The reason for Brad's massive guilt over Lisa's death.
From what little we've seen of the Armstrong household, it would seem that while Brad was allowed to leave the house, Lisa was not. This could be due to Marty abusing Lisa in a way that could get him arrested if any authorities found out. But with Brad, all he did was physically and verbally abuse him, something that no one would really care about. Brad would spend as much time as possible outside and away from Marty, but by doing this he leaves Lisa with no one to protect her from Marty's abuse. When Lisa killed herself due to Marty's abuse, Brad became guilt ridden over not being there for her when she needed him. Marty's abuse of Brad would then increase, either due to sadness over Lisa's death, or simply not having another person in the house to abuse. Brad's guilt would not only follow him for the rest of his life, it would get worse with time. Carp is a Joy mutant.
Carp never speaks in English, only in the native language of the Repulsive waste fish, which were a failed prototype of Joy mutant that refused to obey Yado and eventually formed their own stable civilization underground. This is further indicated by having both his addiction to Joy and his unlock which requires you to feed him green paste, which the fish people eat. Buddy is Nancy, Dr. Yado's daughter.
There must be a reason that Buddy is the only female left on the planet. Being the daughter of Dr. Yado would make sense, as he was the one who created the great white flash. If he could kill all the females on earth, then he could also make one immune to the effects as well. He also wouldn't be dumb enough to not have a backup plan. He would let one female, Nancy (or Buddy if this theory is correct) live, just in case the flash didn't work out as planned. We even find out that he's going to use Nancy for some kind of plan in the future, most likely to be explored in the sequel.- Confirmed.
Brad acted as Lisa's parent for many years, but they weren't close before her suicide.
In Lisa: The First, no mention of a sibling or reference to another person existing in Lisa's world is made. The game entirely revolves around Marty and herself, but according to Brad's hallucination, he took on the role of father for Lisa because of Marty's alcoholism. If Marty truly did force Brad to take over care of Lisa when she was born, Brad should've been a large feature in her dreamscape. However, if Brad fled from the home once Lisa could take care of her own basic needs, Lisa would most likely feel strong resentment toward him for leaving her to suffer Marty's abuse and for being able to leave the house when she couldn't. This would make her feel truly alone, and the resentment would not be the same as the outright hatred she had for Marty. As such, instead of killing versions of Brad in her dreamscape like she did with Tricky Rick, she would remove him entirely and focus only on Marty. In addition, their estrangement would contribute strongly to Brad's guilt over her death, as he is more likely to see her as his own child rather than a sister, and he would blame himself for all that happened to her and for her suicide. This also explains why Buzzo would blame Brad for Lisa's death - he strongly implies that he and Lisa were close, so Lisa could have told him that Brad was her former father figure, and that he had since abandoned her. Brad's joy usage caused him to lose control and act on his base impulses.
If Brad hadn't taken joy ever, he might not have done the terrible things he did during the game. Joy might have been messing with his decision making process, causing him to make poorly thought out and impulsive choices. Brad was the one who raped Lisa.
Marty obviously kept Lisa locked up, but in Lisa: The First, there are plenty of horrible emanations of Marty running around to serve as intimidating and threatening presences that never actually lay a hand on her. Tricky Rick, on the other hand, needs to be destroyed for Lisa to make any kind of progress. His dialogue makes it pretty obvious that Tricky Rick is essentially a penis, a male figure that so completely embodies sexual violation that he has no other identity. Since Brad is supposed to have been her primary caretaker as a small child but makes no appearance in the game, it's most likely that he raped Lisa to reassert his own sense of power after putting up with Marty's abuse, and then abandoned her as soon as she stopped being completely dependent on him. Lisa herself was too young to remember anything except "Tricky Rick", i.e., Brad's penis.- Semi-jossed; it's confirmed by one of the endings in the Painful that Marty was definitely the main proponent of Lisa's abuse, but is heavily implied that Brad may have been forced by Marty to either assault Lisa or watch Marty do so in order to "become strong." Whatever the specific case may be, the only confirmation given is that Brad did not spearhead Lisa's abuse.
Buzzo is a mutant of a different sort.
Doctor Yado mentioned that Buzzo would taste incredible power if he continued to work for him; and he himself was drunk on some sort of power. Somehow, Yado has perfected his Joy formula, and has created what is essentially a super-soldier serum that greatly enhances the user's physical abilities without the adverse side effects seen in the mutants. This would explain why Buzzo is so much more powerful than Brad, despite being at least 20 years his junior as a martial artist. It would also explain why Yado was able to reach places that Brad couldn't, without the aid of rope or easy platforms. Perhaps Yado is planning to use his daughter to repopulate the world with a new breed of human, one superior to normal ones. The Joyful will have Buzzo playable
Either in a flashback to his youth or in a section where Buddy flips the script on him and stalks him like he did to Brad. That's why the trailer seemed to focus on him and why it had Buddy asking him if he was "Ready to play?"- Confirmed. There are moments where you control Buzzo as a kid or as an adult.
Brad hallucinated the mutated versions of Marty in Resort Island.
In Lisa the First, when Lisa is in the dirty world, she frequently sees splotches of red and yellow, flies and grime everywhere, and the the mutations with what look like tentacles for faces. They aren't hostile, however, and could simply be part of her psyche coping with her situation. Brad, however, sees the exact same images in Resort Island - the same mutants, the same grime everywhere, and even some of the same room decor as in the original game. Brad also sees the happy Marty from the white world, with a long coiling neck sticking out of Marty's TV and hovering near Marty's couch. Just as in the original Lisa, these mutants never attack Brad. The only difference is that here, the mutants can occasionally be seen in the sections where the Joy labs were. While it is unlikely, it's possible that Brad hallucinated the same images Lisa did, as the decor of the rooms on the resort look strikingly different than the labs, and seem closer to what Brad and Lisa's home looked like. Alternately... Lisa saw the first stages of the Joy mutation process before she died, the tentacle-faced Marty mutations, and the image stuck in her mind and was featured in her dreamscape.
It's not known how long the Joy experiments were going on, or how long it's been since the Flash, but what is known is that it doesn't take very long for Joy to mutate a person. It's also known that Buzzo was working with Yado for a while, though at what age is unknown (he doesn't seem to be any older than 30s in the game, especially considering that he was maybe 10 when Brad was in his 20s or early 30s). It's very possible that Buzzo worked on these experiments from a young age, before Lisa committed suicide, and gave her access to the mutations (whether willingly or not), which left a large impact on Lisa and contributed to the nightmares she has in her dreamscape. Terry Hintz used to be a cheerleader.
His moves include cheering, posing, dancing, and both motivating and trash talking with words. It just makes sense. He might’ve even got bullied and and ostracized in life for it. Maybe that’s why he comes from a friendless background? Yado Was Controlling Brad Throughout LISA: The Painful RPG.
You can see and hear Yado playing his trumpet on several occasions in The Painful. Even right at the end when you unlock the "..." achievement. Yado was controlling or affecting Brad's Joy affected mind so he would annihilate Rando's Army and start the war which would bring his plan one step closer to execution. That's why Yado is always nearby the villages/places we go in the Painful, if you look for him. Also, he stops playing every time Brad himself notices him. Female Joy mutants are much stronger than their male counterparts.
From what we've seen of Joy Mutant Buddy and Sweetheart, they seem to be some of the strongest mutants around. Sweetheart fatally wounds Buzzo, one of the most powerful men in Olathe, and Mutant Buddy is huge and literally rips Brad in half. Sweetheart also has much longer hair, and based on her name, could've even been Yado's wife. Who else calls someone that besides a husband or lover? Brad's encounter with his father, Marty, on the deserted island was a hallucination and didn't actually happen.
Given the nature of the scene that takes place, there's some question as to whether or not the encounter with Marty is actually real. It isn't referenced by Buddy in any other scene, save that one, and represents some of Brad's worst fears. It also represents a mirror of Brad's behavior, and his own quest for atonement. That Marty succeeded where Brad failed (being a good father, in any respect) would be its own profound, albeit internalized, wound.- Buddy does reference the encounter afterward, when Brad finds her on Rando's island after she was attacked by Mr. Angoneli. This does not necessarily joss the theory, but it does call it into question.
Buzzo never became a Joy Mutant, Buddy hallucinated the whole thing
This will be a bulleted list because there are multiple reasons I made this theory:- Buddy started Hallucinating during the Yado fight, and there was no indication that she ever stopped. In fact, as soon as "mutant" Buzzo dies, she transitions straight into the Join them/Leave them hallucination. Also, the same red organ screen appears while buzzo "mutates" that appeared in the Painful while Brad was rapidly going insane from Joy overdose so it's likely that she killed a completely innocent and mortally wounded Buzzo in a Joy-induced fever dream and depending on your ending got a moment of clarity long enough to vaccinate herself right as she was about to mutate.
- Buzzo has every reason not to use Joy. He knows all the harmful effects that go into that drug, and the number one reason everyone is addicted to it is because they're ignorant of it. The ones who aren't, like Ajeet, avoid it at all costs.
- Mutant Buzzo is weak compared to Human Buzzo. The joy is supposed to make you ten times stronger as a mutant than you were as a human. Human Buzzo was absolutely unstoppable so it makes no sense how Mutant Buzzo would be peanuts in comparison.
- There are two things about Buzzo's transformation that confuse this theory. The first is that the reason Mutant Buzzo is peanuts compared to Human Buzzo isn't because he's weak - it's because he isn't attacking Buddy. He's attacking himself. If you watch the dialogue, you'll see that he's actually biting and scratching at himself to kill himself faster. He does swing at Buddy occasionally, but mostly he is going for himself. The second thing is that, right before he transforms, he calls out for Lisa. Buddy has no idea who Lisa is, has never heard the name or been told about her by Brad or Buzzo, so she wouldn't be able to hallucinate that. It could be argued that it was some kind of spiritual connection type thing, and that's possible, but it doesn't make that much sense within the context of the game.
- It's possible that she heard Buzzo talking about Lisa and it translated into the hallucination as the crazy joy-speak we see it as. It is also possible that his self-harm is to hurry his own death because Buddy is attacking him (if we assume he didn't actually mutate)
- There are two things about Buzzo's transformation that confuse this theory. The first is that the reason Mutant Buzzo is peanuts compared to Human Buzzo isn't because he's weak - it's because he isn't attacking Buddy. He's attacking himself. If you watch the dialogue, you'll see that he's actually biting and scratching at himself to kill himself faster. He does swing at Buddy occasionally, but mostly he is going for himself. The second thing is that, right before he transforms, he calls out for Lisa. Buddy has no idea who Lisa is, has never heard the name or been told about her by Brad or Buzzo, so she wouldn't be able to hallucinate that. It could be argued that it was some kind of spiritual connection type thing, and that's possible, but it doesn't make that much sense within the context of the game.
Lisa herself caused the White Flash
Let me explain. Characters in Lisa can do stuff like throw fireballs or levitate because of genetics. What if Lisa herself was the catalyst for the Flash? The sheer trauma of her treatment by Marty caused her to become a Fantastic Nuke that wiped out all of the women in the world. All of the series is taking place in Lisa's head.
The events of the entire series from Lisa: The First onward never actually happened. It's all taking place inside the head of a girl driven insane by her father's abuse. Everything, from her supposed mutilation and suicide, the destruction of nearly all women, Buddy's presence, Dr. Yago's plans, Brad and Buddy's actions as protagonists... all of it is part of Lisa's imaginary world she's buried herself in to cope with the abuse. She's probably sitting in an insane asylum somewhere, completely out of it. Not all women has been killed by the White Flash
There's a throwaway line from Buzzo that basically says that Buddy would've been a great asset to the other women. And if we assume that Yado has caused the White Flash to create a scenario where he could easily distribute Joy, thus creating addicts, along with releasing a random girl to the greater public to fight over, then who is to say that he didn't created a shelter for certain women? Maybe female soldiers, who are given a chemical to counteract the effects of the White Flash, or random women who happened to be related to his Joy creation. Maybe even genetics, since finger beams, fire balls, and other magical abilities are common occurance in the LISA series.- Jossed. "There are no other women in Olathe."
Though that doesn’t necessarily mean that there aren’t some women outside of Olathe…
Mutant Brad’s absence in the Flowering ending of Joyful is thanks to Buddy giving him a Mercy Kill
.In the first ending Mutant Brad was torn in half by Mutant Buddy. The second ending instead has Mutant Brad alive, docile and under Buddy’s control thanks to the trumpet she snagged from Yado. The third ending added in the remake, however, acks Mutant Brad entirely, with there being a second grave present underneath some flowers that isn’t there in the other endings. Considering that Buddy’s "The Reason You Suck" Speech in this ending path to Buzzo has her mention him being unable to rest thanks to his mutation, it wouldn’t be a large jump in logic to assume Buddy put Mutant Brad out of its misery and buried the body.
Olathe is a Domed Hometown and the White Flash was enterely localized within it.
Dr. Yado was never powerful enough to cause a global White Flash, but killing all women inside an enclosed area and then tricking the men into thinking this happened worldwide would be sufficient for his plan of his daughter sparking a war leaving him to conquer the area to work. Secretly, he erected a dome surrounding Olathe which simulates the sky and prevents anybody from entering or leaving and caused the Flash inside. That's why the day and night circle is no longer functioning properly since the Flash, because that's when the dome was placed. That's why Buzzo briefly mentions the existence of multiple women; they're the female population outside the dome which was never affected. That's why the sky is distorted at one point outside the Joy Lab. That's how Buddy survived; Yado took her outside the dome for the Flash. That's why Olathe is a World Limited to the Plot and why noone entered or left it since the Flash. That's the reason for Jorgensen's Exact Words on "no other women in Olathe". That's why most plants died and Olathe turned into a desert, because the dome blocks out the natural light. That's why, in the Secret Ending of Joyful, Buzzo claims to have created Buddy's "little world". Buddy mistakenly thinks he's bluffing, but he literally did, and Buddy interrupted him from completely revealing the situation. The world outside Olathe is perfectly normal and Buddy's situation is a "Shaggy Dog" Story.Brad and his gang played along with Demon X in their encounter with him
From both a gameplay and story perspective, it doesn't make sense for Demon X to be able to deal 9,999 damage to your whole party with a single attack. Perhaps the second time that Brad sees the rangers, he resigns and just plays along to get it over with? The battle is Unwinnable by Design because Brad and his party simply pretended to be defeated by Demon X. His attacks are actually harmless.