"Sooomebodyyy... A-a-anybodyyy... Love... meee..."
Being a faithful fangame to the LISA series, LISA: The Hopeful has more than its fair share of scares.
- Eddy Lead. It's a powerful optional Joy Mutant encountered in a side area in the Engine Enthusiasts' base. Aside from the fact that it appears to have mutate while wearing a welding mask, which crushed its face into its head, that's all well and good. Then you realize that it's encountered with a car. The Engine Enthusiasts all but explicitly have sex with cars. Did Eddy mutate while fucking the car? It would certainly explain why its body has contorted vaguely into the shape of the car's frame...
- Lanks getting violently raped. It's not explicitly shown what happens, but Craig Fuchs's lecherous behavior towards Beltboy combined with the scream that Lanks lets out while he's offscreen doesn't leave much to the imagination. We discover as the game progresses that the head wound he received was the least of the trauma he got from the ordeal.
- The subsequent sequence where Beltboy narrowly avoids going through the same experience is just as unsettling. He's completely unarmed and cornered in the back of a trailer by a creepy man soaked in what is presumably Lanks' blood. All of Craig's attacks are uncomfortably sexual in nature, usually manifesting in him groping and trying to lick Beltboy as he struggles to break free. Save for Craig's line of dialogue upon being defeated, it's a serious and disturbing depiction of sexual violence. "Blood for Sex
" plays over the scene and it perfectly compliments the claustrophobic atmosphere.
- The subsequent sequence where Beltboy narrowly avoids going through the same experience is just as unsettling. He's completely unarmed and cornered in the back of a trailer by a creepy man soaked in what is presumably Lanks' blood. All of Craig's attacks are uncomfortably sexual in nature, usually manifesting in him groping and trying to lick Beltboy as he struggles to break free. Save for Craig's line of dialogue upon being defeated, it's a serious and disturbing depiction of sexual violence. "Blood for Sex
- Walking through the swamp while high is mostly a fun and goofy experience until Beltboy's childhood friend randomly shows up and attacks him. Since the crew is high, she hits hard; and then about halfway through the battle Beltboy shakes off the high and realizes that it's actually a Joy Mutant, Pinhead, that looks like a huge, fleshy, triangle-shaped head.
- When you think about it, Sportsball is just glorified, brutal fights to the death, which are then recorded as entertainment for everyone in the surrounding area. It seems like the mortality rate for fighting in the arena is quite high, given that Beltboy and co. cut through twenty-one other competitors in their competition alone. Considering all the blood and viscera smeared across the floor in the mutant pens, it seems like the Sports King has lots of corpses to use as food... unless he's not just siccing the mutants on still-living human beings (as he does with Beltboy after he wins the tournament).
- Gars' cryptic reference to sending people beneath the waves becomes much creepier when we consider all the skulls and bones lying around the cave. It can reasonably be inferred that his friends and him have been luring hapless surface-dwellers down into the cave and then drowning them. If we're to go with the assumption that Gar and his fishmen are the kids from the orphanage, it would mean they've been paying tribute to their Gods for a long time.
- Hopeful's Joy Lab is arguably as unnerving, if not worse, than the one from Painful. It's practically empty, aside from some cryptic notes about various test subjects' gradually worsening conditions and a few patrolling Creeps. In the basement awaits Amy, an absolutely terrifying mutant, and a Pain Mode-exclusive optional room just before the exit has a floor made entirely of blood. The background is the red Joy intestine/flesh screen, adding another layer of strange unreality. But the worst part is probably the hallucinations that Beltboy sees of Rodriguez's severed head and his childhood friend, which randomly pop out throughout the lab.
- Even worse, Amy uses Familiar Cry, which is only otherwise used by the mutated forms of Beltboy, Lanks and Cyclops, and if you are on the Beltboy route specifically and escape the battle, she'll scream at him and push him back, something that only mutants who recognize the party like mutated Reginald do when you escape their battles. The implication of this is she is the mutated form of Beltboy's childhood friend.
- The fights with the Lovelies on the eastern mountain start out normally, but once you kill them, they mutate instantly, with horrific shrieking sound effects and the battle music changing to "Love Me".
- The complete and utterly shocking Mood Whiplash of the final battle with The Lovelies. At first, the fight starts off as normal. Once only Hart is alive, though, the other Lovelies mutate into especially creepy joy mutants. After that, the entire atmosphere of the fight changes! Once he almost dies, Hart does as well. His final words, however, are utterly horrific.I need it... I need it so bad...Please, I can't die without it, let me have it...I want to see her face.. and... hold her...Grip her throat...F-ff...fucking... kill heeer...
- Hart's Joy Mutant form. His body contorts into a vaguely heart-esque form, and his mouth begins to tear itself open into a screaming position. He looks like he's in extreme suffering and is literally screaming for help; to make things worse, he's visibly crying.
