Characters / Hatchetfield Other Residents

Main Character Index | Main Hatchetfield Residents | Hatchetfield Families | Other Hatchetfield Residents | Hatchetfield Outsiders | The Black and White | Paranormal Phenomena

Minor and supporting residents of Hatchetfield in the Hatchetfield saga.

Due to the sheer length of this article, if a resident of Hatchetfield has any family members worth noting, move them all to Hatchetfield Families.

Businesses and Organizations

Beanie's Coffee Shop

• Main Residents: Emma Perkins
• Families: Zoey Chambers

Nora

Nora

Played by: Jaime Lyn Beatty

Appears in: The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals

"Emma, what's the deal over here?"

Hey, Mr. Business, how do ya do?
Can we get a triple for you?

Emma's boss, who makes all her employees sing.

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• Actor Allusion: Played by Jaime Lyn Beatty, who actually does work in a coffee shop and served as the production's expert on realistically portraying one.
• Benevolent Boss: To Zoey. Not to Emma. This may be because Emma makes it very clear that she doesn't like her job.
• Jerkass Has a Point: Nora is a pretty Bad Boss to Emma and does make many unreasonable demands and play favorites... but Emma is also pretty rude to the customers and bad at her job. (And that's before we find out she routinely spits in the coffee.)
• Small Name, Big Ego: Seems to harbor ambitions of turning Beanie's from a random crappy coffee shop into a local institution by turning the staff into entertainment for the customers. As Emma points out, this is a lot to ask of random low wage employees.

Camp Idonwannabang

Boy Jerry and Girl Jeri

"Boy Jerry" and "Girl Jeri"

Played by: Jon Matteson (Jerry) | Kim Whalen (Jeri)

Appears in: "Abstinence Camp" | Nerdy Prudes Must Die^note Jerry only

Jerry: "I got you, Girl Jeri." Jeri: "Hold me, Boy Jerry."

Virginity rocks! Just tuck it away
Never touch anyone, anyone, not even your bae
These boots don't knock, not today
I'm stronger than everyone, everyone, not playin' no game

Camp counselors and youth ministers at Camp Idonwannabang.

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• The Cameo: Jerry makes a brief appearance in Nerdy Prudes Must Die during the song "Hatchet Town". As he's not wearing his camp t-shirt, it's not apparent he's Jerry until a reporter accuses him of being the killer. In response, he accuses Jeri of being the killer, to no avail. The filmed version instead has the reporter accuse Gerald Monroe, leaving Jerry only identified in the soundtrack version.
• Half the Man He Used to Be: Boy Jerry is split in half by Lumber Axe.
• Hypocrite: They run an abstinence camp that is hardline about maintaining virginity and publicly claim to both be voluntarily celibate, but they carry on a sexual relationship in secret, which resulted in the birth of Lumber Axe. Making it worse, Boy Jerry thinks nothing of the fact that their monstrous son takes their teachings so seriously that he murders any camper who isn't chaste.
• Mad Libs Catchphrase: When Boy Jerry is annoyed with someone, he tends to make very odd threats starting with "I oughta…". So far, we've heard "put you in a canoe", "cover you in syrup" and "let a bird walk all over you".
• One-Steve Limit: Their names are identical in pronunciation, hence the "Boy Jerry" and "Girl Jeri" designations. They've been calling each other that for so long that they even do so when alone together and regardless of how intimate or intense their conversations become.

CCRP

• Main Residents: Paul Matthews, Ted Spankoffski, Charlotte Sweetly, Bill Woodward

As a Whole

Coven Communications, Research, and Power

Appears in: The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals | "Forever & Always" | "Time Bastard"

The company where Paul Matthews and his friends work in the tech department, located in a building formerly devoted to Hatchetfield's local newspaper. What specifically the company does is unknown.

"Forever & Always" and "Time Bastard" reveal that their incarnation of CCRP is responsible for the science fiction elements — androids, clones, and time travel — appearing in those stories. For characters affiliated with the sci-fi aspects of CCRP, specifically those who are something other than entirely human, see the CCRP section under Paranormal Phenomena.

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• Company Town: Hatchetfield isn't completely a Company Town but CCRP is a very dominant job provider for the community, especially after "the plant" closed some time ago. What such a large and powerful company is doing building an elaborate headquarters in a "tiny town" like this is unquestioned by its grateful employees (and may be tied to Hatchetfield's status as an Eldritch Location).
• Cyberpunk: The future version of CCRP is right out of a story by William Gibson or Bruce Sterling.
• Dress Code: Like most Standard Office Settings, CCRP Technical seems to enforce a "business"/"business casual" dress code for its employees. Notable because this shirt-tie-slacks/sweater-and-skirt combo forms the Iconic Outfit for the main cast of The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals and is how you can distinguish these characters from other roles the actors play. Also notable because in the year 2104 this no longer seems to be true (see No Dress Code).
• Elaborate Underground Base: In the future of 2104, all of CCRP's operations in the Western Hemisphere of Earth are coordinated from a base "miles beneath the ground" known as "Sector-19".
• Everyone Is Armed: Not in the present day, but in the 2104 version of CCRP, every single employee does in fact carry a deadly personal weapon of some kind with them, and is immediately willing to use them against Ted when he's trying to escape (echoing a gag from Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse).
• Everything Is an iPod in the Future: The decor of the 2104 version of the CCRP building says every surface is "frosted glass and digital displays", with basic creature comforts like the water cooler and coffeemaker removed and nowhere to be seen. Everyone is doing their work with self-contained "holo-pads", and the disintegrator weapon Ted steals is a wholly nondescript oblong box with a single button as the trigger, apparently not made for any sort of precise aiming.
• Evil, Inc.: The present-day CCRP is already making secret clones of their employees and using them as slave labor. By the future, they're part of the oligarchy that rules the Earth, has abolished all constitutional and civil rights, and treats all human beings as Human Resources.
• The Masquerade: The "top floor" of present-day CCRP goes to some pretty extreme lengths to keep their activities secret from most of their own employees and the rest of the world. After the Great Crash and Buyout, the CCRP of 2104 has dropped this charade completely.
• Meaningful Name: A "coven" is, of course, a group of witches, and as the title of "The Witch in the Web" reveals, witches in Hatchetfield are far more than a superstitious myth. Executive Kilgrave reveals in "Time Bastard" that CCRP isn't just building secretive conspiracy-theory hypertech but outright Magitek, powered by the eldritch energies of the Lords in Black.
• MegaCorp: Even in the present day, CCRP's name indicates they've got their fingers in a lot of pies, including running a secret space colony on the Moon for nefarious purposes. By the 22nd century, they've become one of the corporations that tyrannically rule the planet.
• No Dress Code: Unclear if this was meant to be diegetic or not, but by the time the Future CCRP scene takes place in "Time Bastard", Robert Manion has already fully changed back out of his Prof. Hidgens outfit into a T-shirt, shorts and a backwards baseball cap — which makes it a funny moment when he speaks up and says he's the current head of the Technical Department and has never seen Ted before in his life. (Matching up with stereotypes of tech workers becoming more and more casual, and an ironic contrast with the very buttoned-up Mr. Davidson in the present day.)
• No One Sees the Boss: The highest-ranked employee of CCRP we meet is Paul's direct boss, Mr. Davidson, who runs the tech department. The actual bosses of this branch of CCRP work on the top floor, and no one ever interacts with them except through their liaison Sylvia, who seems to be a mere receptionist. We finally see one of the real bosses of CCRP in the Bad Future, Executive Andrew Kilgore, and he's a pretty horrifying sight to see.
• One Nation Under Copyright: At some point in the future, an event known as the "Buyout" occurs that passes all sovereignty from the defunct governments of the Earth to corporations like CCRP.
• Sinister Surveillance: Just one of the dystopian touches about the Bad Future in "Time Bastard" is that every single human being in the world is forced to carry a tracking implant their whole lives — Ted not having one instantly reveals that he wasn't born in this time period and arrived via Time Travel.
• Soul-Crushing Desk Job: A lot of CCRP's employees seem to have this opinion of their work, although Paul personally doesn't seem to mind it. It gets a lot, lot worse in the Bad Future.
• Standard Office Setting: Is a particularly bland and generic one of these in The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals. The show makes a point of never actually telling us what the hell CCRP even does or even what "CCRP" actually stands for, although the script clarifies that Paul and his friends working for "CCRP Technical" just means they're the tech support department of a much larger company. It's all a front for them being Evil, Inc..
• Vast Bureaucracy: It's apparently very Serious Business that Paul complete his weekly reports and have them turned in to Mr. Davidson exactly when he expects them, or it will "really gum things up in the office". Paul calls them a "statistical analysis", which means if he works in tech support he's probably keeping track of how much the rest of the company uses their network/computing resources. It turns out the tech support department is deliberately kept ignorant of the supernatural experiments and dark conspiracies orchestrated by the Omniscient Council of Vagueness on the "top floor", with Sylvia acting as their only public liaison. By the year 2104, this Vast Bureaucracy has grown into a monstrosity that serves as the government of the whole planet.
• Walking Spoiler: The true nature of CCRP ends up being part of The Reveal for both "Forever & Always" and "Time Bastard".
• World of Jerkass: The vast majority of CCRP's regular workers are ordinary, decent people in the present day. By 2104, when the Masquerade has dropped, the entire workforce casually accept CCRP's monstrous way of doing business as just the way things are, and are willing and even eager to do brutal violence against outsiders when commanded to.

Ken Davidson

Ken Davidson

Played by: Jeff Blim

Appears in: The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals | Black Friday | "Time Bastard"

"So, what do you want, Paul? What's that one concrete goal that motivates all of your actions?"

I'm looking for someone with strong ambition
Someone to sell their specific vision
Someone to share with precise precision their thoughts
'Cause I want you to want — to want

The boss at CCRP's tech department.

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• All There in the Manual: His first name or initial is never mentioned in The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals itself, but the animated Kickstarter trailer showed the nameplate on his office door says "K. Davidson". His first name was given as "Ken" in a Twitter Q&A.
• Ambiguously Bi: Is very happily married to his wife, but sings to Paul, "There's gotta be something that'll keep my hands off you!"
• Autoerotic Asphyxiation: Hilariously, this appears to be the Tragic Dream the Hive Mind exploited to assimilate him — that he's never gathered the courage to tell his wife he wants her to choke him while he jerks off.
• The Cameo: Appears in the closing number of Black Friday.
• Cannot Spit It Out: Almost tells his wife he wants to be choked while he jerks off but balks at the last minute.
• Change the Uncomfortable Subject: Paul does his best to pull this when Mr. Davidson reveals that he wants his wife to choke him while he jerks off.
• Cloud Cuckoo Lander: Assimilation transforms him into one of these, such as memorably making "too many" curves with his hands while trying to describe a woman's hourglass figure.
• The Corruptor: The Hive Mind is converting the staff of CCRP Technical one by one by having Davidson call them into his office for an "evaluation".
• Happily Married: Even if he gives way Too Much Information about what he wants to do with his wife in the bedroom, the way he describes Carol is actually pretty sweet.
• Hidden Depths: Turns out to be extremely Head-Tiltingly Kinky, much to Paul's horror.
• "I Want" Song: "What Do You Want, Paul?" is about I Want Songs, and he sings what he wants as an example. He also inverts it to attempt to get it to be an "I Want" Song for Paul, but Paul's not into it.
• Loners Are Freaks: "What Do You Want, Paul?" is him singing in the voice of the Hive Mind expressing this view, demanding that Paul join some sort of group or affiliation or else be punished.
• Pointy-Haired Boss: We get to see almost nothing of him before he's assimilated, but the Hive Mind seems to have turned him into a caricature of this trope, a Cloud Cuckoo Lander who treats his management position as an opportunity to force his employees to dish about their personal lives, and a captive audience to talk about his own.

Melissa

Melissa

Played by: Mariah Rose Faith

Appears in: The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals

"Hi, Paul! Were you gonna sign up for the company softball league?"

Mr. Davidson's assistant and coordinator of the company's softball team.

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• A Day in the Limelight: She's the subject of "Hey, Melissa!", an unproduced Nightmare Time script which was read in a Nerdy Prudes Must Die livestream, and reveals her to be the ringleader of a serial killer gang called the Kitty Cat Club, who mutilate and murder men they perceive as dogs.
• Informed Flaw: We aren't outright told that she's unattractive, but Paul clearly treats her this way, with polite but intense discomfort. This is obviously at odds with Mariah Rose Faith's real appearance and her other characters in this show. (The script calls for Paul's actor to pretend that Melissa has one extremely crooked tooth that he can't help but stare at when he looks at her.)
• Phrase Catcher: "Hey, Melissa!"
• Shrinking Violet: At least she acts this way around Paul, implying she may have a crush on him.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Comes very close to being this when she rings Mr. Davidson's wife just seconds after Mr. Davidson confesses that he wants his wife to choke him while he jerks off.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: She's not seen again after Mr. Davidson's song for the rest of the show. (Mariah Rose Faith was already playing Alice, Zoey, Greenpeace Girl, and the nurse at the end who turns out to be assimilated, so bringing her back for any other scenes would be basically impossible.)

Sylvia

Sylvia

Played by: Kim Whalen

Appears in: "Forever & Always" | "Time Bastard"

"If my man saw you talking to me like that, he'd kick your head."

The receptionist from the top floor of CCRP, recently in a relationship with Bill.

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• Loose Lips: She's so flustered about being asked (by her unseen superiors over the phone) to go into Ted's office in "Forever & Always" she starts talking loudly enough that anyone nearby can hear her using phrases like "temporal distortion". Luckily, CCRP's lower-floor employees are too clueless to think anything's amiss.
• The Main Characters Do Everything: We first get the hint CCRP isn't telling their lower-level employees everything about their operations when "receptionist" Sylvia is wandering around the building doing some pretty advanced technical scans for "temporal distortions".
• Mouth of Sauron: Her job as a receptionist is partly to be the liaison between the "top floor" employees of CCRP and the entire rest of the company, with the agenda of the top floor and the meaning of the orders they pass to the other employees via Sylvia being an Over-the-Top Secret. What we learn about CCRP actually being Evil, Inc. in "Time Bastard" makes this trope name very appropriate.
• Muggle–Mage Romance: She's one of the few privileged to know CCRP's secrets about science-fiction Magitek while Bill is an exceptionally boring, mundane Ridiculously Average Guy who is completely in the dark about his employer's Masquerade. Even so, her overwhelming devotion to and admiration of her new boyfriend seems to be genuine.
• Sassy Secretary: She comes off as this exact stereotype at first, although it turns out there's more to her job as "receptionist" (and to CCRP as a whole) than meets the eye.
• Sickeningly Sweethearts: She and Bill are like this in "Forever & Always"; it's a pretty big mood and self-esteem booster for him compared to his previous sad-sack persona.
• Skewed Priorities: She's so revolted by Ted's masturbation, she would rather potentially allow a time-and-space-rending anomaly to continue destabilizing reality than risk going into his office. Hilariously, her successors at CCRP continue to take this stance for the next 85 years.
• Unexplained Accent: Her Joisey accent is fairly out-of-place in small-town Michigan, although since CCRP is not a Hatchetfield-native company and she's a representative of the Mysterious Employers on the top floor she may well be a transplant.

Miss Retro's Throwback Diner

Miss Holloway

Miss Holloway

Played by: Kim Whalen

Appears in: "The Witch in the Web" | "Daddy" | "Killer Track"

"Hannah, sometimes things aren't black and white. Sometimes we have to use something bad to do something good."

Just run away with me, alight to parts unknown
Just run away with me, you won't feel so alone
Even though the rain keeps falling
Follow my lead and we'll keep running
Home

A friend of Duke's, whom he seeks out to help with particularly unusual cases. While Duke calls her a specialist, she calls herself a witch, and she seems stuck in the 1980s.

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• '80s Hair: Wears her hair styled, teased and pouffed out into a truly awesome feathered '80s do; especially impressive in her first appearance, when Kim Whalen turned up with this haircut after having portrayed Becky Barnes not much earlier in the livestream.
• Adults Are Useless: Like Duke, defied. She goes above and beyond to help Hannah, who she doesn't even know. And for once, an adult shows up who not only believes the kids' reports of supernatural events happening, but actually knows more about it than they do and can provide vital assistance and advice.
• All Therapists Are Muggles: Averted. Duke presents Miss Holloway to Pamela as something akin to a psychiatrist or therapist (a "specialist"), and her work with Hannah is very similar to that of a New Age-y therapist working with a patient via hypnosis and directed dreaming to deal with their nightmares. The difference is that Miss Holloway knows that Hannah's dreams are very real and her being unable to "defeat her nightmares" will have grave consequences not just for her but the world.
• Arch-Nemesis: Surprisingly ends up being one for Uncle Wiley from Black Friday, to the point where in half of the currently existing timelines she was the one who killed him once and for all, preventing the apocalypse. Of course, in the other half, he killed her instead, so their actual rivalry doesn't reach the present day outside of circumstances such as when he's brought back from her memories in "The Witch in the Web".
• Battle in the Center of the Mind: An unexpected swerve of "The Witch in the Web" is when Miss Holloway saves Hannah from impending death in her "Nightmare Time" by pulling her out of her own mind into Miss Holloway's, letting us get a glimpse of her backstory and deepest fears.
• Black-and-Gray Morality: She doesn't actually do anything ethically questionable in "The Witch in the Web" itself, but she's honest to Hannah about the fact that she's had to make compromises in the past to stop a greater evil.
  Miss Holloway: Hannah. Sometimes things aren't black and white. Sometimes we have to use something bad to do something good.
  Hannah: It all has a price.
  Miss Holloway: I know. I can pay it. Let's just say... I have very good credit.
• Compelling Voice: Miss Holloway has one of these (represented by reverb on the soundtrack), allowing her to perform something like hypnosis on Pamela to put her into Forced Sleep and to use on Hannah and herself to go into a trance for a Journey to the Center of the Mind, only taking effect far, far faster than anything Real Life hypnotists can do.
• Dead Alternate Counterpart: The Point of Divergence between the main Nightmare Time timeline and the Black Friday timeline is the duel between her and Uncle Wiley at the Starlight Theater — either she dies or he does. If she dies, Uncle Wiley lives to bring about the apocalypse on Black Friday at the Lakeside Mall or, failing that, one of his backup plans elsewhere; if he dies, the apocalypse gets canceled... for now. Wiley takes great pleasure in telling her that in half of the existing timelines she failed, and he gruesomely mutilated and cannibalized her body before taking her jacket as a trophy.
• Death Is a Slap on the Wrist: Her mysterious "deal" allows her to revive about two hours after death, making it only inconvenient if those not in the loop discover that she is dead and she thus has to start over with a new identity. Word of God says that the only weapon that can kill her is the Black Blade, which in every timeline in which she is alive is presumably safely embedded in the corpse of Uncle Wiley.
• Disco Dan: A woman living in the late 2010s who seems to prefer living as if it's the mid-80s. It's not made clear if this is just a weird affectation of hers or if she actually is a Gen Xer who's become The Ageless with magic, though there's some tantalizing hints pointing to the latter. Hints have even been dropped toward a third option in which she is in fact more on the lines of Really 700 Years Old but happened to like the 80s so much that she refuses to evolve further.
• Friend to All Children: There's tons of different approaches one might take to finding occurrences of evil magic that need fighting, and tons of different government contacts one might pursue toward that end. Miss Holloway has chosen to make friends with a social worker for the Michigan CPS and go looking for children who need her help.
• Good Witch Versus Bad Witch: Presents herself to Hannah as a "mostly" good counterpart to the ghost of Willabella Muckwab, although Uncle Wiley dismissively sneers that between the two of them Willabella is the only real witch (and she doesn't really object). It turns out the only "good witch" with the power to actually stop Willabella is her descendant — Hannah herself.
• Hero of Another Story: Through and through. The story of how she tried and failed to save the Three-Girl Creature and ended up fighting and defeating Uncle Wiley would be an adventure in itself, never mind all the other adventures she's implied to have had in her long career.
• Hero's Classic Car: Played Straight completely in her case — a 1987 Pontiac Firebird is an even more classic example than Tom Houston's 1986 Fox-body Mustang.
• Hot Witch: Openly accepts the title of "witch" — "A good witch?" "Most of the time" — and is undeniably hot.
• Iconic Outfit: Her very '80s oversized denim jacket. It turns out that her outfit is part of the backstory of another Iconic Outfit — the version of Uncle Wiley we met in Black Friday wears the same denim jacket, as a trophy he took after he killed her.
• Implied Love Interest: Duke and Miss Holloway flirt pretty heavily and pretty hard, but the story plays it coy enough that it's uncertain if they really are dating or it's just banter.
• Inexplicably Awesome: Why is she a witch? How does she know about the Black and White? What is her history with Uncle Wiley? We don't need to know any of that to watch her kick ass.
• Keeper of Forbidden Knowledge: Has appointed herself in this role, seeking out the Black Book to "keep it safe" from others who'd abuse it. Hannah is dubious that this is a good idea.
• Killed Offscreen: As explained in "The Witch in the Web", in roughly half of all timelines she's a Posthumous Character, having died in 2005 in a battle against Uncle Wiley, whom she killed in the other half. This means she is almost certainly dead in the timelines of Black Friday, in which Uncle Wiley is alive and wearing her jacket as a trophy, and Nerdy Prudes Must Die, in which the Black Book is in Mayor Lauter's possession.
• Mentor Archetype: Is essentially Hannah's Obi-Wan Kenobi, although unlike him she does her best to be as honest as she can about anything Hannah will understand.
• Mind Manipulation: Her power over people's minds is pretty comprehensive, at least among the Weak-Willed like Pamela Foster — to the point where she's able to force a Heel–Face Turn on Pamela and leave her a post-hypnotic suggestion to turn herself in for putting Lex up to selling her pills, going to prison in Lex and Ethan's place.
• Laser-Guided Amnesia: In “Killer Track,” telling anyone about her past inflicts this on them.
• Muggle–Mage Romance: It's left ambiguous whether there actually is anything romantic between Duke and Miss Holloway, but it's pretty obvious that Duke would at least like there to be. We get vague hints that — assuming there isn't anything romantic between them — it's at least partly because the threats Miss Holloway fights are way above Duke's pay grade.
• My Greatest Failure: We don't know if it's her greatest failure, but her encounter with the Three-Girl Creature was traumatic enough that it holds pride of place in her bad memories that bubble up during her own "Nightmare Time". It's probably not the creature itself — it's the fact that this adventure led to her duel with Uncle Wiley, which she barely survived.
• Nice Girl: She's compassionate, brave, and protective.
• No Name Given: No first name is ever mentioned for her. That said, she's also always "Miss Holloway", never just "Holloway", including when addressed by her Arch-Nemesis.
• People Puppets: She has this ability too. Impressively, she manages to use it to get an entire band to help her perfom a song that only she knows.
• Police Psychic: The equivalent of this for Children's Protective Services, brought in off-the-books the way psychics are as a last resort for cases that seem to have no explanation other than the supernatural.
• Really 700 Years Old: “Killer Track” hints this is the case, what with her mentioning having to discard identities “…every 15 years or so, before people get suspicious.”
• Shrouded in Myth: Everything about Miss Holloway's history is this, including basic facts like her age. All we know is that she's been doing what she does — trying to help and protect children — for a long time, along with a few tantalizing hints like her telling Hannah she was a musician "a long time ago". She’d really like to tell people such as Duke, but she physically can’t, as the terms of some vague ‘deal’ cause anyone who hears anything about her past to immediately forget it ever happened.
• Spell Book: Hers is the Tome of Eldritch Lore known only as the Black Book, written long ago by Willabella Muckwab in the blood of innocent children. Hannah is shocked that she even has it, much less is willing to use it, and still calls herself a good guy, but Miss Holloway insists using evil magic for good ends is not only possible but sometimes necessary.
• They Call Me MISTER Tibbs!: She has a cheerfully unequal relationship with her partner, where she always calls him "Duke" and he always calls her "Miss Holloway". He doesn't seem to mind.
• Unexplained Accent: As with Curt Mega as Duke, Kim Whalen is also from Texas, and lets some Texas drawl into her speech as Miss Holloway too. (Mostly when she's talking to Duke, so this may not reflect her real background so much as showing her ability to mirror people's mannerisms and make them comfortable.)

Morning Cup o' News

Dan and Donna

Dan Reynolds and Donna Daggit

Played by: Joey Richter (Dan) | Lauren Lopez (Donna)

Appears in: The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals | Black Friday^note promotional material; Donna only | "The Hatchetfield Ape-Man" | "Peanuts!" | "The Witch in the Web" | "Honey Queen"^note Dan only | Nerdy Prudes Must Die

Dan: "That's amazing, Donna!"

Dan: I’ve never known darker times
And I’ve covered the protests live
At the Hatchetfield kennel
I am Dan Reynolds
...with Action News weekdays at 10 p.m.

The anchors of the local Hatchetfield news station.

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• Alliterative Name: "Dan and Donna" make for a catchy duo due to their similar names, and Donna Daggit has one herself.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: In the first part of the song "Peanuts!" they engage the Man in a Hurry in a pointless Vox Pops speculating on what would happen if Peanuts could talk, seemingly enthralled with the idea of being able to generate even more news content from him than they already do. Then, apparently, he does start talking and their response is to Go Mad from the Revelation.
• Coincidental Broadcast: They were a parody of this trope in The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals, with Paul tuning into the news just in time to catch the pointless Human-Interest Story about "Peanuts the Hatchetfield Pocket Squirrel" and turning off the TV to head to work immediately before they start talking about the mysterious meteor impact the previous night.
• The Dividual: They've never appeared separately outside of their newscasts.
• Fair-Weather Friend: In Nerdy Prudes Must Die, when Donna is accused of the murders, Dan immediately starts pointing fingers at her too.
• Flanderization: Dan and Donna are introduced to the audience talking about Peanuts the Hatchetfield Pocket Squirrel in The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals; the song "Peanuts!" seems to take place in a universe where this one Human-Interest Story attracted so much interest he ends up being the only thing they ever talk about.
• Go Mad from the Revelation: When Peanuts starts talking it apparently disturbs their worldview so much to discover sapient animals exist that their minds completely break, and from that point on their mannerisms become fully unambiguously insane.
• Human-Interest Story: The whole Running Gag with Dan and Donna is that they spend just as much or more energy on seemingly pointless stories about a local resident adopting a pet squirrel or an eccentric tourist's obsession with the local cryptid as they do actual newsworthy events.
• Kent Brockman News: There usually aren't overt jokes in their broadcasts compared to the Trope Namer from The Simpsons, but a lot about them is Played for Laughs, like their forced cheerfulness, Dan's Catchphrase "That's amazing, Donna!" and their morning news show changing its name to the obnoxiously folksy "Morning Cup O' News" in Nightmare Time Episode 1.
• Milking the Giant Cow: Dan in particular develops a tendency to do this as he undergoes Sanity Slippage in "Peanuts!"
• Parody Religion: Peanuts' sapience in the song "Peanuts!" apparently greatly disturbs Dan and Donna's previously atheistic worldview and, it's implied, leads to them swinging to the other end of the spectrum and joining a religion based on worshiping Peanuts, a religion that then — as in Black Friday — evolves into an Apocalypse Cult that ends the world.
• Power Hair: Donna's canonical appearance (the one in "Peanuts!", where Lauren Lopez had time to put on an actual costume and wig) gives her this kind of hair.
• Shoo Out the Clowns: Dan and Donna are noticeably absent from Black Friday; Donna gives us a Human-Interest Story about the Tickle-Me Wiggly doll's sudden popularity in the Black Friday preview video, but in the show itself the Practical Voiceover reporting on the Black Friday crisis comes from a much more Played Straight news broadcast out of New York.
• Silent Partner: A Running Gag in early Dan and Donna broadcasts we heard featured Donna delivering the entire story, while Dan said nothing other than "That's amazing, Donna!" (their Similar Squad in Clivesdale, Rachel and Rod, reverse the pattern, with Rod, also played by Joey Richter, doing all the talking while Rachel is completely silent) Dan gets to speak fully in "Peanuts!" and from "Honey Queen" onward.
• Similar Squad: After Hatchetfield is destroyed in The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals, we run into their counterparts "Rachel and Rod" from the Clivesdale Morning News, reporting on the tragedy. Rachel never speaks, but Rod is also voiced by Joey Richter.
• The Voice: They appeared only in voiceover in TGWDLM, playing on unseen televisions, and in the Black Friday preview. In subsequent appearances they have appeared onscreen.

Needy Beast

Rose

Rosary "Rose"

Played by: Bryce Charles

Appears in: "Killer Track"

"Great. My life is in the hands... of Barbie."

The edgy lead guitarist of Needy Beast.

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Thrash

Thrash

Played by: Joey Richter

Appears in: "Killer Track"

"Shit, man. I feel like I'm gonna shit!"

Just run away if you want, if you dare
The nightmare's gonna get you
Just run away, if you want, if you dare!
Daddy's gonna get you
You can run if I don't catch you
But Nightmare Time already caught you

The frontman of Needy Beast, secretly deeply insecure.

---

Skud

Skud

Played by: Jeff Blim

Appears in: "Killer Track"

"What're we playin', though?"

Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock, baby!

The burnout drummer of Needy Beast.

---

Pizza Pete's Family Fun Zone

Eddie Chiplucky

Eddie Chiplucky

Played by: Curt Mega

Appears in: "Yellow Jacket"

"Is it magic? Psychic ability? Who knows? Once you get past the initial shock, you can sit back and enjoy the show."

The new owner of Pizza Pete's. A former Las Vegas gambler with an eye for kids with unique talents.

---

• Meaningful Name: "Chiplucky" is such a spot-on surname for a Las Vegas high-roller that it's safe to assume he chose it for himself.

Roller-Rama

• The Black and White: Otho

Charles

Charles

Played by: James Tolbert

Appears in: "Yellow Jacket" | Nerdy Prudes Must Die

"Good luck out there, champ. And remember... I got my thumb on the button."

The mysterious figure behind Roller-Rama, formerly Hatchetfield's roller-skating rink, now a secret gladiatorial arena where children with "a touch of the gift" battle each other.

---

• Big Bad: Of Yellow Jacket since he's the one who's got Pokotho on a leash.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: A ludicrously wealthy man with an interest in gaining even more wealth and power for himself through the macabre power that surrounds Hatchetfield.
• The Cameo: In the filmed version of the Nerdy Prudes number "Hatchet Town", Charles makes an edited-in cameo as a suspect of the murders. In the stage version, that accusation was directed at Karen Chasity.
• Even Evil Has Standards: As noted above, he appears in "Hatchet Town", during which he is accused of being the killer; He's genuinely offended by this.
• Fiction 500: Offers Ethan a bribe of 100 million dollars as if it were a Comically Small Bribe.
• Karma Houdini: In Yellow Jacket. While he's forced to let Ethan and the Foster sisters go and his plans to weaponize Hannah for profit fails, Charles himself survives with his business empire intact and views it as a minor bump in the road at worst.

Spitfire

Sophia / Spitfire

Played by: Bryce Charles

Appears in: "Yellow Jacket"

"I didn't need your help the other day. With Stopwatch? I would have figured it out on my own."

A 17-year-old gladiator at Roller-Rama, who has the power to manipulate fire.

---

• Playing with Fire: As a pyrokinetic, it's easy to see why she's one of the most dangerous fighters in the games.
• Supernatural Martial Arts: She commands her fire using very precise punches and kicks, giving her strong vibes of a firebender.

Stopwatch

Daniel / Stopwatch

Played by: Jon Matteson

Appears in: "Yellow Jacket"

"Lucky! Some powers are good, but some stink."

A very young Roller-Rama gladiator who can stop time while holding his breath.

---

• Cheerful Child: Despite being a child gladiator, he's bright and chipper and unfailingly nice to his competitors.
• Competitive Balance: While presumably not deliberate on anyone's part, his "touch of the Gift" would be absurdly overpowered if not for the fact that he has to hold his breath in order to do it; thus he can only take advantage of time being frozen for a few seconds at a time, and as Hannah hint-drops to Spitfire, if the arena is smoky he can't activate his powers at all.
• Time Master: He can freeze time briefly, allowing him to make moves in battle that can't be seen or countered.

Starlight Theatre (including Hatchetfield Community Players)

• Families: Zoey Chambers

Producer

Starlight Producer

Played by: Mary Kate Wiles

Appears in: Workin' Boys

"We'd like to see a few... minor changes."

One of the producers at the Starlight Theatre and judge of the Local Writers' Workshop.

---

• The Cameo: Mary Kate Wiles, known for her work with StarKid sister troupes Shipwrecked Comedy and Tin Can Brothers, makes her second appearance in an actual StarKid property, brief though it is.
• Executive Meddling: In-universe, she and her fellow producers at the Starlight Theatre are willing to pay for Professor Hidgens's show, but only if he makes his all-male cast a group of women instead.
• No Name Given: The credits list her as simply "Starlight Producer".

Stage Manager

The Stage Manager

Played by: Paul Gabriel

Appears in: Workin' Boys

"Does this dialogue still read now that they're girls?"

Professor Hidgens's stage manager on his production of Workin' Girls.

---

• Beleaguered Assistant: As the stage manager, he has to enforce the whims of the director. As you might expect, that's an exhausting task when your director is Professor Hidgens.
• Creator Cameo: Played by Paul Gabriel, who is the actual stage manager for all Hatchetfield musicals (and takes an equivalent role in non-stage installments).
• No Name Given: The credits list him as simply "Stage Manager".

Hailey Dilmore

Hailey Dilmore

Played by: Angela Giarratana

Appears in: "Honey Queen" | "Killer Track" | Workin' Boys

"Sorry it stinks in there. I can't stop dumping ass."

One of Zoey's several roommates and a fellow Community Player.

---

• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: She's a bit part in "Honey Queen", seemingly a one-note joke about suffering diarrhea, but she is briefly seen offering Zoey a tea to soothe her throat. In "Killer Track", we see her searching the Honey Festival for a concoction to ruin Zoey's throat, revealing her to be seemingly just as duplicitous as Zoey herself.

Courtney

Courtney

Played by: Lauren Lopez

Appears in: "Killer Track" | Workin' Boys

"Kick his ass, Thrash."

A member of the Hatchetfield Community Players, and girlfriend of Needy Beast's Thrash.

---

Cast of Workin' Girls

Workin' Girls

Played by: Kim Whalen (Meg) | Bryce Charles (Eve) | Virginia Vass (Sue)

Appears in: Workin' Boys

It takes balls
To be balls-to-the-wall
It takes stones to believe that you think you're above it
And you don't miss it at all
It takes big fat fuckin' balls
To be balls-to-the-wall!

The cast assembled for Professor Hidgens's production of Workin' Girls. The cast also includes Zoey Chambers as Henrietta Hidgens, Hailey Dilmore as Marge, and Courtney as Leia. See Main Residents for Ruth Fleming, who plays Secretary #4.

---

• Gender Flip: Hidgens grudgingly submits to producing a gender-flipped version of his script.
• The Lad-ette: All of them, since Hidgens agrees to change all the genders in his script but refuses to change anything else.
• Lazily Gender-Flipped Name: While not as lazy as he could have been, Hidgens keeps their names as close to the names of himself and his college chums as he can: Henry, Greg, Steve, Stu, Mark, and Leighton become Henrietta, Meg, Eve, Sue, Marge, and Leia. Chad, who makes no onstage appearance, remains Chad.
• No Name Given: The real names of the actresses playing Meg, Eve, and Sue are not given. It's also not textually stated that Leia is played by the previously seen bit character Courtney, though Lauren Lopez and Nick Lang agree that, since it's Lauren in the same wig, that's clearly her. The show's program, a Freeze-Frame Bonus otherwise full of deliberately nonsensical writing by Matt Lang, identifies Eve's actress as Cassandra King.

Toy Zone

• Main Residents: Lex Foster

Frank Pricely

Frank Pricely

Played by: Corey Dorris

Appears in: Black Friday | "Daddy" | "Yellow Jacket"

"That would be nice. If our hot ticket item was on the shelves WHEN WE OPEN."

Did you know? If you spend money
Your kids will love you maybe
We're slashing prices - it's brutality!
Makes me question my morality,
'Cause our doors are open

The owner of Toy Zone, Lex's workplace.

---

• Above the Influence: Frank is one of the few characters who never hears the voice of Wiggly and doesn't actually become Brainwashed and Crazy when the Wiggly cult forms, remaining one of the "infidels" along with his employee Lex. This is possibly because Wiggly's plan required him to be obsessed with selling the dolls to other people rather than having them for himself, or the Black Friday sale would never have happened. As for why Wiggly didn't revoke this protection once the cult had already formed, one line from Linda implies that Wiggly doesn't particularly like Frank.
• Alas, Poor Villain: Frank is not a good person, and much of what happens on Black Friday is his fault, but it's impossible not to pity him when you see him going down under a wave of screaming, feral customers, terrified and confused at how quickly everything went wrong. And there's nothing funny or satisfying about his death as a Human Sacrifice at all.
• Bad Boss: He's a pretty huge asshole to Lex, thinking nothing of making her work long hours on a holiday weekend and openly giving her shit about how lucky she is to have a job as a "dropout with a record". He's also pretty cruel about her sister's disability, and some have interpreted his controlling behavior and handsiness with Lex as sexual harassment. Lex probably hates him more than anyone else but her mom... which doesn't make it any less traumatizing when she sees him murdered right in front of her.
• Black Dude Dies First: Averted, but only narrowly — Ethan is the first character to die but he dies shortly afterwards, and is one of only four characters to die onstage.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: Not a very high level one, but nonetheless ruthless and concerned only about his profits. He plays fast and loose with store policy (and quite likely the law) when demand for the Wiggly dolls gets out of hand, and by so doing hastens the unfolding violence and his own death.
• Death by Irony: He starts the day by smugly proclaiming his store isn't liable if anyone dies in the Black Friday excitement. Shortly thereafter he becomes one of the victims of Black Friday himself.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: "Our Doors Are Open" is a very... sensual song, and has inspired many jokes about how Frank's sexual orientation is capitalism.
• Even Evil Has Standards: He's a totally unscrupulous businessman, but he thinks of Sherman Young as a "sicko" and is relatively quickly convinced to do the sensible thing and impose a one doll limit per customer rather than let him take all the merchandise. He also is the only adult character at the mall who never succumbs to the Wiggly cult at any point, calling them "crazies" to his dying breath.
• Hidden Depths: Daddy reveals that owning a toy store was his childhood dream, and the technological shift to online sales hurts him on more than just a fiscal level.
• Jerkass: Yeah. He's greedy, rude, and outright gleeful at the idea of a Retail Riot occurring in his store. Though even he changes his tune when he sees how bad things are getting.
• Large Ham: He's in a very exuberant mood on Black Friday, singing Christmas carols, dramatically posing in his entrances and calling Black Friday "the holiest day of the year".
• Meaningful Name: His last name is "Pricely" and he's a businessman concerned with prices. His decision to abandon consistent pricing for the Wigglies and allow a bidding war to emerge sparks the Black Friday disaster.
• Money Fetish: All but stated that he has one, given all in innuendo in "Our Doors Are Open," and the fact that he literally (diagetically!) sings about his love of money more than once.
• Only Shop in Town: Toy Zone is the only brick-and-mortar toy retailer in town (and in The New '10s one of the few left in the country), forcing the whole town to gather there on Black Friday for their chance at a Wiggly doll. It turns out Uncle Wiley Toys' decision to only sell one very limited order of the dolls to one independent retailer wasn't just a typical scummy tactic to drive hype, but was calculated to cause violence and hasten the apocalypse.
• Pet the Dog: Almost literally; one of the ways "Daddy" establishes him as a sympathetic protagonist is when he is utterly gutted by the sudden passing away of his dog Buddy on top of his business troubles.
• Politically Incorrect Villain: While talking to Lex he makes an extremely ableist reference to Hannah being dropped on her head as a child.
• Sacrificial Lamb: While Ethan is the first character we see killed in the riots, Frank is murdered by Linda in cold blood to cement how this has gone from Retail Riot to Apocalypse Cult.
• Slashed Throat: How he dies, via boxcutter.
• Slimeball: He can be polite and even genial at times, but his charm is definitely the kind that leaves you needing a shower.
• Villain Has a Point: Black Friday is, after all, named that because it's the time of year when many retailers dependent on Christmas shopping finally get in the black. Frank is feeding the Black Friday Wiggly madness as much as he can because it's how he keeps his store alive.

Government

City Hall

• Families: Mayor Solomon Lauter

Miss Tessburger

Miss Tessburger

Played by: Kim Whalen

Appears in: Nerdy Prudes Must Die

"This is politics, Stephanie, learn to multitask."

Mayor Lauter's administrative assistant.

---

• Decapitation Presentation: Max does this with her head while confronting Mayor Lauter.
• Off with His Head!: Decapitated by Max.

Child Protective Services

Duke Keane

Douglas "Duke" Keane, Jr.

Played by: Curt Mega

Appears in: "The Witch in the Web" | "Killer Track"

"Heya, darlin'!"

A children's social worker. In charge of monitoring Hannah's home life among others, he knows to go to Miss Holloway when situations with Hatchetfield's youth start to feel paranormal.

---

• Adults Are Useless: Defied. His hands are tied in some ways, but he does everything he can to help Hannah, and believes in Lex's innocence when she's arrested in "The Witch in the Web." He got into social work for the right reasons: wanting to protect people who can't protect themselves.
• Amazon Chaser: He thinks Miss Holloway's abilities and powers are awesome, and cheerfully says he's in love with her after watching her in action.
• The Friendly Texan: Curt Mega actually is from Texas, and gives Duke a bit of a drawl. Duke, of course, is just about the nicest guy you could hope to meet in Hatchetfield.
• Friend on the Force: For Miss Holloway — she pretty clearly doesn't work for the government herself, but he's able to stretch his authority as a social worker to bring her in as a "specialist" to help kids touched by the supernatural.
• Good Ol' Boy: Fits this stereotype, with his mild Southern drawl, casual dress, beat-up station wagon, mullet and nickname, subverting a lot of people's stereotype of what a social worker should look and act like while nonetheless being a damn good one. (And helps alleviate the stereotypical portrayal of Pamela, with her similar accent and full embodiment of its Lower-Class Lout connotations.)
• Hero's Classic Car: Averted, after the previous story in this episode had made a big deal of Tom Houston having one — like most social workers, a beat-up old station wagon is the best transportation he can afford. Immediately lampshaded by the contrast with Miss Holloway's 1987 Pontiac Firebird.
• Implied Love Interest: Duke and Miss Holloway flirt pretty heavily and pretty hard, but the story plays it coy enough that it's uncertain if they really are dating or it's just banter.
• Muggle Best Friend: Is this for Miss Holloway — and, with Lex and Ethan in jail, is also the only Muggle friend Hannah has left.
• Muggle–Mage Romance: It's left ambiguous whether there actually is anything romantic between Duke and Miss Holloway, but it's pretty obvious that Duke would at least like there to be.
  Duke: (in awe, after witnessing Miss Holloway's magic) I think I'm in love with you. You know that?
  Miss Holloway: (shrugs) Wouldn't blame you.
• Nice Guy: An upstanding gentleman who works hard to help the Fosters.
• One-Steve Limit: An extremely minor aversion; his nickname is "Duke" and not "Doug" so as not to step on the extremely minor police officer character Mariah plays in TGWDLM who unwittingly became an Ascended Meme.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: His first name is Douglas, but everyone calls him Duke, his given name only being used when the stage directions introduce him and when Miss Holloway gives him a joking Full-Name Ultimatum when he flirts with her.
• Phrase Catcher: He is usually greeted with "Hiya, Duke," to which he responds "Heya, darlin'!"
• Reasonable Authority Figure:
  • Takes his responsibilities very seriously, but also has no illusions that kids like Lex have good reason to be distrustful of the system, and that Lex has a point that Hannah going into foster care has a high chance of making her situation worse, despite how cartoonishly awful a mom Pamela is.
  • Is also fully willing to accept that the supernatural exists and plays a serious role in the troubles of many of the kids he works with, and is willing to let Miss Holloway deal with it without asking too many questions.
• Secret-Keeper: As a friend of Miss Holloway, he's in the loop about the supernatural nature of Hatchetfield, although he's knowingly and willingly Locked Out of the Loop when it comes to the full details about "Nightmare Time" he wouldn't understand. Miss Holloway would like to tell him all of her secrets — and has, out of desperation for closure — but everyone who learns about her past instantly forgets.
• Unexplained Accent: Curt Mega lets just a tiny bit of his native Texas accent into his speech when playing Duke.

Hatchetfield Police Department

• Families: Sam Sweetly

Doug

Doug

Played by: Mariah Rose Faith

Appears in: The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals | "Jane's a Car"

"Sarge, it's your wife on the 911!"

A deadpan and self-serious semi-recurring police officer.

---

• All There in the Script: Adding to the weirdness of the Ascended Meme to outsiders, in the YouTube version of the show, Robert Manion flubbed the line that reveals Doug's name, accidentally addressing them as "Sarge" — meaning you have to read the script (available only to Kickstarter backers) or listen to the soundtrack to know what the line was supposed to be and, therefore, where the meme comes from.
• Ascended Meme: Doug's name is the result of a single line in the song "Show Me Your Hands", and the Gender-Blender Name is probably an unintentional result of which actors they could assign to be Sam's backup singers for that song (with the name being something they couldn't change because it's at the end of a rhyming line). Mariah Rose Faith made a tongue-in-cheek remark on Instagram that Doug's masculine name but feminine appearance is due to being an AFAB non-binary person.
• Bit Character: Doug is only a background character in The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals, but the "controversy" over their gender made them memorable enough that they come back as the police officer in Nightmare Time Ep. 3 Pt. 1, "Jane's a Car".
• The Comically Serious: Their only real character trait. See the Black Comedy moment of what happens to poor Kathy's cat in "Show Me Your Hands".
• Cool Shades: They're Doug's Iconic Item that let you know they're the character Mariah is playing. It made enough sense in The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals, where the song "Show Me Your Hands" took place outdoors in the middle of the day, but they make a lot less sense in "Jane's a Car" where they're wearing them inside a hospital at night (while trying to comfort an assault victim, no less).
• Fair Cop: Being played by Mariah Rose Faith, they can hardly avoid being this, which is one of the reasons fans latched onto them.
• Gender-Blender Name: Their name is "Doug" even though they're played by Mariah Rose Faith.
• Minority Police Officer: If they actually are non-binary in-universe, although being a woman would still make them this to a lesser degree.
• Police Are Useless: Doug is notable if only because their Bit Character role in "Jane's a Car" means that for once they avert this trope for the Hatchetfield PD.
• Wild Hair: One of Doug's most feminine (and unrealistic for a police officer) traits that makes their name so incongruous.

Detective Shapiro

Detective Shapiro

Played by: Bryce Charles

Appears in: Nerdy Prudes Must Die

"There's something not right here. There's something deeply wrong with this whole town!"

A homicide detective, originally from Chicago, who recently joined the HFPD.

---

• Genre Refugee: Seems to have stepped right out of a serious detective TV show in the vein of Law & Order.
• I Need a Freaking Drink: After Ghost Max is defeated, she's seen chugging a flask of whisky at the Homecoming dance.
• Not Quite Dead: Seems to die just before the climax of the show when Max smashes her head through her car's windshield. Peter attempts to check her pulse but admits he has no idea what he's doing. At homecoming, we find she has survived.
• Only Sane Man: The only cop in Hatchetfield who doesn't seem to be a complete moron. Probably because she's not a local.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: Lets the teens off the hook after seeing Max's vengeful ghost with her own eyes.
• Straight Man: She's a lot more grounded and serious than her fellow police officers and Hatchetfield residents in general.
• Twofer Token Minority: A Black woman with a stereotypically Jewish family name who is catholic.
• Wrong Genre Savvy: She conducts herself the way a homicide detective on a cop show would and pieces together plenty of clues in a way that would make sense were she in one, but unfortunately for her she is in a Horror Comedy with paranormal elements she is not prepared for.

Officer Bailey

Officer Bailey

Played by: Curt Mega

Appears in: Nerdy Prudes Must Die | Workin' Boys

"We're small-town cops! We're a little out of our depth."

I hate to relay the news
But the football team might be screwed
Stay inside, watch your children
'Cause a losing streak’s coming

A belligerent police officer who works closely with Detective Shapiro.

---

• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: For Sam as a Jerkass trigger-happy cop.

Schools

Hatchetfield Community College

Ziggs

Ziggs / Ziggy

Played by: Jae Hughes

Appears in: "Perky's Buds" | Nerdy Prudes Must Die

Mentioned in: "Watcher World"

"I'm sorry, dudes. I thought you were Republicans. But like, hell yes. Mad respect. Save the trees!"

Roll it, pack it, light it up
Smoke it, pass it, feel the buzz
Just up the county road
There’s a farm the townies know
That’ll hook you up with all the perks you can think up
Just smoke a fatty bowl of Perky’s Buds

A popular and fun non-binary former classmate of Alice and Deb. Specializes in graphic design.

---

• Always Someone Better: Alice finds Ziggs much cooler and more worldly than herself, and fears Deb choosing Ziggs over her.
• Betty and Veronica: The Veronica to Alice's Betty to Deb's Archie.
• The Cameo: In the filmed version of the Nerdy Prudes number "Hatchet Town", Ziggs makes an edited-in cameo as a suspect of the murders. In the stage version, that accusation was directed at Dan Reynolds.
• The Ghost: Was not seen in the first season of Nightmare Time, as the current Hatchetfield repertoire had no non-binary actors to portray them, leading to Jae Hughes joining the team in the second season.
• Granola Girl: Wears a tie-dyed The Grateful Dead shirt (and notes that they can't imagine anyone wearing such a shirt to ever be in a hostile mood), doesn't relish shooting birds to protect crops, declares "peace and love" as goodbye, and when stoned, is more nervous about the notion of the Metzgers voting Republican than coming back to shoot themself and Emma.
• Life of the Party: One of their only known traits, along with just generally being attractive and "really cool". Apparently Ziggs bringing Quiplash to Deb's party is going to be the highlight of the evening for everyone.
• Male Gaze: Ziggs objects to the term due to being non-binary, but this is the main theme of their graphic design.
  Ziggs: It's my gaze, and I like tig ol' biddies.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: When Bill doesn't know who "Ziggs" is, Alice clarifies that their real name is "Ziggy", before realizing in exasperation that Bill doesn't know who she's talking about at all. Alice and the script keep on exclusively calling them "Ziggs" after this point, though (and "Ziggy" itself is technically a nickname of "Sigmund"). It's unrevealed whether Ziggy is the name on their birth certificate or a name chosen when they came out; in "Perky's Buds", Ziggs and Ziggy are used interchangeably.
• Plucky Comic Relief: Ziggs is apparently so reliably clever at Quiplash Alice is afraid Deb will fall over laughing right into bed with them, given half a chance. Word of God from Nick Lang says that Ziggs is a very "fun and funny" person, all that would be revealed about them prior to their debut.
• The Stoner: In "Perky's Buds", Ziggs works as a farmhand on Emma's cannabis farm and they both partake heartily in the crop they grow.

Jenny

Jenny

Played by: Kim Whalen

Appears in: "Time Bastard"

"Teddy...?"

You bastard
I don't care where you've been
I need to know when it began
And when were you then?

Ted's best friend in college, whom he never had the guts to confess his love to and hasn't seen since.

---

• Ambiguous Situation: The version of Jenny in the Title Sequence singing the Theme Tune "Time Bastard" is very different from the Jenny we meet in the story, and the lyrics seem to be about Jenny taking some long-delayed revenge against Ted for wronging her, saying he took horrible advantage of her once but now she's wise to his tricks and will be turning the tables on him. There doesn't seem to be any version of Jenny in the story who could actually be expressing this sentiment, since Jenny dies without ever finding out the truth about Ted's Time Travel powers, leading to some Wild Mass Guessing over who exactly the speaker of this song actually is.
• Cannot Spit It Out: Neither Young Ted nor Jenny have the emotional maturity to directly confess their feelings to each other at their age, leading Jenny to resort to writing Ted a "Dear John" Letter just before she leaves town — which she later admits was "cowardly".
• "Dear John" Letter: Jenny drops a bomb out of nowhere on Young Ted by leaving a letter in his mailbox telling him she's leaving town with a new boyfriend she never told him about, because she's been in love with him this whole time and living as Just Friends has become too painful for her. The small but very real cruelty of doing this by letter rather than face-to-face helps scar Ted for life and turn him into the "bastard" he is by the present day and sets up the situation that leads to Jenny's tragic death.
• Ethereal White Dress: Bride!Jenny turns out to be this, with the Ted/Jenny wedding just an ephemeral hallucination created by Tinky. It's implied that the version of Jenny in her wedding dress who sings "Time Bastard" is another illusion tormenting Ted, either sent by Tinky or generated by his own guilty conscience.
• Fun T-Shirt: She's wearing a T-shirt with the Ford logo on it when we finally see her for real, although since it's obscured for most of the scene it's probably not an intentional reference to anything.
• Hallucinations: The plot of "Time Bastard" is set up by Ted being granted a very convincing one of his and Jenny's wedding day by Tinky, leading to his obsession with finding the Alternate Timeline where he and Jenny stayed together.
• The Ingenue: Beautiful, innocent, and sweet, so much so that when her best friend Teddy appears as a much-older sleazy douchebag she doesn't take it personally and assumes he must be suffering for the same reasons she is.
• Just Friends: Young Ted put her on a pedestal so much he tries to keep their relationship as this, even though it's tearing him apart inside. It wasn't until it was too late — after reading her letter — that he realized she felt the same way, and the pain of this realization turned him into an embittered misogynist who uses women so he can Never Be Hurt Again.
• Killed Off for Real: The ending of “Time Bastard” reveals that she’s dead — in all possible timelines, due to having died in 2004.
• My Greatest Failure: Ted starts the story of "Time Bastard" musing on how letting Jenny get away without ever declaring his feelings for her was this. By the end of the story he realizes it's far worse, and that his greatest failure was killing her — a failure he can never undo, and which haunts him in his broken state as the Homeless Man for the rest of his life — and presumably still haunts him once his soul goes into the Bastard's Box.
• No Body Left Behind: The final cruelty of the disintegrator is that it leaves no corpse behind, just an unrecognizable small pile of ashes, meaning both Young Ted and Andy have no idea that Jenny is dead and each one assumes she left town with the other.
• No Name Given: She never gets a last name, since we only hear about her from Ted's POV.
• The One That Got Away: She ends up unable to live with being Just Friends with Ted, and falls for someone else and leaves town with him. Ted looking back sees failing to have the courage to bare his feelings for her as My Greatest Failure, and her leaving without saying goodbye in person or ever getting in touch with him again leaves him feeling utterly bereft as though she were The Lost Lenore. So he thinks. It turns out she really was The Lost Lenore all these years, and it's his own fault.
• Posthumous Character: She’s actually dead by the time of TGWDLM and Black Friday.
• Significant Green-Eyed Redhead: Any significant character played by Kim Whalen is going to be this, of course, but it especially applies here, where Kim's whole job is to play a dream girl whose loss becomes the fulcrum a man's whole life pivots on (which she does very well).
• Targeted to Hurt the Hero: Her death is truly awful just to hear described, especially how the disintegrator draws out the process and leaves her in agonizing pain the whole time, staring into Ted's eyes saying, "Ted, I'm scared... it hurts..." until there's nothing left of her. It's calculated to completely, irrevocably break both Ted's heart and his mind, and it succeeds.
• Unrequited Love Lasts Forever: It was requited love, but the knowledge that he screwed things up with the love of his life through simple inaction hurt Young Ted enough that he resolved to never let himself have real feelings for a woman again.
• Unresolved Sexual Tension: She and Ted look like a classic one of these couples who ended tragically because neither of them had the courage to make their feelings known. It turns out that what actually happened between the two of them was a lot more complicated and tragic.
• Virgin in a White Dress: Ted's vision of Jenny as his bride is very much an idealized, fairy-tale version of this archetype, played by Kim Whalen as only she can — although she subverts it with some sly naughtiness like reminding Ted they were going to try edibles for the first time on their wedding night.
• Walking Spoiler: The one scene she actually appears in in "Time Bastard" (as opposed to a hallucination of her) is a bunch of Wham Lines in a row.

Hatchetfield High School - Students

• Main Residents: Lex Foster, Hannah Foster, Stephanie Lauter, Grace Chasity, Peter Spankoffski, Ruth Fleming, Richie Lipschitz, Max Jägerman
• Families: Ethan Green

Deb

Deb

Played by: Jaime Lyn Beatty

Appears in: The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals | "Killer Track"

Mentioned in: "Watcher World"

"Look, she doesn't have to if she doesn't want to, okay?"

Alice: Did you know mom let Deb sleep over?
And you’re right about Deb, she’s a hardcore stoner

Alice's girlfriend, who Bill dislikes.

---

• Ambiguously Bi: Dating Alice but mentioned in "Watcher World" to have a crush on Ziggs, a non-binary classmate, suggesting that Deb is bi or pan.
• Butch Lesbian: Deb is this to her girlfriend Alice's Lipstick Lesbian.
• Fetishized Abuser: This doesn't happen in TGWDLM —she's shown being protective of Alice and Alice got herself killed by staying in Hatchetfield for an extra day without telling her dad— but in Watcher World, Bill's judgement of her as a suitable paramour for his daughter amounts to this. He says that she's a bad influence on Alice and doesn't treat her well, for someone meant to be a significant other, and they don't seem to have a future in mind. Case in point: Bill schedules a trip weeks in advance because he wants to bond with his daughter before she goes to college, and Deb spontaneously hosts a Wild Teen Party, hinting to Alice that if she doesn't come, Ziggs may be more interesting. This sends Alice into a panicked frenzy; to add insult to injury, Deb posts pictures on her Instagram of hooking up with Ziggs, all the while knowing why Alice couldn't make it. For this reason, once she and Bill snap out of Blinky's brainwashing, Alice doesn't admit that Bill was right, but checks Instagram once to follow him and then tosses her phone into the backseat, showing that she's letting go of Deb's power over her.
• Love Triangle: "Watcher World" reveals that Deb has a crush on Ziggs, and Alice is extremely insecure about how much cooler and more worldly Ziggs is than her, thinking it's a very real possibility that Deb may choose Ziggs over her.
• Phoneaholic Teenager: When struggling to give an actual reason he hates Deb Bill throws out the fact that she's "always on her phone".
• Rich Kids: "Watcher World" reveals that, surprisingly, Deb's family is quite wealthy, with her parents owning a lake house — complete with jet ski — they let her use as a venue for a blowout Wild Teen Party just before leaving for college, and are lenient enough Deb feels no need to hide that there will be alcohol and hooking up there, in sharp contrast to how Alice is treated by Bill. And she's going on a weeklong trip to Amsterdam with her grandmother immediately afterwards, and is deliberately going to pursue a Starving Artist career with her parents' money to fall back on. It all puts Bill's dislike of Deb and belief that she's a Toxic Friend Influence in a different, more sympathetic light.
  • Deb's wealthy background overturns a lot of assumptions people had about her based on her brief appearance in The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals where she wore baggy, drab clothes in contrast to Alice's outfit, which now seems like Deb consciously adopting a Hipster identity.
• Straw Vegetarian: Bill seems to regard Deb being a vegetarian — and defining "vegetarian" as not eating seafood, even on Red Lobster's Crabfest — as yet another way she's deliberately antagonizing him.
• The Stoner: Alice reveals to her father's horror that he was right about Deb; she's a hardcore stoner.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: A lot of fans turned against Deb in "Watcher World", where it's revealed she's one of the Rich Kids and acts pretty callously toward her girlfriend, throwing a Wild Teen Party without her right before they both leave for college.
• Toxic Friend Influence: Bill thinks Deb is this to Alice. Ironically, the one time we actually see Deb and Alice before their assimilation, Deb is the one standing up to peer pressure, dragging Alice away from "the Smoke Club".

Obnoxious Teen

The Obnoxious Teen

Played by: Joey Richter

Appears in: Black Friday | "Watcher World" | "Jane's a Car" | "Honey Queen"

"Uh, sir, okay, this is not the type of place where you can haggle, sir, like, I don't set the prices, I'm just a high school kid."

A sleepy-eyed, squeaky-voiced high school student seen throughout Hatchetfield.

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• Actor Allusion: Joey Richter has described his tendency toward Inopportune Voice Cracking as the "bane of his existence" as an actor when he's trying to play a serious, impressive role, and casting him in this role comes off as mildly ribbing him for it (similar to when he cast himself as Scrags in The Solve-It Squad Returns!).
• Burger Fool: All of his jobs are of the menial, mindless sort that teenagers are forced into, and he's incompetent enough that when Tom orders two items at Pizza Pete's (which is technically a Suck E. Cheese's), that's too much for him to write down all at once.
• Decomposite Character: At various stages in Hatchetfield's development, he's been intended to be unveiled as two different main characters, first Peter Spankoffski, then Richie Lipschitz, then Peter again, but it never ends up panning out that way and he remains a Recurring Extra.
  • The original intent for a recurring "obnoxious teen" character, originally played by Robert Manion, was for him to continuously make cameos around Hatchetfield before being revealed to be Peter Spankoffski. However, his second such appearance, in Black Friday, required him appearing opposite Ethan, also played by Manion, requiring the creation of a new obnoxious teen played by Joey Richter, and in Nightmare Time, it was Joey's version who was given the recurring gimmick.
  • In Nerdy Prudes Must Die, the character of Richie Lipschitz was originally written as an unexpected Ascended Extra role for the Obnoxious Teen. However, with Robert Manion's departure from the team, the role of Peter ultimately went to Joey, requiring Jon Matteson to take on the role of Richie.
  • In light of Joey being the new Peter, Nick Lang briefly considered a Retcon that Peter and the Obnoxious Teen were the same person all along, but soon realized that the singular timeline of Nightmare Time 2 made that impossible, as in "Abstinence Camp" Peter complains that he'll miss the Hoeny Festival, while the earlier episode "Honey Queen" shows that the Obnoxious Teen did indeed attend.
• Nerd Glasses: Joey Richter puts on huge glasses — even more exaggeratedly nerdy than those of Peter Spankoffski — as an instant way to let us know who this character is.
• New Job as the Plot Demands: He's a movie theatre ticket-taker in Black Friday, an amusement park ride attendant in "Watcher World", and a waiter at Pizza Pete's in "Jane's a Car". His "Honey Queen" appearance doesn't quite keep up the running gag, as it's a volunteer gig.
• Obstructive Bureaucrat: As with the Squeaky-Voiced Teen, the whole joke of his character is him struggling to enforce his employers' rules on customers who don't care, and who find that it's him trying to tell them what they can and can't do to be adding insult to injury. Ethan almost gets kicked out of the mall trying to browbeat him into giving him a discount at the movie theater in Black Friday, and "Watcher World" features him and Bill getting into a brief Seinfeldian Conversation about what the concept of a "single rider" at an amusement park queue even means. This becomes much more Black Comedy when Bill and Alice get stuck at the top of the rollercoaster, and they have to deal with the scratchy voice of this guy coming over the intercom vainly trying to order them to stay in place and reassure them help is on the way.
• Shout-Out: Everything about him is an extended reference to the Squeaky-Voiced Teen from The Simpsons, being a pimply teen Recurring Extra with a wheezy voice and nerdy mannerisms, who keeps changing jobs, struggles with said jobs, and is much-abused by his customers, who don't care much about the rules at the businesses employing him.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: This character only exists because the script for Black Friday originally called for Robert Manion's nameless character eventually revealed to be Peter Spankoffski (who was also called "Obnoxious Teen" in the script for The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals) to be manning the ticket booth at the cineplex, only for this to be impossible when Robert was cast as Ethan, who gets into a confrontation with the teen. Ironically, following Robert's departure from the team all three characters are played by Joey.

Gabe

Gabe

Played by: Jeff Blim

Appears in: "Perky's Buds" | "Abstinence Camp"

"You know, I never thought I'd meet a girl as cool as my mom, but then I met you, Grace."

Grace's best friend, a church choir boy.

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Brad Callahan

Brad Callahan

Played by: Joey Richter

Appears in: "Yellow Jacket"

Mentioned in: Nerdy Prudes Must Die

"It wasn't me... it was Webby! Oh ho ho ho!"

Star quarterback of the Hatchetfield High Nighthawks.

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• Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: In Nerdy Prudes Must Die, the Nighthawks have a different star quarterback, Max Jägerman. Brad is name-dropped in NPMD, leaving it an inconsequential Riddle for the Ages as to where the Nightmare Time 2 timeline diverged from the Nerdy Prudes one to make him top dog.

Jason and Kyle

Jason Jepson and Kyle Clauger

Played by: Corey Dorris (Jason) | Curt Mega (Kyle)

Appears in: Nerdy Prudes Must Die

Jason: "Who's ready to cream some Chemists?" Kyle: "Let's go! Fuck Clivesdale!"

Kyle: Who knew football’s a team game?
Who needs a star quarterback to air it out
Jason: Or whip you with a saturated towel?
No more bullyball!

Max Jägerman's cronies and fellow Nighthawks football players.

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• Freeze-Frame Bonus: Their last names are never mentioned but can be seen on the backs of their football uniforms.
• Lovable Jock: Without the negative influence of Max they become much more pleasant.
• Minion with an F in Evil: Jason, who reacts to Max mockingly asking if he should let Peter off with a warning instead of beating him up by enthusiastically agreeing that he should in fact do so.
• Those Two Guys: Villainous variant as the two dumb thugs who flank Max. Without him bossing them around they have much more individuality.

Brenda and Stacy

Brenda and Stacy

Played by: Bryce Charles (Brenda) | Kim Whalen (Stacy)

Appears in: Nerdy Prudes Must Die | Workin' Boys^note Brenda only

Stacy: "Money isn't everything. Looks are." Brenda: "And, like, if you're on the football team."

N! I-G! H-T! Aw-awks!

Steph's friends, the Hatchetfield High cheer squad.

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• Alpha Bitch: Brenda — though the true alpha of the school is Max, and she mellows out considerably when he's no longer around.
• Dumb Blonde: Stacy is a more straightforward bimbo in comparison to calculated mean girl Brenda, and this is symbolized by putting the iconically red-haired Kim Whalen in a blonde wig.

Hatchetfield High School - Faculty

• Main Residents: Tom Houston

Miss Mulberry

Miss Mulberry

Played by: Kim Whalen

Appears in: Nerdy Prudes Must Die | Workin' Boys

"The point is, you got through it, together."

The biology and drama teacher at Hatchetfield High.

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Other

Man in a Hurry

Barry Swift, the Man in a Hurry

Played by: Jeff Blim

Appears in: The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals | Black Friday | "Watcher World" | "Forever & Always" | "Peanuts!" | "Daddy" | Nerdy Prudes Must Die | Workin' Boys

"The hell'd you stop the song for?! I'm in a hurry!"

A rude and impatient resident of Hatchetfield who always claims to be in a hurry.

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• Brainwashed and Crazy: He ends up just another one of the Wiggly cultists worshiping Linda who dies when the mall burns down.
• The Cameo:
  • He's the subject of the Couch Gag of Nightmare Time Season 2 Episode 3, prior to appearing in the episode proper in "Daddy".
  • In the filmed version of the Nerdy Prudes number "Hatchet Town", Barry makes an edited-in cameo as a suspect of the murders. In the stage version, that accusation was directed at Officer Bailey.
• Catchphrase: As you may have guessed, "I'm in a hurry!"
• Covert Pervert: He shares Sherman's line in "Feast or Famine" about wanting a Wiggly to be his "little boyfriend". He also spends a lot of time leering at Becky in "What Do You Say?"
• Creator In-Joke: The "Man In A Hurry" character was supposed to blow off Greenpeace Girl's pitch in TGWDLM by saying "I'm in a hurry", but Jeff made a Running Gag out of getting in too much of a hurry to say the entire line as rehearsals went on, so that by the time the show was actually performed, he says nothing at all, just brushing right past her. He was brought back for Black Friday to supposedly "do his character justice" by letting him say actually say it this time. As of Nightmare Time, the character is now a Running Gag.
• Credits Gag: The cast announcement for Black Friday listed an unnamed "man in a hurry" as the role Jeff Blim would be playing. This was to conceal the return of General MacNamara. The gag became well-known enough ahead of time that when Jeff declares, "I'm in a hurry!", the Black Friday audience breaks into applause.
• Decomposite Character: Statements from the creators indicate that the man who orders a complicated coffee from Emma in TGWDLM, pictured above, is not the same character as the Man in a Hurry, instead identified as "Rude Customer" or "Coffee Jerk". This is clearly a Retcon, as he wears the exact same costume as the Man in a Hurry (costume being a huge factor in identifying Hatchetfield characters due to how few actors there are) and shares the tendency the Man in a Hurry exhibits in Black Friday and onward of constantly being on his phone, but it seems the creators would now prefer this character to be used exclusively for "man in a hurry" jokes.
• Didn't Think This Through: Anyone who knows anything about what Black Friday shopping is like knows that making some kind of prior engagement that he's in a hurry to get to after he buys the doll is showing colossally bad judgment. To be fair, his attitude may be because he himself is coming to realize this.
• Flat Character: He's in a hurry. "Daddy" pokes fun at the idea of giving him Hidden Depths: he spends a great deal of time with Frank in that story, forming a genuine connection and offering a sympathetic backstory, with every word he says relating to the concept of being in a hurry.
• Important Haircut: His Nerdy Prudes appearance makes him the first of Jeff Blim's characters to appear after Blim trimmed the long shaggy hair he'd worn through the series until then.
• Large Ham: Once the Retail Riot goes full swing he takes the opportunity to exultantly scream "CHAOS REIGNS!"
• Psycho Knife Nut: After being driven insane and joining the Wiggly Cult, he starts wielding a knife. This allows him to outfight the more experienced but unarmed Tom.
• Recurring Extra: He's the second most recurring character in the series (after Ted) but seldom appears for more than a few seconds.
• Riddle for the Ages: A tongue-in-cheek comment from Jeff Blim is that the one secret of Hatchetfield that will never be revealed is where, exactly, the Man in a Hurry is in a hurry to get to.
• Running Gag: He appears throughout the Hatchetfield saga, always claiming to be in a hurry despite being in places such as in line for Black Friday shopping, in line for a roller coaster, attending a wedding, imprisoned in someone's basement...
• Took a Level in Jerkass: He was already an asshole in TGWDLM, and he doesn't come off much better in Black Friday — taking the opportunity to perv out on Becky and surreptitiously film her during "What Do You Say?" — but the Hate Plague upgrades him to an attempted murderer when he stabs Tom.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Multiple different people play a role in triggering the Retail Riot, but it's the Man in a Hurry's characteristic impatience that causes all semblance of order to break down.
  Man in a Hurry: All right, forget this line. I'll give you $500, cash money, for one Wiggly right now.
• Vox Pops: "Peanuts!" shows Dan and Donna doing one of these interviews with him about the Peanuts the Hatchetfield Pocket Squirrel "phenomenon", only for it to backfire with him looking confused and wondering what they're talking about.

Homeless Man

Ted Spankoffski, the Homeless Man

Played by: Joey Richter

Appears in: The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals | Black Friday | "Forever & Always" | "Time Bastard" | "Honey Queen"

Mentioned in: Nerdy Prudes Must Die

"Look, a coat. And, oh, a hat. That's better. Now I just gotta find a home."

'Cause I may not have a home, but that's way okay
'Cause I prefer to roam the streets all day

A middle-aged, homeless resident of Hatchetfield.

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• Addled Addict: He's The Alcoholic when he can get his hands on booze; he used to be into some much harder drugs like bath salts but, luckily for the faces of everyone around him, they haven't been as easy to find recently.
• And I Must Scream: Being the Homeless Man was already this, in mundane non-supernatural terms — the last fragments of your past self watching yourself become a pitiful insane wreck of a human being, sleeping in filth and eating dogs to survive. Then comes The Reveal that when he dies, he's denied blissful Cessation of Existence and instead gets an eternity in the unspeakable Hell that is the Bastard's Box.
  Narrator: But don’t be too sad. He still lives on... in a way. After his physical death, Ted Spankoffski finds himself trapped in the twisting, impossible maze that is the Bastard’s Box. For him, Nightmare Time has only just begun...
• Brainwashed and Crazy: In both of the first two full-length Hatchetfield shows, being an early victim of apotheosis in TGWDLM and a member of the Cult of Wiggly in Black Friday.
• The Cameo: In the original release of Nightmare Time Season 2 Episode 2, he appears in the Couch Gag during the theme song, otherwise not appearing anywhere in the episode. This appearance is sadly absent from the YouTube version of the episode but can be heard on the soundtrack.
• Cassandra Truth: At the beginning of "Forever & Always" — "You aren't Emma Perkins!" Ironically, this is him being Right for the Wrong Reasons — just seeing Paul and Emma together randomly triggered a stray fragment of his memories of Robot Emma from the future, but he has no actual reason to know that this Emma is the robot and not the real one.
• Catchphrase: "Spare change for the homeless?"
• The Chew Toy: A classic example of evoking guilty laughter about someone living on the very bottom of the societal pyramid. The Reveal of his backstory in "Time Bastard" is an intentional Gut Punch.
• Cloud Cuckoo Lander: Even by the standards of Crazy Homeless People, like when he gets in the line for a Wiggly on Black Friday planning to somehow buy a $49.95 product for three dollars. Oh, and on close examination, he doesn't even have three dollars — he has one dollar, a strip of toilet paper, and a receipt.
• The Comically Serious: Joey Richter has a lot of fun playing the Homeless Man this way, especially with his facial expressions as a cultist in Black Friday.
• The Constant: Among other constants existing in every Alternate Timeline in Hatchetfield, the Homeless Man is confirmed as one of them. This is an intentional case of a Grandfather Paradox, because in any timeline that doesn't culminate in the plot of "Time Bastard", the Bad Future he comes from never happened — and yet he's in all of them because his travels took him to 2004, one year before the timelines began to split.
• Crazy Homeless People: He's been homeless for some 15 years and, understandably, not in the best mental health for it. As it turns out, his mind snapped from Tinky telling him there was no way back to his timeline, followed by hearing and seeing himself in what is essentially the bowels of hell, causing him to develop his loopy mannerisms a few minutes before becoming homeless.
• Dark and Troubled Past:
  • His verse of "La Dee Dah Dah Day" in The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals plays up his long, tragic life on the streets for over-the-top Black Comedy.
  The world is my house
  The dogs are my food
  Oh, look, a new blouse (puts on garbage bag)
  And a new trash tattoo!
  • The Reveal of how he became the Homeless Man in "Time Bastard" is way darker and more troubled than anything we could have imagined about this comical background figure.
• Driven to Madness: We eventually find out the reason he became a Crazy Homeless Person is a lot darker and more supernatural than we'd thought.
• Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": According to the narrator in "Time Bastard", no one in Hatchetfield knows his name, so he is known only as "The Homeless Man".
• Getting Smilies Painted on Your Soul: The nature of the Apotheosis being this is demonstrated pretty well by the Homeless Man's verse of "La Dee Dah Dah Day", in which he sings cheerfully about the freedom that homelessness provides him.
• Go Mad from the Revelation: The final trigger that breaks Ted's mind fully and turns him into the Homeless Man is Tinky opening up the Bastard's Box and just giving him a glimpse of the eternal agony he has waiting for him after death.
• Grandfather Paradox: He's confirmed to exist in every Hatchetfield timeline, which is hugely paradoxical as the "Forever & Always"/"Time Bastard" timeline is the only one in which he possibly could exist. Emma 2, from the same timeline, is confirmed to only exist in that one. It may have something to do with the fact that Ted has been "aborted from time and space" by being anointed by Tinky as "the Time Bastard", or with the fact that Uncle Wiley tells us "everything shattered" and Alternate Timelines became a thing only after Hannah was born in 2005, whereas the Homeless Man appeared in the timestream a year before that.
• Iconic Outfit: The Homeless Man is always seen wearing his bulky beige winter coat and his wool beanie hat — which is an outfit that makes sense for Black Friday, which takes place well into winter, but not so much in The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals when everyone else was outdoors in shirtsleeves. This is, of course, Truth in Television for people who don't have anywhere safe to keep their stuff and have to keep all their clothes with them. Ted finding and putting on this outfit for the first time in "Time Bastard" is Five-Second Foreshadowing for the Wham Line that he and the Homeless Man are one and the same.
• I Kiss Your Foot: The Homeless Man memorably does this in "Adore Me", and seems to be even more enthusiastic about becoming a Sycophantic Servant in a death cult than the others.
• Irony: The reveal that he was Ted, someone casually misogynistic who talked about sex constantly, retroactively makes the Homeless Man's behavior in Black Friday rather ironic, as he's shocked and appalled at the Man in a Hurry talking about Becky's sex life and drinks deeply of his "respect women" juice in his interactions with Linda.
• Killed to Uphold the Masquerade: Paul 23 and Emma 2 kill him because he's the only one who knows she's a robot.
• My Girl Is Not a Slut: For some reason in "What Do You Say?" it's the Homeless Man who's shocked at the idea that Becky Barnes might not be Purity Personified and might actually have sex with her Old Flame Tom Houston instead of just batting eyes at him from across the room. (He is, of course, quickly proven wrong.)
• No Doubt the Years Have Changed Me: He's only fifteen years older than his past self he coexists with in Hatchetfield, but his life on the streets has left him so aged and weatherbeaten no one notices the resemblance, even when they're right next to each other in "Forever & Always".
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Trying to warn Paul that his fiancee is a robot gets him Killed to Uphold the Masquerade.
• Other Me Annoys Me: Ted unknowingly looks at his older self in "Forever & Always" and scoffs, "What a loser!"
• Pet the Dog: After the horrific, amoral life he's led both as himself and as Ted, his last ever action in life is an altruistic urge to try to warn his former best friend Paul that his wife isn't who he thinks she is. This is what finally gets him killed and sent to the Bastard's Box.
• Psycho Serum: "La Dee Dah Dah Day" mentions that he used to be addicted to bath salts that filled him with constant rage and led to an unfortunate instance of cannibalizing a dead body. It's part of the long, long Trauma Conga Line of his life (as well as establishing that whatever is causing the zombie plague in The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals it's not the "zombie drugs" that he was taking before).
• The Resenter: His verse of "La Dee Dah Dah Day" is some major Black Comedy about how, beneath his dull, listless affect, he does in fact deeply resent all of the more-fortunate people he sees walking around every day and fantasize about brutally murdering them (especially while under the influence of "zombie drugs") and only the Getting Smilies Painted on Your Soul effect of the alien Hive Mind has caused it to lift, just now. All of which he cheerfully sings right to Paul's face to a peppy pop tune.
  • We get to see the Homeless Man's unfiltered rage in Black Friday, where it seems to be fueling his drive to join Linda's cult and become one of her most vicious and violent servants, including when he happily attacks Hannah and drags her to Linda to be executed.
• The Reveal: In "Time Bastard", it is discovered that the Homeless Man is in fact a 50-year-old Ted, having travelled back in time 15 years and been forced to take The Slow Path back home. This is true of all incarnations of the Homeless Man, despite Ted dying young in nearly every other story in which he appears; later revelations indicating that this is because, in just one of Hatchetfield's myriad timelines, he travelled back in time to before the timelines began branching. Nick Lang also notes rather wryly that this means that Ted, already the Hatchetfield character with the largest amount of deaths to his name, has an even higher total than he first appears, as every time Hatchetfield is destroyed, two Teds die.
• Ripped from the Headlines: The story of the Homeless Man being on "zombie drugs" and biting off someone's face was ripped from one particularly sensational headline from 2012 that both started a nationwide panic about bath salts and helped establish the Florida Man meme.
• Singing Voice Dissonance: Even though it's a gag we can see coming a mile away, it's still incredibly funny when the Homeless Man suddenly switches from his gruff, awkward voice to a soaring Broadway tenor to sing the second verse of "La Dee Dah Dah Day", especially coupled with the Lyrical Dissonance of what he's singing about.
• The Slow Path: When Ted Spankoffski is Trapped in the Past, he gets back to 2019 by living as a homeless man for 15 years.
• Taking Up the Mantle: Hilariously, he of all people is the first to try to claim leadership of the Wiggly cult ("No, I'm the prophet! I'M THE PROPHET!") after Linda and Sherman are both dead.
• Trapped in the Past: He exists because Ted went back too far in time and was unable to return to the future.
• Trauma-Induced Amnesia: The primary reason his mind is broken and he's unable to even recognize any of the people or things he once knew as Ted Spankoffski is realizing he's directly responsible for killing Jenny, his One True Love, and that there's no way he can use Time Travel to fix it. This, followed by Tinky gleefully showing him the inside of the Bastard's Box, an Ambiguous Situation where he becomes fully aware of the horror of being a living Time Paradox in a Stable Time Loop, shatters his sanity and drives his mind to suppress any knowledge he has of who he is and what's happened in his life thus far, leaving him barely able to function. Tinky "curing" him and giving him his full knowledge of his identity and history as Ted back, before tossing him into the Bastard's Box, is one final Kick the Dog moment for him.
• Two Aliases, One Character: The big reveal in "Time Bastard" is that Ted Spankoffski and the guy everyone in Hatchetfield knows as "the Homeless Man" are one and the same, thanks to Temporal Duplication.
• Walking Spoiler: His backstory — even knowing that he has a backstory and he isn't just a background comic relief character — is a massive one.
• Weak-Willed: It's implied he's particularly susceptible to becoming Brainwashed and Crazy due to a fondness for jumping on the bandwagon, as he's in line to buy a Wiggly doll despite not being able to afford one, and the creators have half-jokingly confirmed a fan theory that he wasn't assimilated at all during "La Dee Dah Dah Day". This isn't quite as funny after we find out why; he's weak-willed because he was Driven to Madness by the overwhelming loneliness of the souls in the Bastard's Box, and he likes to follow the crowd because his desperate, futile drive in the fifteen years since has been to "find a home".
• You Have to Believe Me!: His screaming rant that Emma is an impostor at the beginning of "Forever & Always", after years of insanity have erased any context for this piece of knowledge.

Greenpeace Girl

Harmony Jones, the Greenpeace Girl

Played by: Mariah Rose Faith

Appears in: The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals | "Jane's a Car"

Mentioned in: "Abstinence Camp"

"Hi! Can I talk to you about saving the planet?"

Sometimes I just wanna shout
On top of roof and mountaintops
That all the world is paved in gold
Yesterday is retroactive
Got myself a new perspective
I strut it up and down the road

A witty environment enthusiast.

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• Adaptation Dye-Job: Like all of Mariah Rose Faith's characters from TGWDLM who came back in Season One of Nightmare Time, she's gone from brunette to blonde in "Jane's a Car". Only really notable because one of the things Jane notices about her is her hair. She, Becky, and Jane's original appearance make a Blonde, Brunette, Redhead trio, and later on Jane quips when deciding to steal Becky's body "I always wondered what I'd look like as a redhead".
• Butt-Monkey: Mildly so — every time we see her out canvassing it's in the face of an endless stream of passersby blowing her off or rudely rejecting her. (Truth in Television, of course.)
• Catchphrase: "Do you want to save the planet?"
• Deadpan Snarker: She unnecessarily goes out of her way to make Paul feel bad about being caught in his lie that he already gives to Greenpeace; apparently having to wear a fake smile in the face of everyone's rudeness all day is getting to her.
• Getting Smilies Painted on Your Soul: Applies to all the zombies, but the first sign Paul gets that something is very wrong is how she seems to have completely forgiven him after the previous day's altercation.
• Granola Girl: Subverted. Paul seems quite taken aback that she's a savvy, spunky Deadpan Snarker without much of a hippie peace-and-love attitude to her, despite her profession. This ends up being one of the qualities Jane likes about her.
• I Never Said It Was Poison: Makes up a fake Greenpeace campaign to save the turtles just to catch Paul in a lie about having already donated.
• No Name Given: Even though she becomes one of the recurring zombies who haunts Paul all the way to the end of the show, we never hear her called anything other than "Greenpeace Girl". Both Tom and the narrator of "Jane's a Car" also refer to her as such, as does Pete in "Abstinence Camp". Her name, Harmony Jones, was revealed the day of the release of Nerdy Prudes; Matt Lang explains that he keeps attempting to have her introduce herself as "Harmony Jones, the Greenpeace Girl" but those scenes keep getting cut.

Gary Goldstein

Gary Goldstein

Played by: Jon Matteson

Appears in: Black Friday

"Ow! Right in the subpoena!"

A local attorney who seems to be on several of Hatchetfield's wealthy population's payroll.

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• Ambiguously Jewish: Has the last name "Goldstein", an incongruous New York accent (in small-town Michigan), a pocket stuffed with coupons, and a stereotypically Jewish profession.
• Amoral Attorney: Will press anyone's case for a fee, no matter how absurd or reprehensible, and hilariously immediately contradicts the argument he made for his client Linda Monroe against Sherman Young claiming all the dolls when Sherman reveals he's also got Gary on retainer. Of course, he goes on to be much more straightforwardly and horrifyingly amoral when Wiggly fever makes him kick Ethan Green in the head until he dies.
• Badasses Wear Bandanas: One of the funniest entrances in the show is when we catch up with Gary again in Act 2 and find out he's stripped down to his shirtsleeves and has tied his necktie around his forehead as a headband in an attempt to look like some kind of warrior.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: One of the most dramatic personality transformations in the show, Played for Laughs.
• Dirty Coward: As part of Jon going ham with turning Gary into a loathsome monster. In one of the darkest scenes in the show, it's still somehow hilarious that immediately after beating a helpless Ethan to death and gloating over it, all Tom has to do is lunge toward him and he scuttles off into the shadows squealing like a rat.
• Extended Greetings: He apparently always introduces himself as "Gary Goldstein, attorney-at-law". This is Played for Laughs when he rushes through it in one breath the second time when, after Frank caves to his demands on Linda's behalf, he suddenly reappears as Sherman's lawyer to get him to reverse it.
• Frivolous Lawsuit: The very shaky grounds he gives for both Linda and Sherman's cases in their dispute — Linda's "anxiety disorder" and Sherman, a rich white guy, being "discriminated against" — indicate he's pretty used to filing lawsuits of this kind.
• The Main Characters Do Everything: Apparently he's the only lawyer in Hatchetfield, or at least very much the preferred attorney of all of Hatchetfield's wealthy elite.
• Moment of Lucidity: A Played for Laughs version of this trope, one that turns the running themes of Linda's endless phone conversation and Gary's descent into savagery into one hell of a punchline. As Linda's body falls to the ground after Becky's Boom, Headshot!, the wailing worshipers gather around her body, and then Gary suddenly seems to wake up, picks up the phone and says calmly, "Gerald? It's Gary. Yeah. We gotta talk about the will."
• Only Bad Guys Call Their Lawyers: In Real Life (see Artistic License – Law on the Black Friday main page), both Linda and Sherman have a point in their legal dispute — at the very least, since they directly disagree about the simple issue of whether there should be a limit per customer on Wiggly dolls, one of them must be in the right — but the show treats both of them calling their lawyer as a high-handed abuse of power on their part, mainly thanks to the Hypocritical Humor in both of them sharing the same lawyer, who instantly turns on Linda once Sherman calls upon him.
• Perpetual Expression: Jon Matteson is so committed to his performance that every time we see Gary after his transformation, his face is a rictus of pure rage with his teeth fully bared. It only gets funnier every time he appears.
• Pietà Plagiarism: Ends up cradling Linda's dead body after her Boom, Headshot! from Becky.
• Primal Stance: All the cultists end up acting like this, but Gary gets special mention for how he completely morphs into a snarling, spitting image of Gollum immediately after killing Ethan.
• Sharp-Dressed Man: All the other men in the Black Friday line are dressed in sweaters, jeans, or pajamas, but he's fully decked out in a three-piece suit (and his trusty Bluetooth in his ear) as though he's going in to the office. Apparently, being Linda and Sherman's lawyer means he considers himself always on the job. This only makes it funnier to watch him rapidly transform into a disheveled feral rage zombie over the course of the show.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: He's last seen carrying Linda's corpse off the stage after her death somehow snaps him back to normal — presumably to bring her body to Gerald so they can "talk about the will" and giving Jon and Lauren time to change back into Paul and Emma for the finale. He isn't among the remaining cultists who fight to the death over the last Wiggly in the burning mall, and it's unknown what happens to him in the end.

Peanuts

Peanuts the Hatchetfield Pocket Squirrel

Played by: n/a

Appears in: Black Friday | "Peanuts!"

Mentioned in: The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals

Emma: "Awwww. Peanuts!"

Dan and Donna: Oh he's your guide if you ever need one
He's pocket-sized if you ever see one
He's had a meteoric rise
Peanuts the Hatchetfield Pocket Squirrel!

An injured baby squirrel who was found by "Papa" Ed, a local Hatchetfield woodworker. Ed nursed the squirrel back to health, and Peanuts is most often found in his savior's pocket.

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• The Cameo: In the finale of Black Friday, among several other unexpected Hatchetfield cast members, you can glimpse Peanuts lurking in Ed's pocket.
• Giant Animal Worship: Something like this seems to end up happening in the Bad Future that the song "Peanuts!" leads to, although presumably he didn't literally grow to giant size (the photo showing this event is somewhat abstract).
• Human-Interest Story: A fluffy news piece that the locals of Hatchetfield are fond of. In the ending of TGWDLM Colonel Schaeffer agrees that his being the Sole Survivor of the town will make for a good one as well.
• The Littlest Cancer Patient: An animal version (and therefore even more intensely cutesy version) of this trope — he was found as a baby squirrel "too small to survive" who'd fallen out of a tree and been left for dead by his mother. His adoptive father ends up having to crowdfund to build him a house.
• Loved by All: Everyone who knows about Peanuts seems to love him and find his story adorable ("Aww! Peanuts!"), with the single mild exception of the Man in a Hurry (who may just be in too much of a hurry to want to talk about him in a Vox Pops with Dan and Donna).
• No Animals Were Harmed: Peanuts' appearance in Black Friday is, obviously, just a stuffed prop, and in "Peanuts!" he's played by Stock Footage (and as the prop again for the one photo of Curt Mega holding him).
• Sole Survivor:
  • Of the version of Hatchetfield seen in The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals—PEIP found him burrowed in his master's chest.
  • The lyrics of "Peanuts!" lampshade that he hasn't died once yet in any of the Hatchetfield stories.
  Dan: If there's an apocalypse he'll survive it!
• Surreal Music Video: "Peanuts!", the end credits song of Nightmare Time Episode 2. Starts off as a cute song about Peanuts, but devolves into a story about Peanuts attaining sapience and becoming the idol of a cult.
• Talking Animal: The climactic event of the Surreal Music Video "Peanuts!" is Dan and Donna revealing that after they've spent a long time wishing Peanuts could speak, their wish came true and Peanuts is now confirmed as a sapient being, leading them — and possibly all of society — to Go Mad from the Revelation.
• Team Pet: "Peanuts!" talks him up as a collective one for all of Hatchetfield, and recommends that people forming groups to go on a stereotypical Kids' Wilderness Epic make him the Animal Companion they adopt.
  Dan and Donna: Oh, he's your pal
  When you go on adventures!
  He's your boot on the ground
  When you're looking for treasure!
• Trend Aesop: "Peanuts!" seems to be giving us a parody of this — even something as seemingly wholesome and harmless as Hatchetfield's obsession with a saccharine Human-Interest Story somehow leads to disaster in this Alternate Timeline.
• Ungrateful Bastard:
  • You can't expect too much gratitude out of a squirrel, but in TGWDLM, Peanuts repays Ed for all of his aid by burrowing into the man's chest and using him as shelter when PEIP bombs Hatchetfield.
  • "Peanuts!" mentions a milder version of this — he generally repays people's kindness to him by "leav[ing] poops in your shoes".
• Yet Another Baby Panda: Peanuts is, of course, a joke about this trope, although part of the joke is they don't use him as the kicker and instead promote him in importance above actually relevant stories.
• Your Tomcat Is Pregnant: Nick Lang agreed to give a tongue-in-cheek completely pointless spoiler in a Q&A on Twitter: Everyone refers to Peanuts by "he/him" pronouns, but Peanuts is actually female.

Ed

"Papa" Ed

Played by: Curt Mega

Appears in: Black Friday | "Peanuts!"

Mentioned in: The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals

Donna: "Proud papa Ed has been squirreling away on his GoFundMe page to build Peanuts his very own, get this Dan, squirrel house!"

Dan and Donna: He fell into a townie’s arms
The town was charmed by him (So charming, yeah)

A Hatchetfield resident who took pity on Peanuts and brought him home to nurse him back to health.

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• All There in the Manual: Papa Ed's history as a military veteran was only revealed in livestream previews of Black Friday and is only ambiguously canon now (it seems that this background may have been moved over to the character of Tom Houston).
• Animal Lover: Pretty much all there is to his character.
• The Cameo: Curt Mega is the only actor in the final number of Black Friday not to be wearing the costume of a pre-established Hatchetfield character; he's revealed to be Ed from the occasional glimpses of Peanuts.
• Cloudcuckoolander: Making a personal project out of saving a single baby squirrel isn't something a typical citizen would do, and his physical appearance in Black Friday — unkempt hair, nervous disposition, layered grubby clothes — makes him look like an eccentric Basement-Dweller.
• The Dividual: Ed only ever appears in the context of being the one who carries Peanuts the Pocket Squirrel around in his pocket.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: It's not clear if he actually goes by "Papa Ed" or that was just Donna describing him as "Proud papa, Ed". Since it's the only time his name has ever been mentioned onstage, fans tend to go with calling him "Papa Ed".
• The Voiceless: Ed sings along with the chorus in "What If Tomorrow Comes?" (which is probably non-diegetic), but has never actually spoken while onstage.