Fridge / Bully

Fridge Brilliance

• Many fans of the game complain about how easy the boss battle with Gary is. It makes sense if you think about it, though. Despite Gary's speech, he never really planned on actually fighting Jimmy. He thought Jimmy would have been expelled (which he was) and/or the whole school would have turned on him (which they did, for a time). He never expected the drop-outs to help Jimmy take back the school again. So he panicked, turned the school into a battleground, tied up the principal and planned to blame it on Jimmy but it backfired.
  • Plus, Gary's skill is in manipulation. Once somebody's seen through his bullshit, he's just a Dirty Coward who can't back up his tough talk.
• A lot of Gary's manic behavior and his less than satisfactory reasoning for manipulating everyone. He states twice that he's not been taking his meds. The mission before he betrays Jimmy, you see him frantically talking to himself. His betrayal and eventual taking over the school can be explained by Gary literally being out of his mind.
• During the bossfight which concludes chapter 4, once all Ted Thompson's defenders have been eliminated, the fight turns to a 1 VS 1 brawl against him, at which point he's defeated after being hit exactly one time. It can seem strange that an athletic teenager wearing football protections is beaten so easily by a much shorter boy, but, before this, you had to defeat the defenders surrounding him by throwing explosive footballs at them. Given there was a dozen explosions around him right before the final sequence of the bossfight, of course he turns to be disappointingly weak: he probably suffered from a mild concussion.
• English and Math classes both consist in a time-limited quiz, but succeeding in Math requires a much higher score than in English. Since Mr. Galloway is a very nice and lenient man (in the opening cutscene of one of the English classes, he notes that some students are sharing the answers to the test, and congratulates the students for such a demonstration of "team spirit"), while Mr. Hattrick is a jerk and a bully as well (Galloway's alcoholism is strongly implied to have been caused by years of abuse from Hattrick), no wonder that Math is a lot harder than English.
• In the beginning of chapter 4, Jimmy asks Algie to help him join his fellow Nerds, in order to get help to defeat the Jocks clique. Algie refuses, saying that Jimmy himself is sometimes unpleasant to them, and that he already called him "Pee Stain". It could be a clue about Gary and how he's spreading rumours: think "The Eggs", in which he turns the Preppies against Jimmy with this method (by spreading rumours about Jimmy telling that Tad is heavily inbred).
• Despite being supposedly fired over the course of the game, both Mr. Hattrick and Mr. Burton are apparently still teaching their classes if the player waits to finish the Math and Gym classes respectively afterwards. This makes sense however as Bullworth is stated repeatedly to be the worst school in the country with a reputation to match. It's highly likely those two haven't been officially fired yet simply because there's no teachers willing to actually work at Bullworth to replace them with.
• The Nerds theme appears to be based on the song Da Da Da by German band Trio. Coincidence or not, the English translation of the song does fit in the Nerds' relationship with the rest of the school because it's about accepting the end of a relationship or accepting a mutual hatred between two people.
  "Is it just things you understand? Aha
  This is what you got to know
  Loved you though it didn't show
  I don't love you, you don't love me"
• There's actually a clever bit of visual storytelling with Jimmy finding new places to stay after defeating the various cliques. The more Jimmy fights to become the top dog of Bullworth Academy, the less he actually has. The first base is in the boys dorm, an area surrounded by other people who respect him after the first chapter. Then the second is the clubhouse, which is pretty isolated and the bar inside is supposed to be shared with people but nobody goes inside. The third is the Dragon's Wing storeroom, which is inhabited by the Nerds and they are the first clique to respect Jimmy after he stands up to the Bullies. From the Greaser chapter, however, the storytelling takes effect; the Blue Balls Pool House, the Jocks Clubhouse, and the Townie Hideout are all rundown and isolated from the other students. Gary Smith, the loner obsessed with power, shows how isolation and obsession are bad things and the storytelling shows that Jimmy is closer and closer to being Gary if he lets the power and isolation go to his head.
• Many are often confused why Gary would choose to stay away from the Jocks despite his lust for power but it makes sense when you analyze the situation. Gary is more of a manipulator than a fighter, so going toe to toe with the Jocks will not end well for him and it's better for Gary if he just avoids them altogether. The Jocks are the reigning popular students and it's shown several times that they are pretty dumb as they make the Nerds do their homework for them. For those reasons, the Jocks are immune to Gary's silver tongue because they are already at the top of the food chain, he has nothing to offer them, and the Jocks are simply too dumb to be manipulated.
• To those unfamiliar with American football, Ted being weaker than Damon doesn't appear to make sense since Ted is the leader of the clique and Damon is one of the linebackers. However, it does make sense when you research the roles of a quarterback and linebacker; linebackers are members of a defensive team that have to stop runners from scoring points, whereas quarterbacks give commands to the team and direct the offensive team so they can score. Linebackers, like Damon, have to be strong enough to stop runners from scoring and it's not his role to charge into the offensive position. Ted is weaker because he's the captain who directs the team, not the sole scorer or defender. He has to be faster than everyone else and able to fight with his team as a unit, hence why he isn't as effective as Damon when fighting on his own.
• The Preppies use eggs as ranged weapons instead of slingshots or anything else. When you analyse the clique, it not only makes sense but it's almost comical. The entire clique is made up of out-of-touch classists who are spoilt by their families. Due to their upbringing, they feel entitled to Bullworth's popularity and already think they are the most popular. The clique is also more focused on image and presentation, as they exclusively wear Aquaberry to distinguish themselves, reside in Harrington House to isolate themselves from the lower class, and only use boxing to make themselves appear tougher than they are. To the Preppies, getting eggs on your clothes, let alone expensive clothes, is a mark of shame and an insult as it makes you look slovenly and look like a commoner.
• On the Halloween mission, each costume does parallel each respective main character:
  • Gary dressed as a Nazi, which makes sense because he's obsessed with control, power, and he loves getting a reaction from people through shock value. Gary wants to take over the school, he loves manipulating people by spreading rumors, and his Nazi costume is to shock everyone around him.
  • Petey is dressed as a rabbit, which makes sense because he's designed to be the archetypical victim of Bullworth and the sort of students Jimmy wants to help. Rabbits are seen as innocent, peaceful, and shy animals, something Petey is unfortunately stuck with because he's not part of any of the major cliques, and he's especially vulnerable without Jimmy to protect him so he just keeps his head down and avoids everyone else. However, Rabbits are often seen by other cultures as tricksters and are portrayed as such in the media by having them outwit their stronger opponents. Once Gary betrays Jimmy in the first chapter, Petey steps up and gives Jimmy advice on how to fight the other cliques, his advice helps Jimmy take over the Preppies, the Nerds, and he manages to help Jimmy beat Johnny Vincent.
  • Jimmy's costume is a simple skeleton costume. While this does initially serve as a reference to Johnny Lawrence's costume in The Karate Kid, it does reflect how Jimmy is meant to be the everyday teen in Bullworth and the most normal out of the 3 main characters.
• The fact that the school allows students to wear such different variations of the uniform might initially seem like just another point showing how little it cares, but it's indicative of the one thing the school might be getting right: As long as they wear clothing associated with the school, students are allowed to express themselves as they see fit, and are given plenty of options to do so.
• Although Gary's motivations seem pretty pedestrian compared to other Rockstar villains, it does make sense when you remember that Gary is only a teenager, albeit a mentally ill teenager. Of course, his plans are going to be unrealistic at best, and short-lived at worst, he's essentially a kid in school and lacks any form of maturity or wisdom to make any plans that would actually work in real life.

Fridge Horror

Remember, you aren't the only bully in this school. It was a wretched hive long before you got here.

• Bullworth Academy is a private school. Think about that. People pay for their kids to suffer through that school. Or it might imply that public schools are even worse.
  • To add on to that, since Endless Summer implies that Bullworth has a lot of students living there all year, this may very well be a place where parents pay to abandon kids. No wonder so many students are the way they are.
• Plenty of the students were shown to be picking on the little kids and even the girls during the game. During the final mission neither the kids or the girls could be seen and the Greasers were vandalizing the Girls Dorm, meaning they are either hiding or they were captured by those bullies who now would have the freedom to do whatever they wanted during all this chaos.
• How easy it was for all the cliques to just start fighting each other is terrifying to think about, especially since not that long before they were hanging out together with Jimmy. This shows that they were only pretending to like each other since Jimmy beat them into submission, and therefore while Jimmy might have stopped Gary all he's really done is force the clique leaders back into pretending they like each other and all it would take would be another Gary to cause it to happen all over again.
• When Zoe Taylor is reenrolled in Bullworth, she has a unique version of the uniform as she has several buttons of her shirt undone that reveals her cleavage. Well, there are two ways to look at this design; Zoe is both rebellious and proud of her beauty so she's more comfortable now with how she's dressing because Burton has been fired and she doesn't have to fear his attention. On the other hand, she's a victim of sexual misconduct (either harassment or outright sexual abuse), and one of the symptoms of Rape Trauma Syndrome is hypersexuality and over-promiscuity, which victims use to reclaim and reassert their control over their sexuality, it does paint a darker idea of why she dresses that way.
• When Jimmy and the Nerds took revenge on Mandy by posting erotic pictures of her across Bullworth Town, they were extremely lucky that the police didn't get involved, otherwise they could have been arrested for distributing child pornography since Mandy is 16-17 years old.

Fridge Logic

• So Gary admitted to having gotten kids expelled and convinced all the cliques to fight each other in a brawl that almost destroys the school. But he's still only a 15 year old kid and the police (who could be seen outside the main gate during the last mission) would logically want to look into how everything got as far as it did as would any reporters, meaning they would all look to Crabblesnitch for answers especially since he had been the one to give Gary so much authority. As the school likely receives plenty of money from rich parents, even the more abusive ones would want answers to why their kids were fighting or why they were in so much danger. An investigation like that would certainly have revealed everything that was happening with the students, the faculty and the Townies who caused the fire in the gym under Gary's orders which almost killed several students, creating an even bigger scandal than what Gary had caused. While it's unlikely the school would have been closed down permanently, Crabblesnitch would have been fired and many if not all students would have been sent home so the investigation could be done more thoroughly. Instead everything goes back to normal with all the cliques loving Jimmy, the school is repaired and nobody talks about the violent brawl.

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