There's something in fanon that has me super confused, maybe you know where it comes from - Alexander, heterochromia??? I can't for the life of me figure out where that (/if) was established?? I know you don't write it that way, neither do most people I've read in this fandom, so this is just. I'm confused.
That’s a very good question! I hadn’t thought about this for a few years and I had to sit down with a cup of tea to think about this for a moment.
Essentially, Alexander having heterochromia (= eyes that have a different colour from one another, for example one blue and one brown eye) was a popular fanon some years ago, mostly 2011-2013 if I’m not much mistaken. Because Amnesia has next to no official character art, people liked to analyze what little artwork there existed for visual clues and fandom theories. For Daniel, people looked at the concept art of the protagonist (which is not actually of Daniel, but a concept for the protagonist of Unknown, a sort of proto-Amnesia before Amnesia itself even took form); for Alexander, there is only one visual clue apart from the creepy blue 3D model: his portrait. It’s so dark and painted with such murky tones that you cannot actually distinguish his eye colour from it, but it didn’t stop people from trying. We were kind of desperate for more knowledge back then.
This is a cropped close-up of Alexander’s portrait at 100%. I increased the saturation and brightness somewhat to make it more visible. In this size, his eyes appear to be different colours - the left eye a dark brownish colour (which could be amber or orange), the right eye blue. Granted, you really need to use a colour picker tool to be able to tell.
I remember that someone in the fandom actually went and asked Frictional Games at their forum about Alexander’s eye colour, and they replied by saying that they haven’t established an eye colour for him so any interpretation from the fans is fine. I unfortunately don’t have a screenshot of that conversation anywhere and I can’t remember the name of the person who asked so I can’t prove that it happened, but it sounds like a typically vague FG answer so I have no problem believing it.
I personally never got into this theory myself, but it was definitely popular in fanart back in the day.
Thanks for the detailed answer. :) I don’t know if it’s my eyes or what, I still find it very hard to distinguish from those settings. Ah well, it’s pretty cool, just seemed out of left field, coming to the fandom later than that. Although he would have been burnt at the stake within 5 mins or something when he first got there. Also, mind blown??? Who we think of as Daniel… Isn’t really Daniel??? (Might as well be by now though)
Yeah, it’s quite hard to see, I think it’s only because I have my screen settings set to super bright that I can make out anything out of it.
It’s pretty interesting! The concept art for who people assume to be Daniel is actually from a PDF document titled “ancient_game_overview_from_0810″, where the working title of the game is Unknown.
Screenshot from the document titled ancient_game_overview_from_0810.pdf, located in super_secret.
I can see why people use it as a visual clue for Daniel, I mean the character was a sort of forerunner for him and we have nothing else to go by, but the protagonist was, judging by the art, older and buffer than Daniel, and his clothes are inaccurate for Victorian era since Unknown was set in the late 18th century instead of the early 19th century where Amnesia takes place. Unknown was supposed to have a combat system in it so it makes sense the protagonist would have been pretty buff to fight off the monsters, while Daniel seems to have become a more scholarly character.