The canonical differences between Demon and P1 Dude: How mischaracterizations lead to sanism.

There is a lot of ableism/sanism in the Postal fandom, especially surrounding P1 Dude. I'm tired of people thinking that the "demon"/Demon/DEMON and P1 Dude are the same entity/personality state and have the same moral conduct. Please keep in mind that a canon with many intentionally vague elements does not mean that it does not exist at all. It does. I understand how easy it is for misinformation to spread about old indie games. I am not here to attack anyone. I just wanna shed some light on a few things.

There is a reason that P1 Dude's journal entries sound and look completely different (for the most part) from (what appears to be) the Demon's. We'll just call him "DEMON" or "Demon" as he is labelled on the volume slider. P1 Dude was completely detached from reality and believed he was killing monsters to "save humanity," not innocent people. Yes, P1 Dude was a terrified, anxious, traumatized, and completely psychotic man. Meanwhile, Demon was a cold sadist who enjoyed killing and spouting off goofy one-liners. They have distinctive personalities or manners of thought.

RWS has stated many times that P1 Dude was an average guy that was really going through it before he "went postal". He was not plotting, planning, or scheming to kill a bunch of people. (He is not like Notim from Hatred.) Quite the opposite. He only purchased a Kevlar vest and armed himself at the point he felt his life was in mortal danger.

He lived in a dangerous area of Paradise in which he heard gunshots and screams after dark every night. When he began to feel genuinely threatened, he purchased a singular gun. (This is all in the lore.) The rest of his weapons are found and collected in-game. He did not begin shooting at anyone until the cops literally came barging into his front yard shooting at him first. While that doesn't justify him going on a killing spree, it is the moment that set off his paranoid delusion fully.

We know from the lore that Paradise is a fucked up place filled with dangerous people. There is something genuinely wrong with Paradise that pushed Dude to this point (even if he likely already had mental health issues). The real-world threats he was experiencing amplified the delusion that everyone was out to get him. Chronic stress and trauma can make a person become highly psychotic. You are not immune.

The wrong man in the wrong place at the wrong time makes all the terrifying difference. RWS stated he is an "everyman". He is meant to be related to without condoning what he does. The whole idea behind Postal 1 is that this could happen to anyone in the right circumstances. Absolutely anyone can develop psychosis if they experience enough stress. You don't need a psychotic disorder to experience psychosis.

In P1 Dude's journal entries, he repeatedly stated that he was scared and thought people were trying to kill him. He was straight up visually perceiving the people shooting at him as creatures infected with the "hate plague". Many of the loading screens show what people looked like through his eyes. They have heavily distorted, skeletal, and monstrous faces. On the flip side, Demon's journal entries are quite sadistic, playful, and a bit poetic. He can be seen making references to various forms of mythology, which is intriguingly absent from P1 Dude's perspective in his war journal entries. Demon speaks completely differently from Dude, aside from a few later journal entries when his sanity slips further. It seems like the delusion is worsening at that point and or Demon (if real) is possibly taking over further. It is important to note that Dude never speaks in-game. That is all Demon's voice speaking in his head. RWS confirmed this.

According to RWS, no one else can hear this voice but him. It was deliberately left ambiguous as to whether or not this is an actual demon possessing him, or merely part of his psychotic delusion. At one point during Postal's development Demon was more so akin to a repressed alter in a DID system. (Not exactly great DID representation, but it's a psychological horror game from 1997.) Nonetheless, P1 Dude completely lacked agency over Demon's thoughts/behavior. Thus, wholeheartedly blaming P1 Dude as if he was somehow aware of what he was doing during his psychosis is straight up nonsense.

You could say he was like a puppet for Demon/his delusions. To say there is no difference between P1 Dude and Demon is to fundamentally misunderstand how this character was written. He did not know what happened until the end of the game when he realized he was attempting to harm children (in a hallucination). That's what made him collapse to the ground in shock and horror. If you're familiar with how RWS operates, you know they draw the line at depicting violence toward children. In my opinion, this is directly reflected in P1 Dude's reaction at the end of the game. Everything in this post, which is not stated as purely interpretive/my opinion, can be canonically sourced directly from the original Postal 1 manual, in-game lore, canon information in the game files, RWS' social media accounts where they answer fan questions, and old interviews with the original dev team.

This may be a tough pill for some to swallow, but there are people with psychosis so extreme that they are 100% lacking in awareness of their own behavior. That is a real thing that happens to people all the time. There truly is a lot of ableism, sanism, and misconceptions about how psychosis works in this fandom. Please don't contribute more stigma toward psychotic people if you can help it.

With all that being said and done:

Do I think what he did is ok? HELL NO!!! I can deeply empathize with a traumatized psychotic man who thought he was “saving humanity” by killing monsters without condoning his actions. So can you, even if it is solely cognitive empathy. Severe persecutory delusions are no joke! That's a pretty tragic situation to be on either end of. Imagine thinking you were doing something akin to killing off a zombie outbreak…only to realize you committed absolute atrocities. That's peak psychological horror, my dude. That's raw and real as hell to me.

I am not primarily concerned with P1 Dude's overall sense of morality. My focus is on pointing out the clear moral discrepancies/dilemmas that were deliberately written into the lore. These are moral discussions in the context of Dude's delusional perspective. Obviously, from the player's perspective/morals, his delusion is completely fucked and not logical. It is a delusion, after all. Explanations don't and should never equal justifications. I am not focused on if he is good or evil, as I do not believe in that type of thing. Ontological evil does not exist. My main focus is with understanding the context of his delusional thoughts and actions. I think people are just people. They're all capable of wonderful and terrible things. I am primarily concerned with the canon lore and ableism/sanism toward psychotic/delusional people I have been seeing. People do not choose their delusions or control them, period.

-Sincerely, someone who has experienced similar delusions.

Edit: I originally wrote this post when I was sick, sleep deprived, and had a hellish headache. I have since tried to elaborate on several points I feel I did not explain in a nuanced enough way, initially.

I have noticed some people quote the Postal Strategy Guide claiming that P1 Dude shot first. That is a fair concern to bring up. This is slight misinformation on the original writer's part. Even if you do absolutely nothing in the game but stand around, the cops shoot first. Paul did not work at RWS, was not a game dev, and did not write the lore. Vince Desi confirmed P1 Dude was, indeed, attacked initially. Misconceptions and errors are very common in game strategy guide books from the 90s and early to mid 2000's. Edit 2 (3/30/25): Some of the wording was still a little confusing or vague. It has been corrected to provide additional clarity.

Fixed the hell out of this old thing because of some funky wording and added a lot more clarity. By the way, yes, your ableism toward fictional characters does affect real mentally ill people dealing with the same conditions. There are no ifs or buts about that.

man

I recently played Postal 2. I liked it 🎀