Characters / Die Anstalt

Be warned that since spoiler-tagging trope names is forbidden, many spoilers will be unmarked. You Have Been Warned.

Patients

Kroko

Genus: plush crocodile

Disorder: Paranoid Psychosis, Aquaphobia

Kroko is a crocodile with a primarily dark green and pink color scheme. His most notable feature is the small pocket on his chest. When you first try to work with him, he is skittish and excessively fearful, but as time passes a braver side of him emerges.

Tropes:

• Animal Stereotypes: Subverted in this instance. Kroko is definitely gentle, but his 20cm-stature means he is no giant.
• Literal-Minded: "The patient's infra-logical-predicative thinking hinders him to decipher metaphors." Ergo, when the motivation tape tells him that he is "not a sparrow, but an eagle" and should begin to fly, he actually believes he's an eagle and starts flapping his arms.
• Security Blanket: Let him get rid of it in his own time.
• The Speechless
• Sweet Tooth: He doesn't eat candy, he can't, but he is often placated by a pink-wrapped sweetie during desensitization.
• Wannabe Secret Agent: A milder variation; it's part of the paranoia that grips him in the beginning. It's mostly enforced in his accompanying purchase letter, but you can also see him give himself away as one if you Therapeutically Interview him in stage 2. Come to think of it, Kroko has quite a few identity crises...

Lilo

Genus: plush hippopotamus

Disorder: Autism, Bulimia Nervosa

Lilo is a hippo with exactly two colours on him: purple and red (although his real-life plush version replaces the purple with blue.) He is completely mute, possibly due to the zip on his mouth being zipped shut. He spends the majority of his time trying to solve a two piece jigsaw puzzle, without success.

Tropes:

• Animal Stereotypes: Subverted. While appearing to be a Fat Idiot on the surface, further time spent with him reveals a much cleverer mind within.
• Cute Mute
• Hollywood Autism: Zigzagged. Lilo's symptoms of autism are not merely limited to the silence and the idiosyncratic obsessions, but getting rid of those two symptoms still seems to count as Throwing Off the Disability.
• The Unintelligible: Once treated, he becomes capable of calling his owner. Although you don't hear anything, you can see the owner's responses in a speech bubble, making it clear he is speaking in-universe.
• The Voiceless: Starts off with selective mutism, which is one of the issues you must treat.

Dolly

Genus: plush sheep/wolf

Disorder: "Multiple Personality" or Dissociative Identity Disorder, Anxiety Disorder related to dogs

Dolly is a creamish-amberish sheep with a zip very similar to Lilo's running up her stomach. She doesn't have much in the way of emotional control, especially considering her oscillation between two different mindsets: that of the alpha female and that of the meek herd-follower. Inside her stomach is another form, a brown-coloured wolf with glaring yellow eyes and part of the source of her disorders.

Tropes:

• Animal Stereotypes: Simultaneously played straight and averted. Dolly tends to fit the standard stereotype of the sheep for the most part... except at certain times where her anger or her other self takes over, where she fits more the stereotypes of another kind of animal altogether...
• Delusions of Doghood: At first.
• Noble Wolf: The wolf turns out to be fairly friendly and helpful to the player and Dolly.
• Enemy Within: Getting Dolly to realize this isn't actually the case is what cures her.
• The Speechless
• Split Personality: Between her normal sheep self and the wolf.
• Split-Personality Merge: Occurs at the end when Dolly becomes more accepting of her other half. Doubles up with a literal Flip Personality!
• Trauma Button: Dog bones provide this to her since the wolf likes them.
• Violent Glaswegian: While she doesn't actually have the accent, an e-card strongly implies she comes from Scotland, and she has anger management problems.
• A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing: Literally. Inside her zipper is a plush wolf, which is the cause of her issues.

Sly

Genus: plush rattlesnake

Disorder: Delirium, Complexes (symptoms are actually the result of an accidental overdose of ecstasy pills)

Sly is a snake of a variety of colours all the way from the top of his body to the tip of his five-ring tail. He tends to be easily distracted at first, not focusing on much of anything, but as the player all you have to do is shift his focus to what is important and he fixates on it.

Tropes:

• Animal Stereotypes: Averted. Are you seeing a pattern here? Of course, we have very little way of knowing what Sly's real personality behind the drug addiction is, other than through guesswork.
• Cloud Cuckoo Lander: Compared to the other patients, Sly is really out of touch with reality, and it's difficult to hold his attention for more than ten seconds. Not actually his fault, as being on that many drugs would throw anyone for a loop.
• Contemplating Your Hands: More like Contemplating your Tail, but the effect is the same.
• Likes Older Women: He keeps trying to kiss the sockpuppet therapist.
• Mushroom Samba: Beyond his rattle not working, Sly doesn't actually have deep-seated psychological issues like the other patients. His odd behavior arises from having been dosed with his owners' entire drug stash after getting his tail crushed by a car, and he's cured once the crushed drugs are removed from his tail.
• Oral Fixation: In both directions, actually! He uses his tongue to taste-test various things, particularly the sockpuppet therapist, and he enjoys it when she uses her mouth to feel his tail in turn...
• Smuggling with Dolls: He is revealed to have drugs stuffed in his tail by smugglers, which is giving him delirium.
• The Voiceless: Though he does make slithering noises.

Dub

Genus: plush turtle

Disorder: Compulsive Exercise, Burn-Out Syndrome which degrades into severe Depression later on

Dub is a turtle with a reversible shell on his back; orange and white on one side, green on the other. He fixates on exercise and sticking to a strict training schedule to the detriment of all else, and has a bit of an achievement complex that persists even as you push him into a catatonic depression...

Tropes:

• Animal Stereotypes: Played conventionally straight for once. Dub attempts to defy it at first in his general demeanor and speed obsession, but succumbs to the full stereotype by force later on.
• Determinator: At first, but it's actually not portrayed as a positive trait in Dub's case. He's determined to get faster and stronger, but he constantly exercises while excluding all other activities.
• High Hopes, Zero Talent: Downplayed and deconstructed. While Dub does have some athletic prowess, and may have had even more in the past, it's clear from talking to him that he perceives himself as having much more strength and stamina than he actually has. When he fully realizes the contrary in a dream, it breaks him.
• Non-Specifically Foreign: Based on his backstory, whether Dub is actually from the same country as the other toys or from another country all together is a subject of minor debate. The conflict between what is said in the help guide (that Dub has an owner still) and what the root of his disorder turns out to be (that Dub was abandoned by his owner in an airport) doesn't help.
• Parental Abandonment: Unintentionally. His issues come from accidentally being dropped and lost at an airport by his owner.
• Removable Shell: He steps out of it after a while and in fact the sand inside it forces him to confront the reality of what happened to him. Unusually he's also able to turn this shell inside out and does so when cured, signifying his moving on.

Staff and Humans

Dr. Wood

Genus: plush raven

Disorder: Megalomania, Narcissistic Personality Disorder

Dr. Wood is simultaneously a plush toy raven and a prestigious member of staff at the clinic, having been the Head of Psychiatry since October 2011. At first the player tries to connect with him on strictly a professional level, but further investigation into his psyche reveals something a lot more sinister.

Tropes:

• Animal Stereotypes: Played horrifyingly straight.
• The Cobbler's Children Have No Shoes: Used for drama. Dr. Wood sits down for a session with the player as their professional superior ostensibly just to observe and critique their methods. It's soon revealed that he has rather severe psychological issues underneath the surface, starting with him willing to use shock therapy on you unprovoked, and ending with him having a breakdown and starting a cult devoted towards his ability to cure his followers of their ills.
• A God Am I: When he undergoes a complete crackup about midway though his therapy and starts a cult to himself as a god of healing. He snaps out of it if you keep up the good work.
• Inferiority Superiority Complex: At first glance of his dream, the help guide presumes that Dr Wood is hiding a strong insecurity in his own methods. This trope later becomes inverted, as you learn this could not be further from the truth.
• In the Hood: The hood helps hide his eyes from view of the player, but leaves the tip of his beak exposed. When he takes the hood off to reveal said eyes for the first time, the player knows that something is very very wrong.
• Killer Rabbit: Look at how adorable and small he is. If you get on his bad side or think about his case too hard, Dr Wood can be freaking dangerous. He's an especially dab hand (wing) with the pharmaceutical needle...
• Lack of Empathy: He really doesn't get that the patients might not be particular fans of his methods. Or being incorporated into a cult for treatment.
• Morally Ambiguous Doctorate: He's the head of the clinic's psychiatry wing and is a fully-licensed doctor, but veers into very dubious territory rather quickly.
• Not-So-Phony Psychic: Potentially, since it's not made clear if his reality-altering visions are clear or not.
• Parental Neglect: His issues stem from being kept in a case and not being played with.
• Phony Psychic: Potentially, since it's not made clear if his reality-altering visions are clear or not.
• The Speechless

The Sockpuppet

In order to conduct Therapeutic Interviews, the player character will put a sockpuppet therapist on their hand. For the purposes of this Character Sheet, she will be considered a separate entity from the player themselves, a fact that may be reinforced within game.

Tropes:

• Blind Without 'Em
• Dark and Troubled Past: Implied when Dr Wood goes into her dreams. What were those scissors going to do to her?
• Living Toy: Depending on the patient. Most of the patients see her as a toy on their level, but Kroko manages to expose the human hand underneath, Sly is implied to have figured the same thing out himself post-curing, and Dr Wood makes the reverse journey by seeing her as just a puppet at first, but accepting her (and himself) as a stuffed toy in his endgame.
• The Unintelligible

Nurse

Assistant to the player character, the one who untangles the patients from various predicaments, prepares them for electroshock therapy, and puts them in boxes when you wish to buy them.

Tropes:

• Ambiguously Brown

Dr. Kindermann

The founder and owner of the psychiatric clinic. When you start up the game, he has gone to Japan for an extended research project, leaving you to take his place as head therapist.

Tropes:

• The Ghost: You never encounter him in person during your playthrough, with your only interaction being his detailed notes and observations on your patients.
• Out-of-Character Moment: He has several documents that the player can read that detail the symptoms of the patients. However, his report for Dr. Wood is nothing but Dr. Kinderman gushing about how brilliant he is, and telling the player to support Dr. Wood completely. The signature at the bottom of the page is clearly forged...