My working theory about the physical state of Curly and the mental state of Jimmy.... (SPOILERS!!!)

[Dibby]

So... I have a working theory that I've been rolling around in my head for a few days now. I finished Mouthwashing about a week ago and the whole thing has been percolating in my head for a good while. I keep finding my thoughts drifting back to Mouthwashing, even after a week. Everything about it. I've done a few watchthroughs of streamers and the like playing through it (and then me noticing small little details I didn't catch originally)... This game, man, it's gonna stick with me for a long time.

But! Anyways!!! So, working theory. Specific to this thread title, a theory I developed regarding the physical state of Curly and the mental state of Jimmy. Key words there. In short: I think Curly either died an amount of time after the crash, or has been dead the entire time right after the crash.

"But we see Curly right there! He's alive! We interact with him! We have a lovely birthday party with him and the crew! We shove pills down his throat! Anya can't do it herself cause the thought makes her ill!!" hold it right there pardner. So, I've been thinking about it. And like honestly, REALLY think about this for a sec. Let's go over the timeline of events here. Pre-Crash:
- Jimmy does Jimmy Things and sabotages the whole crew of the Tulpar and sets a crash course into some god forsaken asteroid.
- Curly, upon realizing what Jimmy's done, what he HIMSELF has done, rushes into the cockpit.
- Boom, crash, kapow. The crash happens.

The entire cockpit took the brunt of it all. Curly was inside. His body becomes mangled and mutilated beyond belief. He's barely alive and in constant agonizing pain. His skin basically doesn't exist anymore. Just a mass of flesh and nerves and muscle, if that. He's been amputated several times over. Drenched in blood with severe wounds. The Tulpar has done the best they could with him, considering how utterly fubar'd he is. Wrap him in some bandages, give him some painkillers, call it a day.

So. Let's pause here. Let's pause and analyze and dissect this for a second. Curly was in the cockpit when the crash happened and took the FULL damage of the cockpit imploding, basically. So this poor guy's body just gets shredded and torn to pieces. Literal pieces. This alone is a huge key point. So Curly is kept there on that hospital bed, sustaining through bandage changings and painkillers. For... months. Months and months and months. It's never mentioned if they give him food (another key point in my theory) but let's assume they did. So we have this mangled, mutilated, completely fubar'd mass of flesh and nerves and muscle laying here on this hospital bed, unable to really do anything at all except breath, make noises and other utterances (we'll come back to this one!!). For MONTHS.

Again. Keep in mind the severity of his injuries. Keep that in mind. Think about how ill prepared the Tulpar's medical station (hell, even Anya as the nurse...) is for any true serious medical issue or injury. God forbid a life threatening injury. Think about how Daisuke gets injured in the vent, presumably due to the loose wires sparking and burning him. Daisuke's injuries, not nearly as severe. His injuries needed disinfecting. Where's the disinfectant? Gone. Gone where? Curly, one would guess. All used up on him. ...Unless the medical station didn't have the proper supplies to begin with. Neither here nor there for the time being.

At any rate, Daisuke is dying, the mouthwash infects his wounds, only accelerating his own demise. Swansea comes in with the mercy kill to put the poor kid out of his misery.

This all happens in the span of maybe an hour, if that.

Curly. In the cockpit at the time of the crash. The cockpit, which took the full brunt of the crash, exploding (imploding?) with him inside. Grievous injuries. Injuries that are so deadly, so severe, he ends up in THAT state. He's able to live for MONTHS. Months. Daisuke received much less severe injuries and was already not going to make it just from that.

Curly. Anya has always been too hesitant to give him his pills. Makes her feel nauseous, ill. Anya was pregnant at the time, so you could definitely chalk this up to that as well. You could also chalk it up to the act of forcing pills down this man's throat as an allusion to her SA, serving as a reminder to her the act of non-consent. OR.... Or. Maybe those, but maybe also consider: What if Curly was simply dead the ENTIRE TIME. Well damn, all of a sudden it's pretty clear why Anya is hesitant about giving him the pills. It's a corpse. Give pills to someone who's... dead? Vile and disgusting, for one. For another, that's just plain illogical. Why do that when the medicine would be of much greater service to the crew? And if he's dead, why does he need pills.

So we come to Jimmy. Oh, Jimmy. Jimbo. The entirety of Mouthwashing is a slowburn descent into madness, insanity, despair, and depravity. For everyone. But mostly for Jimmy. Curly and Jimmy were close. Curly's "accident" affected Jimmy. A lot. A LOT. Jimmy is constantly trying to "save" Curly. Constantly telling himself, and others, that he "can still save him." That they can "both make it out of here." That they can both fix everything. Jimmy takes on Curly's full responsibilities. He makes himself the captain. He takes it upon himself to meet the needs of the crew, or, attempt to.

Jimmy is running away from everything that's happened to him the entire game. He isn't "taking responsibility." He isn't "fixing" anyone, or anything. But he's damn well convinced he is. Why? Curly. Guilt over Curly. Guilt, shame, regret, over Curly. Everything that happened between the two. The scenes with Curly burning in the chair talking to Jimmy, and Polle talking to Jimmy both reinforce this. Jimmy places Curly into the single cryostasis pod at the end of the game because he so strongly feels the need to atone for what he's done.

Polle Says: "Wait a minute! If all of that is true, then why do you still care so much about HIM"

The guilt and shame, of course. The state Curly was put in. ...So, going by this theory, if Curly has been dead this whole time, then what's the deal with Curly as we go through the game?

So, what if Curly did die right away? What if he died right away and was never alive through the events of the game? And that event, Curly dying like that, in and of itself was such a blow to Jimmy's psyche that he literally denied the event ever happened. Curly didn't die! He was just mangled up! He's a tough ol' dog, he'll make it through. Just gotta manage his pain! So maybe... Jimmy created this version of Curly in his brain, all to keep him from fully acknowledging what he had actually done. The crash killed Curly, and that is NOT something Ol' Jimbo would ever be able to come to terms with. So the story changed. He didn't die. He's still alive. Keep him alive. Keep him alive. He doesn't deserve this. I can fix it. I can still save him. We can both get out, together. I'm taking responsibility.

Do you see where I'm going with this, yet? Jimmy in this delirious state refused to believe Curly was dead. Created a version in his head where Curly is still alive, albeit mangled beyond all recognition. Curly, who they need to keep alive. A dying man on a ship that's crashed, that's running out of air, food, power, everything. It would make sense to just cut that loose right away. That's a huge waste of supplies on a man in that state. But no, we have to keep him alive. Well. Or Jimmy's conscience does, at least.

So let's circle back to the original key points. There's no way Curly could have survived for MONTHS in the state he was in. We don't know if they were giving food rations to him or not (we could assume either way, I'm not entirely sure that makes a difference). He's not even hooked up to an IV, or any sort of actual medical equipment. Mangled, bloody, amputated. Flayed. Severe, grievous injuries. And you're gonna sit there and tell me with a straight face that some bandages, pain killers, a half-assed amputation job (I'm very much assuming they had to amputate the poor guy themselves) end up keeping this man alive?? Nah dude that man's a CORPSE. He's DEAD. He's been dead the whole time.

Jimmy can't bring himself to believe otherwise. The guilt weighs too heavily. But he's the captain now. And the captain's orders are absolute. What the captain says goes. And you can bet good money Jimmy was the one who ordered everyone to "save" Curly, to "keep him alive". Because in Jimmy's head, he was still alive. But, of course, Jimmy was already fully lost in the sauce of his fall into insanity at that point.

Anya hesitates about giving him meds because he's A Corpse. Giving pills to a corpse is not only exceedingly wasteful, but also an act so vile and unnerving and disgusting to one's core. Jimmy steps up every time because Anya can't do it. He does it specifically so that Curly will "stop making noise". He keeps making noise. All the time. Even when Jimmy is in parts of the ship that are SO far away from Medical, he can still hear him screaming, yelling in agony. And yet, it would seem he is the only one who hears this. It's easy to imagine that everyone else is simple playing along with Jimmy's delusions, because trying to dispel that or do otherwise? Far, far too dangerous. Not only is Jimmy actually a dangerous person, but he's going through some heavy delusions and knee deep in a descent into insanity at this point. You do not stir the hornet's nest.

When you start to run out of painkillers, Curly's noises and screaming becomes so much louder. Echoing through the halls of the Tulpar. Far and long, wide and deep. It's not until you find more painkillers to give him to make him stop. And after Ol' Jimbo does the deed, those screams stop. And we hear crying, at one of these points, after the pill is shoved down Curly's throat. ...But was that actually Curly crying?? Crying and heaving out sobs? Seems to me like that was Jimmy.

How about when Jimmy gets the gun? And Curly starts laughing? This sick maniacal laugh, as if he's been holding that in the whole time. The guy can barely breathe or do anything at all except make these agonizing noises. And yet he's just gonna suddenly become animated like that as we start to move into the climax of the game??? Hmmm makes you thinkkkkk

Curly's been dead ever since the crash, and Jimmy cannot bear to accept that. He cannot take responsibility for that. He can't fix it. He can't solve it. He's not going to save him, they aren't going to make it out together. But Jimmy needs to believe that he can, that he can do all of that. Because that's the only thing that's driving him forward.

He takes Curly and places him down onto the table for Ol' Jimbo's Super Fun Birthday Party. Time to slice the cake! More amputation. Whoa what's that, Curly's still trucking after THAT? He's still FINE? Nope. Nah. That man's a corpse. Even under the most farfetched possible take that would assume he's "alive", how would the Birthday Cake scene NOT have killed him? Jimmy feeds Curly a piece of his own leg. Why? To keep him alive. To "keep him alive". He needs him "alive". Because if he's alive, that means he still has a chance to redeem himself. To make things right. To fix things. To take responsibility.

But he's not alive. He never was. He's been dead this whole time. The crew are unwitting accomplices in Jimmy's delusion of Curly being alive still. They have to play along. Even after everything goes down and the worst starts to play out, Curly's still there! Jimmy takes him with him as he descends even further into madness. Because he needs him. He needs what Curly represents to him. So, he tosses him into the cryopod. One final last act, one final penance, this can redeem him. This can save himself. This will fix himself. This will be him, taking responsibility.

But really, ya just tossed a long-gone corpse in there, all because he could not come to terms with him causing the death of Curly. He does this, he tells himself he's fixed everything, that he's saved him, that he's taking responsibility now. And he walks off screen... and puts a bullet through his brain., His job is done. Curly can be saved now.

But he can't be saved. Because he's always been dead, right from the get-go. In the end, Jimmy saved... no one. Not even himself. It was all doomed to fail the moment he set up that collision course into the asteroids. There was never going to be anyone getting saved. God is not watching.

[PH0B1A5]

I've thought about this too and I agree! I'm glad you wrote this much to back up your claim :) you pointed out some parts that I didn't think about before!

[2011 Mazda MX5 Miyako Edition]

Interesting take and definitely has some weight to it. The only thing I would say is that I don't the rest of the crew would play into Jimmy's delusions and waste meds on Curly if he was dead right after the crash (when morale was reasonably high), especially not Swansea.

[yllwfr]

love this theory ! makes a lot of sense , i did go through all the game thinking that curly couldn't still be alive but i honestly just thought it was artistic liberty

[eglepe]

I don't buy it. Maybe Anya would give in to Jimmy's delusions and waste the painkillers, but would she voluntarily tell you to get the axe to find even more painkillers to waste?

Even if we handwave Anya as crazy, would Swansea go along with any of that?

If he was dead from the start, he'd be heavily decomposed 5 months in. Bodies start stinking 3 weeks in, would they let it hang out in the open in an enclosed space?

About his wounds being infected, they probably disinfected them early on when they had supplies, then the wounds closed up and didn't need more disinfectant.

I don't know why you're assuming Daisuke's wound situation all happened within an hour. It could very well have been days later, the game skips around all the time.

And the biggest hole in the theory, you play as Curly right at the end inside the cryo chamber and you see and hear Jimmy as he shoots himself

[Dibby]

Originally posted by eglepe:

I don't buy it. Maybe Anya would give in to Jimmy's delusions and waste the painkillers, but would she voluntarily tell you to get the axe to find even more painkillers to waste?

Even if we handwave Anya as crazy, would Swansea go along with any of that?

If he was dead from the start, he'd be heavily decomposed 5 months in. Bodies start stinking 3 weeks in, would they let it hang out in the open in an enclosed space?

About his wounds being infected, they probably disinfected them early on when they had supplies, then the wounds closed up and didn't need more disinfectant.

I don't know why you're assuming Daisuke's wound situation all happened within an hour. It could very well have been days later, the game skips around all the time.

And the biggest hole in the theory, you play as Curly right at the end inside the cryo chamber and you see and hear Jimmy as he shoots himself

In order:

Jimmy was always the one giving the painkillers to Curly; Anya never was able to stomach it

The corpse absolutely would be, which would add an additional layer to Anya's hesitation. Curly is in the med station, which has a closed door. If anything, that's the perfect place to put him, isolated away from the rest of the ship. This part doesn't really have much bearing, though, because if Jimmy was so deep in his psychosis that he believed Curly to still be alive then none of that matters. He's the captain now, and what the captain says goes.

We know the timeframe of Daisuke's injury and death. IIRC it was 6 Hours Before Judgment? That whole segment is linear, time-wise. A few hours at most, it was simply an approximation

Re: the final scene, you're forgetting that the idea I put forth was that Curly Is Dead, and that Jimmy is deep in psychosis. Given that, we're not "playing as Curly", we're viewing Jimmy through the perspective of Curly; or even more accurately, Jimmy's perspective of Curly's perspective. He still views Curly as being alive. Our perspective as the player swaps to Curly, but that doesn't mean he can't be dead, also. You can look around and all, but that's playing into Jimmy's perspective of Curly being alive. Also honestly just for pure storytelling reasons, too. It's just a really well framed scene, with how Jimmy walks off and you don't see him do the deed, you just hear it. This particular line of discussion starts to get into the weeds a bit though, I think it's a slight bit pedantic? From where I'm sitting, it was simply a really good storytelling device, no more no less.

At the end of the day I think there's a lot of room for interpretation. A lot of it is open-ended. A lot of it is allegorical. There's a lot of symbolism and layers and subtext; all of which can be interpreted in many different ways. This is but just one such interpretation I've come to after sitting on it for a while. I'm not saying this is absolute or canon in any way. But I think it's something interesting to think about, and I think it's interesting to be able to interpret the game in many different ways.

[eglepe]

>> Jimmy was always the one giving the painkillers to Curly; Anya never was able to stomach it

You're ignoring the more important point "would she voluntarily tell you to get the axe to find even more painkillers to waste" if she knew he was dead?

>> The corpse absolutely would be, which would add an additional layer to Anya's hesitation. Curly is in the med station, which has a closed door. If anything, that's the perfect place to put him, isolated away from the rest of the ship. This part doesn't really have much bearing, though, because if Jimmy was so deep in his psychosis that he believed Curly to still be alive then none of that matters. He's the captain now, and what the captain says goes.

This necessitates every character to go along with it just because Jimmy is "captain". You don't see an indication of this in any of their interactions except (maybe) Anya.

>> We know the timeframe of Daisuke's injury and death. IIRC it was 6 Hours Before Judgment? That whole segment is linear, time-wise. A few hours at most, it was simply an approximation

No, at 6 hours before judgment Daisuke is already injured and laying in bed near death. We don't know when he was actually injured. Anya locks herself in the medical bay "5 months after the crash" and Daisuke gets injured soon after that. It could be days after that Jimmy decides to get him mouthwash

>> Re: the final scene, you're forgetting that the idea I put forth was that Curly Is Dead, and that Jimmy is deep in psychosis. Given that, we're not "playing as Curly", we're viewing Jimmy through the perspective of Curly; or even more accurately, Jimmy's perspective of Curly's perspective. He still views Curly as being alive. Our perspective as the player swaps to Curly, but that doesn't mean he can't be dead, also. You can look around and all, but that's playing into Jimmy's perspective of Curly being alive. Also honestly just for pure storytelling reasons, too. It's just a really well framed scene, with how Jimmy walks off and you don't see him do the deed, you just hear it. This particular line of discussion starts to get into the weeds a bit though, I think it's a slight bit pedantic? From where I'm sitting, it was simply a really good storytelling device, no more no less.

My problem with this is there's nothing that directly suggests this. You've decided the conclusion is "Curly is already dead" and you're contorting yourself to make everything fit. I don't like theories that work backward based on a preconception. There's a reason almost every show/movie/game has this kind of "the protagonist was already dead" or "everything was a dream" theory. It's because it's very easy to make these theories work if you decide from the beginning they're true and handwave all evidence to the contrary as an "unreliable narrator".

[Piss Daniels]

I could honestly see the crew going along with the "Curly is still alive" delusion. Throughout the game, it kinda seems like Jimmy is the only one really losing it. Swansea knows ♥♥♥♥♥ ♥♥♥♥♥♥, and it was ♥♥♥♥♥♥ even before the crash, and all he wants to do is relive that time in his life when ♥♥♥♥ wasnt ♥♥♥♥♥♥, who cares if Jimmy is insane and taking care of a corpse if theres booze to drink. Daisuke does whatever he's told to do, all he wants is the validation of "responsible" adults, and he might not even have checked on Curly after the crash so for all he knows Jimmy is telling the truth. Anya is terrified of Jimmy. She seems far less timid (though its definitely still there) in the interactions we see where she's not focused on Jimmy, and while i thought her private talk with Swansea was about Curly and what to do with him it could also be about Jimmy and what to do with their insane captain. I could see her entertaining Jimmy, maybe partially to try and keep morale up but probably mostly because she knows firsthand what this crazy ♥♥♥♥ can do to another person if he's not entertained.

I think "curly is dead" is a good interpretation, i kinda think that if it was an intended interpretation there would have been some more small details like maybe Anya standing out in the hallway to ask Jimmy to give Curly his meds because she doesnt want to sit in a room with a rotting corpse, but maybe the devs just didnt want "curly is dead" to be the ONLY interpretation

[cocoapuffs1000]

It's technically possible... in the sense that any number of weird theories are possible. I agree it seems like the OP is fishing for reasons to validate it. Here are other theories that are equally possible:

- The entire crew died in the crash and are in some sort of 'Lost' like purgatory... or Hell
- Jimmy is actually CEO of Pony Express and the whole ordeal is an Undercover Boss episode that got out of control
- The crew never left Earth - the 'ship' is just a sealed up tube in a warehouse. The crew was unwittingly part of an elaborate social experiment. Notice there are no windows on the ship and on one on board ever actually sees outer space, hmm...
- The "asteroid" is actually the Tulpar from a mirror universe, and on board are Evil Curly, Evil Swansea, Evil Anya, Evil Daisuke and Good Jimmy (sorry I stole from South Park a bit on that one)

I can provide evidence that supports all these claims

[txfeinbergs]

I agree. I was finding it impossible to believe that anyone would actually stay alive that long with those injuries. Besides, Anya is so incompetent as the ships Dr she wouldn't be able to keep him alive.