Joshua Washington

"Revenge is the best medicine!"

- The Psycho

"And after all you've been through! Good, good-good-good. I mean how does that feel? How does it feel? Do you enjoy feeling terrorized? Humiliated? I mean, panicked? All those emotions that my sisters got to feel once one year ago! Only guess what? They didn't get to laugh it off! No! Nope! No no no! They're gone!"

- Josh reveals his motivation

Joshua "Josh" Washington, a.k.a "The Psycho" is the one of the eight playable characters and one of the two hidden main antagonists (alongside the Wendigos) of the 2015 survival horror video game Until Dawn. Josh is the brother of Beth and Hannah, who died when their friends set up a prank for Hannah, which ultimately lead to the girls falling to their deaths. Blaming their friends for his sisters' deaths, Josh sets up a prank to get revenge.

Past
During the party where his sisters disappeared, Josh did not take part in the prank played on Hannah, having passed out previously due to alcohol.

A year later, he claims to have gotten over their deaths, but becomes snippy and short whenever someone mentions their names. He invites the survivors to come to the lodge to try to have a good time and forget about the events that occurred the year before. However, he previously set the lodge up with the equipment that his father, a movie director, used for special effects in his movies. Blaming his friends for the prank they pulled on his sisters he wants to get revenge by pranking his friends in a sinister way. Things get out of hand however, when the teenagers are attacked by the Wendigo's.

Therapy sessions
"What gives you the right to play god in these people's life? [... ] You're sick! You're a sick fuck! Now what the hell have you done to them? What the hell have you done to them, you psychopath? Psychopath!"

- Josh hallucinates Dr. Hill being angry about Josh's behavior

After the vanishing of his sisters, Josh visited Dr. Hill for therapy. During his prank, Josh many times hallucinates himself into therapy sessions with Dr. Hill. At first friendly, Hill grows more and more aggressive towards Josh when the latter pulls his prank off. He states that Josh is using the experience from the therapy sessions against his friends, desperately wanting to torment them. He calls Josh a psychopath after he put Chris and Ashley under the saw blades. He blames Josh for every death on the mountain. He states that Josh's friends are the only way to save him from his isolation. After Josh has been taken by the Wendigo, Hill leaves him to his madness, offering a last word of advice before departing.

Dr. Hill's office seems to correspond to the answers Josh gives, becoming more gory, and horrific as the game continues, and eventually turns into a forest, due to the "isolation" Josh is experiencing.

Scaring his friends
Wearing equipment from his father's movies, including a mask, Josh begins his prank with Chris and Ashley. While the two are together, they hear Josh screaming like he is in danger. When Ashley runs to help him, he narcotizes her with chloroform. When Chris arrives seconds later, he hits him and knocks him out. Josh then drags Ashley away and lights a candle on the staircase.

After waking up, Chris starts looking for Ashley. After following a mountain path which is prepped with scary puppets and a severed pig's head, Chris arrives at a factory, where he finds Josh and Ashley tied to a wall, a giant sawblade between them. The psycho then talks to them via loudspeaker, telling Chris to choose whether Josh or Ashley will die. Regardless of the player's choice, Ashley will be saved and Josh will be seemingly sewn in half, not before blaming Chris for choosing Ashley. Believing Josh to be dead, Ashley and Chris leave the factory deeply shaken.

After Mike gets unconscious in the asylum, the Psycho is seen overwatching the current events via screens. He then uses his computer to lock Emily and Matt out.

He then stalks Sam while she takes her bath and steals her clothes. At first thinking this to be a joke, Sam wanders around the loft, wondering why no one is answering her. When Sam enters the cinema, the Psycho shows her a video which shows her in her bathtub and Josh's death. He then tells her that he gives her ten seconds. It's up to the player's decisions if Sam is narcotized by the Psycho or evades him.

While investigating the basement, Ashley and Chris find a dollhouse in which the Psycho has the dolls arranged to reenact the day of the prank. They can also find fake newspaper, which Josh printed so the teenagers would be afraid that a serial killer was around. The Psycho then shows them the video of their prank which cuts to a jumpscare of Hannah's face.

If Sam is caught, she will be found unconscious in a chair by Chris and Ashley. Ashley is afraid that she is dead but Chris calms her, telling her that Sam is still breathing. They are then approached by the Psycho who uses chloroform to take out Chris. Ashley tries to escape. She can stab the Psycho in the shoulder with her scissors if she picked them up previously. Hurt and angered, Josh knocks her out by punching her in the face.

If Sam is captured and strapped to the chair, Mike finds Sam, frees her from her binds and asks her to find a way for him to enter the basement. If Sam was not caught, she snoops around the basement and can potentially find The Psycho messing around with some controls. When Ashley and Chris awaken, they find themselves strapped to two chairs facing each other, a table between them. The Psycho then contacts them through loudspeakers and tells Chris that he has to take the gun on the table and shoot either himself or Ashley. The one to survive can leave. If he does not make a choice, both of them will be torn to shreds by circular sawblade slowly lowering from the ceiling. If Chris tries to shoot himself or Ashley, it is revealed that the gun is loaded with blanks. If Chris doesn't make a choice the sawblades stop just before slicing both of them.

Ashley and Mike (if he survived) then burst into the room to see the Psycho approaching Chris. Chris shoots at him with the gun to find out that it was filled with blanks. The Psycho then takes of his mask and reveals himself as Josh.

After his prank
"I DID something! I made you believe in the world I created and I showed you parts of yourself you were too afraid to visit."

"Hey Mike. Mike Mike Mike Mike! Mike! What happened with Jess, Mike? I got a problem Mike! I don't remember killing Jess... I mean, like, I feel like I would remember killing her, you know? She's so soft..."

- Josh provokes Mike about Jessica

Confronted by his friends, Josh reveals to them how he set up the lodge with special effects, including faking his own death. He also tells them that he will put the videos of his scared friends online. Mike, furious about Josh's prank reveals to him that Jessica is dead and knocks him unconscious. Mike and Chris then take him outside, his hands bound. Thinking that he murdered Jessica, Mike plans to lock him up and plans to call the police in the morning although Josh swears that he has nothing to do with Jessica's death. They lock him up in a barn, discussing his deeds with him on the way. When they see his behavior, they realize that he is mad, talking to himself and being in high spirits despite being chained to the pole. They leave him in the barn, planning to get him back in the morning.

When Emily runs from the Wendigo, she runs past the hut Josh is captured in. Mike leaves Josh to find out what happened. When Victor tells them about the Wendigo, Mike tells them that he left Josh at the hut. When Chris and Victor return to the barn to get Josh to safety, they find the barn empty with no sign of Josh. Sensing that a Wendigo is nearby Victor urges Chris to leave without searching for Josh as he thinks him dead. The Wendigo then kills Victor and hunts Chris when he runs back to the lodge (possibly killing him). After that the Wendigo drags an unconscious Josh into the forest.

Realizing that Josh has the only key for the cable cart, Mike tries to find him to get off of the mountain. Brought into the mining caves by the Wendigo, Josh mentally breaks down, hearing voices of Hannah, Dr. Hill and even the Psycho. He hallucinates the corpses of his dead sisters speaking to him who judge him for leaving them to die.

He is found by Sam and Mike who see him hallucinating. Mike slaps him to bring him back to reality. Upon realizing that his friends are with him, he gives Sam the key for the cable cart. Sam then climbs out of the cave and Mike and, given Josh's condition, Mike and Josh try to find another way out. While walking through a pond, Mike gets pulled under by a Wendigo. When the Wendigo comes for Josh he recognizes it as his sister Hannah. Hannah, dependent onto the players decisions, either crushes Josh's head and takes his corpse with her or drags a screaming Josh with her.

If he survives his encounter with the Wendigo, he stays on the mountain and, to avoid starvation, feeds on human flesh, which turns him into a Wendigo. Josh is later discovered by two rangers feasting on the Stranger's corpse before turning around and attacking the two, presumably killing them.

Trivia

 * Josh is similar to Rex Hanson from Horrible Bosses 2, since both of them were mentally ill, initially posed as good guys and still considered the protagonists to be their friends after their betrayal.
 * Josh is the only playable main character that cannot be saved in the game.