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The Children
Allen Llewellyn
The protagonist, an amnesiac boy adopted by Teacher. He is the sixth and last child to be taken under Teacher's care.
- Adorably Precocious Child: Allen is a very intelligent boy capable of understanding words above his age group and solving the many puzzles and riddles the World presents him with. Despite this, he seems to be naive in other ways.
- Alice Allusion: Allen is basically a Gender Flip of Alice from Alice in Wonderland.
- Amnesiac Hero: Virtue of Trauma-Induced Amnesia, he does not remember why he was adopted by Teacher. He doesn’t eventually regain his memories.
- Cute Bookworm: He really loves to read. When he buys a book based on a favorite TV series of his, he impulsively buys a bunch of other books as well.
- Dark and Troubled Past: It is revealed that his parents were shot to death by a burglar while he was outside.
- Deal with the Devil: Makes one with the Cheshire Cat to give his body and soul over in return for saving the kids and Teacher.
- Expy: Very similar in appearance to Oz Vessalius, protagonist of PandoraHearts, another media based on Alice in Wonderland.
- Heroic Mime: The only time he ever speaks in the game is in Teacher's two endings. Though averted in the light novel, where he speaks with more regularity.
- Heroic Sacrifice: In the Chesire Cat ending, Allen agrees to let the Cheshire Cat take his soul in exchange for saving everybody else. However, after merging with him, the Cat decides he's going to kill the others anyway. He does it again in the novel in order to save Teacher from the dream.
- Pretty Boy: Stella notes that Allen has a pretty face.
- Suddenly Voiced: He talks a lot more in the novel.
- Trauma-Induced Amnesia: After his parents were shot by a burglar, he wiped out the memory.
Letty and Rick Amery
Letty
Rick
- Letty: "Okay, let's play! It's my first time playing with someone else in a Dream!"Rick: "Letty's sleeping right now. When I'm here, she's always sleeping."
A pair of twins adopted by Teacher after the fire that killed their family. In truth, however, Rick is Letty's other personality, created to cope with their abusive home life.
- Big Brother Instinct: Rick shows himself to be very protective of Letty, willing to bear all the terrible things she cannot.
- Dark and Troubled Past: They grew up poor in a house in the woods, often not getting enough to eat. They never met their real mother, as she died from an illness. Eventually, their Wicked Stepmother kicked them out of the house and told them to never come back.
- The Dog Bites Back: After being severely abused and abandoned in the woods, they eventually found their way home, where Rick in Letty’s body pushed their step-mother into the fireplace and set the whole house on fire with their father still in it.
- Fairytale Motifs: Their character is a parallel to Hansel and Gretel.
- Genki Girl: Letty is described by Allen as energetic.Letty was a very energetic girl. So, so energetic that she often pushed you around.
- Motor Mouth: Letty tends to go on and on. Lampshaded In the novel, where she is described as having given a "rapid-fire speech" at one point.
- Parental Abandonment: Their parents eventually left the house and left them there.
- Sibling Yin-Yang: Whereas Letty is a Genki Girl, Rick is much calmer.
- Split Personality: Rick is this for Letty - he was created to cope with their stepmother’s abuse. It's implied that whenever Letty goes to "sleep", Rick switches in and vice versa, so they're using the same body but wearing different clothes provided by Teacher.
- Sweet Tooth: Letty seems to have one, as she at one point mentions wishing her house were made of sweets, and her journal mentions wondering if flowers taste sweet, or wishing it was raining candy.
- Tomato in the Mirror: Rick doesn't exist, he's a Split Personality created by Letty to cope with the abuse they faced.
- Wholesome Crossdresser: Since they actually share a body, when Rick takes over, Letty’s female body is dressed in male clothes.
Chelsy Leavis
- "The color red... This color's... scary."
A shy, teddy-bear-loving girl adopted by Teacher.
- Animal Lover: In her dream, she spends time making a medicine for a sick mouse.
- Blood-Splattered Innocents: In both real life and towards the end of her Alice Dream, she gets covered in the blood from the robber/wolf who was split apart with an axe.
- Crime of Self-Defense: When the 'nice man' came after her after murdering her grandmother, Chelsy wound up killing him in self-defense. Allen can decide she deserves to die for this. This is subverted as of version 1.05. It's revealed in the extra segment that it was her father that killed the 'nice man,' not her. He was so violent about it that he still hacked the guy in two with an axe, traumatizing her. She still blames herself because if she hadn't brought the 'nice man' to Grandmother's, her father wouldn't have blood on his hands.
- Dark and Troubled Past: Her father was often absent, while her mother was old and frail. One day, she went to visit her grandma, and met a nice man along the way who accompanied her, only for the man to kill her grandma and turn out to be a burglar looking to steal her grandma’s rare medicines. Chelsy then witnessed her father slice the burglar in half with an axe. Ever since then, she gained massive trust issues.
- Fairytale Motifs: She parallels Little Red Riding Hood.
- Girls Love Stuffed Animals: Her room has several teddy bears lying around. Allen quotes the trope almost by name (likes instead of loves) in reference to her.
- Shrinking Violet: She tends to be rather shy. In the novel, her very first scene has her hiding from the newly arrived Allen behind Stella.
Joshua Bartlett
- "...Allen, those are underpants. Don't put those on your head."
A loud-mouthed, troublemaking boy adopted by Teacher.
- Crying Wolf: Why he has not believed about his father’s suicide. would often tell all sorts of lies to get his mother's attention, but she eventually stopped paying attention. Having repeatedly told her that his father "had gone cold during the night", she didn't believe him when it really did happen until his siblings discovered it themselves. His ending is even called “Crying Wolf”.
- Dark and Troubled Past: He was The Unfavorite of his family, and hated their strictness and stuffiness. Eventually, he witnessed his father’s corpse hanging from suicide, and later his mother’s.
- Driven to Suicide: His father committed suicide after their family fell into financial ruin, and the Cheshire Cat implies that his mother hanged herself as well.
- Fairytale Motifs: Parallels The Boy Who Cried Wolf.
- Never Bareheaded: He wears one. In fact, it was the first present he ever got, which is why he treasures it so much and always wears it.
- The Prankster: He loves to take frogs and bugs, then place them on the shoulders of Teacher and the other kids.
- Smarter Than You Look: At first glance, he looks and acts like a typical Dumbass Teenage Son, but the novel reveals that he loves to study and always scored perfectly on tests.
- The Unfavorite: Joshua felt he didn't get as much attention as his brother and sister, and became a prankster and liar because that was the only way that seemed to work.
Stella Northrop
- "Living humans all get dirty."
A strange, aloof girl adopted by Teacher. She is the only survivor of a 'curse' that wiped out her entire town, leaving her with an unsettling obsession with death.
- Aloof Dark-Haired Girl: Has black hair and is so indifferent to anything that she rarely speaks.
- Brutal Honesty: She is rather blunt to the point of being harsh.
- Dark and Troubled Past: Lost her family and entire town to Nightmare Syndrome, which plagued her with a Survivor's Guilt and obsession with death.
- Death Seeker: Her Survivor's Guilt has left her wanting to rejoin her family.
- Driven to Suicide: Unlike the other kids, she “kills” herself by eating a poisoned apple.
- Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette: She is brunette and is rather mysterious, not very talkative, and has a disturbing obsession with death.
- Fairytale Motifs: Parallels Snow White.
- Four Is Death: She’s the fourth child to be taken in by Teacher, who is familiar and almost obsessive with the concept of death.
- Nightmare Fetishist: She has a rather unsettling obsession with death, to the point that her Mental World is a big graveyard. Ironically, she is simultaneously afraid of insects and the dark.
- Survivor's Guilt: As the only living person in her town when it got overtaken by Nightmare Syndrome, she wishes to join her family in the afterlife.
The Adults
Teacher
David Massey
- "There there, there there, there, there... It's okay."
The man who adopted the kids into his home. He is, in truth, a researcher who is using the kids to study Nightmare Syndrome.
- Angsty Surviving Twin: When he was young, he and his twin sister Fiona were trapped in the other world. His sister killed herself so he could escape. He still blames himself for this.
- Big Good: He tries his best to look out for the children, even going so far as to make a Deal with the Devil.
- Coat Cape: He wears a long dark hooded coat thrown over his shoulders.
- Ditzy Genius: Despite being highly intelligent, he's evidently a bit airheaded constantly becoming the focus of Joshua's mischief and while cautioning Stella and Allen to be careful not to trip on the holes in the ground, the former states that Teacher is more likely to trip over the holes than either of them.
- Empty Eyes: Stella compares his eyes to a pitch black painting, and her remarks about him being "devoid of life" gives us the impression that they are pretty lifeless.
- Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": His real name is David, but the kids call him Teacher. Justified Trope as, at one point, he says that he hates his real name.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Stabs himself with the final key to allow the children to return to the real world. Subverted, as the novel reveals he survived, but he's trapped in the other world.
- Hero of Another Story: Teacher had been trapped in the Dream once before.
- His Quirk Lives On: His way of comforting someone is taken from his fallen sister.
- It's All My Fault:
- He blames himself for Fiona sacrificing herself in the past to save him from the other world.
- He does it again at the end of the novel when he finds out that Allen sacrificed himself to release him from the dream.
- Long-Haired Pretty Boy: His unkempt long black hair is tied in a ponytail with a red ribbon.
- The Man Behind the Man: Subverted. Though it turns out he was the one who told the Cheshire Cat to steal the World Keys, he was doing it to protect the kids, and the Cat is the one in control.
- Meaningful Name: His real name. It's David, which a cutscene mentions means 'Beloved' or "Recipient of Love". Teacher felt that in spite of giving love to everyone he knew, no-one loved him in return.
- "Not So Different" Remark: Stella has stated that Teacher seems just as devoid of life as Allen does.
- Sibling Yin-Yang: He is much more calm and collected than the fierce and hotheaded Fiona.
- Stepford Smiler: Almost unconditionally kind as he is, Teacher has a kind of deep inner melancholy derived from his inability to perceive the love he receives from others, even while he tried his utmost to love. Being a survivor through his sister’s Heroic Suicide also didn’t do well to his mental and emotional stability.
- Tall, Dark, and Handsome: This man is definitely a Hot Teacher with his tall figure (at least from the children’s view) and dark hair and eye coloration.
- Walking Spoiler: His true motivations and the reveal that he is working with the Cheshire Cat (albeit reluctantly) are major twists.
Cliff
Cliff Stowers
Teacher/David's best friend. He works as a doctor in the town nearby where the Care Facility is located and helps Teacher search for possible candidates for the Nightmare Syndrome.
- Brainy Brunette
- Innocently Insensitive: He submitted Teacher’s novel in a likely attempt to help his friend but without his consent, and they got into a little fight since Teacher disliked his name being made public.
- Reasonable Authority Figure: He is shown to care about the children as much as Teacher does, and when Allen calls him about everything that happened, he is willing to adopt him, as well as Letty, Joshua and Stella.
Fiona
Teacher/David's twin sister who fell to Nightmare Syndrome and sacrificed herself to save him.
- Cute Bookworm: She says that she loves the smell of books at one point.
- Heroic Suicide: She chose to kill herself rather than sacrifice David's life in order to escape the Dream.
- Sibling Yin-Yang: She is much more fierce and hotheaded than the calm and collected David.
Dream World Denizens
The Cheshire Cat
- "Good job getting here. Told you not to, didn't I?"
The demon who traps everyone in the Dream Worlds. Quirky yet sadistic, he takes great pleasure in tormenting the children and wants their souls to eat.
- Adaptational Villainy: The original Cheshire Cat was a prime example of Dark Is Not Evil, and a Jerkass at worst. This Cheshire Cat is a demon who torture children to eat their souls.
- Alice Allusion: Obviously, his character is based off the original Cheshire Cat, although he is significantly more malevolent than his inspiration. He also tends to call everyone 'Alice'.
- The Bad Guy Wins: In a sense- no matter what ending you get, he still claims a soul. The novel also ends with him claiming Allen's body and soul, and implies that he is going after Teacher and the other kids.
- Big Bad Duumvirate: He and the White Rabbit are the ones who trapped the kids and Teacher in the Dream Worlds, and he steals the Keys needed to escape so he can eat their souls.
- Body Horror: In his ending, we see him without his hood, and he reveals that he uses parts of the bodies of the children he ate to replace the parts he lost.
- Cats Are Mean: He is a child-eating demon who takes the form of a cat.
- Cheshire Cat Grin: Naturally, given that he is the Cheshire Cat, he wears one almost perpetually, and is always coming up with ways to Troll Allen and the other kids. Also a Slasher Smile, given that his trolling often involves psychological torture.
- Dark Is Evil: An evil black cat.
- Deal with the Devil: Made one with Teacher, and Allen can offer his soul to him in exchange for freeing his friends. Unfortunately, the Cat goes back on this.
- Dragon-in-Chief: He claims to have stolen the keys under someone's orders, implying that he is merely The Dragon. That person turns out to be Teacher, but their conversations in the novel make it clear that the Cat is really in charge.
- Evil Laugh: "Mweeheehee!" The novel ends with it, signifying his victory.
- Evil Tastes Good: He states that he finds the souls of humans, particularly children, to be the most delicious, especially when covered in despair.
- The Heavy: He works with Teacher and is in a Big Bad Duumvirate with the White Rabbit, but he is much more direct and physical in his villainy, while the other two stay in the sidelines.
- Humans Are Insects: He thinks of humans as little more than a food source and makes a comparison between the human slaughtering of cattle and his harvesting of human souls.
- Karma Houdini: By the end, he is still free to continue feeding on innocent children.
- Malicious Misnaming: Calls almost everyone 'Alice', regardless of their real name. He later claims this is because, as a demon, he feels that humans are mere ants to him; and humans don't go naming every ant they meet.
- Obviously Evil: Between his hood, his black fur, and his unsettling Slasher Smile, he does not look like a good guy.
- Pitiful Worms: He outright compares humans to ants at one point.
- Sadist: He loves tormenting people, especially children, and takes pleasure in breaking down Teacher and his kids through their nightmares.
- Slasher Smile: He sports a smile that is somewhere between this and a Cheshire Cat Grin.
- Soul Eating: As a demon, he eats the souls of children.
- Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: Even though he and the Rabbit are both demons who are working together, they genuinely do not seem to like each other, as they frequently insult each other and have even gotten into a physical altercation prior to the story.
- Would Hurt a Child: Eats the souls of children, and uses their remains to patch up his body. He specifically preys on the souls of children because they are the easiest to be influenced.
The White Rabbit
- "Time and events are predecided, and I just live in that flow."
A denizen of the Dream World. Unlike the Cheshire Cat, he seems to be more friendly. However, he is revealed to be a demon himself.
- Adaptational Villainy: In the original story, the White Rabbit is pompous and a sycophant, but overall harmless. This White Rabbit is outwardly friendly but a child-eating demon.
- Alice Allusion: Like the Cheshire Cat, he is based off a character from the story. Also like the Cat, he is a more evil character here.
- The Bad Guy Wins: In a sense- no matter what ending you get, he still claims a soul.
- Big Bad Duumvirate: He is cooperating with the Cheshire Cat to trap the kids in the dream worlds and trick Allen into opening their hearts so they can eat their souls.
- Big Good: Acts as Allen's guide through the dream world. Subverted when he is revealed as another demon who has been deceiving Allen into making his friends into tasty meals.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: He seems to be a nicer guy than the Obviously Evil Cheshire Cat, but he is also an evil demon - just more polite about it.
- Evil All Along: He seems to be the Big Good, but is also a demon.
- Faux Affably Evil: In contrast to the rude and outwardly evil Cat, he speaks in a much more polite manner. However, the novel indicates that his politeness is skin-deep.
- Karma Houdini: By the end, he is still free to continue feeding on innocent children.
- Light Is Not Good: He is all white, but is a demon like the Cat.
- Manipulative Bastard: He tricks Allen into going into the dream worlds and opening the hearts of the other children to make their souls vulnerable.
- Non-Action Big Bad: Unlike the Cheshire Cat, he is more of a backstage manipulator, letting the Cat and Allen do all the work.
- Soul Eating: As a demon, he eats the souls of children.
- Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: Even though he and the Cat are both demons who are working together, they genuinely do not seem to like each other, as they frequently insult each other and have even gotten into a physical altercation prior to the story.
- Treacherous Advisor: He portrays himself as a benevolent guide to Allen, but is actually using him to devour the kids' souls.
- Walking Spoiler: His identity as a demon is a major twist, yet most of his tropes revolve around that.
- White Hair, Black Heart: He has white hair and turns out to be a Soul Eating demon.
- Would Hurt a Child: Presumably, since he too is a demon, he also eats the souls of children.
The Witch
An entity within the Amery twins' dream world, and the representation of their abusive stepmom.
- Kill It with Fire: Allen kills her by shoving her into the fireplace.
- Wicked Stepmother: Though initially kind, she eventually began abusing Letty/Rick, eventually exiling them from their house.
- Wicked Witch: In the dream world, she appears as the witch from Hansel and Gretel.
The Wolf
An entity within Chelsy's dream world, and the representation of a nice man she befriended who was actually a burglar.
- The Big Bad Wolf: In the Dream World, he appears as this.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: He acted friendly to Chelsy and told her that he was just looking for her grandma, but he was really a burglar looking to steal her rare medicine.
- Half the Man He Used to Be: He was sliced in half by an axe.
- Would Harm a Senior: He murders Chelsy's grandma after putting her medicine in his bag.
- Would Hurt a Child: He was just about to kill Chelsy when her father saved her.
