Characters / The Amazing Digital Circus: Jax

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Jax's Intrusive Thoughts

• Advertised Extra: Downplayed in the case that they technically are still a part of Jax. The first copy's face appears as the thumbnail for Episode 9's trailer, presumably done to conceal the real Jax's abstraction. Additionally, the movie poster shows four Jax faces, likely alluding to the four intrusive thoughts.
• Alternate Company Equivalent: They appear to be based on the Id, the Ego, and the Superego from the I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream video game adaptation. Both parties are entities that only exist in their respective mindscapes (Jax and AM), and exist as Literal Split Personalities. Both also serve as the final obstacles that the protagonist has to go through to get to the end.
• Ax-Crazy: The first Jax copy embraces Jax's sadism and capacity for violence, where all that remains is his desire to inflict pain, and has quite the Hair-Trigger Temper.
• Berserk Board Barricade: One of the inner Jaxes has his door boarded up and locked shut, with his icon erased, likely meaning that this represents the true Jax being heavily fortified.
• Comically Cross-Eyed: Cartoonish Jax crosses his eyes to emphasize his descent into a "nothing is real, nothing matters" mindset by becoming a shallow cartoon. With his square pupils, it's kind of a bit mesmerizing to look at.
• Disproportionate Retribution: The first Jax angrily throws a bottle at the fourth Jax just because he stopped playing the piano to greet Pomni.
• Double Standard: Rape, Female on Female: Subverted during a Downplayed instance for the Maid Jax. During a procession for a hypothetical funeral for Zooble, Jax comes onto Gangle and begins sexually harassing her. While Maid Jax plays this off as if she's being comedic, it's made extremely clear through Gangle's horrified and discomforted expression that this is not supposed to be humorous.
• Evil Doppelgänger: Zigzagged; three of the copies represent Jax's toxic coping mechanisms taken to their worst extremes, the most alarming versions being actively misogynistic, homophobic, transphobic, psychotically violent and even sexually abusive. The fourth one, however, represents the vulnerable part of Jax that is broken by his own behaviour and wants to be saved.
• Effeminate Misogynistic Guy: The Maid-suited Jax also represents his sexism and queerphobia.
• Four Is Death: There's four of them, and they manifest in the fallout of Jax's Abstraction — Death of Personality which is generally as irrevocable as Real Life death — and they're the last obstacle that Pomni must bypass to say her final goodbye to the last fragment of Jax's sanity.
• The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You: The first Jax, after choking out a vision of Pomni, looks right at the camera, seemingly looking right at the actual Pomni from beyond the door, who quickly slams it shut.
• French Maid Outfit: The second inner Jax wears the maid outfit from "Untitled" to mock Zooble.
  Scenario Gangle: Wha? J-Jax, why are you wearing that?
  Second Jax: Wearing what? Oh, this! I figured what better way to honor Zooble's spirit than wearing something a little gender-freaky, right?
• The Friend Nobody Likes: Implied with the inner Jax whose door is boarded shut. When he makes a noise from his room, all the other Jaxes yell at him to shut up with angry looks on their faces.
• Gay Bravado: The second Jax is attempting to weaponize his deep-seated gender issues, claiming that by openly and casually wearing the maid outfit, he's showing how much it's all a joke and how he doesn't care at all.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: Between his sinister strangulation of Pomni in response to her offering help in the case Ragatha abstracts, disparaging the second Jax's maid outfit in a rude manner and throwing a bottle at the fourth Jax after bellowing at him to keep playing the piano, the first Jax has little patience for anything. Makes sense, as it is the embodiment of his most violent and unpleasant side.
• He-Man Woman Hater: When Pomni finds a room with all of the four copies in it, they tell her to leave, "no girls allowed".
• Hidden Depths: It's telling that, in spite of these intrusive thoughts being very negative aspects of Jax, there are things implied about their negativity that ground other characters while making Jax the "villain" of each hypothetical.
  • The first Jax dives fully into his violent tendencies to the point of psychotic sadism if Ragatha abstracts. He grounds Pomni via fear — and this, he reasons, will finally make her give up on "fixing" him and in essence become the new moral compass the Players need. It also shows that despite how poor his and Ragatha's relationship currently is, he did believe she was the last thing preventing him from becoming truly awful.
  • The second Jax leans into becoming a through-and-through asshole should Zooble be the one to abstract. He expects Gangle to dive back into the dishonest Happy Mask from "Fast Food Masquerade" in this hypothetical and keeps her grounded through shame and shock, via snark and flirtation. Here, he embraces the dress she put him in — which he despised — and Deadpan Snarker behavior as a way to be a sort of Replacement Goldfish on Zooble's behalf.
  • The third Jax dives whole hog into being a cartoonish trickster, fully believing that if Gangle were to abstract, it would be his fault entirely and that giving Zooble someone to hate without any room for sympathy will ground them with a perpetual game of cat-and-mouse they can put their fury into. It also shows that, despite the scenario the second Jax is a part of, Jax recognizes that Zooble and Gangle are coming to love each other beyond simple friendship.
  • The fourth Jax becomes an Extreme Doormat trapped by the other intrusive thoughts, effectively locking himself down into something more akin to Evil Jax for causing Pomni - the only person to connect with him and not intentionally give up on him - to abstract. Naturally none of the other three actually last that long with Pomni being there, and the fourth Jax being closest to the real Jax allows him to give her the key to that door.
• I'm Dying, Please Take My MacGuffin: The fourth Jax gives Pomni the key to Jax's memories before he disappears.
• Intrusive Thoughts: Each of them are manifestations of Jax's intrusive thoughts, each representing the worst things Jax would do if any specific player abstracted.
• Jerkass: With the exception of the fourth Jax, all of them are even more cruel, abrasive, and malicious than the real Jax, representing the worst of what Jax thinks he will become if one of his friends were to abstract.
  • The first Jax is overtly sadistic and violent, viciously choking Pomni when she tries to comfort him over Ragatha's abstraction before passing off the entire thing as a joke. He also aggressively orders the fourth Jax to shut up and continue playing the piano before throwing a bottle at him.
  • The second Jax acts more obnoxiously and insensitively, wearing a maid outfit during Zooble's funeral to "honor" them and sexually harassing Gangle by making flirtatious comments to her. He also disparages Pomni for being a girl, spews out homophobic insults, and rudely tells the fourth Jax to keep playing the piano instead of talking.
  • The third Jax is a comically unhinged troll who callously dismisses Zooble's anger over Gangle's abstraction and makes them fall down a pit. He also acts dismissive towards Pomni when she tries to find the real Jax, telling her to scram since she is ruining the Jaxes' card game.
• Jerkass Has a Point: The second Jax wears the Maid outfit Gangle put him in during "Untitled" to tease her over Zooble's abstraction. While Gangle (wearing her manic mask) rightfully calls him out as mocking them, Jax then points out that by making a spectacle of Zooble's funeral and making everyone else set it up, she's also mocking Zooble's memory.
• Literal Split Personality: Jax's mind contains five copies of himself. One of them is the real Jax, heavily guarded and extremely difficult to access, but the other four each envision how he would act if one of the other players Abstracted before him. Each of the other four is an exaggeration of one of his traits:
  • The first one Pomni sees is how Jax thinks he would act if Ragatha Abstracted instead, and is an exaggeration of his Comedic Sociopathy. It shows his typical black square pupils hyper-exaggerated, like a cat in hunting mode.
  • The second one is how Jax thinks he would act if Zooble Abstracted instead, and is an exaggeration of his troll-ish behavior. He shows Zooble no sympathy, and he's shown wearing the maid costume from "Untitled", to tease the manic version of Gangle from "Fast Food Masquerade". It also represents Jax's belief that Gangle secretly has romantic and sexual feelings for him, which in itself may be projection on his part.
  • The third one is how Jax thinks he would act if Gangle Abstracted instead, and is an exaggeration of his "nothing is real" behavior. He acknowledges that he probably would've been the one to make Gangle Abstract, and that Zooble would want to kill him over that, but shows even less sympathy than his second copy.
  • The fourth one is how Jax thinks he would act if Pomni Abstracted instead. It's a complete departure from the previous three, a self-shackled Extreme Doormat who lives in a black-and-white room and lets the previous three copies torture him. Though still an exaggeration, it's the closest one to his true personality, and it ultimately allows Pomni to see Jax's true self.
• Losing Your Head: The third copy has his head chopped off while announcing "That's All, Folks!" when the camera irises out on his neck. He survives this of course.
• Loving Bully: The second copy acts flirty towards Gangle. Gangle seems freaked out by it.
• Mental Monster: Each facet represents the worst parts of Jax as well as his Intrusive Thoughts.
• Never My Fault: The third Jax is shown completely brushing off Zooble declaring that he "killed Gangle", snarking that they blame him for everything. However, since this is all in his head, this paradoxically shows that deep down, Jax acknowledges under no uncertain terms that if Gangle were to ever abstract, the blame would fall on him due to how much he bullies her.
• No Body Left Behind: All of them end up disappearing in smoke, one by one.
• Open the Iris: Played for Horror. While strangling Pomni, the first copy's pupils widen to an unusual degree, complete with a Slasher Smile, showing how sociopathic this copy is.
• Painting the Medium: The third Jax's hypothetical a film grain filter, on top of the hall he and Zooble are in looking warped and distorted, and has off-key music reminiscent of Looney Tunes
• Politically Incorrect Villain: The second copy wears a maid outfit to "honor" (read: mock) Zooble's "genderfreaky" identity, uses "gay" as an insult, and calls the wide-eyed one the F-slur, albeit censored. The third copy is also queerphobic towards Zooble.
• Predatory Pervert: The second copy sexually harasses Gangle and gives her the key to his room, expecting to see her that night.
  Second Jax: What? Don't act like you don't like it, sweet cheeks.
• Replacement Goldfish: Darkly Invoked by the second Jax who seems intent to take Zooble’s place in Gangle’s life in the scenario where they abstract — showing up in the maid dress to appear “gender-freaky,” then creepily flirting with Gangle with the expectation she'll run to him the moment the funeral is over.
• Ship Tease: Subverted by the second version. The second Jax teases Gangle with a good time after Zooble's funeral, while this implies a couple of things through Jax's ideas of the scenario, in context it's a creepy exaggeration of a bad quality meant to make Gangle extremely uncomfortable if she ever hypothetically retreated to that mask. Pomni is rightly freaked out witnessing this.
• Sinister Suffocation: The first copy, where Ragatha abstracts, begins strangling Pomni with a sadistic grin on his face. He eventually releases her, reminding her that they can't die from lack of oxygen.
• Slasher Smile: The first one sports an evil wide grin with extremely dilated eyes as he strangles Pomni.
• Talking Is a Free Action: During the hypothetical where Gangle ends up Abstracting, Zooble turns their hands into chainsaws and charges at the third copy at a fairly fast speed, complete with Speed Lines. The third copy has enough time to pull off a Wild Take, then say he has to do something about it, and then deal with Zooble... all of which takes several seconds. By the time Zooble is in range, Jax is able to pause and resume time and take care of them without issue.
• That's All, Folks!: Parodied. In Looney Tunes fashion, the third copy turns to the camera as it irises out and announces, "That's all, freaks!", even imitating Porky Pig's Speech Impediment.
• Token Good Teammate: The fourth copy is the only one of the facets that isn't shown harming other players in any way, being merely an Extreme Doormat who gets abused by the other facets. Once the first three Jaxes disappear, the fourth copy meekly helps Pomni reach the real Jax by giving her a key to his door before dissipating.
• Toon Physics: The third copy, in typical cartoon fashion, can apparently pause and resume time and change the scenery at the swipe of a hand.
• The Un-Reveal: A fifth, locked door can be seen, with something trying to get out (prompting the others to scream at it to shut up). It's never confirmed what was in it.
• Walking Spoiler: Just bringing them up is bound to tip off that Jax abstracted in the finale.
• What If?: All four Jax copies seen represent how Jax might react based on who Abstracts, and how he interacts with others.
  • The first one takes his Comedic Sociopathy to eleven, being left mostly mute, but eager to indulge his sadism when the chance presents itself. He manifests if Ragatha is the one that Abstracts.
  • The second embraces his internalized sexism and queerphobia, wearing the French Maid Outfit from before to "honor" (read: mock) an Abstracted Zooble, while acting like a Loving Bully towards Gangle, who's very clearly disturbed.
  • The third becomes consumed by his cartoonish trickster persona, seeing everything as a cartoon, when Gangle Abstracts. No longer in touch with reality, he's implied to just stand around, lost in his thoughts, until an enraged Zooble decides to get revenge... and he becomes lucid enough to recognize the danger and warp reality to deal with them.
  • The fourth is implied to be what happens if Pomni abstracts. He doesn't have a definite hypothetical, but he is depicted as far more meek and submissive compared to the others, and is chained to his piano, while the rest aren't bound to anything. This is closest to how Jax really feels inside, as an Extreme Doormat who feels helpless against his own traumas and impulses.
• Wild Take: The third copy has quite an expressive reaction to scenario!Zooble charging at him, complete with Eye Pop.