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Al Roberts
- Dead Person Impersonation: He hitches a ride with a man who dies soon afterward. He takes the dead man's car and identity. Of course, this being film noir, he soon encounters a dodgy dame and things go from bad to worse.
- Hostile Hitchhiker: Al is one to Haskell. It's possible that he is responsible for Haskell's death, and certain that he stole the man's identity after he was dead.
- Implied Trope: Unreliable Narrator, as noted below. Al goes to great pains to explain how Haskell died of natural causes and how that injury on his head was caused by his body falling out of the car and definitely not Al hitting him, and how Al couldn't possibly just sit and wait for the cops because of course they'd think he did it even though he totally didn't. And then his even more fanciful tale of how Vera got strangled to death when she passed out with the cord wrapped around her throat and Al just happened to yank on the cord from the other side of a shut door in order to stop her calling the cops...while the camera focuses tightly on his hands which are framed in the manner of someone committing murder by ligature strangulation. Oh, and Vera was dying of some disease making her cough — and some people find this evidence of Al lying, since he'd brought up Camille (1936), who died of a bronchial disease, consumption — and it's too much of a coincidence to ignore; and hey, Vera was dying anyway — you can't murder a dying woman, can you?
- Loser Protagonist: Well. considering he keeps landing into trouble and various deaths of close ones keep happening around him and he's nearly always on the run and at risk of potential arrest... we'd say he fits this trope.
- Second-Person Narration: Throughout, Al's narration addresses the audience as "you", as Al pleads with us to believe that he isn't a murderer and he didn't mean to do anything wrong and he only stole that dead guy's money and car because he had to...
- Unreliable Narrator: It's implied that the main character Al Roberts is coloring events to make himself look sympathetic, and to make Vera seem more like a vicious Femme Fatale. He probably did commit the crimes in the film purposefully—his tale of Vera's death is particularly unlikely—but the story is altered by Never My Fault."How many of you would believe it wasn't premeditated?"
- You Can't Fight Fate: Al comments more than once about how fate has victimized him. "Yes. Fate, or some mysterious force, can put the finger on you or me for no good reason at all." However, it comes across as Never My Fault.
Charles Haskell Jr.
- Every Scar Has a Story: Haskell has two scars, and the stories behind them both become important plot points:
- He got one of them recently, from being scratched by a hitchhiking woman. That woman is Vera. Roberts also picks her up later (all three of them were heading in the same direction on the same road, after all). Because she knows what Haskell looks like, she figures out that Roberts killed him and stole his identity.
- The other he got when he was duelling as a kid. Because his father saw that he had been cut, Roberts cannot pretend to be Haskell to get the dying father's money as he doesn't have a matching scar.
Sue Harvey
- The Chanteuse: Her decision to go to Hollywood to pursue a movie career is the trigger for tragedy.
Vera
- Blackmail: She quickly discovers Al's impersonating Haskell and threatens to report him to the police useless he does favors for her.
- Femme Fatale: Vera sees through Roberts' ruse and blackmails him. She insists that they should milk the situation for all they can, instead of trying to distance themselves from it.
- Hostile Hitchhiker: Vera is one to Al after she figures out he isn't who he seems and tries to blackmail him over it.
- Incurable Cough of Death: Implied. Vera has a nasty cough, and says of the prospect of being hanged: "I'm on my way now. All they'd be doing would be rushing it." Again, Unreliable Narrator at work here, making it seem like if Vera was murdered, it would be pointless.
- Jerkass Has a Point: Vera sees through Al's nonsense very quickly. She even says, "I don't like your attitude, all you do is bellyache."
- Lady Drunk: Vera spends most of the time in their shabby little room drunk.
- Sexy Sweater Girl: The Femme Fatale Vera wears some tight sweaters.
