Poppy Playtime Chapter 4 brings back familiar characters from previous chapters, such as Poppy, Kissy Missy, and Ollie, but it also introduces new characters, one of whom the player has heard about in-game prior to the latest chapter. In fact, Chapter 4 includes more characters that aren't enemies than any previous chapter, showing that the lower levels of Playtime Co. are their own world. However, the player isn't lucky enough to only meet allies in the depths of the factory.

Harley Sawyer is mentioned in the first three chapters of Poppy Playtime as the player finds VHS tapes and notes that reveal glimpses into the factory's cruel past. While he isn't one of the heads of the company, like Leith Pierre or Elliot Ludwig, Sawyer has undoubtedly shaped the company with his work. He made a name for himself among the employees and toys, but he ended up in a position that he didn't expect as the Doctor.

Who Is The Doctor In Poppy Playtime?

Playtime Co.'s Mastermind Explained

The Doctor is Chapter 4's main villain, but the name is just a nickname for Harley Sawyer. Like Huggy Wuggy in Chapter 1, Mommy Long Legs in Chapter 2, and CatNap in Chapter 3, the Doctor is the villain who's behind the events that the player faces throughout Chapter 4. The nature of his existence lets him keep an eye on the player as they move through the prison and other areas that are hidden away under the Playcare, which helps build paranoia since he's quite literally always watching.

What Did Harley Sawyer Do At Playtime Co.?

The Head Of Special Projects

Before he was an employee, Harley Sawyer was part of Playtime Co.'s Young Geniuses Program. However, Elliot Ludwig removed him from the program after being unable to instill humanity in Sawyer and teach him to experiment for the sake of improving humanity instead of purely for progress.

Later, Sawyer was hired by Playtime Co. and would eventually be made the Head of Special Projects, which would be his most infamous position, as it put him in charge of the experiments that the company wanted to keep secret. That secrecy wasn't easy to maintain, and employees saw things they shouldn't.

Sawyer was the one who suggested the Bigger Bodies Initiative for the sake of cutting labor costs, lowering the number of lawsuits the company was receiving, and handling the issue of lower-level employees seeing projects they weren't supposed to have knowledge of, which are problems that received some attention in Poppy Playtime's ARG for Chapter 3.

Insisting that he was put in charge of the project he presented, Sawyer became the Head of Special Projects with the main objective of putting human minds into toy bodies so that they could be unpaid workers for the company. Sawyer spent most of his time at Playtime Co. performing extractions to remove a human consciousness and place it into the body of a toy, then worked on improving and perfecting the process by monitoring the toys that showed problems and finding solutions.

Because of this, it's not surprising that he's known as the Doctor. The VHS tapes in Chapter 3 include snippets of the process kids would undergo if they were chosen, like CatNap's past before he was an antagonist. However, it looks like Sawyer's projects could be messy for the company, resulting in the deaths of visitors.

What Happened To Harley Sawyer?

The Doctor Was Betrayed By Leith Pierre

Sawyer's projects went from helping the company to fueling its downfall. Toys started to act out and revolt, which led to deaths, and not just incidents of a single death occasionally followed by the Hour of Joy.

Instead, a VHS tape found in Chapter 4 includes a conversation between a team that was designed for the purpose of cleaning up after such incidents and sweeping them under the rug so that the public remained unaware of those deaths. Their conversation implies that Sawyer is the cause of these incidents, and that the higher-ups need that spelled out for them.

The problem was that Sawyer knew too much, and he was integral to the projects that gave Playtime Co. unpaid workers in the form of toys. It's likely that Sawyer knew he was too important to fire, and that he knew too much for the company to fire him, risking that he would reveal sensitive information. So, Leith Pierre betrayed him and turned Sawyer into one of his projects, wiring him into the company's security system. This way, they could use him to help with experiments, but he'd be unable to act of his own accord for the most part.

By the time the player returns to the factory, Sawyer seems content in his new role, and he finds entertainment in testing the player. It was a betrayal, but he ended up with a lot of control throughout the facility, which he could've ended up viewing as beneficial instead of the prison it was supposed to be for him. As each chapter reveals more about Playtime Co.'s past and how involved employees like Sawyer were in its horrors, it becomes difficult to imagine what will come next in Poppy Playtime.

Source: Mob Entertainment/YouTube