Taxidermy Is Creepy, indeed.
And you thought your high school sucked...
- Let's look at the setting, shall we? The game takes place in Bullworth Academy, a prep school that is widely considered to be the worst in America, whose alumni include serial killers, maniacs and corporate lawyers. All of the cliques in the school - even the nerds - are amoral bullies engaged in a constant game of social intrigue. The faculty are little better if not worse than the students, composed of holier-than-thou sociopaths who abuse their authority without a second thought. Even the principal is unperturbed by Bullworth's Machiavellian culture, gleefully recounting how he and his friends made a tradition of castrating his fellow students as a teenager. And the icing on the cake? This is set in the same universe as Grand Theft Auto and Manhunt. Who's to say that Michael De Santa or James Earl Cash didn't attend this school at some point?
- Each of the cliques have their own flavor of frightening:
- The Nerds aren't exactly all that disturbing...unless you take into account Earnest's perverted motives, Fatty's ungodly stench or Algie's suppressed sadism (and weak bladder). Or just that they're absolute backstabbers.
- The Bullies wear their concept on their sleeve. Russel is a veritable caveman, Davis bullied a kid into dropping out (and was made to eat junebugs by his cousin), Trent secretly takes pictures of girls, Troy is a steroid-fed sadist and Wade is a psycho with daddy issues.
- The Preps are rich, arrogant and massively inbred with serious family issues on top of it all. Derby is a snobbish egomaniac, Chad owns puppy leather shoes, Gord has utter contempt for the poor, Parker thinks he can literally buy friends and Pinky thinks of herself as a full-blown princess...and has a grandmother with four thumbs.
- The Jocks are at the top of the social food chain and act the part. Ted is a mean-spirited misogynist, Damon is a bloodthirsty linebacker, Dan is literally addicted to abusing Nerds and Mandy is a bulimic snob.
- The Greasers are, well, Greasers. Johnny is a paranoid hothead, Lola is a promiscuous manipulator and Vance thinks so highly of bikes that he's willing to smash up cars to prove a point.
- The Townies are the only clique that don't attend Bullworth. Gangsters, dropouts and delinquents, they'll straight up attack you on-sight.
- Jimmy cannot stay up late in the game, as he'll feel sleepy and eventually pass out. While he's sleepy, the screen becomes to get blurry, Jimmy begins to droop, and this
begins to slowly creep its the way into the soundtrack. Not to mention that by that time, the whole academy and the surrounding town are practically deserted. It's rather creepy to say the least. - Some of the freaks in the carnival Freakshow are rather creepy.
- The Happy Volts Insane Asylum. A drab, rundown institution for the criminally insane that is a hotspot for many of the myths surrounding the game. There are strange X-rays that show some particularly freaky physical deformities, a skeleton that looks like it belongs to an alien and a photo of a doctor posing with a grey. Just what the hell is going on in this place?!
- Due to a developer oversight or time constraints, you don't see any patients in the asylum. You can, however, hear their screams.
- During the development of the game, Rockstar had considered Jimmy being killed in case the player failed to defeat Edgar at the showdown in the chemical plant, where Jimmy would fall into an acid pool, being burned alive, while Edgar is mocking him. There is a recreation of this cutscene, using Edgar's lines where he mocks Jimmy as he dies. The fact that Rockstar considered having a 15 year old die burning in acid while a much older kid mocked him is horrifying to say the least and is more in line with Grand Theft Auto and Manhunt.
- Everything about Gary. Everything. His conniving, manipulative behavior and megalomania makes it clear that he's an outright psychopath. While the other bullies are either sarcastic jerks or cheap thugs, Gary's personality puts him in the category of a potential mass murderer (and/or white supremacist, given his Halloween costume). And we still don't know where he got that facial scar.
- During the final mission where Jimmy chases Gary up the scaffolding surrounding Bullworth Academy's bell tower, Gary continuously throws bricks at Jimmy to make him fall off and even hurls wheelbarrows full of debris down ladders to stop him. Gary is actually trying to outright kill Jimmy. The build-up music could seriously count when it plays alongside Gary's "The Reason You Suck" Speech: It starts off with a melancholy guitar riff mixed with a xylophone. As you progress closer to the bell tower, eerie bells start appearing alongside the riff, and the xylophone is overshadowed by deep wails, while the guitar tune starts to sound more pitched. Once you get to the fight with Gary, loud drums and screeching noises start to play as the wails get much deeper as the song gets pitched by the minute. It perfectly fits how low Gary has stooped.
- The unused beta Math class song sounds like something straight out of an 80s slasher movie. It's stupidly creepy at first for just a simple math class, but it actually kinda makes some sense when you realize how evil Mr. Hattrick is.
- Mr. Hattrick. Not only is he incredibly corrupt, selling test answers to the sons of his wealthy associates, he also treats the students like they're not even human, going as far as to advocate capital punishment in schools. Even worse is that he apparently drove his wife to suicide through sheer emotional neglect.
- Go to the cemetery at night. Not only is it eerie in itself as you feel like some corpse is suddenly gonna jump out at you, but there's also a church with an unseen priest who delivers muffled sermons at midnight. Some players speculated that a satanic cult is happening in there and the thought of it alone is...unnerving to say the least.
- The sermons are actually from the book of Genesis, describing Noah's Ark and the Great Flood. It's not much better, being delivered in the dolorous voice of a fire and brimstone preacher.
- One of the most overlooked moments is that the game has two ephebophiles in it. Mr. Burton sexually harassed Zoe Taylor, a teenage girl, while she was attending Bullworth Academy and he had Jimmy take the girls' panties for him under the excuse that he needed to wash them. The second was a random man who was staring at an erotic poster of Mandy and saying how he was glad that his wife didn't catch him staring at it. Mr. Burton was a threat to the students and the other teachers were too aloof to care and the nerds may have invited the wrong kind of attention to Mandy through their revenge porn plan. Speaking of that plan, had Jimmy and the Nerds been caught, they would likely be arrested for distributing child pornography because Mandy is 16-17 years old.
- If you turn on the No Clip or Free Cam mode in the biology room, you can see human organs, a human embryo with a creepy smile, and the severed head of a young man. In other words, Dr. Slawter's interest in taxidermy isn't limited to fauna, but humans as well.
- If the player wanders in certain areas of the game, they may hear unexplained sounds. The sound of a running chainsaw and laughter can be heard coming from a rundown house in Blue Skies Industrial Park, at any time of the day. Residents of this area enter this house and have not returned from the house.
- Alongside the chainsaw noises and laughter, you can hear people screaming in pain/horror and the sounds of pig-like grunting. There's a chance that those unfortunate individuals who went into the house had a run-in with Piggsy...
- One of the NPCs seen around town can be overheard talking about paranormal activity happening in a local paper mill, describing poltergeists, ectoplasm and even a fellow worker losing a hand. Granted, he's constantly raving about the supernatural, but...what if he's right?
- Mr. Grant is a local hobo found living near Bullworth Academy that asks Jimmy to find and collect various transistors throughout New Coventry. What happens when he collects all six of them? Why, he gets abducted by aliens of course!
- Mr. Galloway is a model teacher, popular with students and helpful with their schoolwork...at first. It soon becomes apparent that he's a serious alcoholic whose addiction is traced to Mr. Hattrick's abuse.
- When confronted by Jimmy about his problem, Galloway says he's tried everything else to curb his addiction: yoga, tai chi and "dubious sites" on the internet. The last of which is never elaborated on.
