Timmy
An eager young visitor at the Midway.- Cheerful Child: Very much so, which results in the trope below.
- Children Are Innocent: He's completely oblivious to just how fucked up the people in the Midway really are.
- Skipping Violin Lessons: Hinted at in one of Timmy's thoughts.Timmy: I don't remember when my next violin lesson is. My mom will kill me if I do it again!
- Lost Pet Grievance: Often thinks about his deceased pets and mentions them to other characters to commiserate with them. Starts to cross over into Black Comedy Pet Death as the list of names gets longer and the causes of death get more gruesome.
- The Un-Favorite: Timmy considers himself this, particularly compared to his offscreen sister Polly Sue.
Dixie
The park owner's wife and current manager of the Midway.- Alcoholic Parent: A benevolent variant; her father was depressed and drunk, but he did love Dixie and treat her well, telling her stories and praising her.
- Blackmail: She is being blackmailed by Otto with a letter written to her by Jocko, stating that he had the intention to kill Ike so that Dixie could only be with him, and implying that Dixie knew of this, while she instead loves Ike and wouldn't think Jocko would do such a thing.
- Blonde, Brunette, Redhead: The blonde to Lottie's redhead and Dagmar's brunette.
- Confusing Multiple Negatives: It may or may not be intentional, but it appears in this exchange with Otto:Otto: D-Dixie! It's Oscar, he's, he's run away! Have you seen my rat anywhere?!
Dixie: I ain't seen no rats, Otto. - Just a Stupid Accent: Curiously enough, her Texan accent.Timmy: Are you from Texas? I always wanted to go to Texas.
Dixie: I ain't from Texas. I just love country an' western music, that's all! - Shout-Out:
- She references Hank Williams' "Hey Good Lookin' " if you cross paths with her. In truth, she slips a whole bunch of lyrics from country songs into her dialogue.Dixie: Hey there good lookin'! Whatcha got cookin'?
- She manages to slip in a reference to the ideators of the game' earliest album Santa Dog with this:Dixie: One Chris'mus, Daddy an' me put a red hat an' a cotton beard on li'l ol' Moochy, an' we called him SANTA DOG!
- She references Hank Williams' "Hey Good Lookin' " if you cross paths with her. In truth, she slips a whole bunch of lyrics from country songs into her dialogue.
- Verbal Tic: She tends to call some people "(insert name) honey".
Ike
The missing owner of the park and Dixie's husband. He can be found in Dixie's room, scarred and comatose from a mysterious incident in the Three-Headed Abominable Snowman exhibit- Child Hater: Downplayed, He's more than happy to cater to children as customers at the Midway and builds his attractions specifically to spread his worldview to the youth of America but he is VERY much against having any children of his own, to the point of faking paralysis to avoid fathering any with Dixie.
- Evil Cripple: He's a maniacal, Nazi-obsessed guy who used a wheelchair even before his accident. It's revealed that he is actually capable of walking, and his use of a wheelchair was simply a ruse.
- The Klan: In a dream he has while he is in a coma, he manages to create a KKK-themed park. Here is this gem in Dixie's ending:Ike: I can see it all now, Dixie. Kiddy Klan Kountry! We'll build it in Idaho! All the kids can put on white hoods and robes as soon as they enter the park, while the first thing they'll see is a huge wheel, with a burning cross in the center! And we'll sell grand dragon dogs and huge imperial wizard burgers at the concession booth, maybe even have cotton glandy stands! It's gonna be great, Dixie!
- Those Wacky Nazis: Dixie mentions he is a known fascist and Nazi sympathizer.
Jackie/Jocko
A shifty-looking handyman who has come to the Midway looking for work. Secretly, he is the Midway's former handyman, coming back in disguise to find a rumored golden treasure hidden somewhere in the park- Asshole Victim: If you play as him and run into Serial Killer Ted, you will be murdered nine times out of ten.
- Clark Kenting: As noted below, he wears a cowboy hat as a disguise, so nobody at the midway will recognize him; Dixie does as soon as he takes it off.
- Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Though not outright villainous, he is the biggest jerk in the game and alludes to murdering people in the past. Despite all his dark qualities, he feels very sentimental about his son. At one point, Jocko ponders that he has a trunk full of photos of his son, and it's the only thing he has that's really meaningful to him.
Dagmar, the Dog Woman
The Midway's resident painted lady and an inveterate dog lover. Dagmar works at a sideshow tent on the midway where she shows off her tattoos and the ribald stories of their origins. She can usually be seen wandering the main street with her Dobermans, advertising her show.
- Canine Companion: Never seen without her Dobermans, Huck and Chuck, either at her side or waiting in the wings.
- Blonde, Brunette, Redhead: The brunette to Dixie's blonde and Lottie's redhead.
- Broken Bird: Her bad history with men turned her into a woman who, according to the game manual's character descriptions, "loves to hate men".
- Fatal Attractor: Nearly every man she had a relationship with had something wrong with him.
- In Love with Love: Despite her history with romance, once she meets The IRS Man she's head over heels and ready to leave the sideshow life behind for marriage and a "vine-covered cottage."
- Pet the Dog: Literally so. She's loved dogs since childhood when her German shepherd saved her from a potential murderer, she owns two Dobermanns whom she loves to bits, and her body is covered in dog tattoos.
- Raven Hair, Ivory Skin: If she wasn't such a lover of body modification, she could easily make a career as a Snow White impersonator instead of a painted lady.
- Really Gets Around: One tattoo = one man she got engaged and subsequently broke up with. Now have a look here
◊. And that's just her legs...
IRS Man
A mysterious agent of the government, hell-bent on auditing the park or having it shut it down for good.
- Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": Has no canon name, he is referred to as "IRS Man" in all official material and as some variation of "taxman" by the other characters.
- Freudian Excuse: His decision to become a taxman came by after someone ran over his childhood dog Betty on their way to file a tax return.
- Obstructive Bureaucrat: Coming by to audit a shady fairground possibly 5 years behind on taxes? Reasonable. Stopping each and every person you encounter on the Midway and demanding their personal tax documents without regard to whether or not they're even employed at the midway? Less reasonable.
- Internalized Categorism: He appears to be mixed race, and in one of his recurrent thoughts he ponders in a circular manner about black and white culture in America, unable to determine which he identifies with.
- Punch-Clock Villain: Loves his job a bit too much, but otherwise isn't that bad of a guy.
- Uptight Loves Wild: Him and Ted are perhaps the stuffiest characters in the game, but he seems to have a soft spot for Dagmar.
- What the Hell Is That Accent?: He sounds like someone with a Gen Am accent doing a particularly southern-flavored General Ripper impression. This is likely deliberate, given the IRS Man's obsession with all things government-related.
- Where da White Women At?: If you take the right steps, he and Dagmar become a couple and leave the Midway together.
Otto
He is the operator of the booth of Oscar The Racing Rat, where he spins a roulette with various holes and drops Oscar inside it, making people bet on the hole he is going to enter. The catch is, though, that he actively rigs the game so that the better may never win.
- Abhorrent Admirer: He considers Oscar his best friend, but Oscar really doesn't like him - he doesn't like humans much at all, after what he lived through before the Midway.
- Awful Wedded Life: He has a wife named Edna who he absolutely despises. Things between them were rocky from the start, and Otto can't remember why he ever thought to marry her in the first place.
- Can't Get Away with Nuthin': His attempts at a criminal career have gone very poorly. Although he hasn't had much trouble with the law, his schemes always seem to fail outright or come back to bite him all on their own. He considers the blackmail letter he found to be the biggest break of his life, after finding Oscar, that is. Too bad Dixie's broke and Ike was just lying about the gold he hid.
- Blackmail: He is blackmailing Dixie with a letter written to her by Jocko, stating that he had the intention to kill Ike so that Dixie could only be with him, and implying that Dixie knew of this, while she instead loves Ike and wouldn't think Jocko would do such a thing.
- Born Unlucky: He never seemed to have much luck in his life.
- Jerkass: His Racing Rat booth is tricked so that no one's bet will ever win, and he is generally very rude towards the others.
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Jerkass Woobie: He was always teased back when he was little, and never seemed to catch a break.
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- Plot-Triggering Death: Otto is always the first to die of the Red Rat Plague As such, he and Lottie are the only ones who have no unique ending sequence.
- Sexual Extortion: Attempts this when Dixie protests that she doesn't have enough money to settle his blackmail demands.
- Speech Impediment: Has a moderate stutter, which has caused him no small amount of grief in in school and even into his adult life.
Oscar, the Racing Rat
- Abhorrent Admirer: Otto considers him his best friend, but Oscar really doesn't like him - he doesn't like humans much at all, after what he lived through before the Midway.
- Amazing Technicolor Wildlife: He has a completely red-furred head. Ike mistook him for a red star the first time he saw him.
- Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: It's left ambiguous what the Red Rat Plague actually is, but's implied that it was either a novel virus from the lab lying dormant in Oscar's body, or a Mystical Plague that manifested from Oscar's sheer hatred for humanity.
Lottie, the Human Log
A performer in the Midway's freak show, and Ted's mother. She is billed as "The Human Log," on account of her rare skin disease that makes her skin look and feel like tree bark. She wears a costume covered in branches and leaves, and has two prosthetic legs made of rough, unfinished wood.She lost her legs in an car accident when she was 10, and lived with her grandmother in the woods after being left orphaned by the crash. When her grandmother died, she married a lumberjack called Tommy and together they had Ted. That's when she developed her signature tree bark skin, and later still, Tommy died from a tree that fell on him. Lottie had to leave the woods with Ted and sustained herself and him by working as a freak in the freak show at the Midway.
- Alcoholic Parent: Her mother. She started drinking due to her husband's disappearance.
- All the Other Reindeer: A panel in her story's comic shows that people mocked her for her wooden skin as she went for groceries.
- An Arm and a Leg: Two legs. She was 10 when she was riding a car with her drunken mother, when they hit a sign pole. Her mother died, while she lost her legs.
- Blonde, Brunette, Redhead: The redhead to Dixie's blonde and Dagmar's brunette.
- Adaptation Dye-Job: ...or at least, that is what the 3d character models show. In the comic sequences that go along with her life story song she is blonde, and even explicitly stated that she dyed herself blonde when she was 14. Some of the comic sequences even show her with pink hair, though maybe it's meant to be very bright red.
- Disappeared Dad: This is what caused her mother to become drunk.
- Doomed by Canon: She is that only character that the player can't control which unfortunately means that she can't be saved from the Red Rat Plague
- Friendless Background: She didn't make any friends in her childhood, as she lived alone with her grandma and their dog Scrappy in the middle of the woods after being orphaned.Lottie: I was an orphan with no place to stay / 'til my granny came along and took me away / to live with her way back in the woods / where they weren't any kids or neighborhoods!
- Lyrical Dissonance: The song she sings as she tells you her tragic story involves a fairly upbeat harmonica-assisted tune. It sort of fits her characterization because she's depicted as being cheerful despite her backstory, and seems happy with her current life as a freak show performer.
Ted
Lottie's son, a sickly-looking insomniac often seen wandering around the Midway. He is a serial killer that can potentially be behind many a character death should you run into him. He takes the dismembered parts of his victims and rearranges them to resemble butterflies.
- Abusive Parents: The first memory he recalls from his childhood is his really tall father, and being slapped by him on the head. Further allusion to this is how he said he hated him right after. Lottie, though, doesn't seem to mention this anywhere.
- Bald of Evil: Ted's hairline has surely seen better days, and he sports a rather extreme comb-over.
- Beauty Equals Goodness: A particularly dark deconstruction of someone who believes in this trope. He says himself that he believes things of beauty should never be killed, and that ugly things should be "liberated" by being killed or eliminated. Curiously, Ted also takes inner beauty into account, as evidenced by him finding his mother "truly beautiful" and the things he says to his victims.Ted: But I abhorr ugliness, and You. Are. Ugly. Ugly in the feelings found in your soul. Ugly in the thoughts that make up your mind. Ugly in the aches found in your heart.
- Butterfly Of Deathand Rebirth: Ted has a butterfly collection of a sort. He's made them out of the bones, flesh, and personal possessions of his victims. A fitting memento of his "ugly liberations," since he considers death to be a kind of rebirth for the "ugly."
- Caught Monologuing: Maybe if he spent a little less time talking about his philosophies he might have survived the wrath of Oscar during his fight with Jocko
- Creepy Child: This guy killed small animals as a child, and as he grew up, he moved on to people.
- Driven to Suicide: If he and Timmy are the only characters left alive by the end.
- Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas: Ted truly loves Lottie, most of his thought sequences about her imply that she's his primary reason for living. Under certain circumstances, he can be seen carrying Lottie around when she gets tired.
- Serial Killer: Ted will immobilize and kill adult characters if he catches them in isolated areas. He is implied to have been doing this during his mother's freak show circuits for quite some time, making some lovely butterflies to commemorate his trips.
- Wouldn't Hurt a Child: If he and Timmy are the only characters left behind by the end of the game, there isn't anyone left for him to kill. He can't bring himself to kill an innocent child like Timmy, and he hangs himself after realizing how ugly and hypocritical he is.
