Agreed with your theory overall, but wasn’t that lore of “MDR going crazy and killing a neighboring group” revealed in s1 to be fabricated entirely, with each group having their own version of that lore against other groups? E.g., the optics and design group had the exact opposite version of the lore as MDR, down to paintings depicting the events being the exact same, but with swapped badge colors that indicated the aggressor.
Just a theory on my part, and I'm trying to build evidence from clues in the series, so you might be right.
We know that there's a lot of unreliable information because Lumon is actively trying to deceive everyone but my take on that was that there was a significant event that actually did happen, some group going crazy, that Lumon needed to rationalize with some narrative in order to address it.
Just to list some events after re-watching some of season 1:
* s1e3 Dylan talks about O&D staging a coup but Mark assures everyone that there was no killing
* s1e5 Irving intercepts a print job that was sent to their print station "by mistake". The picture shows people with green badges (O&D) attacking people with blue badges (MDR). Immediately revealed to be a subterfuge attempt ("you ran a 266 on Irving B." Cobel to Miltchek)
* s1e5 Dylan finds a painting in O&D depicting the same picture that Irving saw on the printer
but with the attackers as blue badges and the victims as green badges ("The Macro Data Refinement Calamity")
So this very well may be subterfuge by Lumon to keep the groups separate.
I read it differently initially, that the printed copy was altered from the original painting and that the original painting was the "true" version, but I think your take is probably more consistent. If Lumon can erase memory then there's no need to keep institutional knowledge about past events that no one remembers.
Some other tidbits of information:
* s1e2 and s1e5 Irving hallucinates black goo while in front of his terminal. I believe as soon as he stands up or backs away from his terminal, the effect goes away.
* s1e3 Natalie is shown on tv talking about a "workie" getting pregnant while severed
* s1e5 Devon goes to a house to give birth and meets someone who's severed. I think the house or property is owned by Lumon (but I'm not sure?)
So, I suspect Mark S.'s sister, Devon, might be the severed employee who got pregnant while severed, though I'm not sure how this fits into the larger narrative if true.
Also, I might be reading too much into it but there's clues sprinkled around about immortality and "Kier speaking through people" that might be support the theory of them trying to resurrect Kier. There's a scene where Cobel gets Petey's chip with a line that says "that's Petey".
So far the series has delivered and I trust the writers, so I'm looking forward to seeing where it goes.
