Mouthwashing Curly Explained: His Role, Guilt, and Fate

Who Is Curly in Mouthwashing?

Curly is the captain of the Tulpar, whose loss of authority and independence drives some of the game's hardest scenes. This Mouthwashing Curly guide explains his injuries, his relationships with Jimmy and Anya, and his place in the ending. Understanding his actions before the crash changes how you read everything that happens afterward.

Full story spoilers ahead, including discussion of sexual assault, suicide, and graphic violence.

Curly commands a five-person crew aboard a Pony Express space freighter. Alongside him are co-pilot Jimmy, nurse Anya, mechanic Swansea, and intern Daisuke. Before the disaster, he is a respected leader who helped Jimmy secure his position.

You control Curly during the pre-crash sections. Those scenes let you see the crew before starvation and isolation take over, while also exposing problems that already existed beneath their working relationships.

After the crash, control shifts to Jimmy. Curly remains alive but severely injured, unable to speak, and dependent on the people he once commanded. That change makes his earlier decisions especially painful to revisit: you have already seen where they lead.

Official page: Mouthwashing (criticalreflex.com)

What Happened to Curly in the Crash?

Jimmy deliberately redirects the Tulpar toward an asteroid. Curly rushes into the cockpit to try to prevent the collision and suffers catastrophic injuries in the disaster.

The opening accusation against Curly encourages you to blame the captain. As the nonlinear story unfolds, the distinction becomes essential: Jimmy causes the crash, while Curly attempts to intervene.

Curly survives with extensive bodily damage and cannot care for himself. He depends on the crew to administer his painkillers.

The crash also traps everyone aboard a failing ship. Power will run out within six months, with food supplies exhausted sooner. Curly's survival therefore depends on a crew facing its own increasingly desperate circumstances.

When following the timeline, separate these two questions:

• Who deliberately crashed the ship? Jimmy.
• Who held authority before the disaster? Curly.

Keeping those answers separate helps explain why the story can hold Curly accountable for failures of leadership without making him the person who steered the Tulpar into danger.

Curly, Jimmy, and Anya: Where His Responsibility Lies

Curly's friendship with Jimmy is central to his failure as captain. He helped Jimmy secure the co-pilot position aboard the Tulpar.

Jimmy resents Curly's status and prospects. When Pony Express goes under, everyone aboard is losing their job, including Curly. However, Curly is set to receive a commendation and exceptional references, giving him advantages the others lack.

There is no managerial promotion waiting for him. The tension comes from the crew facing the same company's collapse with very different prospects afterward.

Anya's Disclosure

Anya tells Curly she is pregnant following Jimmy's sexual assault. That disclosure makes her safety an immediate leadership responsibility.

Curly's response fails to protect her adequately. His concern never becomes the effective intervention she needs.

This is where his character becomes difficult to dismiss or excuse. Curly can care about his crew and still fail someone who depends on his authority. Good intentions offer Anya little protection when Jimmy remains dangerous.

Their Relationship After the Crash

Once Curly is incapacitated, Jimmy gains control over both the crew and Curly's immediate care. Their relationship becomes an extreme imbalance of power.

Jimmy berates Anya for being unable to force-feed Curly his painkillers. Curly cannot explain himself, challenge Jimmy's version of events, or leave.

Read those scenes alongside the pre-crash conversations. Curly once had the authority to act; afterward, he has almost no ability to influence what happens around him. That reversal gives the game's focus on responsibility much of its force.

His suffering also demands compassion on its own terms. Recognizing his earlier failures does not make Jimmy's abuse deserved.

What Happens to Curly at the Ending?

Curly survives the deaths of the other crew members, but Jimmy subjects him to further violence during the final sequence.

Image: Steam / Wrong Organ

Jimmy arranges the crew's bodies around the table in a grotesque recreation of Curly's birthday celebration. He cuts off part of Curly's leg and eats it, with the scene also implying that he forces Curly to consume some of his own flesh.

The familiar birthday imagery makes the sequence particularly disturbing. An earlier moment of friendship becomes a setting in which Jimmy can impose his imagined version of events on people who cannot challenge him.

Eventually, Jimmy places Curly in the Tulpar's last functioning cryogenic pod. The pod offers a 20-year period of cryostasis. Jimmy then kills himself off-screen.

Curly ends the story alive in cryostasis, with his future left open. He has no opportunity to consent to Jimmy's final plan or respond to the meaning Jimmy assigns it.

Calling that act redemption overlooks the violence leading up to it and Jimmy's failure to fully confront what he did to Anya. Curly's continued survival does not settle Jimmy's moral account.

Curly's Personality and Character Design

Curly has a life beyond his captain's uniform. He enjoys weightlifting, spends his time on Earth with friends and family, and likes trying new activities. Winter is his favorite season because he enjoys snow sports.

He is not particularly interested in sweets. One of his fondest birthday memories involves friends, including Jimmy, making him a chocolate-and-caramel whey protein cake that collapsed and tasted terrible. That detail gives their friendship a warmth that makes its later destruction harder to watch.

A few smaller character details add texture:

• His favorite Pokémon is Pikachu.
• He was originally intended to have a British accent.
• His vocal sounds were performed by Martin, the game's audio lead.

Curly's injured appearance was central to the game's visual identity from the beginning: post-crash Curly was the first character image drawn for the project. His pre-crash appearance arrived much later, with the model created about a month before release.

Seeing him before the disaster gives those earlier scenes an additional weight. You can connect the dependent man in medical care to the captain who once moved freely through the ship, maintained friendships, and had the power to make decisions for everyone aboard.