When I began researching for this blog idea, I had the pleasure of coming across a similar post about this topic by user Mightyenacrush on Steam in 2018. My worst nightmare…

Alright, I’m only kidding! Being that we have no official statements regarding this subject, I have refrained from analyzing Mightyenacrush’s post in the interest of this blog consisting entirely of my analysis. Additionally, this blog will only focus on Iterator names, and my analysis is more focused on the “English of it all!” That being said, please go check out their viewpoint on some of these names!

Iterator Names in Rain World

When I started up my first survivor play-through in Rain World, little did I know how obsessed I would become with this game. Quite often, I confidently brag about how this is my favorite game of all time, and I will continue to do that in this blog post. So, if you haven’t yet enjoyed this game, I’m going to be analyzing the Iterator names with great consideration to their entire arc. As a game that shares its lore carefully, this is your official spoiler warning!

If you’re unfamiliar with Rain World and don’t care about spoilers, I’ll provide a short synopsis of the game. In Rain World, you play as a lowly slugcat at the bottom of the food chain, fighting for survival in an advanced, realistic simulation of an ecosystem. Additionally, the world revolves around cycles of rain, which are discharged by Iterators every so often for operation purposes. And Iterators are precisely what I’ll be discussing today!

Iterators are massive machines, built by an advanced long-lost society known as the Ancients. These machines were built to break out of the permanent, endless cycle of life that persists throughout the ecosystem of Rain World. Essentially, when you die in this world, you are immediately reborn. Iterators are programmed with one goal in mind: achieving a Triple Affirmative (affirmative that a solution has been found, affirmative that the solution is portable, and affirmative that a technical implementation is possible and generally applicable).

Now that you hopefully understand what an Iterator’s purpose is, let’s talk about their names. They’re weird. I mean, REALLY, really weird! Oftentimes, they feel like a conglomeration of random words. Their phrasing is often odd, missing a pronoun or some other way of identifying the subject. But, as a writer, I know that character names are incredibly important, so let’s attempt to inject some meaning into these names!

When I started writing this blog, I had the intent of covering ALL seven Iterators named in the main game and Downpour DLC. However, I went into more depth than I anticipated, so I’ll only be covering the most important two in this blog. Perhaps in the future I’ll look at the others!

Looks to the Moon

“As the senior Iterator of the Local Group, Looks to the Moon once acted as the decision-maker for her neighboring Iterators. Her interactions with Slugcat show her to be kind and considerate, yet rather assertive. She collapsed sometime after Five Pebbles, an Iterator built dangerously close to herself, began leeching off her water supply. This caused her systems to fail, and her structure collapsed, leaving her catatonic.” - Rain World Wiki

For many of these Iterator names, it’s helpful to break them down into several parts. Looks to the Moon’s name is a stand out amongst Iterators, as it presents an action through its phrasing. The phrase “looks to” is unpleasant to read, as it lacks a subject (to which I’ll discuss later). However, we can analyze the phrase “looks to” in a vacuum. People often “look to” something in hopes of attaining a certain glory. For example, when someone asks what my plans are for this summer, I might say “I’m looking to spend a lot of time at the beach, relaxing.” This phrase can be thought of as an attempt of outlining one’s future, with some, but not full knowledge of what lies ahead.

As for the “moon,” we can look to how our own world operates as a reference! Much like how Earth’s cycles are determined by the moon, Rain World has a cycle determined by rain. This is further connected by the moon’s influence on Earth’s bodies of waters. Beyond this clear cyclical reference, the moon also symbolizes femininity through protective care. This is important to note considering Looks to the Moon is one of the only known female-identifying Iterators. Lastly, the moon could simply be a symbol for what is above us. And what is directly above Looks to the Moon? Another Iterator, Five Pebbles! It wasn’t always like this, but she nonetheless was built close to Five Pebbles by the Ancients.

Now that I’ve broken down the name, let’s go back to the poor readability via its lack of a subject. We don’t exactly know who or what “looks to the moon.” Is it the character, Looks to the Moon, herself? This would make the phrase closer to “SHE looks to the moon,” which emphasizes the first half of the phrase, “looks to.” It makes it seem more about a hopefulness for peace within the endless cycles of Rain World, as the character looks to attain a more pleasurable future.

Another possibility is that “looks to the moon” is a description about herself. That is to say that the Ancients hoped this Iterator would “look to” her moon, Five Pebbles, for support and collaboration on the Triple Affirmative project. Why else were they built so close together? This theory additionally supports that this naming happened before Looks to the Moon crashed to Earth, which helps to make this character’s name feel more rooted in the reality of the universe.

Five Pebbles

“Five Pebbles grew extremely frustrated after the last of the Ancients ascended, leaving him and other iterators behind to work on a problem that, in his eyes, no longer needed to be solved.” As a result, he became increasingly motivated to rewrite his genetic code in hopes of navigating a way towards suicide. Unfortunately, these processes resulted in him taking up a majority of the groundwater that he and Moon shared, causing Moon to crash to the surface. - Rain World Wiki

Most of the Iterators have names that are descriptions of objects. When using objects for names, it’s typically used as a means of direct symbolism. For “pebbles,” these perfectly rounded stones are often a representation of permanence. And, funnily enough, when researching this, I immediately began thinking of my Jewish upbringing and the tradition of placing stones atop graves. A permanence of life, even beyond death, when attributed to Five Pebbles’ desires, is quite depressing. Perhaps this is a curse placed upon him. He is trying to escape a permanent life, the same concept that is essentially the main antagonist of the game. By naming him in this way, it shows that no matter how hard he tries, Five Pebbles will not be able to escape. This explains why his dialogue is often extremely frustrated and angry. However, it isn’t supported by the idea that these Iterators were named by the Ancients, as why would the Ancients build an Iterator whose success is doomed?

All of that pebbles symbolism is quite interesting and somewhat applicable… But why five of them? Typically when writing using numbers, we are deliberate about their intentions, oftentimes connecting them to another element associated with that number. But here, there isn’t much of that! The only connection that comes to mind is that of the fifth karma level, which represents survival, again acting as a curse against Five Pebbles.

If we instead analyze the number five in terms of symbolism, we get to the concept of “human perfection.” This phrase references Da Vinci’s “The Vitruvian Man,” and how a person fully stretched creates a pentagon with their arms, legs, and head. This further supports the other theories, as we can assume that “human perfection” requires human life, thus, permanence.

Connecting these two words back together, we strongly push for this theory of a perfect, human-like, permanent life. Again, this is horribly depressing, considering the desires of Five Pebbles to rewrite his code to his own demise. It becomes even sadder as we consider that maybe the Ancients did intend on plaguing his success, perhaps by placing him in close proximity to Looks to the Moon?

Conclusion

All of this to say… what? Why did I just spend so much time analyzing really strange names in a really strange game?

Well, naming your characters is just as important as designing their appearance and traits. Though I think we often, as writers, worry so much about making names catchy and appealing, rather than meaningful. In the real world, a person’s name is used as a complete representation of their whole. That is, to say, that a name can also be used to give players an immediate idea of who a character is.

The point here is that Rain World takes this idea of meaningfulness over appeal to an absurdity. Sometimes, odd naming conventions can be incredible additions to your story. They can raise suspicion for a daring bossfight or reinforce narrative themes of mystery and curiosity. I’m not exactly advocating for more character names like “Looks to the Moon” and “Five Pebbles,” but I think there’s definitely a middle ground between that and the more basic names we often see.