), Gmail (response)
8. ↑ Baldi's Basics in Education and Learning by Basically Games | itch.io
9. ↑ Baldi's Basics Birthday Bash by Basically Games | itch.io
10. ↑ Baldi's Basics in Education and Learning Kickstarter Video - 4:55
11. ↑ "*In regards to Null's captions, you should be able to encrypt modified text strings using the Unity Cipher plugin found here: https://github.com/TakuKobayashi/UnityCipher You can use the key "baldi" to encrypt new strings and it should work fine when you replace encrypted strings in Baldi's Basics Classic Remastered.*" - Gmail
12. ↑ "*One rule I've set for myself is to make it so that Baldi is the \*only\* character who can end your game.*" - Kickstarter comment
13. ↑ "*So in the current version of the game the alternate ending closes the game prematurely. This was due to a simple logic error I made in the code. So to anyone who wants to try and get that ending, you might want to wait for 1.3.1. Again, sorry, should have tested more thoroughly.*" - mystman12. June 1, 2018. Twitter