I discovered Mouthwashing on Friday of last week and since then I’ve watched 4 different playthroughs and countless video essays/analyses on the game - needless to say, it’s a new special interest. But through all this and all the things said about it, one thing hasn’t really been talked about, as far as I can find: the meaning behind “I hope this hurts.” It’s been plaguing me from the start.

I have a couple of theories as to what it could be referring to:

1) I believe Jacksepticeye brought up in his playthrough that maybe Jimmy had said it/hoped for it as he crashed the ship. It’s an interesting thought, seeing as most people hope for their death to be painless or as painless as possible, and I don’t believe Jimmy, the cowardly bastard he is, would hope for any kind of consequence to his actions such as physical pain as he dies.

2) The game itself is talking to us, the player, hoping that this game does hurt us, changes us, stays with us. It’s like Jimmy says to Curly: pain is how we know we’re alive. The game and the developers want this story to stay with us, to make us think, and to disturb us. Pain is a great way to do that, for a lot of people have a harder time remembering happy memories than they do memories in which they were sad or angry (or at least I do).

3) The game (or some omnipresent being like Polle at the end of the game) is speaking to Jimmy, hoping that what he’s about to go through hurts him, because it should and because he deserves it. He should feel some sort of hurt for all the pain he caused everyone else.

4) The thought crossed my mind today that maybe, just maybe, Jimmy had said it to Anya as he was sa-ing her. I know it’s implied and never said outright that that’s what he did but I fully believe that he did sa her, causing her to fall pregnant. He doesn’t hold any remorse for it, going as far as to ignore Anya’s suicide and cover up every instance of her ID in the hall of ID cards and apologize to Curly - just Curly - at the end of the game, so maybe he wanted to hurt her. Curly mentioned Jimmy having trouble back on earth; maybe Anya wasn’t his first victim. It would be another hint as to what happened to Anya, if this was the case.

I’m leaning more towards number 2 or 3 being the meaning - especially number 2, but I want to hear other people’s thoughts as well. What do you think “I hope this hurts” means?