4x09 409 Conflict

@mansemat Mr. Robot and Elliot's father aren't the same thing at all.

@saltfish Isn't he the visual personification of the good part of his father? You know the one who had the electronics store?
Why, if he wasn't the same person (not entity or idea) did he flip out when Elliot was gonna remember and then disappeared from his mind out of shame or banishment or however?

Still think it's just a plottwist to stir the pot cause "oh so edgy"

@mansemat Yes, he is probably a visual personification of his father so that Elliot would remember his father in a good light, which helps to hide the traumatic memory. But he is also just a part of Elliot's persona, that was created by him as a coping mechanism for the trauma. Mr. Robot has none of Elliot's father's memories and we only have a limited understanding of what the father's personality was like, so Mr. Robot could be totally different from him.

This kind of thing can happen in real life too, caused by traumatic events, such as childhood abuse. People don't usually manifest split personalities just out of nowhere, there's often a very specific event that triggers mental illness. From what I've read, people that have experienced childhood abuse often bury the memories in their subconscious, and then suffer from depression etc. and don't really understand why they're having these mental problems.

Seems pretty realistic to me, not edgy. These kinds of things happen in real life a lot, and maybe you're uncomfortable thinking about it and resort to just calling it edgy, so that you wouldn't need to think about it seriously.

@saltfish I've had my fair share of encounters with rape-, incest- and other victims so it's not that i'm not comfortable thinking about it. Although dispite this not being an expert I don't see any of the traits I've seen in the people I've known... But then again they didn't have multiple personalities.

I still consider this to be an easy way out by the writer(s) to make the story. Something more profound then just "the bad dad fucking/beating his kids". If you disagree: so be it. It's by all means a good show but the two episodes that revealed and dealt with the abuse brought it down a notch for me.

And yes, I have kids and yes, seeing things like that upsets me (but that wasn't in this show so it left me indifferent... hence, "not necessary" hence "edgy").

@mansemat Its not like they portrayed his mother as an angel either, so if they wanted to portray that Elliot had a traumatizing childhood, they had to show that both parents were to blame, and by the way, the dad wasnt beating Elliot but abusing him sexually while his mother was abusing him physically and psychologically. And it is very believable that in the real world, a person that would have gone through all this would develop a mental illness such as Split Personality Disorder, this show is far from "edgy". Its a very special show and its very easy to see that Sam Esmail has put in a lot of work to make the show actually great, not like most writers and directors who make movies and tv shows nowadays. I have yet to find a show that remains this great consistently throughout all the seasons, most shows add a ton of filler and ruin seasons, but not this show because this show is actually great quality. Also, I very much doubt that what we saw here is the true ending, I'm pretty sure that there is going to be a plot twist in the next episode, and maybe there wont even be an happy ending or at least not one that we were expecting or rooting for.