The Man in Grey
The Man in Grey was a mysterious being. Multiple versions of him were active in the Multiverse, with one spelling the name as the Man in Gray, with an “A”, instead.
Description
Physical appearance
The Man in Grey's principle physical characteristic was the gray robes he wore. (PROSE: The Tribulations of Jenny Over-There)
Personality
Even in universes where he wasn't really especially villainous, the Man in Grey freely referred to himself as “evil”. (PROSE: Open Sourcing) Over-There once cited “working for the Man in Grey for extended periods of time” as something which “tend[ed] to shift one’s perspective a little on the relative badness of kidnapping situations”. (PROSE: Family Business) He combined an outsized confidence in his own mental faculties with a yearning for approval from his betters that left him crushed when he failed to get it. (PROSE: A Series of Queer Events)
In at least some incarnations, his liking for the colour grey extended beyond his wardrobe, with him entire painting the M.F.S. office in this same shade. (PROSE: Open Sourcing) The 925th Universe's version also fell under the label of grey-asexual, but claimed this was a complete coincidence. (PROSE: A Series of Queer Events)
Powers & abilities
The Man in Grey generally had an aura of grayness which extended beyond his physical wardrobe choice. Jenny Over-There found Jenny Nowhere's comparable aura of wrongness eerily familiar. (PROSE: Family Business)
Biography
At Facebook
- See main article: The Man in Grey (What Went Down at Facebook)
In one universe, “the Man in Grey” was connected to mysterious eldritch occurrences which plagued Facebook HQ for over a year leading up to its infamous October 4th, 2021 blackout, and which were seemingly connected to a deal between Mark Zuckerberg and entity called Chuckzikkiushki, also involving a mysterious black mould growing in the server room. This Man in Grey was never seen directly, but at their funeral service, a Facebook employee who had died as a result of the strange events briefly came back to life just to babble about how “the Man in Grey doesn't care about our troubles”. Later, when an intern went into the server room to investigate mysterious chanting which could be heard emanating from there, they exited “wearing grey robes”. The Man in Grey may, or may not, also have been the humanoid figure glimpsed by several employees instead of their own reflection within the liquid mercury which replaced the water in the water-cooler on September 16th, 2021. (PROSE: What Went Down at Facebook) A member of the Collective of the Retconning Crocodiles would later suggest that the 925th Universe's Man in Grey had involuntarily subsumed this version's backstory at some point, citing “whatever grey-robed busybody worked at Facebook all those years ago…” as one of the individuals whose identities he had absorbed. (PROSE: The Man in Grey's Christmas Carol)
In the 925th Universe
- See main article: The Man in Grey (925th Universe)
Though he may have originated in another universe as “the Man in Black”, (PROSE: Open Sourcing) one version of the Man in Grey was principally active in the 925th Universe, where he founded the Multidimensional Finders Service within the Backrooms on the orders of the Great Higher-Ups. This made him Jenny Over-There's boss. (PROSE: The Tribulations of Jenny Over-There, Fragment: A & E, etc.)
In Universe 925-B
- See main article: The Man in Gray
In “Universe 925-B”, a somewhat more sinister equivalent of the Man in Grey who called himself the Man in Gray, with an A instead of an E, ran a Monouniversal Finders Service. (PROSE: Annals of the Jen: One Year of Jenny Over-There) He looked similar to his 925th Universe counterpart that Dynamite Thor couldn't tell the difference, also being “a gray, unremarkable figure wearing a badly-fitting gray suit”, although Jenny Over-There could easily tell the difference. He was aware of the 925th Universe's Man in Grey and once visited the M.F.S. office to meet with him and discuss his lack of a Talisman of Restriction. (PROSE: Fragment: A & E)
In the 775th Universe
- See main article: The Man in Grey (775th Universe)
In the 775th Universe, the Man in Grey was in charge of the Altern Corporation, and a noticeably more sinister figure than the version who ran the M.F.S. office. The local Jenny Nowhere was one of his operatives. He appeared as a tall figure with gray skin, short white hair, and pointed ears. His eyes were heterochromic, with one being solid black with a white pupil, and the other white with a black pupil. (COMIC: Call Me Nowhere)
Behind the scenes
Backround and genesis in Callum Phillpott's works
The Man in Grey and the Man in Black were both devised by Callum Phillpott in loose reference to the 1980 song Man at C&A, whose fairly mysterious lyrics identify singer Terry Hall's character as “the Man in Grey”, seemingly distinct from “the Man in Black”, with both of them being knowledgeable but powerless figures in the context of the Cold War abruptly erupting into a nuclear World War Three.
| Warning, warning, nuclear attack! Atomic sounds designed to blow your mind! World War Three! Nuclear, nuclear attack! (…) The Man in Black, he told me the latest Moscow news about the storm across the red sea. They drove their ball-point views. I'm the Man in Grey, I'm just the Man at C&A, And I don't have a say in the war games that they play. |
| —Man at C&A |
The first incarnation of the character to make its way to released media was the Man in Black, who appeared in Phillpott's novel Cyber-Hunt, set in the Doctor Who universe. Adapted from the earlier audioplay of the same name, which featured no such figure, the book depicted “the man in black” (then uncapitalised) as a highly mysterious figure with whom Fred makes a deal. Various possible identities for the man in black were proposed or hinted at, including some version of the Doctor's nemesis the Master, the Time Lord messenger seen in the Doctor Who episode Genesis of the Daleks, Death, or Nyarlathotep.
A month after Cyber-Hunt was released, Phillpott published a short narrative Twitter thread, later collected as What Went Down at Facebook, satirising the then-current Facebook blackout. The narrative presented a tongue-in-cheek summary of a crescendo of strange supernatural events occurring at Facebook HQ, including water in the watercoolers turning to liquid mercury, alien-looking black mould growing in the server room, and “chanting in the server room”. Two items explicitly connected to the Man in Grey idea: one of the strange occurrences was an employee going into the server room to investigate, and coming out “wearing grey robes”; the other was an explicit name-drop of the character.
| January 2021, room 5b is finally found. Inside it are five prone bodies, later identified as the missing employees from January 7th of last year. During the funeral service, one of the deceased employees gets up, babbling about how the Man in Grey doesn’t care for our troubles. When the employees ask what they’re talking about, Mark Zuckerberg fires them on the spot. |
| —What Went Down at Facebook |
As stated by Callum Phillpott on the Jenny Everywhere Discord on July 8th, 2023:
| The Man in Grey definitely got tweaked a bit conceptually after [What Went Down at Facebook (short story)], but he's been around for a while — in fact he might predate the Man in Black since a similar figure did pop up in an abandoned draft of a novella I was writing, but I can't remember which name I chose then. The story never got far (so it's entirely possible the Man in Black/Grey never left my loose story notes), but the story itself was a sort of romcom riff on Beyond the Wall of Sleep, with the Man in Whatever acting as a cold and removed eldritch matchmaker who was heavily implied or stated to be Nyarlathotep. This story was doomed to fail. This did nearly make it in to Minalopa as a subplot, but we all know what happened there. (…) It's probably a safe call to treat [What Went Down at Facebook] as a different universe. (Also, the reason it's a 50/50 chance of either being the Man in Grey or Man in Black is because I got both of these names from the Specials song Man at C&A — obviously they're quite generic names that have been used centuries prior, but that's where I got them from. |
| —Callum Phillpott |
The Man in PROSE: What Went Down at Facebook would go on to be referenced in PROSE: The Man in Grey's Christmas Carol as “whatever grey-robed busybody worked at Facebook all those years ago…”, suggested to have been an initially-distinct individual whose identity the 925th Universe's Man in Grey had subsumed, as part of a wider claim that the Man in Grey had a tendency to subsume other people's pasts into his own, although the Man at C&A Men were not specifically referenced.
The definitive Man in Grey was introduced in 2022 in The Tribulations of Jenny Over-There, an April Fools' Day story by Callum Phillpott which also introduced Jenny Over-There. Phillpott's rendition of “the Paragraph” released Jenny Over-There as an open-source character in her own right under similar conditions to Jenny Everywhere and other recurring characters, and also said of the Man in Grey:[1]
| You can also just use the Man in Grey if you want, I won't get on your case about that, he's public domain now. |
| —Callum Phillpott |
PROSE: Open Sourcing would go on to humorously reference the connection to the Man in Black, now actively implying that the Man in Grey of The Nine-Two-Five Universe was the same character as the Man in Black from Cyber-Hunt under a false identity. PROSE: Lovie Dovie Stuff referenced the connection further, but altered the implication, with the Man in Grey now depicted as amnesiac about his past, unable to remember his origins as the Man in Black clearly. The backstory would ultimately be delved into in PROSE: The Man in Grey's Christmas Carol, where the Collective of the Retconning Crocodiles ended up diegetically retconning the Nine-Two-Five Universe Man in Grey a new backstory to replace the Man in Black.
Later development
When he devised the Man in Gray in Fragment: A & E, Scott Sanford specified in the copyright note
| The Man in Gray is as public domain as the Man in Grey – if they’re different people at all, which you couldn’t prove by talking to Dynamite Thor. |
| —Scott Sanford |
Notes & References
| Incarnations of the Man in Grey |
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| What Went Down at Facebook • 925th Universe • Universe 925-B • 775th Universe |
| Open-source elements making up the core Jenny Everywhere mythos | ||||||||||||
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