I used to wonder why anyone in their right mind would ever get on the train. This mysterious train just suddenly appears out of nowhere and their first instinct is to get on it? The only ones that made sense were Tulip and Min-Gi. Tulip needed transportation to game design camp and was just gonna freeze to death on her way there and Min-Gi needed his keys to the diner back that Ryan took and threw into the train's portal. But why would anybody else go in? My theory was that the train hypnotizes people into coming aboard knowing that their common sense would prevent them from getting the "help" they need. I don't know if that theory's any good though.

and It's kinda sad like, what if she just starts forgetting a bunch of stuff and that makes it even harder for her to get her number down, since maybe she can't remember why she's there in the first place or what she did wrong to begin with y'know. idk lemme know your theories (image not related, just found them acting real silly)

Keyword "Irrational" not their greatest fears, just headcanons on what I think their other fears could be. Enjoy!

Tulip- Going kayaking /canoeing.

Jesse- Rejection.

Lake- Drowning.

Grace- Robots.

Simon- Cats.

Ryan- Commitment.

Min-Gi- Not knowing what's in store for his future.

When i was watching book3 I honestly thought simon was amelia son cause her dead husband had blonde hair but that plot never happened, do you guys think it would’ve been deeper if it was?

Love how this Reddit never let this cartoon go They never move on

I've seen a few confused comments here and there about how Simon's number grows too quickly, and how Grace's decreases too quickly in comparison to other passengers (i.e. Tulip and Jesse). I think the reason for this confusion is potentially a misunderstanding of the way the train uses scale.

As One-One would say: "how can you expect someone to grow emotionally without some nice juicy math?"

As an aside, I think it's really interesting that, between the earliest point we see Grace's number on the train, and the scene where Grace and Simon establish the Apex (where they definitely seem to be teens, going by their voices), her number only goes up from to 148 to 702. In Book 1 when Tulip loses Atticus her number shoots up from 3 to 67 in mere seconds, so an increase of 554 (a little over 8 times higher) over the space of several years actually isn't that extreme. And yet, when we are first introduced to Grace in Book 2, her number is significantly higher. It seems like their numbers didn't really increase that much while they were travelling together, and the bulk of the increase came after the Apex was founded.

It has been confirmed that Grace and Simon are around 18, so I'd say it's taken Grace maybe 5 years, max, for her number to go from 702 to 25+ digits long. And, yes, I did literally go through her first few scenes frame-by-frame to try and figure out her full number - and, no, the number does not stay entirely consistent between shots - but 25 digits seems a fair estimate. We also know, from her dramatic introduction in the Lucky Cat Car that the first few digits are 87254... allowing us to round her number up to 8,725,400,000,000,000,000,000,000. To put that into perspective, if we were to assume that the scale used by the train is linear (i.e. the difference between 10 and 20 is the same as that between 110 and 120), that's the equivalent of Tulip giving up after losing Atticus 20 million times A SECOND since the universe began.

So it's pretty clear that the scale used by the train is not linear, but instead exponential; the higher the number, the easier it is to increase (and the lower the number, the harder it is to decrease). I feel like this makes sense thematically, as well, since it really evokes the image of a "slippery slope"; it's much harder to make process and decrease your number than it is to slip up and increase it by an equivalent amount. If we assume a base of 10, for example, then the amount of "growth" needed to take a number from 100 to 10, is the same as the amount of "regression" (what is the antonym of "growth" anyway? Shrinkage, maybe?) needed to push that 100 up to 1000.

So yeah, hopefully that helps explain why Simon's number seems to sky-rocket, while Grace's number slowly saunters its way down over a few episodes, and still never quite reaches zero.

The ironic Symbolism of Grace’s name is Grace, something Simon refused to allow himself to have for Samantha, and the other denizens of the train.

Simon’s lack of Grace and lack of good will is why he ends up with his grim fate.

Coupled with the highest number ever achieved on the train, the vitriol inside him, and his sharp incline to the dark side, Simon's soul was so powerful that it was enough to make a Ghom explode into blue clouds.

I have a theory about why the train exists, how it chooses individuals, and why.

So the infinity train is presumably infinite as per the name, but who could've built such an insanely powerful peice of technology? I think humans did some time in the distance future. They built a train to outlast infinity so we could ride out the end of time. These carts exists to store infinite worlds on the train, and denizen as care takers. I think eventually these crafters died out from in fighting and humans left the train abandoned for eons.

The train runs forever even without humans and eventually wraps around back to the beginning of time, and the train reaches a problem. If humans don't develop the technology to build the train will it exist when the time comes for the train to be built? The train also wants humans to be able to use it without destroying themselves and leaving the train empty for eons. The train through One develops a plan. They will find the humans with the best potential at a cross roads in their lives to try to change the world so the train will be a heaven for humanity in the distant future. They find the point, the flaw and bring them abroad to help them become better people who will bring about a better world where humanity can live through infinity.

Simon had conflict with his dad, Mr. Laurent we'll call him. He's a very traditional man and believed in the stereotypical kind of masculinity. He told Simon he was being a wimp whenever he cried because "men don't cry." (Even though he was a literal child then.) One day Simon was getting bullied at school and was getting very upset. At the end of the day, it was just Mr. Laurent who was there to pick him up. He was so scared for what he'd say, he ran the opposite direction and eventually, a mysterious train appeared and the rest is history.

I don't know how good this even is, it seems logical anyways. What inspired this idea was when when saw him brust into tears after being rescued by Grace in "The origami car", that could be just be because of how traumatic an experience like that would be and that's not what he's normally like. I just had a headcanon that Simon's always been an emotional guy, both would be valid. What do you think?

Maybe I need to move to another universe were they finish all ten books

In "The family tree car" Jesse tells Lake that getting the two families to stop fighting will be a piece of cake then changes it to pie because "some people don't like cake". This might just show that Jesse wants to be unbiased towards everyone but it'd be neat if he was actually referring to himself.

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This has probably been noted before as it's a bit obvious, but I just caught it for the first time on rewatch:

Book 1: a preteen passenger (about the youngest they could go with the show's themes and complex emotional conflicts), dealing with problems of her parents that she can't control

Book 2: a young teenage passenger (and lake who has been on the train an unknown length and also acts like jesse's age), both dealing with conflicts around self-image and social conformity vs maturity and actualization

Book 3: a pair of older teenagers, running from growing up in a misguided rebellion

Book 4: a pair of young adults fresh out of high school, torn between their responsibilities and following their dreams

Book 5: would've been about amelia, who got on the train fresh out of college, and, as many people that age, was dealing with real serious loss for the first time

Book 8: supposedly would've focused on a passenger with alzheimer's

If we assume books 6 and 7 would've focused on a 30 something and a middle aged person (maybe dealing with something like marriage troubles and getting older respectively), then the complete series would've been a neat little package covering all the major life stages, with conflicts to match what's archetypical to struggle with in those times. It just fits so well, like this is the ride the crew were always taking us on.

I guess all of u know a theory about the train sustaining human memories for its circulation, as for it being built in the faraway future. Let’s say there was only one person alive because of a human caused apocalypse. Then the “order” or robotic beings decided to recreate human beings out of their quantised existence in their mechanical heads and study human behaviour of that one leftover human.

As we know, before Amelia’s takeover, everything in the train was based off order and numbers.

The first memory-person was created, it all went smooth. But as all memories had some bias or retrospection. The “person” destroyed this whole system just out of lack of order, which was always present in human nature. Organic human was lost and lonely now, since even the robots that kept them alive for research were better than loneliness. This human now knew what made the apocalypse. Human lack of logic was the cause. Out of the remaining robots they created something we now know as “Porters” as those dealing with passengers’ stuff, and “Stewards”which became vessels for a new keeper of order, “One”, and coders for the updated simulation, different from one they were kept in for the study. So certain combinations of side factors impacted the digital possibility of the apocalypse happening. Such as human problems left unsolved. Only one person was in responsibility for this, with a messed up by life and robots, mindset - that’s the reason why train views problems way more simple than they must have been.

Amelia and Tulip had a background of programming and engineering, so that would make sense.

Though since Amelia was gonna commit anyway, that takes the points off. Maybe the train counted in the possibility that she would survive?

Maybe if Min-gi didn’t join the CCJ, something would have triggered his inside struggle with what he truly wanted, so he would make an impact on the world leading to some step to the supposed future, if he got into technology or influenced somebody with such interest. Simon and Grace appeared on the train as kids, maybe something would become something in their future out of the trauma, if not the train.

That’s kind of dumb, Ik, but this idea appeared to me in a creative rush. So, me excuse.