Characters / Get Out (2017)

Characters in the horror movie Get Out (2017). Spoilers will be unmarked. Read at your own risk.

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Protagonists

Chris

Chris Washington

"Why can't I move?"

Portrayed By: Daniel Kaluuya

A black photographer and the main protagonist of the movie.

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• Action Survivor: Chris is just your everyday regular dude, but is eventually forced to perform feats of badassery in order to escape the Armitages.
• Audience Surrogate: Word of God confirms that Chris is supposed to act like a normal person to connect with the audience, especially black horror fans.
• Beware the Nice Ones: The guy tries like a champ to put up with the weirdness and casual racism of the Armitages and their creepy friends. But once he knows what they have in store for him? All bets are off.
• Combat Pragmatist: This is very apparent during Chris's final escape from the Armitage household, utilizing improvised weaponry, sneak tactics, misdirection, and an unsettling lack of mercy (save for his last encounter with Rose).
• Commonality Connection: He attempts to invoke this with the other black characters at the Armitage estate, but they're all victims of body snatching and mind control, leaving Chris feeling awkward and creeped out after speaking with them.
• Determinator: He shows shades of this when he's escaping the estate, especially when he's fighting Jeremy.
• Entertainingly Wrong: The guests at the party are racist towards him, but not for the reasons he thinks. While most of the guests engage in run-of-the-mill, "egalitarian" liberal apologism towards him in what he thinks is a misguided effort to ingratiate themselves to him, they're actually measuring him for his physical attributes as a potential body "donor".
• The Everyman: Peele stated that he wrote Chris to behave as he believed a normal — though intelligent — person would if they found themselves trapped in a horror movie.
• Expy: Of Joanna Eberhart and Rosemary Woodhouse according to Jordan Peele.
• Fatal Flaw: Invoked by Word of God. Because Chris is a mostly level-headed protagonist who is meant to address the common recklessness of horror movie characters, there needed to be an in-story reason as to why he would engage in more reckless behavior like saving Georgina and Rose, or remaining at the Armitage house for so long. This came in the form of his Survivor's Guilt towards his mother. As a result, he initially refuses to abandon Rose until it's too late.
• Foreshadowing: He gets out and looks for the deer after Rose runs it over. This comes directly from the fact that his mother was killed in a hit and run accident when he was a child, and when she didn't come home at her usual time, he didn't call the police to report her missing. What haunts him is that his mother spent hours dying, as the initial hit didn't kill her.
• Freudian Excuse: Chris's dumber actions in the climax of the film, such as attempting to save the possessed Georgina and not killing Rose when he has the chance, likely stem from his guilt regarding his mother's hit and run death, and suggest that he has a bit of a savior complex towards women.
• Genius Bruiser: Downplayed. Chris is a very athletic hunk, and while he's not a Mad Scientist-level genius like the Armitage parents, he's very smart and is able to deduce their plans for him and others, outwitting them and finishing them off in his Roaring Rampage of Revenge. This also brilliantly defies the Armitages' (racist) assumption that Chris and other black people are Dumb Muscle.
• The Generic Guy: A deliberate example; see Audience Surrogate. Aside from his interest in photography and being a generally pleasant guy, there's not much to say about Chris's personality.
• Hunk: Early on in the movie, we see Chris shirtless, and he's jacked. No wonder the Coagula cultists want his body.
• Maligned Mixed Marriage: Chris is worried that Rose hasn't told her parents that he is black, and fears that they won't approve of it. He eventually learns that she's dated numerous black people before him.
• Missing Mom: Played with. Missy Armitage asks Chris about his mother, who died when he was 11, so she can play/prey on that when she hypnotizes him.
• Must Have Nicotine: Chris is a smoker, much to the chagrin of his girlfriend and her family. Missy even offers to hypnotize him to alleviate his cravings. Of course, this is because they want his body to be as healthy as possible, because they are auctioning it off so a white person can live in it.
• Nice Guy: Chris is certainly a pleasant guy. He's easygoing, he's kind, he's a friendly, laid-back, and all-around likable guy to be with. To top it all off, he is considerably tolerant and civil in the racially-charged environment he's thrown into, choosing not to engage in conflict when he doesn't have to. He does have his limits, though, as the Armitages learn the hard way when he's escaping the estate.
• Survivor's Guilt: Chris's mother survived a hit-and-run accident, only to bleed to death because Chris didn't tell anyone or go out to look for her out of fear that nothing had really happened to her. Missy takes advantage of this to hypnotize Chris.
• Took a Level in Badass: During his escape in the film's climax, Chris almost single-handedly kills every member of the Armitage family.
• Tranquil Fury: During his Roaring Rampage of Revenge. The lack of emotion on his face, especially as he takes down Dean and Missy, is almost unnerving, although given what they put him through it's entirely understandable.
• Unlucky Everydude: Chris is just an average guy whose girlfriend is an evil sociopath manipulating him into a trap, so her family can remove his brain and overwrite his consciousness for someone else to control his body.
• Would Hit a Girl: By the end of the film, once he's learned that Rose had faked their entire relationship for the purpose of bringing him back to her parents and cutting his brain out, and that he was only the latest in a long line of black victims to whom she'd done the same — not to mention that she'd attempted to shoot him dead in cold blood — he's prepared to strangle her. He can't quite bring himself to finish her off, though.

Rose

Rose Armitage

"They are not racist. I would have told you. I wouldn't be bringing you home to them. Think about that for just two seconds."

^{Click here to see her after The Reveal}:

Portrayed By: Allison Williams

Chris's upper-class white girlfriend.

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• Action Girlfriend: A very dark variant. Rose is Chris's protective but completely inactive girlfriend throughout — until her family captures him, and she reveals herself to be very handy with a gun.
• Aloof Dark-Haired Girl: Played by Allison Williams, Rose is a snippy brunette who is difficult to please.
• Ambiguously Bi: It's revealed that she keeps a photograph album of previous lovers, including at least one woman. On the other hand, we find out that Rose loves no one outside of her family and has used all of her partners as pawns to get warm black bodies. She also is shown appreciating her partners' physiques.
• Ax-Crazy: As he tries to escape, she chases Chris down with a rifle and attempts to shoot him down.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Throughout most of the movie, Rose seems to be genuinely supportive and loving of Chris. It turns out, however, that she was a part of her family's sinister scheme all along.
• Bizarre Taste in Food: Froot Loops, dry, one by one, washed down with a sip of milk for each one. Technically it only happens once, but its such a wildly bizzare choice that it's irrevocably linked to her in the fandom.
• Broken Pedestal: She plays at being horrified at the subtle and overt racism/awkwardness of the police, her parents, and her brother throughout their visit. It's all an act to endear herself to Chris.
• Casting Gag: At the time of her casting, Allison Williams was mostly known for Girls, a show about affluent white people, so her inclusion as the girlfriend from an ultra-WASPy family makes sense here. In a film that makes fun of liberal white people, it's also a reference to her father being a host on MSNBC, whose target audience is liberal white people.
• The Chessmaster: Rose is extremely good at deceiving and manipulating others to suit her family's plan, and is incredibly, seamlessly good at concealing her true nature.
• Combat Sadomasochist: Implied, as she has no problem trying to kill Chris with a gun and even smiles when he tries to strangle her to death.
• Cute Is Evil: She uses an endearing, innocent Nice Girl facade to lure in her victims. When showing her true colors, the changes in hairstyle and lighting make her look cold and intimidating rather than cute.
• Dark Action Girl: When Chris manages to escape from the Armitage household, she chases him down with her father's hunting rifle.
• Depraved Bisexual: She utilizes the Honey Trap as her primary luring method, mostly with men, but one woman is in the pictures of her victims. This is also combined with Ambiguously Bi, since it's never specified whether Rose actually was attracted to her female victim or simply pretended to be attracted to her.
• Dies Wide Open: She dies with her eyes glazed over as Chris and Rod drive away from the scene.
• Dissonant Serenity: Played for horror. After The Reveal, Rose has an eerily flat affect, expressing no emotion even as her entire family is killed around her. Once she has no need to act out emotions, she simply doesn’t show any at all, because at her core she is utterly devoid of real human feeling.
• The Dragon: While her parents are in charge, Rose stands out primarily as the one responsible for directing most of the events of the movie by manipulating Chris into falling into her family’s scheme throughout the majority of the film. Her brother Jeremy is more of the Brute in the family.
• Dragon Their Feet: After Dean and Missy are killed, Rose is the last Armitage family member to be dispatched, after Jeremy and her grandparents.
• Emotionless Girl: She's creepily serene after her true nature is revealed, especially in the scene when she's talking with Rod over the phone and how she keeps a straight face while her voice sounds like someone in distress.
• Erotic Asphyxiation: According to the script, Rose is smiling when Chris is strangling her due to arousal.
• Evil All Along: It turns out she was a willing part of her family's evil plan all along.
• Expository Hairstyle Change: The top picture shows her with loose wavy hair that covers the sides and top of her face, as part of her loving girlfriend façade. The lower image is from after The Reveal, where she pulls back her hair into a tight ponytail that exposes her entire face, as well as her real personality.
• Extreme Libido: While the rest of her family see black people as some sort of Master Race whose power they want, Rose's only priority seems to be having sex with them. As a reward for luring them to her family home, she gets to have fun with her black boyfriend for a few months, and as soon as Chris gets taken away, she's shown sizing up single black men online, looking for her next prey. She's even aroused as Chris strangles her and smiles at the prospect of going out with a bang.
• Faux Affably Evil: She tells Chris he was one of "her favorites", but this is likely just a last taunt, as she says it as he's slipping into what she believes will be his final trip to the Sunken Place, the culmination of months of her intensely gaslighting and manipulating him so her family can steal his body.
• Femme Fatale: Rose's primary method of luring the Armitage family's victims is to romance them and then take them to visit her family's household, where her mother can subdue their consciousness with her hypnosis, and her father and brother can perform the brain transplant.
• For the Evulz: Rose really has no reason for seducing black people into being mind-raped apart from her own enjoyment. Word of God confirmed that she wasn't being brainwashed and that she would definitely continue her scheme even after every single member of her family had been killed.
• Gaslighting: She does this to all of her victims to make them believe that their suspicions about her family are paranoid and misplaced, when they're all just evil, heartless monsters. When Chris loses all trust in her family regardless, she does appear to come around and support him...only to gaslight him again by pretending she can't find the car keys right as he tries to leave.
• Good Hair, Evil Hair: After she reveals her true nature, she immediately puts her hair up into a tight ponytail, reflecting her actual, much colder personality and more obviously showcasing her Villainous Cheekbones.
• Has a Type: Rose tells Chris that he's the first black guy she's ever dated. He's not.
• The Heavy: Though her parents serve as the main villains of the film, she's still the one responsible for getting Chris wrapped up in their scheme and the last obstacle keeping him from leaving.
• Honey Trap: She seduces black people (mostly men, but one photo shows her with Georgina pre-possession) and brings them to her parents in order to perpetuate their immortality process.
• It's Personal with the Dragon: For most of the Armitage family, Chris is only meeting them for the first time so they're mainly obstacles to him when he's attempting to escape. Rose on the other hand has been his girlfriend for several months so her betrayal of him hits that much harder.
• Love-Interest Traitor: To Chris, and the other victims she acted as a Honey Trap towards. Chris (and presumably the other victims) genuinely loved her before discovering the truth about her and the Armitages.
• Mad Scientist's Beautiful Daughter: A straighter example pre-The Reveal, when it's clear that the rest of the Armitages are into an evil scheme, but she still sort of counts.
• Manipulative Bitch: She uses Chris's feelings for her to manipulate him when he first starts feeling like something isn't right. She also plants the idea that Rod is sexually attracted to her, only to use it against him later when he tries to get her to admit where Chris went. She tries to use Chris's feelings against him in the end, but it doesn't work.
• Master Actress: Up until she reveals her true colors, Chris has no suspicions that she's a committed racist cultist like the rest of her family and is completely fooled by her. She also anticipates that Rod will try to record their phone call, so she accuses him of calling her because he lusts after her so that he would be the one who came off looking like the aggressor if the authorities heard the recording. Rod himself says "she's a genius". During the same conversation, she convincingly fills her voice with emotion that the audience can see is not reflected on her expressionless face.
• Meaningful Name: Every Rose has its thorns.
• Nice Girl: Subverted. Rose does a good job faking it, but she's really just a stone-cold sociopath who feels nothing whatsoever for Chris (or even her own family as they get killed, for that matter).
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: She is directly responsible for Rod coming to rescue Chris, her attempts to mock him into hanging up on her only inflaming his curiosity until he decides to drive to her family's house.
• Nightmare Fetishist: She's implied to be getting off on being strangled when Chris tries to choke her to death.
• Psychopathic Womanchild: Towards the end of the film, Rose calmly consumes cereal separately from milk, shows no genuine concern for her relatives when they each die, and hunts people of color like wild animals. According to Jordan Peele and Allison Williams, this is all supposed to illustrate that Rose is emotionally stunted.
• Psychotic Smirk: She gives a particularly nasty one to Chris when he is strangling her.
• Rich Bitch: Definitely rich, definitely a little prickly from square one.
• The Sociopath: While we have some profoundly evil bad guys, underneath her nice girl persona, Rose is disturbingly empty and serene, and responsible for the fates of a lot of innocent people. She keeps a couple selfies of herself with her victims as trophies, hanging them prominently above her bed when she doesn't have a mark staying with her. Even after she's the last of her family standing, she seems to not care about their deaths on any level, even after seeing her brother's corpse.
• The Vamp: As you've probably realised by now!
• Too Kinky to Torture: The Psychotic Smirk she gives as Chris strangles her while she's bleeding out is because, according to Word of God, she's getting off the fact that she's being choked to death.
• Walking Spoiler: Perhaps the biggest reveal of the movie is that she was in on her family's scheme from the beginning. While there was something clearly off about the Armitages from the beginning, Rose hides it skillfully up until the point where Chris has to be restrained.
• White Shirt of Death: She wears a white dress when being shot in the guts. Also to Chris (attempted), as she changes into a white suit when her family captures him.
• Wounded Gazelle Gambit: She attempts to feign innocence while being strangled by Chris and a police car arrives. Unfortunately for her, the person behind the wheel is Rod, and while Chris stops strangling her, he and Rod have no problem with leaving her to bleed to death.

Rod

Rod Williams

"I'm T.S. Motherfucking. A. We handle shit."

Portrayed By: Lil Rel Howery

A TSA officer and Chris's best friend.

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• Audience Surrogate: Rod reflects the audience in knowing that something is very wrong with the Armitages, trying to figure it out, using modern technology and the local law enforcement in an attempt to smoke it out, and ultimately taking direct action in rescuing the hero.
• Big Damn Heroes: He rescues Chris from the Armitage estate at the end.
• The Bro Code: Rod's best friend's girlfriend thinks Rod might have a crush on her. She's lying through her teeth.
• Bromantic Foil: To Chris in terms of general personality and in terms of how they relate to Rose.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: He's a very strange man who spends the bulk of the movie as comic relief with his rambling, bizzare monologues and constant sex jokes. But he's also a very skilled investigator, managing to near single-handedly figure out the Armitage's plans based on nothing but a single suspicious photograph. Wacky he may be, but he didn't become an agent of the law on nothing.
• Cassandra Truth: When attempting to confide in the police regarding Chris's disappearance, the cops (albeit understandably, given his sex slave obsession) laugh at Rod's story regarding Chris. Chris also initially doesn't believe Rod's warnings.
• Cloudcuckoolander: His paranoia combined with his sense of humor make him come off this way, as a foil to the sober, self-examining Chris.
• The Cuckoolander Was Right: And yet, his paranoid ideas about Rose turn out to be mostly correct by the end, and he ends up being the one to save Chris.
• Determinator: Despite the fact that he has no idea where Chris is and the police are no help, Rod tracks him down to mount a dramatic rescue. That is true friendship.
• Entertainingly Wrong: Being unable to contact his friend and only working with what he can piece together secondhand, Rod knows something is desperately wrong, and that Chris, Andre, and possibly a lot more young black men are in deep trouble... and he's also running with his assumption that the Armitages are running a cult where they abduct and brainwash them to use as sex slaves (which is pretty close, in every aspect, to the truth). The ridiculous nature of the theory and how he tells it gets him laughed off by the authorities, and — assuming Chris never told him the whole story — he still believes that's what happened even after saving him.
• A Friend in Need: He sticks by Chris, giving him long-distance moral support over the phone through a stressful situation. When Chris's phone cuts out and the police laugh in his face, he commandeers a TSA vehicle, finds the Armitage address, and drives like hell to save his best friend's butt.
• Friend on the Force: He's a TSA officer who's friends with Chris and Rose, helps the former unravel the mysteries surrounding the town, and shows up at the end to take him home.
• Genre Savvy: He's basically a walking example of what to actually do in a horror film.
• Meaningful Name: Rod. Those three letters are an acronym for the term "ride or die", Undying Loyalty.
• Plucky Comic Relief: He's very funny and very plucky.
• Police Are Useless: Rod is legally a police officer, but the TSA's reputation as ineffectual Punch Clock Villains means he has none of the respect associated with a law enforcement position, including from the actual police. However, he turns out to get much farther than said police in uncovering the plot and rescuing Chris.
• Potty Emergency: In one of the alternate endings, he asks Chris if he could use the toilet in their house.
• Properly Paranoid: Rod immediately starts getting bad vibes from Rose's family even though he's never met them. It's why he eventually decides to follow Chris to make sure he's okay after not getting a call from him in a while.
• Shoo Out the Clowns: Averted. Whereas in a typical horror movie, a character who's telling goofy sex jokes and being funny would disappear (or die) halfway through, Rod continues to Pull the Thread on Rose's plot, culminating with him riding to Chris's rescue.

The Armitage Family

In General

Tropes applicable to all members of the Armitage family.

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• Ax-Crazy: Jeremy, Rose, and Roman may be more overt about this side of themselves, but each member of the family is deranged, sadistic, violent, and enjoys condemning those they capture to a Fate Worse than Death.
• Abusive Parents: It runs in the family.
  • Dean's father, Roman, raised his son to become a neurosurgeon specifically to perform his special and exceedingly unethical procedure.
  • Dean and Missy went on to raise their own son and daughter from a very young age to be a violent drunken psychopath who abducts victims and will have the medical knowledge to do the procedure himself one day, and a stalking horse who seduces victims to bring home respectively.
• Avenging the Villain: This seems to apply most to Dean, and he's the person who cares the most about it, appearing obsessed with his father's defeat by Jesse Owens.
• Big, Screwed-Up Family: Given that their patriarch developed a process involving the hypnosis of black people to transfer the minds of white people into them, and the rest carry out that plan with undying loyalty, absolutely.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: They sincerely want to be seen as gracious hosts and enlightened liberals, but end up showing their true colors despite themselves. Their son Jeremy shows his true colors faster than most. His sister Rose is one of these and then some, with a side of Black Widow as well.
• Corrupted Character Copy: Of the Drayton Family from Guess Who's Coming to Dinner.
• Face of an Angel, Mind of a Demon: Except Jeremy, but especially Rose.
• The Family That Slays Together: All of them had and have a part in enslaving black people and destroying their minds. Jeremy, Rose, and Missy especially seem to enjoy it.
• Faux Affably Evil: Their hospitality is a put-on to make their victims feel comfortable and open for a hypno session.
• Green-Eyed Monster: Their virulent racism takes the form of envy, targeting black people specifically for their stereotypical supposed physical advantages for their order to use, feeling that they don't deserve them.
• Hate Sink: The Armitages were designed to be as despicable as possible, and their body-snatching scheme is an exaggerated allegory for the institutional racism black people have faced in the US for hundreds of years at the hands of white people.
• Light Is Not Good: The Armitage family is this.
• Meaningful Name: Armitage is taken from the Greek "eremos" and can more or less translate to "Hermitage" for how isolated the family home is from the rest of the world.
  • Possibly also a William Gibson nod.
• Politically Incorrect Villain: The entire Armitage family are a bunch of disgusting, sadistic racists. Although it's somewhat inverted considering that the reason why they're targeting black people is because they believe they are actually better than a white man in some ways, which makes them in their eyes a perfect candidate for their Grand Theft Me operation, but the reasons why they do such a thing is either disturbingly hedonistic, petty, or out of envy.

Dean

Dean Armitage

"By the way, I would have voted for Obama for a third term if I could."

Portrayed By: Bradley Whitford

Rose's father, and a gifted neurosurgeon.

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• Amazingly Embarrassing Parent: To Rose in spades. In keeping with her attempt to calm Chris down, Rose pretends to be mortified by Dean's repeated references to Obama. It's also possible that he might also be this because he makes it clear that the family are a bit too interested in black people for Rose's comfort.
• Bumbling Dad: Rose describes him to Chris as a lame dad.
• Casting Gag: Casting Bradley Whitford as Dean asks the question, "What if Josh Lyman was really evil and racist underneath?"
• Death by Irony: One of his very first lines is an extended tirade about his hate of deer, and his desire to see the whole species wiped out. Chris eventually impales him with deer antlers.
• Evil Old Folks: He's not elderly, but he's much older than Chris, with an ageing leftie idealist vibe before The Reveal.
• Four Eyes, Zero Soul: Dean is an evil, bespectacled Mad Doctor whose glasses ominously reflect the fire in the fireplace in the scene where the family reveals their villainous nature.
• Godhood Seeker: He believes the Order will make all its acolytes living gods that will outlast the sun.
• Hippie Parents: Deconstructed. He appears to be very friendly to Chris and espouses liberal views, but it's ambiguous how much of this remains once he reveals how terrible he is.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Chris impales him with a trophy deer head's antlers.
• Innocently Insensitive: He goes on a rant early on about how he thinks all deer should be exterminated because they get into suburban communities and damage things. This makes Chris very uncomfortable, likely because he's heard racists say the same sort of things about minorities before. Of course, he's actually not so innocent.
• Legacy Character: Much more evidently than the rest of the family, as his grandfather was beaten by Jesse Owens and he appears to maintain the desire for revenge most decisively, while everyone else just appears more like violent, evil white supremacists.
• Like Father, Like Son: He took up neurosurgery from his father, and is in turn raising Jeremy as a neurosurgeon to ensure that his family's method of transplanting older white people's brains into young, healthy black people will continue for future generations.
• Mad Doctor: A neurosurgeon who transplants the brains of older friends and family into African-American bodies.
• Morally Ambiguous Doctorate: Well-educated, wealthy, shady, and like his father before him, a Mad Scientist.
• White Hair, Black Heart: He has white hair and is an extremely evil white supremacist doctor.

Missy

Missy Armitage

"Would anyone like tea?"

Portrayed By: Catherine Keener

Rose's mother, a psychiatrist specializing in hypnotherapy.

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• Berserk Button: It's downplayed, but initially smoking appears to be this for her, although this may just be a ploy to get him in a position to be hypnotized. It's possible that it actually does count, too, because he's endangering his body.
• Evil Matriarch: Of the Armitages.
• Eye Scream: She's killed when Chris forces a letter opener into her eye.
• Ice Queen: Missy is unflinching. It's easy to see where Rose gets it from.
• Impaled Palm: She inflicts this upon Chris with a letter opener in the climax, only for Chris to turn it against her without flinching.
• Knight Templar Parent: She pretends to be one about Chris's smoking, but it's probably just a ruse to get Chris to be hypnotised by her. She seems not to care very much for Rose or Jeremy.
• Mind Control: Her specialty.
• Mind-Control Device: Her teacup.
• Mind Rape: She does this to Chris when she brings up and guilts him about his mother’s death, in order to successfully hypnotize him.
• Obviously Evil: She's the most overtly sinister Armitage, well before it's revealed they're all in on it.
• Psycho Psychologist: She's a psychiatrist, but she is an extremely clear example.
• The Shrink: A particularly shady one. Even before the family's scheme is revealed, hypnotizing an unconsenting person to stop smoking is messed up.
• Slasher Smile: It's subtle but there, whenever she sends Chris to the Sunken Place.
• Soft-Spoken Sadist: She never raises her voice, even as she's appearing to enjoy sending Chris into the "Sunken Place".

Jeremy

Jeremy Armitage

"So the thing about jujitsu is...strength doesn't matter, right? It's all about this. It's a strategic game, like chess."

Portrayed By: Caleb Landry Jones

Rose's brother.

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• The Alcoholic: During dinner, he drunkenly attempts to put Chris in a headlock.
• Ax-Crazy: He's the most outwardly aggressive member of the family.
• The Brute: Invoked and played with. Based on his brutish behavior, it's understandable to doubt that he's going to med school; however, he is indeed doing that, and even assisting his dad in the operating room.
• Determinator: Despite being inflicted with a severe head wound by Chris, Jeremy still tries (unsuccessfully) to stop him from escaping.
• Carry a Big Stick: When the family's true colors are revealed, he attempts to bludgeon Chris with a lacrosse stick.
• Dragon Their Feet: Chris kills the elder Armitages and makes a break for the exit, when he is suddenly jumped by Jeremy, whom he had thought he'd killed earlier, and forced to fight his way out.
• Dumb Muscle: A downplayed example. While the other Armitages are articulate and capable of hiding their intentions under an Faux Affably Evil demeanor, Jeremy is transparently aggressive and thuggish. Also, while he does assist his dad in the Coagula procedure (and is mentioned to be learning to do it himself), he mostly just serves his family as The Brute. Chris eventually defeats Jeremy by outhinking him.
• Finishing Stomp: He gets his head stomped to a bloody pulp by Chris after a fight.
• Foreshadowing: A mysterious helmeted man in a sports car knocks down Andre at the beginning using a headlock; Jeremy later tries to perform a headlock on Chris, but is stopped by his dad. Both of these earlier examples also foreshadow how Jeremy later properly attacks Chris.
• Green-Eyed Monster: Word of God in the director's commentary interprets Jeremy as being envious of achievements in black athleticism, thus suggesting that he'd want Chris' body for himself.
• Headlock of Dominance: Jeremy's primary method of subduing the family's black victims. He kidnaps Andre this way in the opening sequence. At dinner, he tries it on Chris, but the family stops him before he can. When Chris escapes during the climax, Jeremy ambushes him with a headlock, only to be outsmarted, overpowered, and ultimately killed by Chris.
• Hot-Blooded: He is less patient and more belligerent than the rest of his family.
• Like Father, Like Son: He's studying medicine to follow in his neurosurgeon father's footsteps. In reality, it's so that he'll gain the expertise to perform the Armitage family's brain transplant procedure himself one day.
• The Load: He's the character who most obviously tips off Chris to how unsafe he is with the Armitages.
• Mad Doctor: It's implied that he would eventually become one like his father, given that he is mentioned to be attending medical school and is later seen helping Dean in the operating room.
• Not Quite Dead: Jeremy is knocked out with a bocce ball by Chris, only to ambush him later during his escape with a headlock. Chris gains the upper hand and kills him.
• Obviously Evil: If his aggression, disheveled appearance, and fixation on Chris's "genetic makeup" are any indication.
• Overlord Jr.: To Dean, especially as he also follows in Dean's footsteps by becoming a doctor.
• Psychopathic Manchild: He reacts with childlike glee when Missy's hypnosis incapacitates an escaping Chris, and later huskily whispers "One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi" while strangling him.
• The Rival: Downplayed, but to Chris in terms of physicality. A Deleted Scene involving the two squaring off in a game of badminton was — according to Word of God — meant to further hint at this (which would later pay off during Chris and Jeremy's climactic fight).
• Slasher Smile: He gives plenty to Chris at the dinner table, signaling right off the bat that something's not quite right with him.
• Smug Snake: The most obvious example in the family.
• Token Good Teammate: A very downplayed example. Despite being the most obviously psychotic Armitage, he's surprisingly this, since he's the only one that shows any emotion or sadness from the loss of his family members.
• Villainous Breakdown: By the climax, he's reduced to a guttural screaming, taunting maniac, and attempts to kill Chris to avenge his parents.

Roman

Roman Armitage

"Maybe one day you'll enjoy being members...of the family."

Portrayed By: Richard Herd (original body) & Marcus Henderson (Walter body)

Dean's deceased father and the family patriarch. He was formerly an Olympic-class track runner, and became a neurosurgeon later in life.

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• Acting Unnatural: Much like Georgina visibly screaming from behind Marianne's smile, "Walter" is unnervingly serene when talking with Chris, with a very clipped, formal, almost mid-Atlantic-accented voice and a sly grin; teasing Chris about Rose like he does would come off as a little creepy if done by anyone, but especially the groundskeeper, and he conspicuously doesn't make much of an effort to hide his true self during the garden party. He also runs full-tilt around the property in the middle of the night, training and testing the limits of Walter's body, and not only doesn't acknowledge Chris but almost knocks him over. Marcus Henderson himself pointed out that even Walter's chores, like cutting the entire estate using a single push mower, don't make logical sense; aside from maybe chopping wood to build up strength, it's all done as a performance for Chris.
• Ax-Crazy: Creating a body-snatching operation that condemns the original host to a Fate Worse than Death simply because he’s butthurt that a black guy was better than him at sports really says a lot about how utterly fucked up he is mentally.
• Big Bad: The founder and mastermind of the Body Surf operation.
• Body Surf: It turns out that he founded the Order of the Coagula, a cult dedicated to achieving immortality through surrogate bodies, and himself is living in the body of the Armitages' black groundskeeper Walter.
• Disproportionate Retribution: He invented the despicable Grand Theft Me surgery operation that condemned the original host to a Fate Worse than Death because he lost in a sport.
• Evil Is Petty: The entire reason he started his plan was envy at Jesse Owens for beating him in the qualification round for the 1936 Olympics. He was presumably capable of admitting Owens had great athletic abilities, but not that Owens deserved the win or those abilities as a black man.
• Evil Old Folks: He and his wife are smarmy mind-control cultists with a downright eugenicist bent. By extension, this also applies the merely middle-aged host bodies they've taken over, whose quaint mannerisms just come across as creepy. Without Roman's advanced age and his circa-1930s racist envy, the whole body-snatching scheme may never have gotten off the ground.
• Green-Eyed Monster: His loss against Jesse Owens kickstarted a deep-set envy for athletic black people in him, so he created his body-snatching operation to steal their bodies for himself as well as his family, because he doesn't believe they deserve it.
• Irony: He is aggressively racist, but chose to live the rest of his life in the body of a black man.
• Lightning Bruiser: He was a prospective runner for the 1936 Olympics, but was beaten by Jesse Owens. In the younger body of Walter, he's very fast and completely overpowers Chris in a tussle.
• Mad Doctor: Birthed the "Coagula procedure", the transplantation of brains from older white people into young, healthy Black bodies. His son and grandson continue performing the operations for future generations of the Armitage family.
• Mr. Exposition: He appears in an infomercial-style video explaining to Chris in the most pleasant way why he's here and what's about to happen to him.
• Psychopathic Manchild: Starting a cult that hijacks black people's brains and bodies just because you lost to a black man in a sport does not imply maturity.
• Shout-Out: Both his names. "Roman" is the name of the cult leader in Rosemary's Baby, while "Armitage" is the name of an H. P. Lovecraft character, albeit a heroic one.
• Sore Loser: He did not take the loss to Jesse Owens in the 1936 Olympic Trials well, leading to him developing a plan to transfer the consciousness of elderly white people into the bodies of black people.
• Taking You with Me: He's ultimately killed by this, when the man whose body he's possessing regains control and shoots himself in the head.
• Walking Spoiler: In case you didn't realize something was wrong with him from the very beginning...

Other Characters

Georgina

Georgina

"No, no, no, no, no, no..."

Portrayed By: Betty Gabriel

The Armitage family housekeeper, who disturbs Chris with her bizarre mannerisms.

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• Ambiguously Gay: She's included in Rose's memory box of ex-partners/victims, and was possibly lured into the Armitage house through Rose's Honey Trap.
• Creepy Housekeeper: With her unblinking gaze and constant wide grin, Georgina is rather unsettling.
• Determinator: She is the only victim of the Armitages who has any success in resisting the Sunken Place without the assistance of a camera flash.
• Expository Hairstyle Change: She wears a wig that is styled in an outdated bob-cut, but on the pictures Chris finds of her, she has long, wavy hair. This becomes important when it's revealed that first, an elderly white woman is inhabiting her body, and second, the bob-cut serves to hide the cranial surgical scar below her hairline. When Chris tries to save her, the wig falls off as she viciously attacks him, revealing that her old self is a lost cause.
• Fan Disservice: While Georgina is fairly young like Rose, her dress and mannerisms are meant to be off-putting unlike her, as she dresses and acts like the old white lady inhabiting her body. In a photo of her and Rose prior to her kidnapping, she appears more "normal".
• The Farmer and the Viper: After Chris accidentally hits her with his car, he tries to save her rather than leave her to die. Unfortunately, the Armitage grandmother is still in control and attacks him, crashing the car and killing herself in the process.
• Fighting from the Inside: Georgina has been implanted with the brain of the Armitages' grandmother, Marianne, but while other victims need a bright flash to break free from their captors' control, Georgina almost manages it at one point all by herself.
• Foreshadowing: Georgina's mannerisms and form of speech surprises Chris, who finds both aspects as very uncharacteristic of a young black woman by all measures. This is because it's a white old lady inside her head.
• Haughty Help: Chris speculates at one point that the reason that Georgina acts so oddly, especially to him, is because she doesn't approve of him being around, or of his dating Rose. The actual reason is that Marianne is a wealthy, elderly white matriarch play-acting a subservient role that she normally doesn't have to, and she likely has no interest in connecting with Chris because he'll soon cease to exist.
• Old Retainer: Missy and Dean see her and Walter as practically members of the family. Given the Immortality Inducer scheme, and Rose calling them "Grandma" and "Grandpa", they are.
• Screw This, I'm Out of Here!: When Chris escapes from the Armitages' attic, Georgina sees him emerge and promptly flees. However, she returns later, with Marianne in control, in an attempt to stop his car.
• Spanner in the Works: She leaves the cabinet with Rose's memory box open for Chris to find, prompting him to escape.
• Stepford Smiler: She's forced to become this by her possession by Grandma Armitage.
• Two Decades Behind: In her conversation with Chris, she is unfamiliar with modern slang like "snitch" and "rat you out," but realizes what they mean clarifying with "tattletale." She also uses the outdated term "cellular phone." This is because she's actually an elderly white woman inhabiting a younger black body, and thus her only contact with modern slang is probably Rose and Jeremy.
• Villainous Breakdown: After Chris attempts to rescue her from the burning Armitage estate.
  "You ruined MY HOUSE!!!"

Walter

Walter

Portrayed By: Marcus Henderson

The Armitage family groundskeeper.

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• Dying as Yourself: He briefly becomes himself shortly before he incapacitates Rose and then kills himself.
• Fighting from the Inside: It's actually not clear if he's ever going to do this for most of the film, but he succeeds in breaking free for a moment when Rose is about to shoot Chris, enabling him to save Chris's life.
• Heroic Suicide: He kills himself before Roman can exert any more influence over him.
• Redemption Equals Death: When he becomes himself, he saves Chris's life and incapacitates Rose.
• Small Role, Big Impact: Despite him only being free for less than a minute, he singlehandedly manages to save Chris's life.
• The Stoic: In the pre-kidnapping picture with Rose, he had quite a serious look on his face.
• Super-Speed: He's an unusual non-magical example, but it's an early indicator of why the Armitage grandfather especially wanted him.
• Taking You with Me: He kills the man possessing him by committing suicide.
• Would Hit a Girl: He shoots Rose in the stomach.

Andre

Andre Hayworth/Logan King

"Get out!"

Portrayed By: Lakeith Stanfield

A former acquaintance of Chris and Rod's from New York who vanished six months prior to the events of the film. He unexpectedly resurfaces at the Armitages' party, now calling himself "Logan King" and exhibiting a completely different personality.

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• And I Must Scream: As with all the Armitages' victims.
• Chekhov's Gunman: He is introduced in the first scene as the Victim of the Week but returns later in a plot-relevant role.
• Fate Worse than Death: Unlike Walter and Georgina, Andre survives the events of the film under Logan's control. It's left unknown if the authorities will ever even look into the reports of Andre's disappearance, and even if they do, there's apparently no helping him.
• Ghetto Name: "Andre" is a minor example, but it stands out when compared to the name "Logan", the name of the man who has taken over Andre’s body.
• Madness Mantra: Andre is so broken and terrified upon leaving the Sunken Place that he can only yell a desperate warning to Chris, before beginning to scream as he's subdued and taken away for re-hypnosis. This panic makes it easier for Dean to pass the incident off as a seizure-triggered anxiety attack.
  Andre: [stammering as blood trickles out of his nose] ...G-get out.
  Chris: Sorry, man—
  Andre: GET OUT! Get out — get out! Get outta here, get outta here! GET THE FUCK OUTTA HERE!
• Spanner in the Works: He accidentally becomes this to the Armitages' age-old Body Surf-ing Immortality Inducer conspiracy — as he turns out to be an old acquaintance of Chris, his presence at the Armitages' party and weird behavior alarmed Chris, leading him to alert Rod and try to leave the Armitages' household.
• Title Drop: After the camera flash brings Andre to his senses, he warns Chris to... get out.
• Two Decades Behind: Chris tries to give him a fist bump, but Logan instead grabs his fist as though he were shaking his hand.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: He's still under mind control at the end of the film, and it's unclear if Chris and Rod will inform the police about him or if he is trapped in his situation. Even if authorities did find out about it, though, it’s extremely unlikely anything could be done to free him.

Jim

Jim Hudson

Portrayed By: Stephen Root

A famous blind art gallery owner and member of the Armitages' circle of upper-crust friends.

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• Affably Evil: Although he "buys" Chris at the auction, Jim is the only partygoer to hold a normal conversation with him. Even when he reveals to Chris what his true intentions are, he calmly reassures him that he's not doing this because he's racist, but because he sincerely admires Chris's photographic eye. He even assures to Chris that what he's doing is nothing personal against him.
• Deaf Composer: A blind art gallery owner. Lampshaded:
  Jim: Believe me, the irony of being a blind art dealer is not lost on me.
• Equal-Opportunity Evil: Unlike the other party-goers, he doesn't want Chris's body because he's black, but for his photographer's eye.
• Even Evil Has Standards: He might be at the party, but he has a strong distaste for the other party-goers. He seems to consider their reasons for wanting a new body to be spurious and dislikes their racist motivations. It's still shown to not justify his behaviour, though.
• Evil Cripple: He's a blind man willing to condemn others to a Fate Worse than Death to gain sight.
• Evil Old Folks: Like the rest of the party-goers, he's an older man and pretty damn evil.
• Hypocrite: He claims to be the only non-racist member of the cult, and maybe he even means it. But he's still willing to support and benefit from a group of white supremacists violently exploiting black people, so it's hard to see him as any hero of race relations.
• Kill It with Fire: He (presumably) dies when the operating theater burns down with him still under sedation. A truly gruesome end for anyone other than a body-snatching sociopath.
• Literal Metaphor: Jim's lack of sight is one for the kind of people who claim that they "don't see race" or are "color-blind", but nonetheless benefit from institutional racism; in this case, he claims that he couldn't care less what color Chris is, just that his eyes are important — effectively fetishizing one part of him and discarding the rest of his identity, just like all the other Coagula members he claims to dislike. In the original script, he even says, "I don't care if you're black, brown, green, [or] purple", a stereotypically common refrain among white people trying to deny their prejudice.
• Mr. Exposition: He plays this role later on when he explains to Chris how the surgery works and why he wants him specifically.
• Not So Above It All: Per the Director's Commentary: despite his personal dislike of racism, general awareness, and criticism of other partygoers, Peele hints that Jim feels he would be more respected as a Black photographer (despite claiming to only care about Chris' photographic eye). So on a personal level, even he isn't immune to racist attitudes.
• Token Good Teammate: He sees himself as this for not caring whether Chris is black, but Chris is equally horrified for good reason.
• Undignified Death: He dies in a fire at the operating room, knocked out by the anesthesia, with his scalp and cranium in a bucket, and his brains totally exposed. Yup, undignified alright.

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