The Vitruvian Grub Explained... Kinda... Not Really Script

Art. It’s beautiful. It’s thought provoking. It has been used to tell some of the greatest stories ever told. But today, we’re going to talk about a classic: the Vitruvian Man. This work by Leonardo da Vinci has become one of the hallmarks of the Renaissance Era. It symbolizes the architecture of nature found in the proportions of the human body. But this isn’t a fucking art class; it’s a Hollow Knight lore video, so what does the Vitruvian Man have to do with anything? Well, hidden deep away within the City of Tears, there is a very interesting drawing called the Vitruvian Grub. This is one of the biggest mysteries in Hallownest. So what does it mean? Honestly, I don’t have a goddamn clue, but hey, that doesn't mean I can’t make a widely speculative video about it. This is the “Vitruvian Grub: Possible Ties To ISIS??”

Alright, so when you start playing Hollow Knight for the first time, you’ll probably stumble into this room in Forgotten Crossroads. Here, you’ll find the Grubfather, weeping over the loss of his children. The player can find these grubs trapped in glass jars all throughout the map. After you find one his children and return to him, the Grubfather will give you a reward. So yeah, the grubs are just a cool side quest that the player can do while playing the game. But who captured the grubs in the first place? Well, turns out it was this four armed motherfucker, the Collector. The Collector can be found in the Tower of Love in the City of Tears, and after beating him, the player can find a map that holds the location to all of the remaining grubs the player has left to find.

Now there’s a lot going on with this guy that we will get to in a second, but first I wanted to talk about the Tower of Love itself. This appears to be an abandoned location that was repurposed by the Collector. The Tower of Love is hidden away, only accessible from Kingdom’s Edge. The walls of the area are covered with cushions and even the key to the area is covered in padding. This whole place gives me an Eyes Wide Shut vibe. Hallownest’s secret elite meeting up and engaging in lude sexual act. This is pretty speculative, but I do appreciate the subtle world building Team Cherry does here. Another interesting piece of information is what the corpse of the bug holding the Love Key in Queen's Garden says when hit with the Dream Nail. It says “Too long… spent together. We became as one…”. Now, if you look at this guy’s eyes, you can see black streaks, a feature commonly found on bugs that died close to the Abyss, where void resides. I think this means to tell us that this bug actually spent some time with the Collector, who itself is a void creature.

How do we know the Collector is made of void? First off, its body is all black and liquidy and goopy. When defeated, it melts down into the floor, and when hit, it gives off the same black particle effects that the Siblings do. And, like the Siblings, the Collector does not give the player soul when hit. Then of course, there’s the mold found in the workshop in the White Palace. This mold is used to create a humanoid shaped figure with four arms. This mold was used to create the Kingsmoulds that guarded the White Palace. The Collector was probably created here as well, even though it might not have been intentional. So yeah, the Collector’s origins began at the White Palace, which raises a ton of questions.

So why was the Collector created? It’s possible that the Collector was an early attempt at creating a void construct gone wrong, who just escaped the White Palace and traveled upwards into the City of Tears. Another theory is that the Collector was specifically created by the Pale King to capture the Grubs. At the very least, there is something about the Collector that separates it from other void creatures. The Collector is the most expressive of any void creature found in the game.

For example, one of the Collector’s Dream Nail dialogue is “My love, my love, protected at last.” This type of deep emotional connection isn’t seen in many void creatures, other than maybe the Hollow Knight, or arguably Zote or Hornet if you think they are made from void as well. Also, the Collector doesn’t respond differently after the Knight has obtained the Void Heart, which means that the Collector must have an independently strong will itself. So what exactly is the Collector trying to do if this is the case?

First let’s look at the rest of its Dream Nail dialogue. The Collector’s other two lines are “A safe space, for you! And you! And you!” and “It must be saved!” From these lines of dialogue, it seems that the Collector is capturing grubs and other creatures in order to protect them. Protect them from what exactly? Well, this is where shit gets weird. So, let’s say you defeat the Collector and rescue all the grubs. Cool, you go to the Grubfather, who is eternally grateful and gives you the final reward, the Grubberfly’s Elegy. Awesome. But if you chose to return to the Grubfather after resting at a bench, then you will discover that the Grubfather has actually eaten his children. Now that’s some fucked up shit right there. Look Team Cherry, I don’t know if the practice of eating one’s children is common in Australia, but here in the United States, it is not. So, maybe the Collector knows that the Grubfather was going to eat his children, and so it captured them as a way to keep them safe.

If that was the case though, the Collector might actually be wrong. Even though the grubs have been eaten, you can still hear them inside of the Grubfather’s stomach. So they’re not dead yet. Also, the achievement the player gets when freeing the last grub is called Metamorphosis. So this whole thing might just be biology. The last reward given to the player is a charm called the Grubberfly’s Elegy, which talks about the grubs moving on into the next stage of their lives. So it seems as though the Grubfather is actually sacrificing himself and acting as a cocoon for the grubs to transform into Grubberflies. The Grubberflies would then burst out of the Grubfather’s body, which wouldn’t be the first time we saw that in Hollow Knight. It’s all just a part of the beauty of nature. But of course, the Collector might not know this, so maybe it thinks capturing the grubs is the only way to protect them.

There is something a bit unsettling though. If you listen to the Collector before reaching the room where you fight him, you hear some strange things. Now that’s just creepy. Seriously, listen to it with horror music playing. Not only that, but you can hear the Grub gagging at one point. Why is it that this cute little creatures are involved in one of the most fucked up plots of the game? It’s so weird.

So let’s just say that this is all there is to the Collector’s motive. Where does that leave the Vitruvian Grub? Well, the Collector seems to find nature beautiful, and believes that it should be protected. Maybe the Vitruvian Grub is just a drawing the Collector made to represent its obsession over the form of the grub body. But that’s kind of a boring answer! I think it’s time we start speculating wildly. What if there’s another motive behind the Collector’s actions? What if there’s another layer beneath all of this? What is it about the grubs specifically that the Collector is so infatuated with? 

The Grubberfly’s Elegy mentions that the charm “imbues weapons with a holy strength”. Now, this is interesting. Are the grubs actually more powerful than we could possibly imagine? Let’s look at the Vitruvian Grub again. What’s the deal with this symbol in the middle of the drawing? It’s not visible on the grubs in game. What could it mean? Well, the symbol shows 3 circles connected together. Maybe, this is supposed to represent a holy trinity. The number three has already been established as being an important number in this game, seeing as there are three dreamer required to combat the Radiance. In other words, this design on the grub’s stomach is telling us that the grubs do indeed contain some sort of sacred power within them.

But what about the surroundings of the grub. In the Vitruvian Man drawing, the man is surrounded by a circle and square. This was done to show the architectural properties of the human body. But I think something different is going on here. First off, they kind of look like crop circles. You know, the kind left by aliens.

[X-Files Theme Intensifies]

Now, I don’t think we’re supposed to believe that grubs are actually aliens despite the compelling evidence that points that way. But I do think this is meant to represent how grubs might be other-worldly, or at least very different in nature from the rest of the bugs in the game. But there’s another interesting thing about the designs that surround the Vitruvian Grub. As I’m sure you’ve noticed, there are 46 circles drawn in this picture, and that’s the exact number of grubs that can be freed in game. What if this drawing is some sort of representation of the locations of the grubs? When we compare the Vitruvian Grub to the world map, there’s an easy connection we can make right away. These three dots in unison can line up with the three grubs found in the Tower of Love. But after that, it really doesn’t make any sense. But I do think this surrounding design is telling us that the grubs are scattered across the land, even if the Vitruvian Grub isn’t a 100% accurate map.

But this raises another question. Why is it that the Collector leaves the Grubs in various locations, instead of just taking them back to the Tower of Love? Is the Collector just hiding them it spots it thinks no one will find? Is it because they have to be positioned in a certain way? If so, is this by the Collector’s will, or is the Collector actually following instructions left for it. Maybe the Collector was told to capture the grubs, and the Vitruvian Grub is some sort of instruction on how to do it. I suggest this because the Collector’s dialogue only points to it wanting to preserve the grubs, but it just seems like there is more going on here. Is it possible that the Pale King wanted the grubs captured? Did this holy power hidden within the grubs scare the Pale King? Is this another example of the Pale King trying to smother out other powerful beings? If all that’s the case, then we might have just fucked everything up by freeing them all.

So yeah, is the Collector just absolutely insane and became obsessed with grubs for some arbitrary reason? Is the Collector aware of this holy power that might be hidden within the grubs? Could it be that the Pale King is actually responsible for all of this? Is it even possible to know the answer at this point? Whenever I think about Hollow Knight lore, I always end up remembering Zote the Mighty’s Precept Fifty. Maybe it’s better not to linger on mysteries for too long. Is this Team Cherry’s way of telling us to not get too worked up over every little bit of dialogue? I mean, we craft entire theories off of characters turning their heads slightly for fuck’s sake. I think the Vitruvian Grub is a really cool mystery Team Cherry has added to the game, but maybe there is no answer for its existence yet.

And that’s all I’ve got. Let me know in the comments if I missed something or if you have any theories of your own as to what’s going on with all this. I hope Team Cherry gives us more information about the Vitruvian Grub in upcoming content, but then again, I already feel that way about 10 other fucking things in this game.