Characters / LISA - Main Characters

LISA Characters Index
Main Characters | Brad's Gang | The Warlords | Other Characters

The main characters featured in the LISA series.

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Lisa Armstrong

Lisa Armstrong

"Do you love me?"

The protagonist of The First, she's Brad's younger sister. She was forbidden to leave the house and was molested by her father, Marty. Eventually, she killed herself to escape her suffering.

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• Cute and Psycho: It's revealed in The Joyful that she was a seriously messed up little kid (most likely due to Marty's extensive abuse), pleading with Bernard to cut her up so Marty won't touch her anymore and goading him into cutting off a cat's paw as "practice" for his eventual mutilation of her face.
• Childhood Friends: With Buzzo, as it's revealed in The Joyful. Going by the tone of their dialogue together, it may have been more than just that.
• Dark and Troubled Past: Like Brad, she was a victim of physical and emotional abuse at the hands of her alcoholic father, but unlike Brad, she was also sexually abused by him regularly. The Joyful implies that Brad was also forced by Marty to participate in her abuse at one point, though the degree of his involvement is never explicitly stated.
• Decoy Protagonist: She’s the protagonist of the first game and the franchise is named after her, but she killed herself in between the first and second game and only plays a role in hallucinations and flashbacks after that.
• Driven to Suicide: Lisa is shown hanging by her neck in the title screen and in several of Brad's hallucinations. From what we see in The First, it's more than implied that Marty's abuse drove her to do it.
• Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette: A more downplayed example, but Lisa's design consists solely of black/dark browns and white/light tans, giving her this effect.
• Eyes Out of Sight: Her eyes remain unseen under her mop of hair.
• The Ghost: On account of being dead, you never truly encounter her in either The Painful or The Joyful; All of her appearances are as Brad and Buzzo's hallucinations. The only time she has any actual appearance whatsoever is in her casket within The Joyful's Joy Lab.
• Lonely Funeral: A flashback shows Brad being the only one to attend her funeral. You can also find what is basically a visitation room with her casket within a secret Joy Lab room in The Joyful.
• The Lost Lenore: Her death is the catalyst for many events in the series, and she was Buzzo's love interest.
• Rape as Backstory: In The First, it is heavily implied that she was sexually abused by Marty.
• Small Role, Big Impact: While she's the main character of the first game, in the RPG she makes one living appearance as a baby, gets one line in a flashback, and is an occasional silent hallucination the rest of the game. And yet her life and death have such an influence on Brad and Buzzo that the sequel still carries her name.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom:
  • She made Buzzo mutilate a cat, and then herself, as a way of proving his love for her as well as making Marty not want to force himself on her anymore. This would prove to be the event that led to Buzzo becoming the depraved, vindictive monster that he appears as in The Painful.
  • Deconstructed in the Definitive Edition. In the "Flowering" ending route of The Joyful, Buddy, who has been able to uncover some secrets and learn more about Lisa, calls Buzzo out for using Lisa as an excuse to justify his actions. Lisa may have instigated it, but Buzzo could have refused her or stopped himself later if he wasn't too absorbed in self-pity and revenge fantasies; Buddy goes as far as to accuse Buzzo of being the true reason Lisa's dead, which utterly breaks him.

Brad Armstrong

Bradley Edwin Armstrong

"I just... For once... I wanted to do something good. I'm the one that was supposed to protect you. I can't let anyone hurt you..."

The protagonist of LISA: The Painful RPG. A retired middle age martial artist who's haunted by the memories and trauma of his broken past. After living through the white flash that killed all females, Brad stumbles upon an abandoned infant, and he later discovers that the baby is actually female. He decides to name her Buddy, and rather than turning her over to the most powerful group in Olathe, the Rando Army, he chooses to hide her away from the world and raise her in secret. Initially, he only decides to raise her out of the guilt and regret for his part in his sister Lisa's suicide. However, he soon comes to genuinely love Buddy as his daughter, and she brings out emotions and feelings he's never felt before. When the Rando Army is informed of Buddy's location and abducts her, Brad is determined to save her, as she is the only thing in life that matters to him now.

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• Afro Asskicker: He used to be one, as shown in flashbacks.
• Aloof Big Brother: By the time of The First, Brad had left the Armstrong household years ago, and most likely never called or visited. This is why Brad is missing from Lisa's dreamscape in The First, as he was never really a big part of Lisa's life.
• Ambiguously Bi: When he was younger, he wished that he could have a wife. Nowadays, he doesn't seem too bothered about becoming a gay prostitute. In Definitive Edition, he only allows one person other than his own daughter to hug him... that being Terry Hintz. Which he then leans into after blushing.
• And Then John Was a Zombie: No matter what choices the player makes, he transforms into a Joy mutant in the ending.
• Anti-Hero: Brad's a pretty brutal one, to the point that he borders on a Villain Protagonist. His intentions are ultimately sympathetic, though he clearly has an incredibly limited moral compass beyond his protectiveness of Buddy. This trope becomes a major reason (if not the BIGGEST one) why he has virtually no allies left by the time you reach the final area of The Painful.
• Badass Boast: During the last stretch of The Painful, Brad gives us this absolute gem:
  Brad: No. You don't understand. I've been dead for 35 years. Today is the day I live.
• Bare-Fisted Monk: He's a master of the self-created Armstrong Fighting Style (which is described in the artbook as "a mix of Karate and pain"). According to one of the epilogues of The Joyful, he picked up Karate from his grandfather.
• Beard of Sorrow: He sports a full beard (which was, if the cutscenes are anything to go by, present since he hit adulthood), and is haunted by his regrets and bad memories.
• Berserk Button: Hurt his adoptive daughter in any way, shape or form, and this guy'll fuck you up. His relentless drive to protect Buddy causes him to take on both his own party members and an entire army of men by the end of the game.
  • According to Buddy and Rando, Brad did not like being referred to as "Dad" due to his own horrible experiences with his own father, which is why they refer to him by his name.
• Body Horror: His Joy Mutant form is every bit as horrific as you'd expect. The fact that only his head remains from his original body is particuarly tragic.
• Brought Down to Badass: It's implied that he's out of practice, since he has to relearn his own martial arts style via leveling up. He's still strong enough to deal with the various wasteland warriors, albeit with backup from his party members.
• Celibate Hero: Brad wanted a wife, but didn't think he deserved one.
• The Comically Serious: Most of the time, Brad is completely straight-faced, never reacting to the ridiculous people or situations he encounters, and always perfectly willing to beat up squirrels or cross-dress without question.
• Dark and Troubled Past: In addition to being emotionally abused by his father, Marty, Brad was also a helpless witness to his sister Lisa's eventual suicide after suffering all manner of abuse from their father. It's also implied that Marty would force Brad to take part in the abuse, too.
• Deconstructed Character Archetype: Of the Papa Wolf, much like Joel and Father Nier. He does all sorts of terrible things in the name of finding and protecting Buddy, to the point that he's called a monster by multiple people... including Buddy herself.
  • He also deconstructs the typical RPG protagonist. The majority of enemies faced are simple, sometimes completely innocent men who Brad tramples in his quest. By the end of the game, he's regarded as a ruthless monster, and other people are terrified of him.
• Despair Event Horizon: After Rando is defeated, when Buddy states in no uncertain terms that Brad was more responsible than anybody for her misfortune. It's at this point that he loses all hope, and begins to mutate.
  Brad's body is feeling strange...
  He has become a failure.
• Determinator: Nothing will stop Brad in his quest to save Buddy, not even the loss of his own limbs or party members.
  • Dying from Joy overdose in the finale just makes him stronger.
  • Also justified as a side effect of Joy, causing the user to obey their innermost desires as mentioned in the Joyless ending. As a result nothing would stop Brad from "protecting" Buddy.
• Dragged into Drag: By Buddy, when he was raising her. Happens again at Dismal Island, in a less wholesome manner.
• Drowning My Sorrows: Brad's Dark and Troubled Past has driven him to severe Joy addiction. Game dialogue changes depending on if he continues to take Joy or tries to kick his addiction.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: In a suitably depraved fashion for this series, but an example nonetheless. If Buddy takes the vaccine at the end of The Joyful, then we last see the Joy Mutant Brad mutated into living together with Buddy as she raises her child. The implication is that Brad has been made docile thanks to Buddy owning Yado's trumpet, and is living together with Buddy to protect her. Since this is all he ever really wanted in the first place, it's difficult to argue that this is a bad ending for Brad, especially in his current state.
• 11th-Hour Superpower: Thanks to Buzzo forcing him to take three Joy pills at once, Brad by the end of the game is turning into a mutant, which puts him in a drug-fueled rage that lets him easily demolish Rando's army whether or not he has limbs. Not only do his moves get upgraded, he even gains the ability to restore SP by crying over Lisa and inducing fear by screaming.
• Expy: Of Ryūken from Fist of the North Star. Not only does he share his monk-like appearance as well as being the master of his own martial art style, he's actually the former master of Rando and Buzzo, the resident Expys of Raoh and Jagi.
• Eyes Always Shut: Maybe not shut, but Brad's eyes are always hidden by his eyebrows, giving him an extremely menacing appearance. Word of God says that his eyes are actually Black Bead Eyes, and in one promotional sprite, his eyes are revealed to be such.
• Failure Knight: His devotion to protecting Buddy is spawned from his failure to protect his sister.
• Fallen Hero: What he has become by the end of the game, having taken innumerable lives, as well as stealing from, terrorizing and possibly even blackmailing others to find his daughter.
• Final Speech: Before he begins his mutation into a Joy Mutant, he warns Buddy that people will always try to use her, but states that for once he wanted to do something good with his life. He concludes by asking Buddy if he did the right thing.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: At the beginning of the game, he's a washed-up martial artist who has gotten rusty over the years. By the end of the game, he's likely assembled a large gang (including a former warlord on The List), has become a prominent warlord in his own right, and has left a massive pile of bodies in his wake.
• Going Cold Turkey: Attempted this in order to be a better parent for Buddy, but wound up falling Off the Wagon, leading to the bender he wakes up from at the start of the game. A player can attempt this again in a Joyless run, but Buzzo forces Brad to overdose by threatening Buddy's life, making it all for naught.
• Handicapped Badass: While losing one or both of his limbs does hinder him severely, he's still capable of biting and tackling anyone in his way. He is also still able to climb ropes and ride his bike using his mouth.
• Heel–Face Door-Slam: Downplayed. When confronting his father, Brad can choose to spare him, which at least seems like a step in the right direction. Unfortunately, the Joy that Brad took earlier causes him to kill Marty anyways, further pushing Buddy away from him.
• I Have No Son!: As far as he's concerned, Dusty was never his son and he admits that he never cared for him as he did Buddy.
• Huge Rider, Tiny Mount: When riding the child's bicycle, this enables him to cross over small gaps.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Flashbacks and his general mood show that Brad can be very kind at times, and that his gruffness is mostly for show. A number of people describe him as having a sensitive soul, but his years of abuse from his father and watching his sister be driven to madness and eventual suicide have seriously dampened his worldview.
• Kamehame Hadoken: A signature move in the Armstrong fighting style. Because the fire is a manifestation of emotion, Brad can use this even without hands.
• Kavorka Man: According to Queen Roger in his campfire conversation with Brad, despite Brad being a fat, balding, scarred and mentally ill man, there is something attractive about him buried underneath all that.
• Kick the Dog: The first battle of the game involves Brad killing a small and relatively harmless dog, a precursor for the terrible deeds he commits during his search for Buddy.
• Last Request: He asks that Buddy hug him, something no one has ever done for him. The player can choose to allow or deny it.
• Love Makes You Evil: His desire to protect Buddy from everyone leads to him killing many people in his way, ultimately does more harm to everyone than anything else, and in the end is more out of a selfish desire to make up for the loss of his sister.
• Made of Iron: To an insane degree. Not only does Brad have the best HP of all party members, but he also can lose both of his arms and somehow keep trucking on, not dying neither from blood loss, the pain or the shock of losing a limb. He also will always only get knocked out by One-Hit Kill moves that include getting decapitated or having your head bit off, getting your neck snapped or having your heart ripped off your chest; which, as expected, normally eliminate another party member for good. In the end game he fights most of Rando's army and WINS, before defeating Rando himself while bloodied and riddled with arrows, although that is Justified because of the effect of the joy overdose.
• Man Bites Man: If he loses one of his arms, biting will become incorporated in his Armstrong Style. If he loses both arms, then it becomes his default attack.
• Mighty Glacier: Brad has high HP alongside a wide variety of powerful offensive moves, making him a very capable damage dealer and tank. His main weaknesses are his unimpressive speed, a lack of support skills (like buffs and HP recovery) and Joy addiction (which weakens him while suffering from withdrawal). Also, losing his limbs will permanently and noticeably hinder his performance, though he'll still remain powerful even without them.
• Mirror Character: Like it or not, Brad is one to Marty. Both kept their children locked inside their houses, have serious drug problems and tried to make their children become "strong" by forcing them to commit an abhorrent act that no child should have to do. And by the end of the game, both are even seen using Buddy as a way to redeem themselves for what they did (or didn't do) to Lisa.
• Mook Horror Show: In the finale. Brad's ferocity causes Rando's army to go from confident, to shocked, to terrified... to dead.
• My Greatest Failure: What Brad considers Lisa's suicide to be. He was not only complacent in Marty's abuse of Lisa but also participated in it, albeit unwillingly. Brad also left the house sometime before Lisa killed herself, leaving Lisa alone with Marty.
• My Greatest Second Chance: Buddy is this in a nutshell. Brad wants to protect Buddy no matter what as a sort of redemption from failing to prevent Marty from abusing Lisa.
• Not in This for Your Revolution: Everything Brad does is for his own reasons; he legitimately couldn't care less about saving humanity or anyone that he isn't close to. This causes a lot of problems, to say the least, to the point that his old friends want nothing to do with him by the time the game comes to a close.
• One-Man Army: This trope, of all things, is Played for Horror, as Brad fights both his own gang and the Rando Army near the end and wins. What makes it utterly terrifying is that his budding transformation into a Joy Mutant is the major reason why he's able to take on this many people at once at that point.
• Papa Wolf: He will stop at nothing to protect Buddy. However, his obsession with protecting her drives him to do some horrible things.
• Plot Armor: Brad is the only party member (intended) to be immune to Instant Death Attacks. He still gets instantly knocked out by them, but it's infinitely better having to revive him with a profume than losing permanently a party member you spent time and mags to train up and properly equip. Of course, he can still die by other means, which will lead to a Game Over.
• Remember the New Guy?: Despite being Lisa's brother, Brad is never mentioned in The First. Justified, as he presumably wasn't in Lisa's life anymore by that time.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Deconstructed. While just about anyone can sympathize with Brad's quest to find his daughter and save her before bad things happen to her, the methods with which he goes about them are very destructive to the society of Olathe. As well, the motivations behind this rampage are called into question; since Brad projects a lot of his failure to protect Lisa onto his relationship with Buddy, one could argue that Brad's real motivation for wreaking havoc across Olathe is striking back at the world that hurt him and drove his sister to suicide, with rescuing Buddy being his nominal excuse for doing so.
• Sociopathic Hero: While Brad's goal of saving Buddy is understandable and relatable, his actions throughout the game are nothing short of repulsive. He murders just about anyone who stands in his way, even if that's all they're guilty of. He also routinely forces people to join him by doing such things as stealing something valuable from them, holding their loved one hostage, or lying to them by saying he will help them with their cause or desire. And in the end, he has more or less doomed any and all chances for Olathe to ever recover by killing influential people and destroying important gangs and organizations that were keeping some kind of peace and order. In the end, one has to wonder how much of these actions are caused by Joy, Brad himself, or a mixture of the two, and how redeemable Brad is will come down to the conclusions about his character that each player comes to themselves.
• Survivor Guilt: Brad blames himself for Lisa's death, and the guilt of not protecting her from their father is a big part of his motivation for saving Buddy.
• The Stoic: Despite having had a TERRIBLE life, Brad rarely shows any emotion beyond anger.
• Stout Strength: Has a noticeable gut, but is also one of the strongest guys in the wasteland, bar none.
• Tragic Dream: The only thing Brad really wants to do is to be the kind of father his own never was for Buddy, as a means of redeeming himself after contributing (unwillingly) to Lisa's abuse and failing to stop it from eventually driving Lisa to suicide. Unfortunately, he's just not fit to be a parent; he is regularly neglectful, letting Rick, Sticky, and Cheeks handle her care most of the time, sets a terrible example by almost always being high or drunk around Buddy, and he can be quite emotionally distant and verbally abusive without even really meaning to. In summary, Brad's dream is simply impossible to achieve because he as a person is simply not fit to fulfill it.
  • According to Dingaling, Brad would have liked to get married, but didn't think he deserved it.
• The Unfettered: Due to his Joy usage, Brad is literally unable to stop himself from saving Buddy.
• Unreliable Narrator: Thanks to the Joy affecting how he behaves, especially after his overdose, Brad only thinks of himself as a savior to Buddy, regardless of all the terrible stuff he does. He also runs with the implication that Sticky raped Buddy (which never actually happened), and thinks he killed Rick while interrogating him.
• Unscrupulous Hero: All Brad wants to do is find and protect his adoptive daughter, but thinks nothing of the morally questionable things he does in order to do so. His behavior gets so bad that pretty much EVERYONE turns on him by the end of the game, including Buddy herself.
• Unwitting Pawn: It's implied that Dr. Yado had been fueling his obsession with saving Buddy thanks to his Joy addiction, and Yado's trumpet. The Joyful has Buzzo provide credence to this, and admitting that the bad things Brad had done were not his fault.
• Use Your Head: Brad can headbutt and slide on his head to knock down opponents. If he loses both arms, this becomes about his only method of attack, bar a few others.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: In the Definitive Edition's "Flowering" ending, Brad is absent unlike the other two endings, where he either stuck with the grown up Buddy or was killed by her mutant form, leaving his final fate ambiguous.
• Zero-Effort Boss: The Memory of Brad in The Joyful. The only thing he can do to benefit himself is healing in his second form, but the one after that has him healing you instead.

Buddy

Buddy/Nancy Yado

"I am strong. I'm not afraid... And I am one of a kind."

The protagonist of LISA: The Joyful. The only female to survive the White Flash. Adopted by Brad as an infant, she is abducted by the Rando Army for their own purposes. However, not everything is as it seems.

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• And Then John Was a Zombie: If she chooses not to take the Joy vaccine, the epilogue shows her as a Joy mutant.
• Ax-Crazy: Progressively grows into this throughout The Joyful. Part of it is because of taking Joy.
• BFS: In contrast with her father's bare fists, Buddy wields a scimitar roughly as tall as herself in Joyful.
• Babies Ever After: In The Joyful, the ending where Buddy chooses to take the Joy vaccine shows that she eventually has a child. It's unexplained whom the father of the child, though.
  • Interestingly, in a variant of the ending where she doesn't take the vaccine and becomes a Joy mutant, she still somehow has a child.
• Balance Buff: In the Definitive edition, not only are her base stats noticeably higher, but she gains a warlord skill after defeating each one.
• Break the Cutie: In The Joyful, after everything she went through, Buddy has become utterly ruthless, determined to rule Olathe so that no one else can hurt her.
• Broken Bird: By the time of The Joyful, Buddy's traumatic life has hardened her into a ruthless killer, which is not helped by her usage of Joy. Eventually, she starts breaking down and her hallucinations grow worse.
• Combat Pragmatist: Buddy's fighting style is based entirely on survival; most of her attacks are stabs at vital body parts, and she's not above exposing herself to distract enemies.
• Damsel in Distress: Seems to be this at first, but it's subverted in that not only is she escaping captivity on her own, she is actively trying to get away from Brad, even preferring her supposed captors (Marty and Rando) over being with him. Subverted even harder come Joyful, as it turns out she's only helpless when she's without her sword. With it, she's a killing machine.
• Dark Action Girl: Goes from a Damsel in Distress in The Painful to a ruthlessly effective combatant in The Joyful. The transformation is more than a little disturbing.
• Death from Above: In The Joyful, if she's jumping down at the right angle, she can pounce on enemies and instantly kill them.
• Determinator: Buddy will stop at nothing to get away from Brad, and always seems to be one step ahead of him. This extends to her drive to rule over Olathe herself, come The Joyful.
• Distracted by the Sexy: In The Joyful, she can flash her opponents to distract them temporarily.
• Does Not Like Men: With few exceptions, she's not particularly fond of guys in general. This is justified, of course, considering that most of the men she comes across are murderous and attempted rapists. Even people like Rando aren't exempt from this, despite Rando having her best interests in mind. It eventually backfires on her when Rando leaves her in the dead of night, because he's unwilling to continue helping her kill people.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: The "Flowering" ending from Definitive Edition heavily implies that Buddy has found a home with a loving parental guardian after everything she went through.
• Emotion Suppression: Her ruthless combat style was taught by Brad, who advised her to never feel fear or mercy when taking a life.
• Eye Scream: Near the end of the game, she gets her face clawed on by Mr. Angoneli. In The Joyful, she wears bandages over her face, covering the eye.
• Fragile Speedster: Her Speed stat is extremely high, and far exceeds all of her other stats, which are more or less average.
• Freudian Excuse: By the time of Joyful, she's violent and ruthlessly pragmatic, but given the way almost every man in Olathe has treated her (not to mention she was also raised by Brad, a very violent and ruthlessly pragmatic man), you'll understand why she became so hardened and cruel.
• Gaining the Will to Kill: Rather than being trained in the Armstrong Style, Brad's training was focused on conditioning her to kill without hesitation. He did this by forcing her to kill stragglers he beat up before eventually moving onto hostile targets.
• Gender Rarity Value: Buddy is the only woman left on the planet. As soon as the news gets out, everyone in the world goes looking for her.
• He Who Fights Monsters: Invoked. Buddy reasons that the only way for her to live freely in a world full of perverts and kidnappers willing to kill to get at her is to Beat Them at Their Own Game by becoming the top link of the food chain.
• I Just Want to Be Free: What Buddy most desires is the freedom to do what she pleases without others forcing their will or control on to her.
• Informed Deformity: Non-player characters constantly mention how ugly Buddy is, although both her in-game sprite and her character art show her to be a cute little girl. It's revealed a little later in the game that the "girl" who was constantly referred to as ugly isn't Buddy, but rather a captured Fardy Hernandez who was forcibly dressed-up as a woman.
• Jerkass: Devolves into this by The Joyful, becoming incredibly short-fused, manipulative, harsh and cruel towards pretty much everyone. Her shitty attitude towards Rando, in particular, stands out as especially unnecessary.
• Jerkass Has a Point: Her "The Reason You Suck" Speech to Buzzo in the Flowering Ending is harsh and cruel, ESPECIALLY when she tells him that Lisa would have been "alive if she never met you", but most of what she says about him is correct, especially in regard to him trying to avoid responsibility, and saying he never felt true pain compared to Brad. On the other hand, a lot of it comes off as Psychological Projection on her part, given the context.
• Jumped at the Call: Upon learning that she is the future of humanity, Buddy eagerly embraced her new, all-important role.
• Kick the Dog: Rando, who is the nicest person you could ever meet in Olathe, can be killed by Buddy, simply because he intended to protect her.
• Last of Her Kind: The last known female in Olathe; as a result, the vast majority of the remaining populace wants a piece of her, which is a major reason why Brad is so protective of her.
• Living MacGuffin: A Deconstruction. Buddy is the future of the human race and, as such, is treated like a prize or an object. The fact that almost nobody (not even Brad) takes her feelings or mental state into account gradually warps her into the ruthless Dark Action Girl we see in The Joyful.
• More Deadly Than the Male: The men of Olathe are a bunch of perverted thugs, but Buddy (at least by the final game in the series) is a ruthless killer, capable of killing dozens, if not hundreds, of people without hesitation or mercy.
• My God, What Have I Done?: During the ending of The Joyful, Buzzo reveals to her that every bad thing Brad had ever done to her was never his fault; this also applies to the much kinder Rando. She breaks down into helpless tears after mercy-killing Buzzo, and is given the option to either fall into despair, or try to move forward.
• Never My Fault: Is an even bigger case of this than Buzzo, if that's even possible. A lot of her speech towards Buzzo in the Definitive Edition's Flowering Ending inadvertently applies to her just as much as it does to him, especially the parts about being motivated by revenge, trying to avoid responsibility and shifting blame. The only thing justifying this is the fact that she's a little girl, and Buzzo is a grown man who probably should have known better.
• Ninja Run: How she runs in "The Joyful."
• Pet the Dog:
  • Depending on your choices, she can hug Brad at the end of The Painful RPG, showing that as much as she hates him, she still pities him for all the shit he's dealt with in life.
  • When Rando is being held captive by Bolo, her first instinct is to grab onto the wire and not let go, even as it cuts into her hands.
• Pint-Sized Powerhouse: She takes on both men and mutants far bigger than her in The Joyful.
• Protectorate: While lots of people wish to do her harm, a handful of characters want nothing more than to protect her such as Brad and Rando.
• Punctuated Pounding:
  "I don't want to be safe! I don't want to be protected! I want! My own! LIFE! I'm going to rule this world whether you like it or not!"
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: In the Definitive Edition, should certain actions be taken, she delivers a vicious one to Buzzo, castigating him for his self-pitying attempts to justify his actions and suggesting that, if not for him, Lisa might still be alive.
• Shed the Family Name: Subtle, but Buddy is listed solely as Buddy in both the Status menu in Joyful (wherein characters are typically listed by their last name after their class), and in the artbook (where, notably, it lists Rando as Dusty Armstrong and mentions that he took on Brad's family name after he was adopted), as opposed to Buddy Armstrong. Additionally, her Leitmotif isn’t a remix of The Sireen's call, unlike her adoptive father's.
• This Is Your Brain on Evil: While Buddy was taught by Brad to kill mercilessly if she had to, it was meant to be done in the name of survival. But when she starts taking Joy, it amplifies her innermost desire for freedom, causing her to kill more indiscriminately as the game goes on. By the end, not even Rando is safe from her wrath.
• Tragic Keepsake: Wears her father's poncho and her adopted brother's mask in "The Joyful." She also carries the not-so-tragic keepsake of her biological father's trumpet in the good ending.
• Training from Hell: As a child, Brad forced her to kill people in order to prepare her for the outside world. Her first kill was some guy Brad had beaten up and tied up. When she finally went through with it, Brad told her that next time, the guy won't be tied up.
• Took a Level in Badass: In The Joyful, Buddy takes the initiative in trying to survive in Olathe. By the end, she arguably rivals her own adoptive father in sheer power.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: She becomes far more harsh and cruel in The Joyful, willing to kill pretty much everyone in her path. She also treats Rando horribly, constantly insulting and manipulating him. It gets so bad that her initial instinct in the Pacifist Village is to kill the pacifists, and, should the player choose to spare them, she has to force her natural killing instinct down to do so. Part of this is due to her Joy addiction.
• The Unfettered: In The Joyful, she lets nothing get in her way of conquering Olathe, even if it means killing an avowed pacifist.
• Unskilled, but Strong: For whatever reason, Brad never actually taught her Armstrong Style so much as forcing her to be comfortable with killing. As such, her fighting style is just stabbing people in the vitals as brutally and efficiently as possible.
• Will Not Be a Victim: Taken to its horrifying conclusion in The Joyful, where Buddy concludes the only way to be at peace in a world full of men out to get her is to conquer or kill them all.
• Villain Protagonist: What she becomes in The Joyful, as a direct result of being a constant target of Attempted Rape, raised (poorly) by Brad and treated like an object by most of the cast. Using Joy certainly doesn't help things, either.

Buzzo

Buzzo/Bernard "Berny" Buttfart

"I've got the Joy, Joy, Joy, Joy, down in my heart..."

A mysterious gang leader who is heavily involved in Olathe's Joy trade. He is oddly fixated on Brad for unknown reasons. It's revealed in "Joyful" that he was Lisa's boyfriend, and that he blames Brad for failing to protect her from Marty's extreme abuse.

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• The Aggressive Drug Dealer: Regularly pushes Brad into taking Joy, giving it to him for free and actually force-feeding it to him at one point.
• Alliterative Name: According to Word of God, his last name is Buttfart.
• An Arm and a Leg: Loses an arm fighting Sweetheart at the climax of Joyful.
• And Then John Was a Zombie: Becomes a Joy Mutant at the end of The Joyful.
• Arch-Enemy: Goes out of his way to be one to Brad, and succeeds with flying colors. He and his gang are also one to Rando and his army.
• Ax-Crazy: He nonchalantly mutilates Brad, and is implied to have been responsible for Rando's scarred face.
• The Bad Guy Wins: Partly. While he fails to capture Buddy for Dr. Yado, he does succeed in "avenging" Lisa by causing Brad's death. It's not until The Joyful where he realizes just how wrong he was from the get-go.
• Berserk Button: If Brad asks why Buzzo is tormenting him, Buzzo loses his temper, cuts Brad's arm off, and takes all his items and mags. This is DEFINITELY not something you want to happen, considering how scarce mags and items are at that point in the game.
• Big Bad: Buzzo is the primary antagonist of The Painful, especially since he antagonizes Brad more directly than Rando and slowly drives Brad further into evil, turning him into the Villain Protagonist he is by the end. Of course, it turns out even he's merely The Dragon to Dr. Yado, the true Big Bad of the series.
• Big Damn Heroes: At the end of Joyful, he jumps in to save Buddy from Sweetheart.
• Broken Pedestal: In the Definitive Edition. In the "Flowering" ending route, Buddy admits that she somewhat respected Buzzo at first; he's clearly not a good person, but he has the kind of power she's always yearned for, able to influence Olathe on a major scale without painting a target on himself like the Warlords. However, seeing him dismembered by Sweetheart and claiming that everything he did was sparked by losing Lisa, Buddy realizes that he's just a sick man that only used his power to fulfill his twisted fantasies instead of trying to find a way to actually heal from past trauma like Brad at least attempted to do.
  Buddy: Maybe Lisa would still be alive if she had never met you.
• Clipped-Wing Angel: Berny is much weaker than other Joy mutants, and after he transforms a second time, he starts clawing and biting at himself to hasten his demise.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: At the climax, he challenges Rando in order to get to Buddy. Mere moments later, Buzzo's entire army is dead and he himself barely manages to escape with his life.
• The Dragon: The Joyless ending reveals that he's secretly working for Dr. Yado, the creator of Joy. However, he’s really only this in The Painful, as Sweetheart usurps him from this role in the epilogue.
• Dragon-in-Chief: Is this in The Painful: He's the one causing all the trouble for Brad. His boss, Dr. Yado, only appears in certain easter eggs, and Brad doesn't even know who he is. Buzzo is also the leader of the Joy Boys, the one spreading Joy throughout Olathe.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • He'll give a second sadistic choice to Brad. Either cutting off one of Buddy's nipples, or killing Brad's party. Choosing the latter would leave him so disgusted by your choice that he'll ask again. Stick with it, and he'll reluctantly give the order.
  • In the Joyless ending, he's sickened at what Dr. Yado has planned for his daughter.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: As warped of a loving relationship it was, it is made very clear that he still grieves for Lisa, even long after her death. This is especially considering he took the time to set up a visitation room in the Joy Lab for her casket, which he somehow took the time to find and dig back up an unknown period of time ago. However, in the Definitive Edition, the "Flowering" ending route has Buddy call into question how "loving" that relationship truly was if he's using Lisa's death as an excuse for his current actions and claiming that she would have loved the mess he helped turn Olathe into.
• Expy: Of Jagi, with his obsession with torturing the protagonist psychologically and physically. As a kid, he looked like Jeff from EarthBound.
• Faux Affably Evil: Buzzo speaks to Brad like an old friend, offering him Joy and bantering pleasantly, but his only intention is making Brad's life hell.
• Hate Sink: Everything Buzzo does in The Painful is petty and needlessly cruel. To wit: his actions were supposedly driven out of revenge for Lisa's death. However, instead of targeting Marty, who raped and abused Lisa and drove her to suicide, he targeted Brad, who didn't do anything wrong other than escaping Marty's abuse and leaving Lisa. He then proceeds to mutilate the face of Dusty (who wasn't even involved in Lisa's life) just because he was Brad's adoptive son, kidnap and possibly cut off Buddy's nipple just because she was Brad's adoptive daughter, force-feeds Brad Joy pills so he'd be guaranteed to mutate, and more. If it weren't for the fact that he's still grieving over Lisa's suicide and that he eventually realizes the error of his ways, he'd be almost as bad as Dr. Yado and Marty.
  • This gets Double-Subverted when Buddy calls bullshit on Buzzo's attempted redemption, revealing that it's inconsistent and only done to garner pity. She also adds the possibility that he never truly loved Lisa and that his actions possibly were one of the causes of her suicide. This reveal removes the one sympathetic quality Buzzo had.
• Heel–Face Turn: In The Joyful. Not only does he save Buddy at the very beginning, he later saves her from Yado's Joy mutant and later finishes off Yado himself before admitting that he was wrong to inflict such miseries on Brad and Buddy. However, in the Definitive Edition, she completely rejects this and calls his motivations into question, even blaming him for Lisa's death, causing him to completely lose his temper on her and turn into a Joy mutant.
• Heel Realization:
  • At the end of The Joyful, Buzzo admits to Buddy that Brad never deserved the suffering that he inflicted upon him and that he was so twisted by his failure to save Lisa that he had to blame someone.
  • Subverted in an optional path in the Definitive Edition. Buddy's "The Reason You Suck" Speech sends him into a rage, screaming about how he's in control, that he built Buddy's world and could have ruined her at any time. This paints his actions throughout the game as selfishly trying to control and manipulate Buddy for his own ego, much like Yado did, rather than genuinely trying to help her.
• Hidden Depths: Considering his ties to Dr. Yado and Joy, it is implied he has some understanding of the pharmaceutical industry, especially considering Dummied Out sprites in The Painful RPG which are of him in a clean and trim business suit.
• Hopeless Boss Fight: Attempting to fight him in The Painful simply leads to him wrecking you with little difficulty.
• I Die Free: After he mutates a second time, all his turns consist of him frantically beating and biting himself to hasten his own death. With his last breath, he tells Lisa he's finally free of her influence.
• Irony:
  • Buzzo is hounding Brad because, in his eyes, Brad failed to protect Lisa from her father, which eventually led to her suicide. Though he may not admit it (and in fact refuses to if certain actions are taken in the Definitive Edition), Buzzo ALSO failed to protect Lisa, and his lashing out at Brad should also be directed at himself. Along with this, Buzzo's constant hounding of Brad is also putting a young girl in harm's way, ironically doing the exact same thing Brad once did. He realizes this by the time of The Joyful, which leads to him potentially earning Redemption Equals Death.
  • Buzzo has an amputation fetish, and will act on it on Brad if given the chance. At the climax of The Joyful, he ends up losing his arm against Sweetheart.
• I Want My Mommy!: His Villainous Breakdown changes to this in the Flowering Ending, with a probable side helping of Heel Realization as he confronts the fact that he can't put the blame for his actions on anyone but himself. This degenerates his mind to the point that it triggers his Joy mutation.
  Berny: GIMME BACK MY BIIIIIIIIIIINKY!!!!!!!!!!!
• Karma Houdini: He never gets his comeuppance and ultimately succeeds in breaking Brad in The Painful.
• Karma Houdini Warranty: In The Joyful we see that him breaking Brad ultimately didn't make him feel any better. He later gets mutilated by Sweetheart and admits his wrongdoing just before turning into a Joy Mutant, forcing Buddy to kill him. This is intensified in Definitive's "Flowering" ending, where he receives a vicious verbal teardown courtesy of Buddy that utterly breaks his mind and reduces him to a sobbing, pathetic mess.
• Laser-Guided Karma: Like so many others that partook in Joy, he turns into a mutant in The Joyful.
• Love Makes You Evil: When Buzzo was a kid, Lisa used the love he had for her to lure him into mutilating animals and herself using a buzzsaw. The death of Lisa only made things worse, leading Buzzo from cutting of Rando's face and then to becoming the brutal warlord of Olathe fascinated with amputations and sadistic choices.
• Madness Mantra: In his first appearance, he and his followers are singing the lyrics to 'Joy In My Heart'.
• Never My Fault: In the Definitive Edition, on the "Flowering" ending path, Buddy cuts off Buzzo's final ramblings about Lisa with a "The Reason You Suck" Speech, declaring him a Broken Pedestal, someone whose power she initially respected but she has since realized he doesn't truly understand pain like Brad or Lisa did, and is just a big baby still blaming them for his own suffering instead of finding a way to heal from it. Buddy then states that maybe Lisa would still be alive without Buzzo, and he breaks, his Joy Mutant transformations now sparked by him calling out for his mommy and Lisa.
• No Fair Cheating: It is technically possible to beat him. Doing so has him mock you and grants you a game over.
• One-Winged Angel: After getting mauled by Sweetheart at the end of Joyful, he transforms into a Joy mutant, becoming the Post-Final Boss.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Twice:
  • After Buddy escapes, he drops the insane grin, and talks openly with Brad about 'the women', which he doesn't elaborate on.
  • In the ending, Buzzo is horrified about what Dr. Yado is planning.
• Post-Final Boss: He serves as the very last opponent Buddy faces in The Joyful, after turning into a Joy Mutant. The battle against him is not very difficult, however, and is nowhere near as long as the fight against Dr. Yado.
• Punny Name: "Buzzo" might refer to feeling buzzed (under the high of drugs), and can also refer to his history with buzz saws.
• A Pupil of Mine Until He Turned to Evil: It turns out he was one of Brad's students, back when he was a martial arts instructor for kids.
• Pyrrhic Victory: His revenge against Brad comes at the cost of losing his entire army to Rando, and then failing to capture Buddy for Dr. Yado. Further elaborated on in The Joyful, when he realizes that torturing and mutating Brad didn't solve any of his problems, and only caused more people to suffer.
• Redemption Equals Death: In The Joyful, he saves Buddy from a Joy Mutant, succumbs to Joy Mutation himself, and becomes the Post-Final Boss. However, in the Definitive Edition, the "redemption" part is absent during the "Flowering" ending, as he refuses to admit personal fault for his actions after Buddy calls him out and intentionally tries to hurt her as a Mutant.
• Revenge: Seems to be his motivation for antagonizing Brad, but Brad has no idea why he's hounding him. In the Pain bonus ending, it's revealed that Buzzo knew Lisa and appears to blame Brad for her death. He is also the one who attacked Dusty (Brad's adopted son and pupil) and sawed his face off as a message to Brad.
• Sadistic Choice: He often forces Brad into these, making him choose between either his companions or his possessions, ranging from all the items he's currently carrying up to his own arm. Attempting to Take a Third Option will either lead to him beating you mercilessly or him taking both.
• Slasher Smile: Often sports one while hunched over and leering at Brad. It's notable that despite this, Buzzo remains calm, never shouting or doing wild actions, making it seem like he has Dissonant Serenity. When you find him standing up, with a calm expression, it's obvious that there's more to Buzzo than his "insane drug warlord" act.
• Troubled Child: Something that Brad noticed when he was his student, suspecting that there might be problems at home for young Buzzo.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Buddy makes the claim that were it not for Buzzo's actions, Lisa wouldn't have killed herself, which would make him this for her if he genuinely believed disfiguring her with a buzzsaw would've stopped the abuse.
• Vague Age: A flashback depicts Buzzo as being a child when Brad is an adult, but according to Dingaling on Twitter, he's not too much younger than Brad.
• Villainous Breakdown: In the Definitive Edition's "Flowering" ending, Buzzo utterly loses his mind after Buddy delivers one hell of a scathing critique of him and his actions. He hallucinates that Lisa is with him, starts ranting that only he can talk to her, and wails about how much he needs her, which devolves into him crying out for his mommy and binky. It ends with him becoming a Joy Mutant.
• Villainous Cheekbones: He has prominent cheekbones, especially when he's grinning.
• Walking Spoiler: His connections to the Armstrong family and Dr. Yado alone make him a prime example of this trope.

Rando

Rando/Dustin "Dusty" Armstrong

"A fff-fa-face is nothing... The inside... It's... It's what matters."

The most powerful warlord in Olathe, and head of a massive army. He abducts Buddy in the beginning of the game, and is Brad's main opponent in saving her.

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• The Ace: Leads perhaps the biggest army seen in Olathe, is fearsome in battle, and is very kind-hearted and respectable in spite of all the horrors he's seen and most likely dealt with in the series.
• All-Loving Hero: Despite his intimidating appearance and supreme effectiveness in combat, Rando is naturally a kindhearted and soft-spoken person. In The Joyful, not only is his class "Peacebringer", he's constantly trying to convince Buddy to drop her quest to murder all the warlords to no avail.
• Big Bad: Seemingly this in The Painful, as he and his army are the biggest and most constant threat in Brad's quest. Ultimately subverted, however: while most of his army is made up of scumbags, Rando himself proves to be one of the few morally decent characters by the end. Buzzo is the real Big Bad of The Painful.
• Big Brother Instinct: To Buddy. Since Buddy is the adopted daughter of Brad, Rando sees her as his little sister of sorts. Buddy exploits this by forcing him to help her kill off the warlords of Olathe.
• Body Horror: His scarred face.
  • During the fight against Dr. Yado in The Joyful, Buddy hallucinates that the Joy Mutant "throne" that Yado sits upon is a mutated Rando, with the scarred skin on his face somehow covering his entire body, and having the stump of the hand that originally held Yado's trumpet having a flower sprouting out of it.
• Broken Ace: If Brad manages to shatter his mask and reveal his face, the fearsome Rando's name will be changed to "Broken Man," drawing similarities with Brad. He is also treated as this by characters in The Joyful.
• Combat Breakdown: Once his mask is broken, the great Rando will begin resorting to scratching as an attack.
• Crucified Hero Shot: When he's finally defeated, his body is left limp in this pose.
• Crutch Character: He joins Buddy early on in The Joyful and is a fairly powerful character that plays like Brad. The trade-off is that he opts to protect Buddy as she sleeps, thus not recovering any health and SP, and he does eventually leave her.
• Dark Is Not Evil: Don't let his outfit or scarred body fool you; he's the nicest character in the series.
• Deconstructed Character Archetype: Of a strong, powerful singular man that has successfully gathered an army under his wing. Like Raoh, but the RPG examines what it would be like if such an army would be left unchecked, acting alone without its leader. The result is rampant power-grabbing and abuse. Sure enough, this turns Buddy against him when his men kidnap her and imprison her despite his insistence to treating Buddy properly.
• Dented Iron: While still a force to be reckoned with, Rando is significantly weaker in Joyful on account of the horrific injuries inflicted on him by Brad at the end of Painful. This only worsens over the course of the first half of Joyful as his sense of duty to Buddy forces him to get in numerous fights when he's already running on fumes and watch over her while she sleeps, compounding everything with days of sleep deprivation. This all ultimately catches up to him at the end.
• The Dreaded: Rando is one of the most feared figures in the setting, and for good reason. He wasn't even put on the The List of Olathe's reigning warlords, both out of respect and due to how terrifying him and his army can be.
• Disney Death: Inspecting his body after beating him states that "he's done" instead of dead; the same thing happened to Rick, who lived to confront Brad later. Sure enough, he turns up alive in Joyful, helping Buddy along the way.
• The Dragon: He becomes this to Buddy in The Joyful, helping her as she carves a bloody swathe across Olathe.
• Establishing Character Moment: Brad first encounters him after crashing his motorcycle into him. The motorcycle is completely trashed, but Rando is completely unharmed, and doesn't even flinch when Brad crashes into him. He then sincerely apologizes for wrecking Brad's motorcycle and gives him some supplies to compensate the damage. This readily establishes Rando as both an utter badass and a remarkably decent fellow.
  • In addition, as soon as Rando leaves after the above, some of his followers attack Brad in an attempt to take back the supplies. This showcases just how little control Rando has over his army.
• Expy:
  • Overlaps with Composite Character. The first is Raoh, as a post-apocalyptic warlord seeking to save the world through an army. The second is Kenshiro, being the bullied kid who was too nice for his own sake. The third is Toki, who dislikes unnecessary violence and is rather gentle. The fourth is Jagi, who has a scarred and disfigured face caused by Buzzo covered up by a mask.
  • When not wearing his cloak he's physically reminiscent of Lord Humungus.
• Extreme Doormat: Rando is a very kind person, but unfortunately that kindness leads people to walk all over him because he can't stand his ground emotions-wise. He can barely control his army, and by the time of The Joyful, his desire to make Buddy happy leads him to help her kill three of Olathe's warlords before abandoning her in the night out of regret.
• The Faceless: Rando conceals his face with a red skull mask, which is also his gang symbol. When Brad breaks his mask during the final battle, he's revealed to be heavily disfigured. This is later revealed to be a result of Buzzo carving off his face when they were both younger.
• Final Boss: He is final opponent you face in The Painful.
• Foil: To Brad. When they finally confront each other, the two both stand as powerful figures with good intentions who lead their own Badass Crew. The difference is that Rando works to set the world right, killing dangerous gangs and understanding that Buddy is the future, whereas Brad is too consumed by the demons of his past to consider the viewpoints of others and instead throws his life away trying to make amends for his own regrets.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: He was an orphan in his teenage years and was not very good at fighting. In present day, he has his own army, is the most powerful enemy in the game, and other warlords in The Joyful respected him so much, his name was left out of The List so he would go unopposed.
• Graceful Loser: Upon being defeated, he acknowledges Brad as his master and thanks him for teaching him all he knows.
• Hero Antagonist: Rando is ultimately the most heroic character in the game, only wishing to do what he thinks is best for everyone (including Buddy). Unfortunately, this puts him at odds with Brad.
• How the Mighty Have Fallen: Spends most of The Painful as the most dangerous man in Olathe. By the last stretch of the game, not only does he have his entire army single-handedly slaughtered by Brad, but in The Joyful, once Bolo and his men hear his voice and realize how weak he sounds, everyone loses respect and begins attacking him. Averted with some of the warlords, who were friends with Rando before.
• Legacy Character: Being Brad's adopted son and having trained under him, Rando effectively acts as a second Brad during his stint as a party member in Joyful.
• Manly Tears: In the first encounter with him, seemingly crying for all the death he and his army cause. He also sheds several of these in the final battle with him, due to being forced to fight the father figure he loved above all else.
• Meaningful Name: Rando, according to Austin Jorgensen comes from Random, as in he's no better than any random guy. Also, like most political systems, its all random, seeing that while he has a powerful army, he's no better off controlling them when they commit atrocities. You know, like any random schmuck.
• Mercy Kill: In The Joyful, if Buddy refuses to let him go during Bolo's ambush, then he's ultimately left completely crippled, bleeding out, and in complete agony, prompting Buddy to give him this.
• Mirror Boss: In the final battle against him, he uses several of Brad's moves such as the Buster Punch. This is because he was formerly Brad's adopted son and trained in Armstrong-Style Karate.
• My Country, Right or Wrong: His men may be a bunch of ruthless thugs, but they respect Rando greatly, and even decided to take his supplies back because they felt he was being too nice. Late in the game, when Rando speaks, his men were caught off guard by his soft-spoken voice. This does not deter them from protecting Buddy, and further motivated them, despite how progressively hopeless the situation gets.
• Noble Demon: Rando may be the warlord of a raider army, but he's a good person at heart.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: All Rando/Dusty wanted to do is make Brad proud of him and save humanity. He ultimately ends up beaten to shit and killed for his troubles.
• One-Man Army: Rando is talked up as this by a lot of people, and more than lives up to it by the end, all things considered. What drives the point home is that he's the only character in the cast who can go toe-to-toe with a Joy-addled Brad for a good while without being turned into red paste, in contrast to both Brad's former party members and Rando's own army. Since Brad is openly regarded and shown to be an absolute monster in a fight at this point, it speaks volumes about how powerful Rando is.
• The Quiet One: Rando very rarely speaks to the point that very few of his men know what he sounds like. This is due to the fact that his actual voice is rather soft, and he speaks with a stutter. In The Joyful, when Bolo and his gang realize what he sounds like, they are no longer intimidated and decided to chance fighting him... which ends about as well as you'd expect.
• Rank Scales with Asskicking: He's quite a formidable fighter, being arguably stronger alone than his entire army combined.
• Red and Black and Evil All Over: His signature mask and cape style him black and red, giving a sinister appearance and with Spikes of Villainy to boot. Subverted when he's revealed to be a genuinely heroic character.
• Redemption Demotion: While he's still strong when you finally get to play as him in The Joyful, he's not the One-Man Army he was in The Painful. However, it's justified, as this comes right after a brutal defeat at Brad's hands. He's also lost his entire army at the hands of the latter, while other warlords and enemies have become less intimidated and more willing to fight him due to his scarred face and weak voice making him come off as less of a threat.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: In The Joyful, after he realizes that he'll never get Buddy to change her ways, he abandons her while she's sleeping.
• Shout-Out: He's named after Dusty Rhodes.
• Shrouded in Myth: Little is known about Rando, aside from the fact that he is an almighty warlord. No one has seen him without his mask, and few have ever even heard him speak.
• Speech Impediment: He speaks with a heavy stutter, which serves as a hint to his identity as Dusty, Brad's adopted son.
• Token Good Teammate: Of his titular army.
• Tragic Hero: His birth parents are nowhere to be seen, he may have had a physical and/or mental handicap according to Dingaling, he was neglected by his adoptive father and brutally assaulted by his fellow student. He never stops trying to be a good person despite this.
• Wasteland Warlord: He's the game's most prominent Warlord, being the only figure to have leveraged his personal strength to amassing a personal army.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: He strives for the approval of his adopted father, Brad.
• What the Hell, Hero?: When facing the early warlords, they give this reaction to Rando for coming to fight them. Justified, as Buddy goads Rando along and forces him to fight alongside her.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Buddy eventually kills him after his repeated attempts at dissuading her from her ambitions and trying to shelter her.
• Zero-Approval Gambit: If Buddy chooses to hold onto the barbed wire holding up his body, he'll tell her that he ordered the men in pink to kidnap her. His claim might not be entirely true, since he also berated the men for locking her up rather than treating her as an equal, which means he might have lied to convince her to let go and not fall with him. This is also somewhat Deconstructed when he sees that his gambit made her even more jaded.

The True Ruler of Olathe (All spoilers unmarked)

The Trumpet Man/Dr. Yado

"I am Yado. I'm a man of science. A man of... Higher power. And this is MY world. You are just a pawn. An insect engineered by ME. I birthed you, I'm your father! And you must obey me!"

A mysterious man in a brightly colored polka-dot shawl who can be found at several points in the game, playing the trumpet in inaccessible locations. It's eventually revealed that he's actually Dr. Yado, the scientist responsible for Joy and the Great White Flash as well as the biological father of Buddy.

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• Abusive Parents: To the nth degree. He intentionally engineered all the misery his daughter went through and put her in danger of being raped and abused by thugs repeatedly, making her suffer a life of hardship, to mold her into a cold-blooded killer he could use to kill his enemies. He even refers to her as an insect.
• The Beastmaster: He can control the mutants through his trumpet. In the "Free" ending of Joyful, Buddy takes his trumpet for herself.
• Big Bad: Of the entire series. He's the one who caused the Great Flash, for one thing; he then proceeds to manipulate everyone in his plan to destroy humanity, whom he despises. He is most directly this in The Joyful, where he manipulates Buddy into massacring all the remaining survivors in Olathe before turning on Buddy herself.
• Cerebus Retcon: Once you know his personality, backstory, and the true purpose of his trumpet playing, his appearances in The Painful become a lot less amusing.
• Chekhov's Gunman: He has several key appearances, prior to taking center stage in The Joyful:
  • He can be found in certain spots of The Painful RPG playing the trumpet. Said trumpet is used to control mutants and joy addicts, as The Joyful reveals.
  • He can be seen in the prologue if you go past Marty's house, although he wears different clothing and sunglasses and has a goatee, so you won't realize it's him at first. If you interact with him, he only says "Olathe, it's beautiful" without facing Brad.
• Dirty Coward: When finally confronted by Buddy, he finds himself too afraid to properly confront her. His boss fight consists of him initially cowering in fear before commanding his mutant throne to attack her. Of course, there's the (very small) possibility he might be a little reluctant to fight his own daughter.
• The Dog Was the Mastermind: Who woulda guessed that a character supposedly serving as a comedic Easter Egg NPC would be the Big Bad of the entire LISA series?
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: A possible explanation as to why he saves Buddy from Bolo, then is initially reluctant to fight her during the last stretch of The Joyful... assuming he isn't just being a pragmatic coward.
• Final Boss: He serves as the last major challenge of The Joyful. Buddy starts hallucinating other "foes" as the fight drags on, but the beginning and end of the fight make it clear that she is fighting Yado all throughout.
• Greater-Scope Villain: His research caused all the horrors that we see in Olathe, and his notes in the Joy laboratory hint that he fully intended all of it. He finally takes center stage as the Big Bad in The Joyful.
• A God Am I: He plans to rule over Olathe by populating it with mutants and using Buddy to instigate a war so that his potential enemies kill off one another.
• Hate Sink: Yado is portrayed as an utterly loathesome Mad Scientist who is willing to send all of humanity into extinction, solely to rule over it by himself. He thinks absolutely nothing of making Buddy's life hell, as well as treating pretty much everyone he comes across as a pawn on some level. The sheer level of damage and tragedy he causes from behind the scenes is shown very often throughout the series, which will likely make the player seethe with rage at him by the time he's finally revealed to be the main antagonist.
• Iconic Outfit: What really gives away his true identity: a piece of incidental text says that Dr. Yado is a huge fan of polka dots.
• Karma Houdini Warranty: Yado spends the majority of the series getting away with pretty much everything he does. And unlike Buzzo, Brad suffers under the consequences of Yado's actions without even realizing he exists. It's not until The Joyful where karma finally catches up to him.
• Kick the Dog: Most of what he does is nothing but this trope, though one major epilogue in The Joyful stands out as particuarly henious; it reveals that he murdered a woman prior to executing his plans, which may had happened after The Flash, judging by how fresh her corpse seemed when Brad finds her^*Her body can be found in the Secret Lab on Pain Mode.
• Left the Background Music On: In the areas where you can find him in The Painful, the music is replaced with him softly playing his trumpet; actually finding him causes him to stop and leer at Brad.
• Mad Scientist: He's the creator of Joy, and the man responsible for all the Joy Mutants you encounter.
• Non-Action Big Bad: He has no physical prowess whatsoever, meaning that he has to have the Joy Mutants act as his bodyguards whenever he ends up in a scuffle.
• Omnicidal Maniac: He wants to end humanity by turning as many as possible into Joy Mutants while sparking a war via his daughter. When the dust clears, everyone who hasn't mutated and been put under his trumpet's control will be dead.
• Pet the Dog: Probably his ONLY redeeming quality is the iota of pragmatism he displays (described below in Pragmatic Villainy), potentially fueled by a very dormant love for his daughter. Otherwise, he's a complete scumbag.
• Pragmatic Villainy: He can potentially save Buddy, his daughter, from being raped by Bolo, however he does this solely because he needs her alive and at full strength to kill the remaining Olathe Warlords so he can take over. Once she does, he immediately tries to kill her.
• Pyrrhic Victory: Throughout most of both The Painful and The Joyful, his plan goes through without a hitch. The end result, especially if Buddy doesn't take the vaccine, is near identical to his vision. He didn't foresee the possibility that he could be killed, though, which makes his efforts completely pointless.
• Recurring Extra: Can be seen in a few obscure, unreachable locations in The Painful. Subverted in The Joyful, where he only shows up at the end and is revealed to be very important.
• Right-Hand Attack Dog: Sweetheart. Technically all of the Joy Mutants count, but Sweetheart is his go-to mutant when he really wants someone dead.
• The Sociopath: Yado ticks many of the boxes. He is immensely self-centered, to the point of a god-complex, displays a Lack of Empathy, even towards his own family, and manipulates people into furthering his schemes.
• Vague Age: He, even when Young Brad finds him, looks considerably past his prime, yet Buddy is explicitly approaching puberty by the time The Painful starts, so it's left unexplained how old Yado actually is.
• Villainous Breakdown: When confronted at the end of the game, he is baffled and terrified that Buddy has gotten past Sweetheart, and now has nothing left to throw at her. The first phase of his boss fight is him being too scared to fight back.
• Villainous Rescue: Indirectly saves Buddy from a Near-Rape Experience in The Joyful if she chooses to not let go of Rando.
• Walking Spoiler: It only becomes explicit that he's the one behind everything at the end of the third game, and it's difficult to talk about him in general without bringing up sensitive plot details.

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