History Characters / Phantasm

!Supporting Cast/First Movie

[[folder:Myrtle]]
[[quoteright:173:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/0e67ae8bd54da9161c1e8298e8b92329.jpg]]
* CatScare: Nearly gives Reggie (and the audience) a coronary.
%%* CoolOldLady
%%* DemotedToExtra
%%* TokenMinority

[[folder:The Fortune Teller]]

[[folder:Tommy]]
[[quoteright:181:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/66358048fb2fd049dac9c2a559561464.jpg]]
* WasOnceAMan: [[spoiler: He gets turned into a Lurker.]]
* WeHardlyKnewYe: Is the first person to die, just a few minutes into the first film.

[[folder:Christa]]
[[quoteright:181:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/eee3c8720d20e14161e4b5b4092b5557.jpg]]

[[/folder]]

!Antagonists

[[folder:The Tall Man (spoilers)]]

!!Tall Man
[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/11ac9fc0b8b17e8af3d1184ffcf21e5c912f9b55_hq.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:350:''"The funeral is about to begin!"'']]
!!!'''Played By:''' Angus Scrimm

The mysterious '''Tall Man''' is a sinister, interdimensional conqueror of worlds with an army of the undead. Though he may appear to be human, the Tall Man is a supernatural being of unknown origin, a grim harbinger of death.\\\

Once, he was '''Jebediah Morningside''', a mortician during the Civil War who developed a fascination with death. He created a device that would allow him to travel through dimensions in the hopes that he could use it to conquer death, but when he walked through the gate he came back only a few moments later, forever changed, if he was even himself anymore.
----
* AchillesHeel: He doesn't like the cold and is stunned by the sound of tuning fork. {{Downplayed}} since his [[CompleteImmortality quantum immortality]] renders these weaknesses mostly moot.
* AlienBlood: He gets his hand caught in a door at one point, and the boy cuts off his fingers with a blade. They bleed yellow; the director noted on the commentary that most test audiences were shocked at the unusual color, his minions are also shown to have yellow blood in the sequels.
* AttractiveBentGender: In his Lady in Lavender and Alchemy forms.
* BadassBoast: ''"You think when you die, you go to Heaven. You come to US!"''
* BadassInANiceSuit: He's never seen in anything but a suit.
* TheBadGuyWins: By the end of the series, he claims dominion over one universe and there doesn't seem to be any way of beating him with seemingly endless amount of clones out there, waiting to replace whichever one is destroyed next. All that's really left for the heroes to do is go somewhere cold that he can't reach.
* BigBad: He's the antagonist of the entire series.
* BizarreAlienBiology: ''Whatever he is'', Tall Man's biology is baffling; he bleeds yellow, has a Sentinel instead of a brain, and any severed body parts become weird insectoid monsters.
* BodyBackupDrive: How the Tall Man is still around after 'dying' multiple times: one body dies and another simply takes his place with no inconvenience to him. In the fifth movie, he reveals that there are tens of thousands of him.
* CardCarryingVillain: When confronting and killing a priest, he inverts his rosary before giving him his BadassBoast about people coming to him when they die instead of Heaven, as if to imply he is The Devil himself. In the final film, he admits that he hates positive concepts like loyalty and looks down on humanity for believing in such a thing.
* CatchPhrase: ''"BOOOOOYYYY!"''
* ColdHam: Most of the time, the Tall Man is quiet and stoic, saying little, but when he does speak, he often really cranks it up, particularly for his catch phrase.
* CoolOldGuy: As Jebediah Morningside, he seems like a friendly, endearing old man, which makes it that much more heartbreaking when he becomes the Tall Man through [[AmbiguousSituation an unknown process]].
* CreepyMortician: He poses as a Mortician to get close to bodies and make more minions.
* DecapitationPresentation:With Liz at the beginning of the third movie.
* DystopiaJustifiesTheMeans: In ''Ravager'', after his conquest, the Earth has become uninhabitable in many places thanks to an alien contagion he released onto the planet, leaving many areas submerged in a thick, red atmosphere that only he and his minions can survive within.
* EvilCannotComprehendGood: In ''Ravager'', the Tall Man cannot understand why Reggie would risk his life for Mike and his friends at all.
--> '''Tall Man:''' Why are you so obsessed with these friends!?
--> '''Reggie:''' You could never understand. It's called loyalty.
--> '''Tall Man:''' Those frail human emotions again. Do you not understand? Your kind is simply skinsacks of water and meat, and when a few random electrons fire off in that puny brain of yours, you're ready to annihilate yourself for this... this futile sensation you call ''loyalty''.
* EvilGenius: As a human, he created the Dimensional Forks that allow him to travel between time and space and the rest of the advanced technology he uses, such as the Sentinels.
* EvilIsBigger: Deliberately invoked, he was made to tower over the other characters. Hench his title.
* EvilOldFolks: The Tall Man generally appears as an elderly white man, and acts more civilized than the monster he really is.
* EvilPlan: In the first movie, the Tall Man is collecting bodies from the Morningside Cemetery to make into his extradimensional slaves.
* EvilSoundsDeep: Speaks in a gravelly voice, contrasting with the grandfatherly voice of his host body, Jebediah Morningside.
* FascinatingEyebrow: It's such an iconic look for him that he's shown doing that on several posters.
* FauxAffablyEvil: Throughout the series, the Tall Man often acts and speaks politely, particularly towards Mike in the fourth film, [[BlatantLies assuring him that his lobotomy won't hurt a bit]]. However, the mask ultimately slides completely away in ''Ravager'', when he ridicules Reggie and Mike's friendship.
* ForTheEvulz: Angus Scrimm has said himself that the reason the Tall Man messes around with Mike and Reggie so much is because he is bored, which the Tall Man confirms in ''Ravager''.
--->'''Reggie:''' If you're so strong and powerful, why haven't you killed us yet?
--->'''Tall Man:''' (Mike was) my subject, and you... well, every poor man deserves an amusement.
* HealingFactor: He regenerates his fingers after Mike cuts them off. In the third movie, he regenerates his hands after they are sliced off.
* HeroKiller: He's most likely the one behind Jody's death in the first film, gets Liz killed at the end of the second, and seemingly kills Mike in the fourth film.
* HeyYou: He never addresses any of the characters by their names. He calls Mike "Boy" and refers to Reggie by titles such as "Small man" and "Ice cream man".
* HumanoidAbomination: He's clearly only human on the outside, though whatever he is exactly is left unexplained. In ''Ravager'', he refers to his body as a "skinsack", implying that it may not be his body at all.
* ImplacableMan: No matter how many times he's seemingly killed, he always comes back. In ''Ravager'', a rocket launcher only burns his skin.
* InvincibleVillain: Played with. The Tall Man has superhuman durability and regeneration, but the protagonists are able to trap or kill him in every installment. The problem is that the Tall Man has quantum immortality, and multiple versions of him exist throughout the multiverse. Thus, every time the Tall Man dies, another version of him pops out of nowhere and replaces the dead Tall Man.
* JustToyingWithThem: He refers to his many encounters with Mike and Reggie as "games", and lets Reggie go in the fourth film when he could've easily killed him to play "one last game".
* KickTheDog: A flashback in Phantasm IV shows him running over a dog for no real reason.
* KillItWithIce: The cold seems to be one of the few things that can at the very least slow him down. Not that it's much of a comfort to our protagonists.
* KnownOnlyByTheirNickname: The true name and identity of the entity that has taken over Morningside is never revealed. It is known only as the Tall Man.
* MindOverMatter: Has a limited form of telekinesis.
* {{Necromancer}}: The Tall Man uses his advanced technology to resurrect the dead as his minions.
* OrganAutonomy: {{Exaggerated}}. The Tall Man's dismembered body parts transform into hostile creatures after some time.
* TheProblemWithFightingDeath: Kind of the point. As has been stated on numerous occasions, the Tall Man represents death itself and thus can never truly die or be escaped. Ultimately, death claims even Reggie at the end of ''Ravager''.
* TheQuietOne: He never really says a whole lot in the first movie, only a few short phrases, though he ends up having full conversations with the heroes by the last movie.
* RapeByFraud: He takes the form of women to seduce men on occasion, only to end up killing them.
* RealityWarper: It's implied in the early films that he can alter the universe to his liking, [[QuantumMechanicsCanDoAnything thanks to quantum mechanics]]. In the first movie, Michael and Jody survive while Reggie dies, yet a CosmicRetcon makes it so that Jody died in a car crash while Reggie lives and doesn't remember the events of the first movie. The fifth movie confirms that the characters live in a multiverse and occasionally shift into other realities.
* SatanicArchetype: An evil being who rules over an unnaturally hot place and vies for world domination. Also, when he is confronted by a priest, he telekinetically inverts his rosary before giving his BadassBoast mentioned above. Though Reggie takes it up a notch by saying his world is "worse than Hell".
* ShapeShifting: He can shapeshift into [[GenderBender attractive women]] to seduce and kill his opponents.
* StealthMentor: The end of the third and rest of the fourth film seemed to be suggesting that the Tall Man was trying to make Mike become just like him... but then it's [[SubvertedTrope subverted]] at the end, when the Tall Man takes the sphere from Mike and leaves him to die.
* SuperStrength: One of the first undeniably unnatural things Mike sees when spying on the Tall Man is him effortlessly lifting up a coffin by himself.
* TakeOverTheWorld: He desires to conquer Earth and various other dimensions.
* TimeMaster: As Jebediah Morningside, he created the Dimensional Forks that allowed the user to travel to any destination and any time period.
* TrueSight: The Tall Man spots Mike when he's [[AstralProjection astral projecting]] to spy on him and is supposedly invisible, and even sees him when he's traveled back in time to the moment he became the Tall Man, even though Mike was in another dimension layered over that one.
* UnwantedRevival: Revives Mike after he's tried to kill himself, stating that death is no escape from him.
* WasOnceAMan: [[AmbiguousSituation Maybe]]. The form he's in used to be called Jebediah Morningside. However, it's unclear if it's really him, or if something had taken his skin. The latter interpretation is supported by his statement that his body is just a "skinsack".
-->'''Jody:''' Jebediah Morningside never did come back.
* WouldHurtAChild: Has no issue throwing around a young Mike and gets Tim killed by his Lurkers off-screen.
* YouHaveOutlivedYourUsefulness: At the end of ''Phantasm IV'', the Tall Man removes the Golden Sentinel from Mike's head and then... leaves him to die. He confirms this in ''Ravager'', stating, "My need for you is now finished."
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Tall Man's minions.]]
From the dead bodies he resurrects to willing human servants, the Tall Man has an army of henchmen.

* AlienBlood: All the undead henchmen have yellow blood like the Tall Man. This may in fact be embalming fluid used as part of the resurrection process.
* DepravedDwarf: The Lurkers are made from bodies shrunken down to better adjust to the higher gravity of the Tall Man's world.
* GasMaskMooks: The Gravers wear gas masks for some reason.
* HumansAreBastards: The Tall Man has managed to gather a number of human followers who serve him willingly. They pose as morticians and help him wipe out towns so he can use the bodies of the deceased to create more henchmen.
* KillerCop: The Demon Troopers are zombie police that patrol the towns the Tall Man has wiped out, searching for humans who wander into them to kill.
* MeaningfulName: The Gravers plunder graves for bodies the Tall Man can use to create more minions.
* NightOfTheLivingMooks: The Tall Man steals bodies and resurrects them as his undead henchmen. They come in different varieties depending on how he resurrects them. The Lurkers are made to act as slaves back in the Tall Man's world, and are shrunken down. The Gravers retain their size and are tasked with plundering graves on Earth for more corpses the Tall Man can repurpose into minions. The Demon Troopers are more powerful variants of the Gravers that act as the Tall Man's police force.

[[folder:The Tall Man/The Lady in Lavender/[[spoiler:Alchemy/Jebediah Morningside]]]]

The mysterious '''Tall Man''' is a sinister, interdimensional conqueror of worlds with an army of the undead. Though he may appear to be human, the Tall Man is a supernatural being of unknown origin, a grim harbinger of death.

Once, he was [[spoiler:'''Jebediah Morningside''', a mortician during the Civil War who developed a fascination with death. He created a device that would allow him to travel through dimensions in the hopes that he could use it to conquer death, but when he walked through the gate he came back only a few moments later, forever changed, if he was even himself anymore]].

* AttractiveBentGender: In his Lady in Lavender and [[spoiler:Alchemy]] forms.

* TheBadGuyWins: [[spoiler:By the end of the series, he claims dominion over the world and there doesn't seem to be any way of beating him with seemingly endless amount of clones out there, waiting to replace whichever one is destroyed next. All that's really left for the heroes to do is go somewhere cold that he can't reach.]]

* BodyBackupDrive: How the Tall Man is still around after 'dying' multiple times: one body dies and another simply takes his place with no inconvenience to him. In the fifth movie, he reveals that there are [[spoiler: tens of thousands of him.]]

* CoolOldGuy: As [[spoiler:Jebediah Morningside, he seems like a friendly, endearing old man, which makes it that much more heartbreaking that the Tall Man stole his body]].

* DecapitationPresentation: [[spoiler:With Liz at the beginning of the third movie]].
* DystopiaJustifiesTheMeans: In ''Ravager'', after his conquest, [[spoiler:the Earth has become uninhabitable in many places thanks to an alien contagion he released onto the planet, leaving many areas submerged in a thick, red atmosphere that only he and his minions can survive within]].

---> '''Tall Man:''' Why are you so obsessed with these friends!?
---> '''Reggie:''' You could never understand. It's called loyalty.
---> '''Tall Man:''' Those frail human emotions again. Do you not understand? Your kind is simply skinsacks of water and meat, and when a few random electrons fire off in that puny brain of yours, you're ready to annihilate yourself for this... this futile sensation you call ''loyalty''.
* EvilGenius: [[spoiler:As a human, he created the Dimensional Forks that allow him to travel between dimensions]], and he presumably also created the rest of the advanced technology he uses, such as the Sentinels.

* FauxAffablyEvil: Throughout the series, the Tall Man often acts and speaks politely, particularly towards Mike in the fourth film, [[Main/{{BlatantLies}} assuring him that his lobotomy won't hurt a bit]]. However, the mask ultimately slides completely away in ''Ravager'', when he ridicules Reggie and Mike's friendship.

* GutturalGrowler: Speaks in an iconically gravelly voice, contrasting with the grandfatherly voice of his host body, Jebediah Morningside.

* HeroKiller: He's most likely the one behind [[spoiler:Jody's death]] in the first film, [[spoiler:gets Liz killed at the end of the second]], and seemingly kills [[spoiler:Mike]] in the fourth film.

* ImplacableMan: No matter how many times he's seemingly killed, he always comes back. In ''Ravager'', [[spoiler:being shot with a rocket launcher only burns his skin]].
* InvincibleVillain: His thousands of clones make it nearly impossible to put him down for good. The only possible ways to take him out would be to either somehow destroy his entire realm, journey through his realm to find his true form and destroy it, or change history so that Morningside never became the Tall Man in the first place. Mike comes close to doing the latter, but his fear of Morningside prevented him from warning him against using the Dimension Fork. By the time Mike had gotten over his fear, he couldn't go back. By the end of the series, he has pretty much taken over Earth, and unless the characters can somehow find another gateway to the past or safely traverse his realm to find and destroy his true form, it's only a matter of time before humanity will be completely wiped out.
* JustToyingWithThem: He refers to his many encounters with Mike and Reggie as "games", and [[spoiler:lets Reggie go in the fourth film when he could've easily killed him]] to play "one last game".

* TheProblemWithFightingDeath: Kind of the point. As has been stated on numerous occasions, the Tall Man represents death itself and thus can never truly die or be escaped. [[spoiler:Ultimately, death claims even Reggie at the end of ''Ravager'']].

* ShapeShifting: He can shapeshift into [[Main/{{GenderBender}} attractive women]] to seduce and kill his opponents.
* StealthMentor: The end of the third and rest of the fourth film seemed to be suggesting that the Tall Man was trying to make Mike become just like him... [[spoiler: but then it's [[SubvertedTrope subverted]] at the end, when the Tall Man takes the sphere from Mike and leaves him to die]].

* TrueSight: The Tall Man spots Mike when he's [[Main/{{AstralProjection}} astral projecting]] to spy on him and is supposedly invisible, and even [[spoiler:sees him when he's traveled back in time to the moment he became the Tall Man, even though Mike was in another dimension layered over that one]].
* UnwantedRevival: Revives [[spoiler:Mike after he's tried to kill himself]], stating that death is no escape from him.
* WasOnceAMan: Maybe. The form he's in used to be called [[spoiler:Jebediah Morningside]]. However, it's left ambiguous if it's really him, or if something had taken his skin. The latter interpretation is supported by his statement that his body is just a "skinsack".
--->'''Jody:''' [[spoiler:Jebediah Morningside never did come back.]]
* WouldHurtAChild: Has no issue throwing around a young Mike and [[spoiler:gets Tim killed by his Lurkers off-screen]].
* YouHaveOutlivedYourUsefulness: At the end of ''Phantasm IV'', the Tall Man removes [[spoiler:the Golden Sentinel from Mike's head and then... leaves him to die]]. He confirms this in ''Ravager'', stating, "My need for you is now finished."

* TheBadGuyWins: [[spoiler:By the end of the series, he claims dominion over the world and there doesn't seem to be any way of beating him with seemingly endless amount of clones out there, waiting to replace whichever one is destroyed next. All that's really left for the heroes to do go somewhere cold that he can't reach.]]

%%* CoolOldGuy

[[folder:Raina]]
[[/folder]]

* BaldOfAwesome

* StuffedInTheFridge: [[spoiler: Her fate in the beginning of the third film.]]

---> '''Tall Man:''' Those frail human emotions again. Do you not understand? Your kind is simply skinsacks of water and meat, and when a few random electrons fire off in that puny brain of yours, you're ready to annihilate to annihilate yourself for this... this futile sensation you call ''loyalty''.

[[folder: Mike]]

[[folder: Reggie]]

[[folder: Jody]]

[[folder: Liz]]

[[folder: Tim]]

[[folder: Rocky]]

[[folder: Myrtle]]

[[folder: The Fortune Teller]]

[[folder: Tommy]]

[[folder: Christa]]

[[folder: Sally & Sue]]

[[folder: Tanesha]]

[[folder: Father Meyers]]

[[folder: Jeri]]

[[folder: Jennifer]]

[[folder: Demeter]]

[[folder: Raina]]

[[folder: The Thief]]

[[folder: Chunk]]

[[folder: The Tall Man/The Lady in Lavender/[[spoiler:Alchemy/Jebediah Morningside]]]]

* ActionGirl: FIghts back against The Tall Man,

* CasanovaWannabe: Subverted. The only two women he successfully seduces [[spoiler:are allies or avatars of the Tall Man, while Rocky and Jennifer both turn down his advances.]]

* TheCasanova: Subverted. The only two women he successfully seduces [[spoiler:are allies or avatars of the Tall Man, while Rocky and Jennifer both turn down his advances.]]

* YouHaveOutlivedYourUsefulness: At the end of Phantasm IV, the Tall Man removes [[spoiler:the Golden Sentinel from Mike's head and then... leaves him to die]]. He confirms this in ''Ravager'', stating, "My need for you is now finished."