Joy
PD 3 PD 2 Mask Joy in Payday 3. Joy in Payday 2. Joy's character icon.
Career information
Role	Hacker
Signature weapons
Ranged	Signature Akimbo Signature
Melee	Hackaton
Grenade	Pocket ECM
Biographical information
Nationality	Japanese-American
Language(s)	English, Japanese
Age	22 - (PAYDAY 2) 27 - (PAYDAY 3)
Physical description
Hair color	Brown
Eye color	Brown
Build	Slender
Ethnicity	Asian
Other
Portrayed by	N/A
Voiced by	Siu-See Hung
Quotes	Quotation page
Room	Joy's Van
Internal name	joy
v·d·e

"You have one life left, cats. Don’t make us waste it!"

—Joy in her bank speech

Joy is a Japanese-American Hacker, the twenty-second and final playable character released for PAYDAY 2, and the fifth playable character released for PAYDAY 3 alongside Pearl.

Previously exclusive to the Nintendo Switch release of PAYDAY 2, Joy was released as a free character to the PC editions of the game as part of operation ICEBREAKER on August 13th, 2018.

Background

Before and during PAYDAY 2

Joy has been a cyber criminal since her younger teens. She is a skilled hacker when it comes to tech and computers, but she also knows how to handle a gun and she's as tough as they come in spite of her young age. As the protegé of the shrewd Vernon Locke, Joy joins the ranks of the Payday gang with her cyber-security expertise on offer. With the mounting threat of the enigmatic Kataru, it will be increasingly important to protect Crime.net from interlopers. This is where Joy will show her worth as a member of the crew.

Joy's induction into the gang represents a recognition of the changing and increasingly technology-centric nature of crime. Joy's perk deck is focused around the Pocket ECM, a pocket-sized reusable version of the regular ECM Jammer that Joy can use to momentarily jam cameras, pagers and other electronics while in stealth, or to cause a painful communications feedback effect to stun nearby enemies while in loud. Coupled with skills from the Shinobi branch of the Ghost skill tree and/or skills from the Breacher branch of the Technician skille tree and possibly even skills from Controller branch of the Mastermind skill tree, Joy can effectively leverage technical gadgets and tech-centric tactics to manipulate both civilians and police to the gang's advantage, regardless of the situation.

Even when not physically present in a given heist, Joy is still in the background providing assistance to the Payday gang, which is evident on multiple occasions. Joy presumably provided assistance for the gang during their southern campaigns through Texas and Mexico (specifically the Silk Road and Texas Heat campaigns), conducted as a diversion while Dallas, Chains, Wolf and Hoxton were setting off on their mission to rescue Bain from Murkywater.

For the City of Gold campaign, Joy was also contacted by and old friend, the ex-triad arms smuggler Jiu Feng, who contracted the Payday gang to carry out a string of attacks on his old gang, the Golden Dagger triad. This would lead to the Dragon heist, then a follow-up operation to rescue Vlad and finally a revenge job ordered by Vlad. After all this, in a surprising turn of events, Joy was contacted by Shayu, one of the Golden Dagger's bosses, who contracted the gang to assassinate the boss of the triad, Yufu Wang, so that Shayu could usurp control over the organization.

For the Shacklethorne Auction heist, Joy was responsible for acquiring invitations to the event for the crew and she was instrumental in procuring Murkywater IDs for the gang for the White House heist as well as creating the programs used to hack the PEOC's vault (the computer still says "WOLF_ROOT", implying that Joy reused elements of the program developed by Wolf for the Undercover heist). Lastly, during the ongoing White House heist, Joy also alerted Locke of the Murkywater supply line destroyed during the concurrently ongoing Border Crossing heist in Texas/Mexico.

Post-Payday 2

In the true ending of PAYDAY 2, Joy is stated to have started a 'trendy' arcade hall in Seattle with several dated arcade machines, before eventually making some arcade games herself and found and owning a wildly successful gaming company.

PAYDAY 3

Five years after the ending of PAYDAY 2, string of assassination attempts made by an unknown assailant on the former members of the Payday gang leads to Joy having to retreat back into the underworld and being forced out of criminal retirement. She alongside the original five of the Payday gang are the only gang members still accounted for and whose current status are known by the time of PAYDAY 3. Joy's technical expertise is now once again a valuable asset to the gang and is much more prominently on display during heists, as the gang employs modified smartphones to loop cameras, answer pagers and perform hacks, and they also make use of a variety of new technical gadgets such as Microcams, Infrasonic Mines, Motion Sensors, Trip Lasers and ECM Jammers. Lastly, many skills, particularly ones in the Hacker, Strategist and Scrambler trees, are patterned around utilizing and subverting technology.

Joy later helps out with securing Crime.net's security alongside Shade after several heists that target the conspirators responsible for the attempted attack on the retired Payday gang, culminating in the gang's ransacking of the Wall Street Stock Exchange.

Trivia

• Joy's LED mask briefly flashes in the patterns of the signature masks of several Payday gang members in the Switch teaser trailer, in the order of Dallas, Houston, Chains, Wolf and finally Clover.
  • Houston's mask pattern is omitted in-game, but Hoxton's and Bonnie's are present.
    • In PAYDAY 3, these mask patterns are removed entirely, with Joy's mask now only flashing her name, representing a turn towards a simpler, more functional design.
• Joy is the second Japanese heister to be inducted into the gang after Jiro.
• Joy is the fifth heister to not conform to the gang's standard suit, on top of also being the first and so far only female member to not wear a suit.
• It is implied that she is the hacker responsible for the infiltration of Crime.NET. Locke previously claimed that he did this himself, though it is possible he was hiding her involvement for future use.
  • If this is true, this implies that they had been working together for at least a few years prior to her introduction to the PC version of the game.
• Joy's choice of alias and the red-and-blue coloration of her mask are references to her home platform's controllers, the Switch's Joy-Cons.
  • Joy's shoes are also colored after the Joy-Cons.
  • Joy also references Nintendo consoles in her pager lines. By her own admission, Joy currently owns every Nintendo console ever released.
  • Joy also has a Nintendo Switch visible in her pocket.
• At age 22 (27 in PAYDAY 3), Joy is the youngest member of the Payday Gang.
• Technically speaking, Joy does not have her own room at the Safe House. Her accommodations seem to consist entirely of a van that she drove in from elsewhere.
• One of the pins on Joy's jacket features five dots in a pattern that is likely a reference to Conway's Game of Life, in which this combination of dots can be inputted to create a "glider", the simplest possible object capable of moving in a predictable pattern.
• Being a gamer herself, most of Joy's voice lines are fairly meta, referencing a "heist game", another one asking "when's payday?", and refers to healing items as "health potions", among other things.
• Formally joining the gang in mid-late 2018, Joy is the member with the shortest staying time among the crew as of the end of PAYDAY 2.
  • However, it can be inferred that Joy had joined the crew much earlier, as she is seen as one of the heisters who participated in the City of Gold heists.
• Joy is the only playable heister that has voice-lines for all other playable heisters when she calls out for them. However, no other heisters have lines recorded for her.
• Joy's hands are noticeably smaller than those of any other heister, making most weapons fit improperly in them. This formerly caused other heisters to have a clipping issue involving her signature melee weapon, the Hackaton.
• Joy's pants have various mathematical equations, writings, and drawings on them. Most of the writing is incomprehensible due to being in low quality (as well as being in cursive.)
  • One of the clearly visible writings on her upper right leg is "7A120 / (SB)2 + 8! + bobblehead - 111 = ?" The mathematical equations appear to be comprised of both trigonometry and algebra.
  • The drawings could potentially be graphs, though there is little to no context as to what they could be for.
  • As for the writing, she has two small paragraphs or sentences on her upper left leg, as well as another just above the first tear. It is very difficult to read any of the writing for the previously stated reasons.
• Joy is a first-generation Japanese American. By her own account, she has never been to Japan, though she has the desire to go there.
• Joy also doesn't have any voice lines recorded in Japanese, though she does claim to speak the language. This includes Jiro, whom she does not have any special dialogue with in the safe house.
• Similar to Sokol, Joy has an affinity for ice hockey. If interacted with in the safehouse while playing as Sokol, she will tell him she loves the sport and "can't believe" he used to be a pro player, implying she recognizes him from his previous career. One of her pager lines involves her talking about the sport, saying she believes the Queens will have a good year.
• In two of her Taser lines, she will refer to the unit as "Electro." This is a reference to the Marvel villain of the same name, who controls electricity and has the desire to become a god-like figure.
• In the beginning of Beneath the Mountain, Joy may say "Murloc-... I mean, Murkies everywhere." This is likely a reference to the Murloc, a race of bipedal amphibious beings in the Warcraft universe.
• In her teaser art and the case for the physical copy of the Switch version of the game, the colors of Joy's mask are much darker, and the skull icon is over the red and blue split. In-game, however, the colors are brighter, and the skull pattern is its own pattern rather than placed over the red and blue split.
• Joy's sub-machinegun, Signature SMG, bears a similar name as the Signature .40 Pistol. This is due to the real-world variants of both weapons being produced by Sig Sauer.
• It was revealed before the release of the Jiu Feng Dragon Pack that Joy is originally from San Francisco, and was contacted by Jiu Feng about jobs in the city.
• The opening to the Dragon Heist implies that it would have been the first time Locke introduced Joy to the rest of the gang.

Gallery

• PAYDAY 2
• PAYDAY 3

As depicted in-game without her mask.

Joy's ingame mask.

Joy image from Icebreaker Day 1

Payday 2 - Joy's Voice Lines

VO lines

Joy's full body shot.

A particularly infamous picture of Joy.