In a conversation with EIP Gaming writer Dylan Graves, producer Kai Moore cited horror films such as Alien, Event Horizon, Sunshine, The Thing, and Pandorum as influences on the game's bleak, paranoid tone and isolated setting. However, Moore also countered the association of these kinds of horror stories with monsters, stating that he sought to make the player question the definition of "monster," particularly in the context of Jimmy's statement at the start of the game claiming that Curly willingly crashed the Tulpar.

In a developer Q&A posted on the game's Steam community page, the staff at Wrong Organ revealed that Jimmy was named after a person repeatedly mentioned in the 2023 song "A&W" by American alternative pop singer Lana Del Rey. In addition to inspiring Jimmy's name, the song may also serve as the basis for Spoiler:Jimmy's role in the game as Anya's implied rapist, given that "A&W" describes "the experience of bein' an American whore" and features multiple passages where Del Rey repeats the line "Jimmy only love me when he wanna get high."

Mouthwashing uses a visual style inspired by games released on the original PlayStation, with low-poly visuals and a retro style. The game's art designer Johanna Kasurinen was introduced to this style by Puppet Combo, an indie developer that frequently uses it for their games as far back as their debut title Babysitter Bloodbath. While not promoted as "PS1-style", this visual style gained traction over time, with Kasurinan stating:

According to a Q&A hosted on the game's Steam page, every character in the game is voiced by audio designer Martin Halldin, including Curly, Daisuke, Polle, and "anything that isn't an advert in the tv sections". In the case of Polle's voice, the intention was to have it feel like they were pulling voice clips from random advertisements to string a sentence together. To that end, the words were all recorded individually and cut into sentences during post-production.

The designs of the Tulpar crew are all loosely based on characters from popular horror media. Two examples that the developers themselves confirmed in a diary post are Daisuke and Anya, who are respectively based on Ryosuke Kawashima from the 2001 Japanese horror film Pulse and Wendy Torrance (as portrayed by Shelley Duvall) in the 1980 film adaptation of Stephen King's The Shining.