Poets of the Fall's MVs and lyrics often contain various depictions of Mental Worlds - characterised by tvtropes.org as "Any world that exists inside a person's mind."[1] Some of these are overt, outright declaring their mental nature such as the MV for Lift, some are known to be such due to band interviews such as Choice Millionaire and others still are assumed through context, such as Locking Up the Sun.
Known Mental Worlds
Poet County Jail
The setting of the Lift MV that inspired the fan community Poet County Jail - a blend of prison and mental asylum. The world has a toroidal topology and consists of three "floors":
- The interview room, where "Mark" is being questioned by a five person panel and under the watch of two guards. The guards' badges show Poet County as being the shape of a human brain. The wall has a big number three blazoned on it. One of the symptoms written down for Mark is "Delusional parasitosis". Considering the contents of the playroom, this would mean that the moths are in Mark's mind - not real moths.
- The playroom, where the band plays amidst an oversized toy train set, wooden blocks and walls covered in live mounted moths.
- The bedroom, where the band plays in front of a gothic bed, with a portrait of a woman with wings hanging above it. In the corner of the room is what appears to be a coat stand with a red cape and a white dress on it.
The Machine
The machine features heavily in the lyrics of Revolution Roulette and is introduced as the setting of the Choice Millionaire MV. In the MV, it is a factory under heavy guard that appears to utilize indoctrinated slave laborers that breathe in a gas through a gasmask. When Marko gives the protagonist Hopecatcher, she and the others make an escape attempt and it appears that only she is successful (though the Dying to Live quote may cast that into doubt). The setting and cinematography draw many parallels to Carnival of Rust.
Mental Versailles
Spoken of in the lyrics of Drama for Life and therefore likely also the mental world depicted in the MV. Likely derived from BBC Sherlock's concept of a "mind palace", the choice of Versailles palace rather than any other adds detail to the metaphor as it was used for a brief time as a prison, tying in with the Poet County Jail.
Likely Mental Worlds
The Carnival of Rust
The setting of the MV of the same name, the Carnival of Rust uses heavy symbolism in an unrealistic and deeply archetypal location, with Commedia Dell'arte stock characters, Tarot card metaphors and a smiling moon. There are even two antithetical versions of Marko. As The Machine is a known mental world, the heavy connections between the CoR and CM music videos add credence to the idea that this too is one. The lore behind the Hopecatcher also indicates the existence of multiple worlds.
Absolution Arena
The setting of the Locking Up the Sun MV is likely a mental world due to its heavy use of unrealistic symbolic concepts including a "battle of the bands" between two different versions of Poets of the Fall inside a boxing ring - perhaps a metaphorical Hegelian dialectic. It continues the symbolic use of the Lollipop spiral from CoR.
The Night Road
The setting of the Late Goodbye MV again features two versions of Marko. The protagonist in a red car drives past a stereotypical American middle-of-nowhere motel (analogous to the Oceanview Motel) and is tail-ended by a mysterious white car of the same model. An antagonistic Marko in a black mask, driving a black car of the same model hits the protagonist in a head-on collision. These three colours hold alchemical symbolism and are used frequently in the catalogue, for instance in the MV for False Kings.
The Masquerade Ball
The setting of the Daze MV, this raucous party is portrayed as filled to the brim with debauchery. The jester-like character portrayed by Marko and his seeming ability to spread fires at an impossible distance implies that this is another fictional place.
The Memory Estate
The setting of the Cradled in Love MV, namedropped in Kamikaze Love and potentially also the Mental Versailles, protagonist Jeremiah Peacekeeper sleeps in a nook of this abandoned and decaying mansion until being woken by the arrival of a woman in black, reminiscent of his former incarnation Zoltar's experience in the Carnival of Rust. Also spoken of in the lyrics of Skin.
The False World
The setting of the False Kings MV, people appear in mirrors who are not present and call-backs to numerous previous PotF works are represented in a distorted, false form, like caricatures of their original incarnations with their meanings lost - the Lollipop but not a spiral and the Morpho hand gesture void of context, for instance.
The Hotline Couch
The setting of the My Dark Disquiet MV, or rather multiple settings including an empty desolate building, an 80s film-trope hacker computer setup and a half-demonic Marko on a couch from which he uses the Hotline from the game Control to contact two female characters, seemingly corrupting them into performing strange dances. The silently mouthed "wake up" followed by Captain's frantic typing and Apollo 11 code procedure is perhaps a computer analogy for the mind waking up.
The Harlequinade
The setting of the Requiem for My Harlequin MV, in which a troupe of circus performers provide backing for the Harelquin's tirades. Tarot analogies return alongside metaphors like the back-and-forth chess piece and the difference between what's happening in the scene and what's happening in the mirror. The end of the MV may be implying that we have left the mental world behind, with a genuine Marko raising a glass and departing.
Remedy Entertainment
Several mental worlds are known to exist in the Remedy Connected Universe, including the Astral Plane in Control and Alan and Saga's versions of the Mind Place in Alan Wake II.