In an interview with The Washington Post, art and narrative designer Johanna Kasurinen stated that Spoiler:Jimmy's dilemma of constantly making the crew's predicaments worse by trying to fix them was inspired by the development team facing a similar ordeal during a previous project. According to Kasurinen, Spoiler:the project was dead in the water well before the group decided to terminate it, yet they persistently tried to keep it going, stating it was "that state of a team of people trying to convince ourselves, 'We can still fix this if we just try harder,' when everything was already limping and on fire, that eventually planted the seed."

Similarly, the characters of Jimmy and Curly were based on people who were common in the workplace and other social environments, with Kasurinen stating that the developers wanted to both express this relatability and challenge players to see what elements of their own selves parallel the two, particularly Jimmy. Kasurinen noted how Spoiler:although she had never committed the kinds of atrocities that Jimmy does throughout the game, she still found resonance in her own experiences with jealousy, insecurity, and other "awful, clinging emotions" and "uncomfortable things, about aspects of myself or others that I find distressing, shameful, contradictory. Things that I think a lot of people can identify with but aren't usually put into words."