History Characters / Psychonauts

** [[spoiler: He's also the {{Foil}} to Gristol Malik, the true BigBad of the sequel game. Oleander was driven to [[SanitySlippage madness by Psitanium poisoning]] that ended up [[FreudianExcuse worsening his unresolved personal issues,]] but once his problems were dealt with, ultimately proved that he was a decent, if very gruff man. Even during his stint as the BigBad, Oleander was also competent enough to fight his own battles and proved to be a challenging opponent directly, as well as being smart enough to use something easier to control for his EvilPlan via the brains of psychic ''children'', as insane as it was. Gristol Malik spends much of the sequel game pretending to be a decent man, [[MaskofSanity but the reveal shows that he is in truth a dangerously egotistical and narcissistic sociopath]] willing to do whatever it takes to revive Maligula for extremely selfish and petty reasons. [[PaperTiger While a skilled manipulator and planner, he's not a fighter and more or less intended on the revived Maligula to do the gruntwork for him,]] and '''severely''' lacks the wisdom to consider that he is trying to control ''[[EvilIsNotAToy what is essentially the psychic equivalent of a force of nature.]]'']]

* AbusiveParents: [[spoiler: His parents were [[FantasticRacism prejudiced against psychics]], to the point of giving their son a lobotomy upon finding out that he was born with psychic powers.]]

* {{Retcon}}: While he isn't suddenly cruel or uncaring towards his son, the sequel does claim that he was formerly a BoomerangBigot regarding psychics. It also has him spending the entire game struggling to ignite a pinecone, [[BagOfSpilling despite being shown in the first game to be at least competent enough to use a Psi-Blast without issue]]. That said, different psychic characters have different strengths in their abilites. It might be that Augustus has a stronger affinity for psi-blasts and telekinesis than pyrokinesis. Or that he never trained in the latter.

%%* SoProudOfYou

* UnskilledButStrong: Revealed to be this, putting into account both games. While he had enough inherent talent, in the first game, to invade the Meat Circus without a Psycho-Portal, and give Raz enough of a boost to become an energy-based {{Kaiju}}, his lack of training makes it difficult for him to do basic Pyrokinesis.

* AllegoricalCharacter: He is essentially the voice in Fred's head scolding him for being a loser that grew into a SplitPersonality. More specifically, he is the manifestation of Fred's deep desire to win, and is trying to get Fred to be willing to get back up and fight for his victories. However, Fred's strong sense of learned helplessness driven by his implied past failures, the sheer weight of having Napoleon Bonaparte as his ancestor, and his dismal failure to win against a mental patient in a board game makes Napoleon's efforts far more frustrating than the SplitPersonality likes, and his attempts to coerce and force Fred to fight back tended to end in failure. Only when Raz comes along and give Fred some muchly needed help does Fred finally begin to fight back, [[SoProudOfYou much to Napoleon's eventual pride.]]

** Given his backstory and some of his implied failures in the past before the game, he might also have a case of Learned Helplessness. See EpiphanicPrison.

* EpiphanicPrison: It's implied given a combination of contextual clues within his mental world and the revelation of some of his past failures that this is also partly to blame for why he's stuck like this after losing to Crispin. His apparently loss in the Pinewood Derby when he was younger, his subtle SoreLoser tendencies (or at least a desire to win despite his failures), combined with having a FamousAncestor (with all the heirlooms that entailed) that he can never truly live up to, might have given him a secret inferiority complex that caused him to believe he was incapable of succeeding at anything. With that in mind, his severe losses to Crispin (who was a mental patient) at a board game might have been less the core cause of his current mental state and [[TheLastStraw more the straw that broke the camel's back.]]

Yes. ''The'' UsefulNotes/NapoleonBonaparte, or rather a GeneticMemory within the mind of his descendant Fred.

* AllegoricalCharacter: He is essentially the voice in Fred's head scolding him for being a loser that grew into a split personality. Either that or Psychics being real in the setting means that Genetic Memory really ''is'' a different thing than it is in reality.

* GeneticMemory: The general idea, though it is equally likely that he is just a manifestation of Fred's slipping mental state exacerbated by the psitanium. [[MaybeMagicMaybeMundane Or it could be real, it's not really made 100% clear]].

* SoreLoser: Ironically for the split personality that emerged to educate him on winning, when Fred starts to ''actually'' win for once with Raz's help, Napoleon proceeds to close off his castle's gate and jam the gears to the bridge. When he's called out for cheating, he says that "all is fair in love and war."

* ConspicuousTrenchcoat

** His Psychonauts HQ lab and office are pristine however, but among the items in it are one of the tacky lamps he claims to despise.

* NotSoAboveItAll: During ''Rhombus of Ruin'' he acts significantly goofier under the effects of the Rhombus' Psilerium deposit, mistaking the [[spoiler: mutant fishmen]] for aliens and struggling with one over a mock Golden Disk after being freed from the Psilerium's effects [[spoiler: [[SkewedPriorities even as the Rhombus facility is crumbling around him.]]]]

* SeenItAll: When Raz mentions that Oleaner was stealing children's brains and putting them into death tanks, Truman chuckles, "Is that all?", then {{Troll}}s Lili by saying he was more worried about the ''kissing'' that goes on at summer camps. (The look on his face indicates he knows full well Raz and Lili shared a FirstKiss.)

* {{Cloudcuckoolander}}: Albeit a dangerous one, bringing us such lines as "You have the insanity of a ''manatee!''" ''Rhombus of Ruin'' reveals [[spoiler:this is likely [[CerebusRetcon the result of the botched lobotomy his parents tried to remove his psychic abilities with.]]]]

* SpyBot: What they seem to really be (though its tough to tell for sure, considering where they live). The tops of their heads are detachable. In fact, The first one Raz talks to sprouts a gun from his mouth when he suspects him of being the Milkman, and they all have built in extinguishers if you manage to set them on fire.

* SignatureMove: Each of the wreslters have their own special moves that set them apart:

* ForgotAboutHisPowers: Somewhere between ''1'' and ''2'', Raz lost the ability to make a Shield, Turn invisible, or create confusion grenades, which would have been ''very'' useful in ''2''. Given that Clairvoyance is similarly unavailable until Raz reaches a situation where he realises it'd be useful in the beginning levels, its implied that Raz ''literally'' forgot about some of his psychic powers- which arguably makes sense given how many of them he acquired in rapid succession over the course of a single day.

* ForgotAboutHisPowers: Somewhere between ''1'' and ''2'', Raz lost the ability to make a Shield, which would have been ''very'' useful in ''2''.

* TalkingToPlants: She is very fond of plants and has the rare ability to commune with them. Come ''Rhombus of Ruin'', her Psilerium induced hallucination has her speaking to plants. [[spoiler: Or rather bombs she ''thinks'' are plants.]]

* GameBreakingInjury: His mind was shattered while fighting a powerful psychic 20 years before the game, separating it into several different personalities. His mind is only focused and stable while close to large deposits of Psitanium, but he still isn't as strong as he once was. [[spoiler:The second game reveals that it wasn't Maligula who damaged his mind, but Ford himself, who did this to forget the pain over having to tamper with his beloved's memories to save her.]]

* MyGodWhatHaveIDone: [[spoiler:Even if he feels it was necessary to some degree, he is wracked with guilt concerning everything involving Nona and Augustus, this overwhelming guilt is even a major factor that lead to Ford shattering his own psyche. When Raz calls out Ford on his actions, Ford does not argue with him at all and fully admits he was a young fool back then.]]

* ShatteredSanity: True Psychic Tales tells everyone that Ford Cruller's mind was broken in a epic battle with an evil psychic, and that's definitely true enough if you see him around the camp. In the sequel, you find that his mind is so shattered that you cannot access most of it while Ford is "sane", you have to access his mind while he is in different personas to access those portions of his mind (and return them back to normal). Fittingly, his broken psyche is represented as a shattered mirror, and you have to find the broken fragments to repair him. [[spoiler:However, it turns out that his psyche was ''not'' broken from a duel with a powerful psychic, at least not directly. He actually shattered his own mind deliberately to hide what he had done to Lucrezia, his once upon a time love and more recently mass murderer Maligula.]]

** Explored in [[VideoGame/Psychonauts2 the Sequel]] - being summoned to HQ by the smell of bacon, he immedeatly reverts into 3 seperate personalites, that nobody on base actually recognises.... and you actually get to explore their seperate mindscapes this time since Zannato gives Raz the mission of trying to Fix Cruller to combat the Delugionist threat, since Ford is the one who defeats Maligula in the end.

* InformedSpecies: While described as a Lungfish, she much more closely resembles a giant, bipedal female Angler Fish. The "Lungfish and Loboto" Memory Vault reveals that this is a product of the experiments performed on her, as prior to her mutation she was quite visibly a normal lungfish.

* InformedSpecies: While described as a Lungfish, she much more closely resembles a giant, bipedal female Angler Fish.

* FemaleMonsterSurprise: There's no indication at all that she's female until she gives Raz her name. And yes, we are reasonably sure she's a "she," given the secret HundredPercentCompletion ending video.

* {{Foil}}: To the Interns of the second game. Both groups serve as side characters for Razputin to interact with throughout the game, and both are captured at one point by a dangerous villain who need to be saved by Razputin. However, the Campers were a group of [[DysfunctionJunction dysfunctional kids]] around Raz's age who were disinterested or less focused on Psychonauts training compared to Raz and Lily, and they mostly tended to be friendly at best with Raz, or just didn't care too much about him for the bulk of the story. They also were not willing to help out Raz even after he saved them from the villains, either due to being indifferent of the situation, or having very SkewedPriorities. The Interns by contrast are mostly older kids, who despite their eccentricities, tended to get along well enough with each other, are keen to take on real missions as Psychonauts, and [[AllOfTheOtherReindeer initially don't think too highly of Raz at all.]] However, their opinion of him improves after the Casino Mission, and they end up aiding him several times throughout the story, including against the final boss of the game.

* EmbarassingNickname: His mother and grandmother call him "Pootie".

* EverythingsBetterWithPlushies: [[http://store.iam8bit.com/collections/psychonauts-10th-anniversary/products/psychonauts-raz-plush Raz is!]]

* TheComicallySerious: His stoicism makes some of the punishment that happens to him [[spoiler: like being knocked senseless by The Mega Censor, or being de-brained]] even funnier than usual.

* MakeMeWannaShout: Larger, clipboard-carrying Censors shout at you as a ranged attack. Heavy Censors can do this as well.

* PerpetualFrowner: Censors are almost always in a full-mouth scowl.
* PowerFist: Heavy Censors in ''2'' wear brass knuckles with "NO" and two "forbidden" signs on them.

* GypsyCurse: The cause of his (and his entire family's) SuperDrowningSkills.

* GypsyCurse: The cause of his (and his entire family's) SuperDrowningSkills.

* MakingASplash:[[spoiler: The revelation his family's curse was actually a placebo created by Ford too keep Maligula at bay (and that Maligua is his ''great-aunt'') implies Raz might have untapped potential for hydrokinesis, especially that after this, he is able to use the Hand to return him to save him from the water.]]