Line #133 Characters/TheOuterWorldsOtherCharacters


1	[[WMG:[[center: [-''Characters/TheOuterWorlds'' [[Characters/TheOuterWorlds character index]]\
2	[[Characters/TheOuterWorldsTheCrew The Crew]] \| Factions (Corporations: [[Characters/TheOuterWorldsCorporationsTheBoard The Board]], [[Characters/TheOuterWorldsCorporationsAuntieCleos Auntie Cleo's]], [[Characters/TheOuterWorldsCorporationsSpacersChoice Spacer's Choice]], [[Characters/TheOuterWorldsCPBoarstFactory C&P Boarst Factory]], [[Characters/TheOuterWorldsCorporationsMSI MSI]]), [[Characters/TheOuterWorldsCorporationsSubLight SubLight Salvaging & Shipping]], [[Characters/TheOuterWorldsIconoclasts Iconoclasts]], Other Groups: [[Characters/TheOuterWorldsGroundbreaker Groundbreaker]], [[Characters/TheOuterWorldsDeserters Deserters]], [[Characters/TheOuterWorldsGorgon Gorgon]], [[Characters/TheOuterWorldsEridanos Eridanos]], [[Characters/TheOuterWorldsMarauders Marauders]], [[Characters/TheOuterWorldsOutlaws Outlaws]] \| '''Other Characters''']]-]]]
3
4	----
5	[[foldercontrol]]
6
7	!Other Characters
8
9	[[folder:Dr. Phineas Welles]]
10	!!Dr. Phineas Vernon Welles
11	[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/phineas.png]]
12	[[caption-width-right:350:Rebel scientist]]
13	->''"Are you feeling anything that can be construed as... explosive cell death? No? Wonderful! Let's get started."''
14	->'''Voiced by:''' Creator/PiotrMichael
15
16	The rebel scientist who wakes you up on The Hope.
17	----
18	* TheAtoner: He's done some things in his past that he's not proud of. [[spoiler:Specifically, a decade ago he accidentally killed a dozen of the ''Hope'''s colonists while running experiments to try to figure out how to safely revive them from stasis. Saving the remaining colonists is his way of atoning, and in fairness to him, the Board had already written them off as dead and had no compunctions about disposing of them.]]
19	* BigGood: He is the primary figure opposing the Board and is the central questgiver for the main storylines.
20	* DeadpanSnarker: A good portion of his lines are him snarking away. Character creation is replete with various zingers on your skill, stat, and background choices.
21	* DefectorFromDecadence: He used to work for the Board, but rebelled when he realized that they were ruining Halcyon. [[spoiler:More specifically, he was fired and declared a wanted criminal when he accidentally killed a dozen ''Hope'' colonists in an unauthorized experiment, but he is genuinely ideologically opposed to the Board and its methods.]]
22	* DefiantToTheEnd: Will not give in to the Board, even under threat of death.
23	-->'''Phineas:''' [[spoiler:They say I'm a murderer -- and they're right. I am. I regret what I've done. But I'm not about to turn myself into the Board. I'm not going to go begging the Board's forgiveness.]]
24	* DespairEventHorizon: If you turn him over to the Board, [[spoiler:Phineas will start a prison riot and hold Adjutant Akande hostage. Suggesting the board could still spare him has Phineas respond that he has no intention of surviving, and that it's time he "paid the price for (his) failures". Depending on certain dialogue routes, he will either go down in one last fight, or commit suicide.]]
25	* {{Determinator}}: He will spend his last breath reviving the Hope's colonists to save Halcyon, if he has to.
26	* EinsteinHair: Like any self-respecting mad scientist, his hair stands up, giving him a [[Franchise/BackToTheFuture Doc Brown]] or [[Franchise/RickAndMorty Rick Sanchez]] look.
27	* {{Expy}}:
28	** Has some Doc Mitchell in him. When the player is creating their character, Welles will make various comments depending on your selected stats.
29	** Boyarsky said he's a cross between Rick from ''Franchise/RickAndMorty'' and Walter Bishop from ''Series/{{Fringe}}'', even jokingly calling him "Rick" in the Noclip documentary. His speech patterns however are much closer to [[Franchise/BackToTheFuture Doc Brown]], Rick's original inspiration.
30	* FailureHero: If you side with the Board. [[spoiler:All his human test-subjects die in agony, apart from a single person who then turns around and betrays him. His attempts to take down Akande (and you, if you don't manage to talk him down) will also be for nothing, ending in his death. The ''Hope'' colonists are then jettisoned like trash. Everything he spent his life working towards ends in failure.]]
31	-->'''Phineas: ''' [[spoiler:Yes, I failed. There -- I've said it. I'm a failure. I failed the colony. I failed myself. I failed you.]]
32	* TheFarmerAndTheViper: Even though Dr. Welles revives the Unplanned Variable and sets them free from what would have been indentured servitude even had the Hope's journey not been interrupted, the player can turn around and betray him by helping the Board capture him. However, he doesn't mind the idea of you getting into their good graces and will even encourage you to plant a tracking signal (albeit a corrupted one) in his lab on the basis that they'll find him eventually and it will curry favor with Akande. Although he will almost state this trope if you are on the Board's side and having a 'talk' with him.
33	* FinalBoss: Should you side with the Board, Phineas will be your final opponent.
34	* {{Forgiveness}}: [[spoiler:Telling him you forgive him for the lives lost in his early attempts to revive the Hope colonists -- bearing in mind that, despite his youthful hubris, he was trying to save them -- is deeply meaningful to him, the first step in being able to forgive himself. This changes his attitude in the ending slides, and combined with the UV's other choices, can result in a slightly better ending for the Hope colonists.]]
35	* GoMadFromTheIsolation: 35 years on the lam have left him [[SadClown extraordinarily depressed and lonely underneath his buoyant exterior]].
36	* HeroAntagonist: Becomes this if you side with the Board, making a last-ditch effort to [[spoiler:inspire an uprising with a riot on Tartarus -- even knowing that it's doomed from the start]].
37	* HiddenDepths: While Phineas isn't keen on leaving his isolated lab, he apparently had a lot more of a social life back in the day. Gladys can comment he was "quite the dancer back in his prime".
38	* HoistByHisOwnPetard: An Unplanned Variable can not only do this to their savior by joining the corporate overlords [[HeWhoFightsMonsters they were woken up to fight]], but they can also [[spoiler:kill Phineas himself]] with either the ShrinkRay he created or his custom Spacer's Choice "Phin's Phorce" rifle that they can steal from his lab after [[spoiler:he is taken to Tartarus]], which the Unplanned Variable would've been gifted with if they had ultimately sided with Welles.
39	* HoldingOutForAHero: His plan to defeat the Board ultimately boils down to clinging to this trope in two ways. First, revive a competent [[spoiler:and expendable]] who has the skills needed to acquire what he needs to revive the other colonists. Second, and lastly, hope that the awakened scientists, engineers, and intellectuals will be able to come up with the solutions to the colony's woes that Welles was unable to.
40	* {{Hypocrite}}: Due to having some rather violent fantasies about killing the heads of the various corporations, Welles is perfectly fine with any number of heinous actions, no matter how brutal or depraved, a villainous Unplanned Variable performs so long as they are in service of defying and sabotaging the Board. However, he's quick to decry the protagonist's malicious character traits he previously tolerated and even lauded if they're ever used against him in the finale.
41	* KnowNothingKnowItAll: For all his brilliance, he's so focused on reviving the Hope's crew and overthrowing the Board that he never deigns to investigate and subsequently discover what's actually killing Halcyon, [[spoiler:unforseen biological incompatibilities with the crops grown there with humans]], which the Board has nothing to do with.
42	* LifeWillKillYou: [[spoiler:In the Anti-Board Endings, Phineas ultimately doesn't live to see most of his efforts bear fruit as he passes away from old age, but is able to die making peace with his past]].
43	* MadScientist: A madcap mad scientist who's spent years in zany isolation crafting incredible new devices while working on a project most of the colony thinks is impossible.
44	* MyGodWhatHaveIDone: His reaction to [[spoiler:discovering that Earth is no longer there. His war against the Board potentially threatened human extinction. You can either reassure him or say that he was foolish.]]
45	** [[spoiler:If you side with the Board, Phineas will bitterly place the blame on himself for having revived you. However, if you treat him with compassion, he will also apologise and ask you to forgive him for involving you without ever giving you a choice.]]
46	* MyGreatestFailure: [[spoiler:The deaths of the previous colonists he failed to revive before finally succeeding with the Unplanned Variable.]] If the Unplanned Variable sides with the Board, or just goes on a murderous rampage across Halcyon, then his greatest failure is turning you loose.
47	* PlayerAndProtagonistIntegration: Phineas is a loose representation of the Player. The game's initial CharacterCustomization sequence is framed as Welles choosing to unfreeze a Hope colonist [[AnAdventurerIsYou who happened to have all those attributes]]. His initial plan was to more directly guide the Unplanned Variable through a communicator (Controller), which doesn't work out as the device is irreparably damaged after they crash land on top of Alex Hawthorne. If the [[spoiler:protagonist sides with the Board]], Phineas has a blistering tirade against them for [[OffTheRails deviating from the mission he gave you]], [[LeaningOnTheFourthWall which illustrates some of the darker aspects of the "Advisor" variant of this trope.]]
48	-->'''Phineas:''' We could have saved this colony, you know. [[{{Railroading}} That was always the plan.]] I revive you. You do as I say. I tell you to go there, get me this, [[BreadEggsMilkSquick shoot that.]] [[ControlFreak And you do as I say.]] If you just listened to me, we could have rescued everyone on the Hope. We could have been the saviors of Halcyon. [[YouBastard But you didn't listen.]] [[SurroundedByIdiots No one in this damn colony every listens!]]
49	* PlotArmor: Phineas is the sole exception to the game otherwise allowing you to kill everyone you meet, as you need him as your quest-giver for over half the game. He spends the entire game in a room that you can't enter, talking to you from behind a sheet of bulletproof glass, which prevents you from just murdering him whenever you want. Furthermore, the automated navigation of ships in the setting allows him to scramble attempts to simply track you or your ship to his asteroid hideout, preventing you from simply handing him over to the Board even if you've already been to his base.
50	* ProperlyParanoid: He will not come out of his room since he doesn't trust you to not murder him. Considering that it's a very real possibility (and he'll even cite your actions in Edgewater if applicable) he's not wrong. A NoteToSelf visible only from his side explicitly notes that the Unplanned Variable could have been made unstable by the long-term freezing and potentially traumatic unthawing, and that he intends to take appropriate precautions.
51	* RevengeBeforeReason: One of his darker lines of dialogue in the pro-Board endgame has him state that he wouldn't surrender to the Board if the lives of everyone in Halcyon depended on him doing so, hinting that his crusade was more about getting back at his former employers than necessarily saving the colony.
52	* SadClown: Phineas is often inappropriately upbeat, and has a love of puns (which the player can either find amusing or shoot down). However, he's [[spoiler:deeply traumatised by having killed a number of the ''Hope'''s colonists with his experiments. Siding with the Board will reveal his pain in greater detail if you have the right dialogue skills, and also give him the added guilt of having those sacrifices be for nothing. He'll also put the blame of the player's actions entirely on himself for having unthawed them.]]
53	* ThinkingOutLoud: He's very fond of talking to himself out loud as he works. 35 years on the run will do that to you.
54	* TooDumbToLive: If you decide to betray him, he won't notice the signal transmitting from the Base, until the Board's soldiers are at his doorstep. ADA will even state as this.
55	* VoiceWithAnInternetConnection: Starts out as this for the Unplanned Variable, but the communicator he provided to monitor and chat with the protagonist is damaged early on, which gives the newly unfrozen colonist the opportunity to sell him out to the Board with Welles being none the wiser.
56	[[/folder]]
57
58	[[folder:Captain Alex Hawthorne]]
59	!!Captain Alex Hawthorne
60	->''"He's to be your chauffeur, so to speak. Not to worry, I'm told he's a specialist. Dashing gunslinger, one of a kind ship, that sort of thing. You'll like him, I'm sure."''%%--Phineas
61
62	The original owner of the Unreliable. [[ItWasHisSled Crushed by your escape pod]] minutes into the game, leaving the player to recover his ship and repair it in his stead.
63	----
64	* TheAce: Described as such but was a BrokenAce by the time of his death.
65	* TheAlcoholic: His terminal confirms that he was more than fond of a drink.
66	* BrokenAce: He was apparently much more dashing once but has gone through a long decline assisted by alcohol.
67	* CruelAndUnusualDeath: Being crushed by an escape pod is a hell of a way to go.
68	* {{Expy}}: Being made out to be the dashing smuggler, ace pilot, crack shot, and all-around LovableRogue at every turn, Alex Hawthorne is the setting's answer to [[Franchise/StarWars Han Solo]], complete with the Unreliable as his Millennium Falcon. Of course, you accidentally crash-land on top of him with your escape pod before gameplay even begins, as an EstablishingCharacterMoment for you, what's left of Hawthorne, and the colony as a whole.
69	* FakeUltimateHero: Phineas' early narration makes him sound like a Han Solo-like dashing rogue. [[CruelAndUnusualDeath And yet, somehow that doesn't seem right considering how he dies.]] That said, discussions with people who knew him indicate he did fit the description. The man programmed ADA’s personality, was a close associate of the head of [=SubLight=], and had a ton of schemes and plans in his back pocket.
70	* GadgeteerGenius: May have helped cause ADA to become sentient. Also helped turn SAM into a super-robot, although if PAM on Gorgon is any indication, SAM [[SuperPoweredRobotMeterMaids might not have had far to go]].
71	* JerkWithAHeartOfGold: Refuses to turn in Welles to the Board despite them offering him a lot of money.
72	* IdiotHero: Despite his supposed skill as a spacer, Hawthorne was too dumb not to stand directly under where your pod was supposed to come down. However, later dialogue with ADA implies his judgement was severely impaired by a recent head injury.
73	* IWorkAlone: Despite having crew quarters on his ship, he preferred to work by himself with only ADA as his companion.
74	* NiceGuy: Apparently was a decent person who didn't deserve what happened to him.
75	* OddFriendship: Multiple:
76	** With his maybe-sentient starship ADA.
77	** With both Board bureaucrat Udom Bedford, who is devoted to finding Phineas Welles, ''and'' Phineas Welles himself. Both of these friendships appear to be genuine.
78	* PosthumousCharacter: Your first act on arriving on Terra-2 is to kill him, albeit unintentionally.
79	* SeriousBusiness: He was obsessed with Science weapons, and threatened bodily harm towards Welles for refusing to even so much as let him touch his prototype ShrinkRay.
80	* TakeUpMySword: You can take up his name, ship, and cause to glorious heights.
81	* TooDumbToLive: Held the beacon that was guiding your escape pod instead of planting it and retreating to a safe distance, resulting in his being crushed to death when the pod landed on him. [[DownplayedTrope Downplayed]] when ADA reveals he had been suffering from a head injury at the time, which was implied to have clouded his judgement.
82	* UndignifiedDeath: Told to plant the guidance beacon in the ground and stand back. He held on to it, and your landing pod promptly squashes him. Worse, the people you can inform of his death are Phineas, who curses him for a idiot for that and ADA, who shows regret that it happened but doesn't want to stay grounded forever and very soon tells you to say you're him and you can take his place.
83	** You can lie to Udom Bedford and tell him Captain Hawthorne was eaten by wild canids, which Udom reveals as having been Hawthorne’s greatest fear, being turned into canid droppings.
84	* WeHardlyKnewYe: Literally dies within a minute of being introduced, and doesn't even get a speaking line. The only time you see him in-game is his body after his head met the bottom of your escape pod.
85	[[/folder]]
86
87	!!Monarch
88
89	[[folder:Corporate Compliance Crew]]
90	A team of mercenaries hired by Hiram Blythe to guard Devil's Peak. They are as bloodthirsty as they are anal retentive, and unlike most other mercenary groups, they follow a "corporate model" which allows their smalll organization to operate at peak efficiency. Unfortunately, their labored attempts at professionalism make them about as LawfulStupid as actual corporate enforcers, and they will adhere to the ExactWords of a contract rather than the spirit of it, such as how they saw nothing wrong with guarding the Devil's Peak Cavern entrance, as that was what they were hired to do, while doing nothing to guard against intruders who take the long way up the mountain through the mantisaur-infested cliffs.
91	----
92	* BloodKnight: They all really enjoy killing things.
93	* ICallItVera: Joy calls her rifle "Sunshine", and treats it like a partner-in-crime.
94	* MauveShirt: Like Jeremy, while they're all named and voiced, they can all be killed during the siege on Devil's Peak due to their reckless tactics.
95	* ObstructiveBureaucrat: They won't even take bribes if there isn't such a penalty fee clause in their ledgers.
96	* ShadowArchetype: To an Unplanned Variable with teammates, as Berthold Fox will storm the interior of Devil's Peak flanked with two companions (Donald Anderson and Addie).
97	[[/folder]]
98
99	[[folder:Hiram Blythe]]
100	->'''Voiced by:''' Keston John
101
102	An information broker living on Monarch. Phineas needs to get in contact with him to locate more dimethyl sulfoxide.
103	----
104	* TheAlcoholic: Mildly, but he is well-stocked with liquor and his supply list for Nyoka is topped by additional cases of purpleberry wine.
105	* DeadpanSnarker: Can even engage in SnarkToSnarkCombat with the Unplanned Variable.
106	* GoneHorriblyWrong: Provided information to [[spoiler:Sanjar and Graham]] to help them establish MSI as the sole corporate power on Terra-1 so that he could get on with his work without being distracted by competing companies. He didn't foresee the two of them splitting up and subsequently distracting him with all their competition over who gets to rule the newly christened "Monarch".
107	* KnowledgeBroker: He makes his living selling information to willing buyers.
108	* NonActionGuy: When Marauders show up at his relay station, he barricades himself in the communications room and waits for rescue.
109	* SelfAppliedNickname: Keeps trying (and failing) to get people to call him "the Broker", but it's a small colony, and anyone who knows who he is at all already knows him as Hiram.
110	* TheStrategist: He was actually the one who came up with the plan for Monarch Stellar Industries to take control of Terra-1.
111	* SweetTooth: Has a fondness for purpleberry in general, [[TheAlcoholic wine and liqueur in particular]].
112	* WeUsedToBeFriends: Used to work for MSI with Sanjar and Graham.
113	[[/folder]]
114
115	[[folder:The Mather Family]]
116
117	A seemingly wholesome family living outside of Stellar Bay. '''Spoilers follow.'''
118	----
119	* AxCrazy: They lock you in, insisting you stay for dinner. When you find the body in the attic, they see the blood on your shoes and attack.
120	* BigOlUnibrow: All of them have big bushy monobrows.
121	* BlatantLies: If you turn around and try to leave, you will discover that the front door is locked. Raising concern about it will have the father apologize because the lock constantly malfunctions and he promised it will be fixed after dinner. Refusing to let the matter go will eventually cause everyone to become hostile.
122	* CannibalClan: A family of happy friendly humans in the wilderness? Must be cannibals.
123	* CannibalLarder: The half-butchered corpse of their former drug dealer Braxton can be in a locked room upstairs.
124	* {{Expy}}: To ''Franchise/TheTexasChainsawMassacre''. Possibly also to ''VideoGame/Fallout3'''s Andale.
125	* FauxAffablyEvil: They are very nice to begin with, but bringing up their many problems causes them to claim the irritability is "spoiling the meat," meaning they wanted to keep the party sedate to make them taste better.
126	* GutFeeling: The moment you speak to one of the Mathers, your squadmates will tell you that something isn't right and that you should get out immediately.
127	* ImAHumanitarian: They're a family of cannibals.
128	* InterfaceSpoiler: In order to prevent the player from merely walking out or fast-travelling to escape their home, walking into their front door requires instancing a new area, like entering a dungeon. This easily tips off the player that they are in danger.
129	* MinorCrimeRevealsMajorPlot: They get caught because their drug dealer started missing his shifts. Subverted as this is because they killed and are in the process of eating him.
130	* ShownTheirWork: Prion diseases are a known risk of eating human organs, in particular the brain. The son's mental degeneration can be seen in a series of poems in which he goes from mildly eloquent to barely being able to spell.
131	* StepfordSuburbia: Their house is one of the nicest on Monarch and they are some of the kindest people. It is actually unsettling.
132	* TheyLookJustLikeEveryoneElse: Subverted as their normality actually makes them abnormal on Monarch.
133	* TooDumbToLive: When the heavily armed Unplanned Variable (and possibly two, also armed companions) come to investigate a missing persons case, they decide the best course of action is to kill them.
134	* WalkingSpoiler: Talking about them in any detail inevitably spoils the fact that they try to kill and eat the party.
135	[[/folder]]

Context Characters / TheOuterWorldsOtherCharacters