love seeing everyone's Mouthwashing theories and analysis and just wanted to throw my two cents in, bc Mouthwashing is an amazing game, not only story-wise, but also on a meta level.
!!! SPOILERS FOR MOUTHWASHING, CAN'T PUT A READ MORE ON MOBILE !!!
the game is told from two perspectives: Curly before the crash, Jimmy after the crash. The player controls either one of the two in the corresponding times, and I think the concept of "protagonist" plays a big role here. Before the crash, Curly is the protagonist. He's the captain everyone listens to and tries his best (more or less) to be a leader, a friend, a beacon for everyone. Jimmy is an old friend of his, but ultimately an NPC in Curly's perspective. And the game shows that Jimmy is very jealous of that. He wants to be a big shot too. He wants to be someone others look up to. He wants to "take responsibility".
The crash happens and Curly is left burned and limbless and voiceless and now Jimmy is the protagonist. We, the player, control him and thus we get his very limited and unreliable perspective on everyone else. And Jimmy loves being the "protagonist". The game is even warped story wise so we only learn in the end that it was Jimmy who caused the crash, not Curly. With Jimmy as the protagonist, every other character is subject to his perspective: for example, when Anya locks herself in Medical to end her life, Jimmy influences Daisuke to believe that Anya would kill Curly, although she's shown nothing but compassion and selflessness for the other characters all game. It's easy for the player to get caught up in that, as seen in players being totally fine with drugging Swansea to enter Utility and rarely questioning if the character they're controlling is being reliable or not.
The game being warped through Jimmy's influence also shows itself in other instances: during the one time Jimmy and Anya talk alone in the hallway, Jimmy lashes out at her. He yells about the "tasks" he's been given and the order of them, resulting in the tasks the player can see in the user interface starting to flicker and change according to what he yells. This is showing how meta wise the game is being influenced by Jimmy being the protagonist, having to bend to his will and act accordingly. But we also see the game fight back: during the hallucinatory vent sequence, the player has the option to turn around after seeing a piece of paper that reminds them to "take responsibility" and when turning around and facing away, thus not facing responsibility, the game snaps the player back to face the paper again. It looks like the whole game is a representation of the protagonist struggle between Curly and Jimmy. Curly, the "natural protagonist" is hijacked by Jimmy's actions, making Jimmy the new protagonist of the game. He tries to fulfill the role according to what he thinks he has to do, but he's not good at it, resulting in the game being told out of chronological order, to show the player both sides of the coin.
And even the finale of the game is a representation of the "protagonist struggle" between Jimmy and Curly. In the end, after everyone is dead except them, Jimmy (controlled by the player) takes Curly to the one functioning cryo pod, his last action as a protagonist. Then, in the last scene, the perspectives are switched again. The player looks through the eyes of Curly inside the cryo pod, seeing Jimmy outside ultimately walk to the side and kill himself with a gunshot. As the credits of the game play, the cryo pod is starting to freeze Curly and the player is stuck as him in the pod, ending the game. It shows that Jimmy didn't manage to grow into the role he so desperately wanted, bc his last action as the protagonist is giving away responsibility, directly back to Curly. Jimmy can end the game as an NPC again and avoid taking responsibility, while Curly is the one now faced with an undetermined future, worse off than before.
I hope my ramblings made sense, but I love the game a lot and I hope more people start to analyze the story and other aspects of the game soon!
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