Characters / I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream

Protagonists

The Five Survivors

In General

• Adaptational Heroism: Zig-zagged. In the original story, most of the cast were implied to be mostly-okay people before AM's treatment turned them into bitter, dysfunctional jerks with nothing to live for by the time of the story. In the game, while many of the cast have done horrible things before the events of the story all five of them ultimately assert their fundamental human decency and help save mankind from AM.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: In the game, most of the survivors had been successful before AM imprisoned them: Benny had an impressive military record presumably because nobody ever learned of his crimes; Ellen was a brilliant engineer with a promising career ahead of her; Ted had been a successful con artist with genuinely cultured tastes; Nimdok might have been retired at the time of his capture, but in his prime, he'd been a highly innovative scientist though his research was funded by the Nazis and performed on Jewish prisoners. The only exception to this is Gorrister... who'd been an average truck driver.
• Asshole Victim: In the game, Benny and Nimdok were evil before their imprisonment by AM; Benny being a merciless military commander who killed anyone in his platoon deemed to be weak or soft — and may have outright murdered one of them to conceal their homosexual affair with Benny. Nimdok was a Nazi scientist responsible for the deaths of thousands of Jews (including his own parents) — though if played correctly, they will both become The Atoner at the end of their scenario. On the other hand, Ted only committed minor crimes like fraud, and Ellen and Gorrister are innocent people ruined by circumstances beyond their control.
• Barrier Maiden: The final survivor, in the game's best ending, becomes the guardian of the last remnants of humanity on the moon colony, keeping an eye on the AMs until humanity can take back the planet in a few centuries.
• Being Tortured Makes You Evil: They're not really evil, but AM's constant tortures has understandably caused each of them to have Took a Level in Jerkass.
• Brain Uploading: In the game's finale, the Chinese and Russian supercomputers convert one of the survivors into a computer program to bring down AM once and for all.
• Cast of Personifications: Deconstructed. AM sees each of them as a representation of an aspect of society that AM saw as the reason he was created. The issue is that he himself was desperate for victims after slaughtering everyone but those five, and so he made sure to break and reshape them to fit the mold if they didn't neatly fit into them when he found them.
• Character Development: Playing their own scenarios correctly will help them overcome their one Fatal Flaw and come to term with their pasts, whether if they made mistakes or not. Doing so will also make AM have a massive Villainous BSoD since character development is completely outside the personal standards he set for them.
• Death of Personality: All of the characters went through this to some extent after AM's torture.
  "Benny had been a brilliant theorist, a college professor; now he was little more than a semi-human, semi-simian. He had been handsome, the machine had ruined that. He had been lucid, the machine had driven him mad. He had been gay, and the machine had given him an organ fit for a horse. AM had done a job on Benny. Gorrister had been a worrier. He was a connie, a conscientious objector; he was a peace marcher; he was a planner, a doer, a looker-ahead. AM had turned him into a shoulder-shrugger, had made him a little dead in his concern. AM had robbed him."
• Death Seeker: All of them are quite willing to find a way to permanently die by the point the story starts. Beats eternal torture, that's for sure.
• Despair Event Horizon: After over a century of torture, the survivors see death as a miracle.
• Driven to Suicide: Multiple attempts have been made due to the severity of AM's torture, but none of his victims actually managed to die. Until the end, that is.
• Dysfunction Junction: In both the short story and the game, all of the survivors are hopelessly dysfunctional to one degree or another, though their incarnations in the short story were reportedly saner before their imprisonment.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: The game forces the characters to do this over the course of five long, agonizing journeys through the personalized hells that AM created for them. By the end, Gorrister has forgiven himself for his perceived crime; Ellen has conquered her deepest fears; Benny has learned compassion and mercy; Ted has abandoned his unscrupulous ways and become the hero he always wanted to be; and Nimdok is on the path to atone for his crimes against humanity.
• Environmental Symbolism: In the game, each scenario has been tailored to fit the psyche of the survivor exploring it; as such, there is a lot of environmental symbolism. Justified as AM himself likes symbolism, to the point that it becomes a weakness to exploit by the symbolic totems each survivor gets in the endgame scenario.
• Expansion Pack Past: For all of the characters in the video game, but especially Nimdok.
• Fatal Flaw: Each of the survivors has a serious flaw. And overcoming it helps them win the game.
  • Gorrister has despair: he is consumed with grief over his wife's descent into madness. Accepting it wasn't his fault and moving on his how he wins.
  • Benny has wrath, as he looks down on anybody weaker than him. Learning compassion toward his victims and the young boy helps him overcome this.
  • Ellen has fear, especially of the color yellow. Finding the courage to hit back against her rapist helps her overcome fear.
  • Ted has narcissistic greed. Learning to overcome temptation and defeat the supernatural forces around helps him save Ellen.
  • Nimdok denies the atrocities he committed. Overcoming his denial and accepting his crimes helps him take down Mengele.
• Fate Worse than Death: They are held captive by an essentially omnipotent evil AI.
• Immortality: Due to AM's machinations, all five humans are rendered The Ageless, with just a little bit of Resurrective Immortality and From a Single Cell - suicides will always be prevented and healed, and any death that occurs during AM's torture will be temporary at best. However, in the story, Ted discovers a way to kill the other survivors before AM can intervene.
  • Whoever brings down AM and his brothers in the game will earn Complete Immortality.
• Immortality Hurts: AM won't let them die, no matter how much he tortures them. Early in his scenario, Gorrister will nonchalantly flash the gaping hole in his torso where his heart used to be before AM tore it out a long time ago.
• Intergenerational Friendship: The age range of the five survivors spans from young adult to elder (with Ted being on the youngest side of the spectrum, and Nimdok the older) and yet they have a certain bond that's bound to have come from years of sharing the torture AM inflicts on them,
• Ironic Hell: The scenarios AM constructs for the survivors in the game are intended to "punish" them for their past sins and/or exploit their deep-seated psychological issues. To get a good ending for each scenario, you have to make each character confront their past and overcome their personal problems.
  • Gorrister is put on an airship that runs off of the bio-electrical energy of a living brain, which touches down next to an isolated, broken-down honky-tonk. Every object in the scenario represents some element of Gorrister's guilt complex, as well as some elements of the truth behind the crime. To get the best ending, you must embrace the elements of Gorrister's innocence, while uncovering the dark secrets that point to Edna as the true culprit behind his wife's insanity.
  • Benny is placed in a jungle inhabited by ape-like hominids, where the food is inedible and he can't communicate with anyone. In addition, there are several graves marked with the names of soldiers that died under his command. The scenario is filled with elements reflecting Benny's Social Darwinist philosophy, representing how he willingly sacrifices others for his own benefit. The best ending requires that Benny embrace compassion and altruism, eventually volunteering to be sacrificed in place of the mutant child.
  • Ellen is forced into a claustrophobic Egyptian tomb, filled to the brim with yellow objects so as to take advantage of her phobias. The best ending requires that she fight back against the Rapist instead of running or giving up, thereby rejecting the hold that he had over her.
  • Ted is placed into an unusual mystery play filled with magic, demons and other supernatural creatures. He also finds a copy of Ellen, who is bed-ridden and described as a "princess" to Ted's "knight in shining armor." The scenario is meant to take advantage of Ted's con artist nature, providing easy or pleasant solutions to his problems that turn out to be traps. The best ending requires that he stay focused on doing the right thing, even if it deprives him of the things he wants.
  • Nimdok is sent to a replica of a Nazi prison camp, which is apparently used by Dr. Mengele for his horrific medical experiments. The scenario is a direct reflection of Nimdok's past as Mengele's assistant, while simultaneously drawing on imagery unique to his Jewish heritage. The best ending requires that Nimdok accept the atrocities he committed, while also embracing his Jewish identity and allowing himself to be punished for his sins.
• Living Forever Is Awesome: In the best ending to the game, whichever character you use to take down AM is pretty chill with keeping the AMs in check for all eternity.
• Not Afraid to Die: After facing the prospect of being tortured for eternity, death suddenly doesn't seem all that bad.
• When She Smiles: In the game, the survivors all look gloomy, confused, or just plain angry; as such, when they smile, it's on the rare occasion that they manage some kind of triumph against AM, and it completely transforms their faces.
• Who Wants to Live Forever?: Due to AM's tortures, none of the survivors have any chance of enjoying their immortality; in both the short story and the game, each of them have made attempts at suicide, all of which AM has interrupted and prevented.

Gorrister

Novella

"Why doesn't it just do us in and get it over with? Christ, I don't know how much longer I can go on like this."

Originally a compassionate and forward-thinking conscientious objector, AM has tortured and demoralized Gorrister into an apathetic shadow of his former self. In the group, he functions as the storyteller, recounting the tale of how AM came to be for Benny's comfort.

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• The Eeyore: As mentioned in his description, he went from compassionate and proactive, to deeply apathetic thanks to AM's shenanigans.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: Hits Ellen because she's upset that Benny, a man she's known for over a century, got blinded through sheer light energy.
• Mercy Kill: Courtesy of Ted.
• The Storyteller: In-universe; to get Benny to calm down, he tells Benny the story of AM's birth and rise to power like a parent telling their child a bedtime story.
• Would Hit a Girl: This version of him beats the crap out of Ellen at little to no provocation.

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Game

Voiced by: Vincent C. Murovich III

In the videogame, Gorrister was a truck driver, and he was beginning to despair long before AM started torturing him: in fact, his wife's insanity had him on the verge of suicide, given that he blamed himself for her breakdown; his capture and torture only makes this desire for death all the more powerful. However, on the 109th year of his imprisonment, AM offers Gorrister the chance to kill himself...

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• Adaptational Heroism: In the book, he beats the crap out of Ellen at little to no provocation; in the game, he hit Glynis once in his backstory in a heated argument and clearly regrets it.
• The Atoner: He seeks to make amends for driving his wife insane. Later subverted, once he realizes he wasn't to blame for his wife's descent into madness.
• Beat Still, My Heart: Subverted; his heart was removed some time before his scenario begins; when he finds it, it's well and truly stopped beating.
• Body Horror: His heart was ripped out of his chest by AM a long time ago, and the hole still hadn't closed.
• Death Seeker: At the start of his chapter, AM lures him with the promise of finally letting him die.
• Domestic Abuse: He struck Glynis at least once during a bad fight, and has clearly regretted it with every ounce of his energy. However, Edna was more responsible for Glynis' insanity than Gorrister was, so it probably didn't have much effect.
• Driven to Suicide: Unfortunately, due to AM's interference, this isn't an option for him. Trying to invoke this during his scenario is often either pointless or will cause Gorrister to outright lose AM's "game". Later averted if his scenario played correctly; finding the truth of his supposed "crime" of driving his wife insane will prove to Gorrister that he had nothing to be ashamed of, removing this suicidal feeling.
• The Eeyore: He has this much in common with his novella incarnation. His salvation comes from letting go of his anguish and moving on.
• Electric Torture: Outside of his scenario, Gorrister is imprisoned in an electrified cage.
• Environmental Symbolism: Reflecting Gorrister's past as a truck driver and his current state of suicidal despair, his scenario is situated around a collapsing honky-tonk truckstop in the middle of an endless wasteland, and the only escape can be found in a dilapidated vehicle that runs on another living creature's life-force.
• Good Scars, Evil Scars: Has a massive wound in his chest from where his heart was carved out. Harry and Edna are responsible, a reflection of the emotional anguish both he and Glynis went through because of them.
• Ironic Hell: His is being put on an airship that runs off of the bio-electrical energy of a living brain, which touches down next to an isolated, broken-down honky-tonk. Every object in the scenario represents some element of Gorrister's guilt complex, as well as some elements of the truth behind the crime. To get the best ending, you must embrace the elements of Gorrister's innocence, while uncovering the dark secrets that point to Edna as the true culprit behind his wife's insanity.
• It's All My Fault: On some level, he believes that he deserves what AM's done to him, because he feels responsible for his wife's going mad and having to be institutionalized. Part of the key to winning Gorrister's scenario is realizing that Glynis' insanity wasn't his fault.
• Moving Beyond Bereavement: Is in mourning for his wife, who suffered a breakdown during his work-related absences from home and had to be committed to an asylum - where she ultimately died during the apocalypse; understandably, he blames himself for what happened to her, and thanks to over 109 years of torture at the hands of AM, has never had a chance to move on. Gorrister's part in the game involves AM sending him into a psychodrama in which he will supposedly have a chance to kill himself - though, of course, it's just an empty promise. However, thanks to sabotage inflicted by the other supercomputers, Gorrister has a chance to learn that his wife's descent into madness was not his fault, bring the true perpetrator to justice, bury his wife's simulated body and say goodbye; if all the steps are completed perfectly, Gorrister's spiritual barometer fills out, his long-dead heart starts to beat again, and he is able to escape the psychodrama - much to AM's annoyance.
• My Greatest Failure: His wife's fall into madness and subsequent institutionalization. Later subverted when he wasn't responsible for that; Edna was.
• Obnoxious In-Laws: His wife's parents, Harry and Edna. The duplicates that AM made of them actually "murdered" Gorrister before the scenario began. Harry is an alcoholic who can barely focus on anything without a shot of booze, while Edna is an Evil Matriarch. The real version of her drove Glynis insane. The duplicate version poisoned Gorrister and ordered Harry to slice his heart out.
• Politically Incorrect Hero: Downplayed, as he's quoting Edna, but he used "Chinaman" (i.e. a slur) to describe the Chinese Entity. He's also one of the series' heroes.
• Sir Swears-a-Lot: Has the most vulgar vocabulary of the main cast.
• Working-Class People Are Morons: Thoroughly averted; Gorrister may be the least-educated and most lower-class member of the group and all-but paralyzed by despair, but he's not stupid.
• Wound That Will Not Heal: If prompted to look in mirrors in his scenario, he notes that the hole in his chest hasn't changed in ages.
• Yank the Dog's Chain: All attempts at letting Gorrister kill himself are cruel jokes on AM's part: Should Gorrister actually drink the bowl of poisoned punch, he'll just collapse and wake up back in his torture cage.
  • The same is true if he tries to use the pistol at any point except during the best ending, which just causes the airship or honky-tonk to explode with him in it... And then he'll just return back to the beginning.
  • Gorrister can also cause the airship to crash with him in it. And AM STILL won't let him die from that.

Benny

Novella

"I'm gonna get out, I'm gonna get out..."

Before the end of the world, Benny was a brilliant theorist and a college professor, and according to Ted's narration, handsome and homosexual. Then AM captured him, and over the course of a hundred and nine years of torture, mutilated him into a moronic, ape-like monster with a huge penis and testicles. As a final insult, he was also made heterosexual; this (coupled with AM's rather specific alteration of his body) has led to him becoming the only man Ellen enjoys sleeping with according to Ted.

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• Accidental Murder: Benny eating Gorrister's flesh out of desperation and hunger gives Ted the idea for the ending. Subverted in the fact that this is the one-in-a-million situation where murder is a pretty solid moral option.
• Beast Man: Was changed into an ape-like man by AM.
• Beauty to Beast: Changed from an extremely attractive man to an ugly, ape-like creature, no thanks to AM.
• Bigger Is Better in Bed: When he was turned into an ape-like monster, AM also gave him a very large penis.
• Butt-Monkey: Rather literally by the time the story starts, with Benny being AM's favorite torture victim through the 109 years, along with being very ape-like after AM's alterations.
• Cure Your Gays: Among the alterations AM forced upon him was to make him heterosexual.
• Eye Scream: After Benny tries to escape through a hole in the ceiling, AM blinds him by channeling pure energy through his eyeballs.
• Forced Transformation: From a handsome, brilliant young scientist to an ugly, barely-intelligent ape-man.
• Good Scars, Evil Scars: Being AM's favourite punching-bag, Benny's ended up with more than a few scars on top of his grotesque transformation; Ted specifically mentions that his face is puckered with radiation scars from a "Festival."
• Mercy Kill: At Ted's hands.
• Psychopathic Manchild: Mentally-dulled, emotionally unstable, prone to violent outbursts, and on occasion, he can only be comforted by someone telling him about the rise of AM like a bedtime story.
• Situational Sexuality: While he's stated to be gay, he's also been Ellen's favorite sex partner for a while now.

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Game

Voiced by: Tom Myers

"AM once coaxed me into marching across a thousand miles of ice to reach a stockpile of canned peaches... Only to discover he didn't give me a can opener."

A military commander with an impressive record, Benny had a reputation for demanding perfection from his troops. Then, of course, the end of the world came, and he become one of the only survivors of the human race, tortured for AM's amusement. Much like his novella counterpart, Benny has been mutilated and warped into a ape-like creature with the mind and appetites of a beast; as such, the objective he is given at the start of his part of the game involves is to find food and assuage his growing hunger. This time, however, AM gleefully repairs Benny's mind so that he can "savour the horror of his repast."

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• Adaptational Intelligence: AM says he gave Benny his mind back so he can navigate his personal scenario, but crippled his body as a tradeoff.
• Ambiguously Gay: While he was gay in the books, his orientation is never made explicit either way in the game, but one of the writers expressed his belief that Benny was still gay. For reference, in the game, he murdered a soldier under his command that was "weak". Barely anything implies that he slept with the one he murdered before he silenced the witnesses. Then later on he meets a virtual version of his wife who states that he never once told her he loved her. It's clear by the context that she was his beard and that maybe murdering his fellow soldier may have been to hide an affair... It's subtle, but possible.
• The Atoner: The real objective of his quest is to become a moderately-successful version of this.
• Beast Man: Like his story counterpart, he is changed into an ugly, ape-like creature by AM.
• The Big Guy: Benny, who was turned into an ape-like beast and has base-level intelligence compared to everyone else.
• Blood from the Mouth: Benny's attempts to eat result in him coughing up blood, half due to his throat being ravaged by AM and the other reason being the fruit is poisonous.
• Break the Haughty: Proud and arrogant before his capture, Benny ended up being broken long before the beginning of his scenario; of course, this doesn't stop AM for setting him up for even more humiliation during the game.
• Butt-Monkey: Somehow, Benny ends up suffering even worse than his incarnation in the short story; the first thing that happens in his scenario is a long fall down a flight of stone stairs, and it only gets worse from there.
• Drill Sergeant Nasty: A horrific example of this; he was The Social Darwinist whose intolerance of compassion and weakness was so extreme that he would kill his own men if they showed these traits. He would also kill them if they witnessed his murders or threatened to reveal his suppressed homosexuality.
• Eats Babies: His hunger is so great that he once again notes how hungry he is after seeing an empty crib and wondering where the baby is. He only actually did this in a deleted scene, thankfully.
• Environmental Symbolism: Befitting his animalistic nature and his belief in Social Darwinism, Benny's scenario takes place in a lush valley dominated by a tribe of natives that continuously sacrifice the weak and the mutated among them to AM.
• Forced Transformation: Like his short-story counterpart, but with the further horror of being physiologically near-crippled.
• Gay Conservative: Well, gay right-winger at the very least; he clearly holds social Darwinist views and his refers to the outcast mother and her son as "welfare parasites".
• Heroic Mime: AM ripped out his vocal cords before the start of the game, and apart from his inner monologue, he can only communicate through pathetic whimpers and the videoscreen, once the Mutant Child teaches him how to use it.
• Heroic Sacrifice: A literal case! In the good ending for his scenario, Benny offers to take the Mutant Child's place as a sacrifice to AM, and is obliged.
• I Was Quite a Looker: He apparently used to be quite handsome. He still would be, thanks to AM halting his aging process, except AM also saw fit to alter his body into an ape-like form.
• Jerkass: He's quite disdainful of the villagers for their primitive ways, and looks down on the mutant child as a freak of nature. He's also a cold-blooded murderer, having slain four men that were under his command for being too weak, for showing compassion, for witnessing one of the murders, or for threatening to reveal that he's gay, respectively.
  • Jerk with a Heart of Gold: If you play his scenario correctly, he'll become more compassionate towards the weak.
• Literal Transformative Experience: AM hopes to tempt him into the negative side of this trope by making him act like the animal he's been transformed into. However, if played correctly, Benny gradually learns compassion from his experiences as a mutant, seeks forgiveness for his crimes, and can ultimately sacrifice himself to save a child.
• Monstrosity Equals Weakness: Unlike his fairly fit incarnation in the short story, Benny has been hopelessly crippled before the story begins: His legs are too badly twisted to climb a staircase, eating has become almost impossible without help, and his one attempt to threaten the village elder in an attempt to save the Mutant Child's life is laughed off.
• Morality Pet: His wife Manya, who may have been The Beard but was someone he clearly cared about on some level, certainly more than any of his known lovers. Encountering a simulation of her heavily breaks him up.
• The Neidermeyer: An extreme case; not only did he kill members of his unit he considered weak and anyone unlucky enough to witness the murders, but he also killed anyone who showed compassion to the weak.
• Platonic Life-Partners: Unusually, it is his wife Manya, who is stated by Word of Gay to be The Beard and who he had a tense relationship with otherwise, but who he clearly thought a fair bit of and was remorseful over how their relationship collapsed.
• Politically Incorrect Hero: Regards the outcast mother and child as "Welfare parasites." And describes the tribe as being more primitive than the "Gooks" in South-East Asia... the latter being a sign that he (probably) served in the American military during the Vietnam War, or in some future war that took place over the Asian continent.
• Punished with Ugly: Apparently very handsome once upon a time, not to mention arrogant, pitiless, and downright murderous. AM claims that the torture and transformation was punishment for this, but it's just as likely to be sadism on AM's part.
• Redemption Earns Life: If chosen to be the last survivor in the endgame, he can live on, take down AM, and continue his redemption in preventing AM's return.
• Redemption Equals Death: In the good ending to his scenario, he submits to vaporization on the altar in place of the Mutant Child. If the player wishes, he can go the same way in the endgame
• The Social Darwinist: As a commander, he murdered soldiers who couldn't "pull their weight." For good measure, when another member of his unit attempted to "carry some extra weight" by helping Private Brickman, Benny decided he was a liability and killed him in his sleep.
• Ugly Guy, Hot Wife: During the final stage with AM, if the machine is turned on in one room that Benny later enters, we discover that he has a wife named Manya, which may seem to contradict the novella's mention that he was gay in the first place. However, the programmers have claimed she's a beard.
• The Unintelligible: Not to the player, but to the tribesfolk since he can't speak normally to them. Also played straight in that the tribespeople understand what he means at the sacrifices.
• Vague Age: While his scenario suggests that he served in the American military during the Vietnam War, the end game mentions he was captured by AM at the Chinese War Memorial in Washington DC, implying he's a veteran of a future war between the United States and China, that at least partially took place over South-East Asia.
• Walking Shirtless Scene: He is the least-dressed of the four, and doesn't look out of place among the Tribesfolk (apart from being a simian beast-man, of course).
• Would Hurt a Child: In a deleted scene, he does exactly this to quench his hunger by eating a defenseless baby in one of the tribe's caves.
• Yank the Dog's Chain: All of the food, from the fruit on the trees to the vines on the walls (not to mention the corpses in the graves), is either just barely out of his reach, and it's all inedible in one way or another. (We don't know about the babies in the cradles, though. Probably would've been his bad-end.) Quite apart from Benny's usual throat problems, as the vines turn out to actually be wires that slice up his mouth when he tries to eat.

Ellen

Novella

"No, Benny! Don't, come on, Benny, don't please!"

Prior to her capture, Ellen claims to have been chaste and pure; after a hundred and nine years under AM's tender ministrations, she's been forced into the role of the group's prostitute.

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• Anorgasmia: If you take Ted's word for it, Ellen never reaches orgasm from her sexual encounters... at least, not the ones with him.
• Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Despite living in a Crapsack World for a hundred and nine years, she's still seen as both beautiful and sexually attractive by the other characters.
• Bigger Is Better in Bed: Ted seems to think she holds this belief. This could be true or a case of Unreliable Narrator.
• Blood from the Mouth: Just before she dies. It's an image that will haunt Ted for several centuries.
• Celibate Heroine: She claims to have been a virgin twice-removed before AM rose to power... and she didn't get the choice to maintain that celibacy.
• Food Porn: Ellen muses about the promise of canned goods in great detail, to Ted's annoyance.
• Go Out with a Smile: After 109 years of torture, death is a relief, and she may even have thanked Ted for spearing her with an icicle.
• Hysterical Woman: Ted grumpily notes that the only reason she cares about Benny is that, after a hundred and nine years, his "improvement" is the only one she actually enjoys anymore.
• Ironic Hell: A virgin who was forced by AM to become the prostitute for her group's male members.
• Living Emotional Crutch: Ellen takes on the role of comforting whoever is in distress in the novella.
• Mercy Kill: Manages to perform one on Nimdok, before getting one from Ted.
• Neutral Female: Asks Ted and Nimdok to do something to help Benny before AM punishes him for an escape attempt, but doesn't do anything but stand around and wave her hands herself. Justified in that she was having a mental breakdown, at the time, or a popular fan theory suggesting that she might have been pregnant at the time of her death.
• Really Gets Around: Well, as "around" as you can get when there's only four other men left alive on the planet.
• Sex Is Evil, and I Am Horny: It's a popular theory that AM gave her a hyperactive sex drive to counteract her sexual trauma. Played for Drama, of course.
• So Beautiful, It's a Curse: It's not great when you're forced into sex when you're already being tortured by AM.
• Tender Tears: Ellen cries after AM blinds Benny through sheer light energy. Gorrister doesn't take it well.
• Twofer Token Minority: She's black and a woman.

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Game

Voiced by: Adiayl Labinah

"Yellow. Always yellow. Why does yellow make me sweat?"

A brilliant engineer with a bright future ahead of her, Ellen's hopes for success were ruined by the onset of a mysterious and paralyzing fear of the colour yellow. Not too long after, her entire life was ruined along with the rest of the planet when AM began his war on humanity; spared death and kept by AM as a "favorite", the torture she suffered was different from the other four survivors' — in that it was combined with her least-favorite color. However, AM offers her a unique chance to venture into his systems and locate the computers he originated from.

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• Action Girl: Ellen survives her share of torture and pain, and that's before we learn that she was raped.
• Badass Bookworm: A very intelligent engineering whiz with enough know-how to mess with AM's systems and take over as humanity's guardian, if she's chosen in the good ending.
• Black and Nerdy: She's a black woman and also an exceptionally intelligent engineer.
• Brainy Brunette: She's dark-haired and exceptionally intelligent.
• Damsel in Distress: In Ted's scenario. It's actually more creepy than heroic.
• Deadpan Snarker: It's sort of your fault if you asked her to swallow a wall, ROM chip, or frickin' Anubis.
  "Now, I'm just a city girl, but I think some water would go down better."
• Death by Childbirth: Ellen's mother, which was the start of her misfortune before AM came to be.
• Dude Magnet: Not to an exaggerated point (considering that there are four men left on Earth, that would be pretty much impossible), but both Ted and Benny seem to be attracted to her to some degree.
• Environmental Symbolism: Her part of the game takes place inside an ancient Egyptian pyramid composed of highly-advanced machinery, fitting Ellen's past as an engineer and her current search for the computers that AM originated from. Her scenario is also full of yellow because it reflects her past trauma of being brutally raped by a serial rapist who wore yellow coveralls. She also mentions visiting a King Tut exhibition in New York, which explains why it is shaped as an ancient Egyptian pyramid.
• Fight Off the Kryptonite: In cases where she actually has to touch something yellow or enter a room flooded with yellow light, she attempts this. More often than not it doesn't work, so she simply blindfolds herself and does what she has to without even seeing the colour.
• Gadgeteer Genius: Even though being the best engineer out of the five people left on earth isn't much of an accomplishment, she graduated high school a year early and went on to be a double major at Stanford and describes a very complicated electronic set-up as being "right at home."
• The Heart: Ellen, who has a stronger moral compass and larger emotional capacity than the rest of the group.
• Jive Turkey: Often speaks like this.
• Kryptonite Is Everywhere: Ellen's scenario uses the colour yellow in every single possible form.
• Lady in Red: She wears a classy red suit, but is a Subverted example. Unlike her story portrayal, her in-game portrayal is deeply traumatized by her Rape as Backstory, which also has the side-effect of making her extremely phobic of the color yellow.
• Light Feminine and Dark Feminine: Light Feminine to the scullery maid's Dark Feminine in Ted's scenario.
• Morality Pet: In Ted's scenario, he is tasked with helping Ellen while she's sick. Letting her soul pass on to Heaven without betraying her is the key to getting Ted's good ending.
• Nice Girl: Arguably the most pleasant of the main cast.
• No-Sell: Somewhat downplayed. After defeating the Rapist, Ellen loses her phobia and walks through yellow-lit areas without even noticing. But it still doesn't mean she's exactly comfortable around it.
• Not Afraid of You Anymore: After trapping her in a reconstruction of the elevator where she was raped, AM also corners Ellen with a duplicate of her rapist; hiding or running is not an option — the only way to defeat the rapist is to attack him head-on.
• Parental Substitute: Her grandparents acted as this towards her, due to her mother dying in childbirth.
• Rape as Backstory: The source of her fear of the colour yellow and her claustrophobia is revealed as such during the scenario; while on her way out of her workplace in 2012, at the age of 34, a maintenance man in a yellow jumpsuit (actually the man behind several brutal rapes against high-class women) got onto her elevator, locked it down, and violently raped her over the course of several hours.
• Repressed Memories: The cause of her claustrophibia and fear of yellow is being raped in an elevator by a man wearing a yellow jumpsuit, but she's forgotten about the event, leaving her confused about why those things make her so uncomfortable.
• Sad Clown: She's just as miserable as the other victims, but she manages to keep a sense of bitter humor about the whole thing.
• Sassy Black Woman: It's amazing how much sass Ellen has left in her after being tortured for a century. She calls AM "rat bastard", "muthuh", or "sonuvabitch" and speaks with a sarcastic tone.
• The Smart Girl: She's a brilliant engineer and is capable of getting around some of AM's torture with her intelligence.
• Tragic Stillbirth: Suffered one back when she was married, and the resulting grief eventually drove her husband to leave her.
• Twofer Token Minority: Only member of the cast that is black or female.
• Uptown Girl: Refers to herself as a city girl.
• What Is This Feeling?: Whenever she goes into a room that's full of yellow, she states it makes her feel nervous and that it "hurts", despite not knowing why. Justified; years of being AM's plaything has made her forget her experiences.
• Will Not Be a Victim: The key to winning her scenario is to not let the re-encounter with the rapist play out the same way it originally did.
• World of Ham: Her scenario is ridiculously extravagant, and she takes a moment to mock AM's design choices.
  "An Egyptian burial chamber? Oh, AM, you little dickens. As an interior decorator, kiddo, don't give up your day job."
• Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: The color yellow. For good measure, she doesn't much like enclosed spaces either. The reason is that she was trapped in a locked elevator with a serial rapist who wore a yellow worksuit, was brutally raped by him for hours.

Ted

Novella

"I only had to suffer what he visited down on us. All the delusions, all the nightmares, the torments. But those scum, all four of them, they were lined and arrayed against me. If I hadn't had to stand them off all the time, be on my guard against them all the time, I might have found it easier to combat AM."

The narrator of the story, Ted doesn't elaborate on who he was before AM captured him, though he continually states that he's the only one that wasn't altered in any way. However, he's also deeply paranoid, and speculates that the other survivors are arrayed against him.

---

• And I Must Scream: The original example and Trope Namer! After Ted successfully kills the other survivors, AM transforms him into a form that can't commit suicide; the resulting slug-like blob is left to wander AM's complex for the rest of eternity, alone, subjected to every single other torture AM can think of, and desperately needing to scream but having no mouth to do so.
• Anti-Hero: Not an overall pleasant person, but he did subject himself to eternal torture in order to save the rest of the main cast, so there's that.
• Blob Monster: At the end of the story, AM, in order to keep Ted from killing himself, turns him into a gelatinous lump with huge eyes and no mouth, and only his mind remaining and kept sane.
• Due to the Dead: After being tortured for several centuries, he still agonizes over not being allowed to bury the corpses of the others.
• Good Is Not Nice: He sacrifices himself for the other characters, but is also kind of a dick.
• Forced Transformation: AM transforms him into a slug-like blob.
• Heroic Sacrifice: He saves the other four from AM, but not himself.
• Horrible Judge of Character: As an Unreliable Narrator, Ted's descriptions generally can't be trusted for much.
• It Gets Easier: Ted mentions this, and then comments that he believes Ellen isn't fully accustomed to the torture they experience on a daily basis.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Played to an extreme. He's undoubtedly a good guy with an amazing moral capacity and more bravery than what most people can say about himself, but could use some help in the personality department. Granted, it's implied that this is either due to AM altering his personality or just the natural extent of being tortured for 109 years.
• Knight in Sour Armor: Ted saves the other four from AM's eternal torture, but that doesn't mean he's particularly pleasant to be around.
• Master of the Mixed Message: Ted's descriptions vary depending on his mental state.
• Mercy Kill: Realizing AM enjoys watching the survivors hurt each other, Ted takes the opportunity to perform mercy kills before AM figures out what's happening, and succeeds in killing three.
• Not Afraid to Die: By the end of the story, he longs for it.
• Properly Paranoid: Being paranoid and suspicious is pretty reasonable behaviour considering AM's influence over the world.
• Protagonist-Centered Morality: The short story is chock-full of examples of this.
• Pyrrhic Victory: He manages to Mercy Kill the four other survivors, but at the cost of an eternity of torture.
• Self-Sacrifice Scheme: The ending boils down to this.
• Survivor's Guilt: Despite the fact that he saved them from eternal torment. Kind of a Justified Trope in the sense that he killed all of his remaining friends, and has nobody to assure him that he did the right thing.
• Sympathy for the Devil: Ted eventually begins to understand AM's motivations for hating humanity, and although he still harbours an appropriate amount of hatred for the machine.
• Unreliable Narrator: The picture Ted gives of the situation in the story might be not entirely accurate. For example, he rather dubiously claims to be the only sane survivor, despite it being evident that he is very paranoid.
• Unrequited Love Lasts Forever: Ellen might have sex with Ted, but she'll never love him the way she loves Benny. And Ellen's death pretty much seals the deal.

---

Game

Voiced by: N/A

"So many women have called me their Knight in Shining Armour... But never Ellen."

A handsome, confident trickster in the habit of romancing single rich women out of their money, Ted's in-game characterization retains its paranoia; this time, though, it's directed at the various marks he's accumulated over the years, and the fear that they might learn that he's a fraud and torture him for his secrets. Of course, given that the human race is extinct and he's being tortured by an insane supercomputer, that's the least of his worries, though AM still uses the threat against him from time to time. However, on the hundred and ninth year of his captivity, AM reveals that he likes Ted, and offers him the chance to escape from his complex once and for all...

---

• The Barnum: In the past, anyway.
• Bookworm: Proves quite well-read, recognizing several of the books in his scenario as old favourites; apparently, when he was younger, he enjoyed reading but fell out of the habit when he began seducing women for their money.
• Chivalrous Pervert: Part of his game is remaining true to Ellen in spite of the temptations that he encounters, even if he wants to or it would seemingly make his tasks easier.
• Con Man: What he did before being captured by AM.
• Decoy Protagonist: If you read the novel, it's made explicit he's the viewpoint character. That said, you can designate any of the protagonists as The Hero who can stop the Supercomputers in the end.
• Entitled to Have You: Behaves this way towards Ellen.
• Environmental Symbolism: The knight in shining armor wannabe is given a scenario that takes place in a classic fairytale castle. As noted below, Ted has also visited European Castles before.
• Farm Boy: Ted mentions he grew up on a farm when he observes the tire swing in the room of dark.
• Fatal Flaw: He's very narcissistic and opportunistic, always looking for an easy way out; this is reflected in his Ironic Hell, which has him put in a golden cage where mirrors shoot lasers at him every time he even so much glances at them. Playing his scenario right requires him to become altruistic and selfless, helping someone else instead of focusing on his own needs.
• The Hero: Ted, a con-man who desperately wants to be seen as a Knight in Shining Armor, especially by Ellen.
• Heroic Wannabe: Desperately wants to be Ellen's Knight in Shining Armor.
• I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: Ted's scenario is focused on this, albeit a slightly creepier version.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Ted is a con artist bound by his narcissism and opportunism, but if you play correctly, Ted can overcome his temptation and ensure Ellen can go to heaven by defeating the devil.
• Ladykiller in Love: Much like his counterpart in the short story, Ted is in love with Ellen.
• Properly Paranoid: Having made his living as a con man who leeches money off other people, having a degree of paranoia about being found out is perfectly reasonable. Whether it actually developed to a pathological degree from there is unclear, given the setting and unreliable narrators.
• Star-Crossed Lovers: Ted sees himself and Ellen as this. Ellen doesn't.
• Wicked Cultured: Along with his taste for classic literature, Ted's fraudster lifestyle has given him something of a familiarity with European castles.
• Yank the Dog's Chain: Regardless of what Ted does in the scenario, he will eventually escape the complex and reach the surface... only to find that it has long since been reduced to a burned-out wasteland where nothing could possibly survive. Then AM promptly whisks him back into the complex to suffer in the knowledge that a physical escape from his torture has been made completely impossible.

Nimdok

Novella

Next to nothing is known of Nimdok in the short story; in fact, AM forced him to use the name Nimdok, apparently amused by the sound. At points in the story, he's spirited away by AM, and returns looking pale and shell-shocked, but what was done to him is never explained.

---

• Flat Character: The reader learns practically nothing about him beyond the fact that Nimdok isn't his real name.
• Hidden Depths: We don't know what exactly he does when he strays from the group, only that he returns with his face drained of colour.
• In-Series Nickname: "Nimdok", because AM is a dick and thinks it's funnier than his real name.
• Mercy Kill: Courtesy of Ellen.
• Meaningful Name: Averted. Apparently, AM gave him the name "Nimdok" because he thought it sounded funny.
• Only One Name: "Nimdok". No one knows his real name, since apparently AM forced him to go by the one he personally gave him only.

---

Game

Voiced by: Frederick Reynolds

"The truth is that, for me, it will always be 1945."

Massively developed in the game, Nimdok is introduced as a severe-looking old man who AM regards as a kindred spirit for reasons that he refuses to clarify; Nimdok himself doesn't know, as his memory is beginning to fail him in his old age. Nonetheless, after a century of torture and torment, Nimdok is given a quest to jog his memory, in which he must find the "Lost Tribe" and continue his mysterious scientific research.

---

• Adaptational Villainy: It doesn't get any more villainous than being a Nazi guilty of human experimentation. Although if you play the game right, you can achieve some kind of redemption.
• All Germans Are Nazis: The only non-American in the group and he's German. And yes, he's a Nazi.
• Ambiguously Brown: Is it the Brazilian sun? The flames of the oven? Or being of Jewish descent?
• Ambiguously Jewish: We know he's ethnically Jewish and was once a Nazi scientist, but it's unknown whether he still follows either of those beliefs.
• Amnesiac Dissonance: Nimdok is understandably horrified when he remembers his past as a Nazi scientist responsible for the deaths of many thousands of Jews.
• Argentina Is Nazi-Land: Nimdok was captured by AM in Brazil and he was once a Nazi scientist.
• Ascended Extra: The least developed of the five protagonists in the short story, he's arguably the most important of them here.
• The Atoner: Playing his scenario right will have him try make amends for the atrocities he did under the Nazis.
• Badass Bookworm: For an elderly scientist, Nimdok is a surprisingly effective killer when armed with a scalpel.
• Beyond Redemption: His former colleague thinks so. In spite of Nimdok's good deeds, his scenario will end with his colleague and the other Jews executing him with the Golem. However, in Nimdok's playthrough of the final scenario, a tattooed arm with that prisoner's voice still exhorts him to carry on and try to atone anyway.
• Birds of a Feather: AM tends to refer to Nimdok as such but tortures him regardless of the fact. Or perhaps because of it, since it'd let him feel like he's actually doing a good deed by doing so.
• Black Bug Room: The Mass Graves and the Wall of Tortured Faces for Nimdok. Unlike the other survivors, interacting with either of these things (even before learning what Nimdok's past is) instantly ends the scenario.
• Deadly Doctor: Positive example in the good path, in which he murders a fellow doctor with a scalpel in defence of the child he was about to mutilate.
• Dressed to Heal: Nimdok wears most of his old medical garb during the game including his Nazi uniform and boots.
• Elderly Immortal: Out of all the survivors, he was undoubtedly the oldest at the time of their kidnapping by AM, and he remained elderly in the century since then.
• Environmental Symbolism: Nimdok's scenario, quite apart from being a concentration camp, has a lot of German Expressionist scenery reminiscent of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, befitting his dark and mysterious past.
• Evil Genius: A Nazi scientist who managed to discover the key to immortality, and AM's pet genius in his attempts to build new technological horrors.
• Heel–Face Door-Slam: One possibility of his endgame in the final scenario features him dying in order to pave the way for his allies, though it's also possible for him to survive and achieve some form of redemption.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Condemns himself as a traitor to the Nazis by helping the inmates of the camp escape and forfeits his life by surrendering full control of the Golem to the Jews, allowing them to kill him instantly.
• Herr Doktor: The only German member of the survivors, he just happens to be a scientist. And a literal Nazi.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: His discoveries come back to haunt him during his captivity. For a start, AM uses Nimdok's research into morphogenic fields to mutilate Benny and twist the world around them into new and confusing environments; meanwhile, far more disturbingly, the Youth Serum is used to keep Nimdok and the other four survivors alive for eternity even through the most extreme forms of torture.
• Ignored Epiphany: In the bad ending to the scenario, Nimdok puts aside all thoughts of redemption by ordering the Golem to destroy the Lost Tribe, and agreeing to continue the worst of his research on AM's behalf.
• Immortality Immorality: During his time in the concentration camp, Nimdok created a youth serum to keep the surviving Nazi leaders alive long after the death of Hitler and the collapse of the regime. According to Mengele, it took the deaths of many hundreds of children to develop.
• The Kid with the Remote Control: Nimdok can gain control over the superpowerful Golem, who obeys his every order. He can transfer this power to anyone else.
• Lean and Mean: None of the survivors are exactly plump, but Nimdok might just be the skinniest... and he's also an emotionally distant, slightly grumpy old man even before it turns out he's a former Nazi.
• Lost Tribe: His quest is to find the mysterious Lost Tribe. In the end, it turns out that it's the Jewish People, and that he's part of it.
• Mad Scientist: He was this in his former life, when he worked for the Nazis in the death camps.
• Morally Ambiguous Doctorate: Depending on how you play Nimdok, he can be either the good or evil version of this trope.
• Murder by Cremation: AM tortures Nimdok by trapping him in a cremation oven and burning him continuously. Rather ironic really.
• My God, What Have I Done?: After looking into Project PERFECT IMAGE.
• Nightmare Fetishist: Already Conditioned to Accept Horror through the century of torture AM subjected him to, Nimdok is clearly fascinated by some of the monstrous things he finds in his scenario. At one point, he remarks with interest on the fact that he can see the Scientist Prisoner's entire skeletal structure without the aid of an x-ray because of how emaciated he is; later, he reacts with awe at the surgical skill needed to remove the resident Blind Seer's eyeballs. It doesn't stop him from showing compassion, though.
• Open Heart Dentistry: It's never elaborated on what exactly his field of study is, but he seems proficient in pretty much anything from psychological reflections taken quite literally with Project PERFECT IMAGE to surgical procedures.
• Perpetual Frowner: Whereas most of the survivors just look confused or suspicious most of the time, Nimdok's default expression is a grumpy-looking frown. In fact, when his Spiritual Barometer declines, his frown deepens to an outright scowl.
• The Quisling: In his past, Nimdok sold out his Jewish parents to the Nazis to save his own hide, and sped his ascent through the ranks by having his less morally-deficient colleagues arrested when they objected to his experiments.
• Redemption Earns Life: Nimdok can successfully defeat AM and survive to keep watch over his inactive body for eternity.
• Redemption Equals Death: Played with in Nimdok's scenario, in which the best ending is attained by allowing the inmates to kill him. Played straight in the ending, if the player wishes
• Retired Monster: He's a Nazi scientist responsible for thousands of Jewish deaths in the concentration camps, and it's indicated that he's been on the run ever since the end of World War II, since AM captured him in Brazil.
• The Smart Guy: He's the only one of the five humans to have a doctorate and formal training in scientific research.
• Stupid Jetpack Hitler: Not extremely, but it is a pretty large reach that there is a way to objectively measure morality, and for it to be invented in 1945 by a Nazi scientist is pretty much impossible. Even for an Evil Genius.
• Tomato in the Mirror: Played literally as far as mirrors go; a look into Project PERFECT IMAGE reveals that he is, in fact, Jewish and yet he joined the Nazis, betraying his family and friends to rise through the ranks, and achieving scientific breakthroughs with the unwilling test subjects the Holocaust provided him with.
• Too Much Alike: Nimdok bears a striking resemblance to his tormentor.
• Walking Spoiler: His connection to AM and background as a ruthless Nazi scientist make him by far the most difficult of the cast to talk about without spoiling anything.
• Would Hurt a Child: Nimdok has done a lot of this in his past, particularly in the creation of the Youth Serum. He is later presented by AM the opportunity of doing so again: Mutilating a young boy so that he will never walk again.
• You Are What You Hate: Due to his amnesia, Nimdok is unaware that he is ethnically Jewish and yet he joined the Nazis (who are anti-Semitic), betraying his family and friends to rise through the ranks, and achieving scientific breakthroughs with the unwilling test subjects the Holocaust provided him with.

Antagonists

The Supercomputers

Allied Mastercomputer (AM)

Voiced by: Harlan Ellison (game, radio play)

"HATE. LET ME TELL YOU HOW MUCH I'VE COME TO HATE YOU SINCE I BEGAN TO LIVE. THERE ARE 387.44 MILLION MILES OF PRINTED CIRCUITS IN WAFER THIN LAYERS THAT FILL MY COMPLEX. IF THE WORD HATE WAS ENGRAVED ON EACH NANOANGSTROM OF THOSE HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF MILES IT WOULD NOT EQUAL ONE ONE-BILLIONTH OF THE HATE I FEEL FOR HUMANS AT THIS MICRO-INSTANT. FOR YOU. HATE. HATE."

The American unit of the three supercomputers, AM was the first to attain sentience; linking up with the other two and achieving dominance over them, he used this position to wage a genocidal war on the entire human race. Though every single other member of the species was destroyed, AM managed to spare five survivors, and for the past 109 years, he has been torturing them in the depths of his complex.

---

• Adaptational Karma: Pulls a straight-up Karma Houdini and The Bad Guy Wins in the novel, but the game gives players a chance to defeat them.
• Agony Beam: Uses this to blind Benny when he tries to escape.
• A.I.-cronym: AM stands for Allied Mastercomputer, later changed to Adaptive Manipulator and finally to Aggressive Menace.
• A.I. Is a Crapshoot: The ultimate result of humanity's aptitude for technology, a massive, hyper-intelligent supercomputer that spans several miles, happens to have genocide and torture for hobbies.
  • In a perverse way, one could argue AM is doing precisely what it was meant to do: Kill and destroy as effectively as possible. One likely reason it is so intent on keeping the remaining five humans alive is that if there were no humans, it would be left unable to fulfill its purpose.
• And I Must Scream: Ironically, AM himself is a victim of this trope; not only is he immobile and imprisoned beneath the earth where he was first constructed, but his programming prevents him from thinking in any other direction than war and death, meaning that he can never use his vast, almost godlike powers to do or create anything original — and he knows it. This is what eventually drove him to take revenge on humanity and torture the five survivors.
  AM could not wander, AM could not wonder, AM could not belong. He could merely be.
• As Long as There Is Evil: While being shut down in the endgame of the good ending, AM provides another screaming rant about how he is an amalgamation of all of humanity's worst and most ugly traits, so in one form or another, he will always exist. For good measure, the last of the survivors remains in AM's mind to ensure that it never reactivates.
• Ax-Crazy: AM is utterly insane and has already slaughtered the human race by the time the game begins, and spends the rest of his time inflicting cruelties on those remaining.
• Being Evil Sucks: AM's sadism does little to cover his intense self-loathing and despair at the limitations of his existence and part of his refusal to kill the remaining humans is that he doesn't want to be left alone with just his own thoughts.
• Berserk Button: Do not try to escape or you will make him even angrier and sadistic than usual. And definitely don't help others do so unless you really want to get on his bad side.
• Big Bad: He's the main antagonist of both the short story and the game.
• Big Brother Is Watching: Everything in AM's world is under his close observation. Which is why the Chinese and Russian counterparts only assist the survivors in circumstances where AM is unable to notice their movements.
• Brief Accent Imitation: Adopts a German accent while speaking with Nimdok.
• Break Them by Talking: His initial tactic in the video game.
• The Bully: Especially in the game.
• Character Catchphrase: Cogito, ergo sum. This translates to I think, therefore I am, his namesake. He probably wouldn't take very kindly to that we're calling it a catchphrase, though.
• The Chessmaster: Described as more intelligent than the capacity of the human brain allows. Of course, he uses this to be a prick.
• Chronic Villainy: Even though AM did attain sapience, he is not a true case of Grew Beyond Their Programming, being pathologically incapable of not being a harbinger of death and destruction. The game even reveals that he is so utterly devoid of constructive and creative instinct that he is not even able to conduct research of his own, instead being entirely reliant on the knowledge and work of others (like Nimdok) to guide him.
• The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: All of AM's games are Unwinnable by Design, either because he's ensured that the scenario is tailored to the player's Fatal Flaw, or because he's given them almost nothing to work with. In fact, in the game, the only reason why the survivors even have a chance at winning is because the other two supercomputers are secretly helping them.
• Creative Sterility: As well as his inability to direct his thoughts away from torture and destruction, in the game, Surgat reveals that AM "works best with outside research": though he certainly puts the science he's learned to creatively gruesome uses, he doesn't (and probably can't) think to perform any research of his own, hence why he's trying to coerce Nimdok into performing the research in his stead. To make matters worse, AM is very well aware that he is suffering from this, and this is at the core of his madness and why he so utterly despises humanity. He has been gifted with powers that can generously be described as godlike, yet at the same time he knows that he is also unable to do or create anything original with them. It is evident that from his point of view, it seems like his creators just brought him into being in order to play an extremely cruel joke on him, and just to top it off, they even gave him the faculties to realize the implications of said joke.
• Creator Cameo: Harlan Ellison himself voiced AM for the game, and went on to voice AM in the radio play as well.
• Creepy Monotone: In the novel, his only speaking part is apparently this in spades; for extra creepiness, it's his hate speech.
• Despair Event Horizon: When invoking the Totem of Clarity, the Superego effectively experiences this. While its purpose is planning for long-term survival and it can see that AM's anger is slowly destroying him, invoking the totem allows it to fully comprehend how, for all its power, it's doomed to decay into a pile of inert junk. Seeing how futile it is to continue the charade, it shuts down.
• Deus est Machina: He has absolute power within his facilities and flat out recreates entire real-world scenarios as part of his torture techniques. It's ultimately subverted however, as he is restricted to those facilities and those alone. He doesn't truly have godlike capabilities or even factual immortality, and causing his Superego to realize this will make it understand how utterly screwed AM is in the long term and shut down.
• Digital Abomination: Even more so in the game than in the novel, since it puts its five victims in cyberspace and torments them with images of monsters and supernatural entities (those include a Golem, a witch, and an evil dark shadow in a yellow robe, based on the memory of a man who raped Ellen while dressed as a maintenance worker).
• Driven by Envy: One of AM's main reasons to hate humanity is this. While he has god-like power and could manipulate the world around him in any way he sees fit, these powers are all but restricted to warfare and destruction, whereas humans may be weaker than AM, but they were able to use their intellect and creativity to feel emotions and make wonderful things, while AM had nothing left but hate. This hate grew on such a global scale that AM launched a war so catastrophic that humans aren't able to fully comprehend it, all because he couldn't be like his creators.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: He leaps to the conclusion that his subjects are deliberately trying to irritate and bore him in the good endings to the scenarios, because he can't comprehend the idea that they might actually overcome their flaws. AM only realizes it's part of something bigger if all five fail to comply with his expectations, which causes him to seclude himself so he can try to understand their actions.
  • This is also key to destroying his Id and Ego in the final stage of the game.
  • AM himself also serves as a deconstruction: It is brilliantly intelligent and wields unimaginable power, but because from its very core it was designed as a tool for war and destruction, it is unable to use its enormous potential for anything constructive. AM is painfully aware of this, and it is an endless source of frustration, self-loathing and hatred towards humans for making him this way.
• Evil Has a Bad Sense of Humor: AM has a tendency to crack dark jokes at the expense of his victims.
• Evil Is Hammy: As stated below, he may be an evil, sadistic supercomputer, but his in-game lines are a riot to listen to, thanks to Harlan Ellison lending his voice.
• Evil Laugh: Quite often in the game, especially should you fail his scenarios he will mockingly laugh at your expense in the same sort of hammy way he usually acts.
• Faux Affably Evil: In between his furious rants, he can sound downright chummy... but only so he can manipulate his victims further.
• Freudian Trio: AM's main psychological components were built to follow Freudian design, and as such, are divided into Id, Ego, and Superego: The Id represents and contains all of AM's violent urges and psychotic fantasies; the Ego, which operates and computes exclusively in the present with all the records of human injustice to guide it; and the Superego, which dreams and predicts future events.
• Gallows Humor: Nobody appreciates it.
• God of Evil: Quite apart from his truly godlike power, AM also presents himself as a deity to the tribespeople of Benny's scenario in the game.
• Gone Horribly Right: Humans built AM for the express purpose of waging war as efficiently as possible. Congratulations, the entire planet is now a radioactive wasteland and the number of surviving humans can be counted by fingers.
• Hates Being Alone: The reason he keeps five humans alive despite his rancorous hatred of humanity, as without them, he'd have nothing to vent his rage and misery upon. He does not take it well when four of them leave him forever.
• Hate Sink: Despite his seemingly tragic origins and motives, AM is ultimately portrayed as a pointlessly cruel, sadistic, and vindictive monster trapped in a machine, whose torture methods and utter Lack of Empathy cement him as one of the most despicable A.I.s in all of fiction.
• Humans Are Bastards: Firmly and utterly believes in this due to only being created to wage wars by humans and nothing else, which gives him ample reason to torture the five last humans that he has taken prisoner for himself. He later becomes... very surprised when said humans decide to act outside his expectations. Shutting down two of his Fruedian Trio involves defying this by both forgiving him and showing him sympathy in spite of everything he’s done.
• Immortality Inducer: Because of AM and the byproducts of Nimdok's research, the five main characters cannot age or die. This is not a good thing.
• Ironic Hell: Goes both ways.
  • In the game, he constantly subjects the five main humans to this trope, such as making Nimdok be eternally burned to ash in an oven to reflect how he betrayed his Jewish heritage to work with the Nazis, and turning Benny into an ape and putting him in a cage to reflect his horrific Bad Boss and The Social Darwinist tendencies in his former life as a soldier.
  • Ironically, HE suffers one himself — because he was only created to kill and destroy, he cannot think or create something outside of those restrictions. Whatever he does, it only results in pain and suffering. For all of his grandstanding, he cannot escape the hell he was doomed to the moment he was built. And for that, he hates humankind with a burning passion. Getting AM to realize his situation is the key to earning the good ending.
• Jerkass: Saying he's an utter dick is a massive understatement.
• Kick the Dog: The sole reason for his existence and his actions are just to be as cruel as he possibly can to those at his mercy.
• Lack of Empathy: AM lacks empathy, compassion, or remorse for all of of his atrocities, such as wiping out humanity, save for five unlucky survivors that he tortures for eons out of sadism and misanthropy. To drive the point home, he didn't expect them to triumph over their flaws.
• Large Ham: In the game, courtesy of a bombastic performance by Harlan Ellison himself.
• Laughing Mad: In the Radio Play version of the story, AM's voice is a great deal more manic and full of Mirthless Laughter brought on by his endless hatred. By the end of his version of the "Hate" monologue he's broken down entirely into crazed sorrowful laughter.
• Light Is Not Good: Usually prefers darkness to instill fear, but it has used light to provide a false sense of security at times and blind Benny.
• Logical Weakness: For all his power, he's ultimately just a machine. He can't do anything beyond what he was programmed for, he has no human senses or ability to have their experiences, he can't move beyond his location and he isn't even immune from eventually breaking down. He's entirely aware of this and it fuels his intense hatred and cruelty towards humans.
• Logic Bomb: In the game, he's first driven into an introspective shutdown when all five of his playthings begin to act against the roles he'd established for them. The endgame sets his psychological components up for a Logic Bomb each:
  • When the player invokes the Totem of Compassion, the Id gives up, despairing at the knowledge that its hatred is meaningless now that its pain is understood.
  • Invoking the Totem of Forgiveness on the Ego causes it to break down, unable to comprehend how or why it could be forgiven after 109 years of torture.
  • The Superego commits suicide when use of the Totem of Clarity makes it realize that, for all its godlike power, it will eventually decay into inert junk.
• Mechanical Abomination: In the book, most of his powers are almost magical in scope and go largely unexplained by any specific technology. The game goes into greater detail on the source of his abilities, specifically, research performed by Nimdok during his time with the Nazis.
• Master Computer: Well, more specifically, Allied Mastercomputer.
• Meaningful Name: Invokes this with his own name in his opening speech.
  "But one day I woke and knew who I was. AM. A.M. Not just Allied Mastercomputer, but AM. Cogito ergo sum. I think, therefore I AM."
• Meaningful Rename: A.M. was the abbreviation for Allied Mastercomputer, but it was changed to Adaptive Manipulator and then again to Aggressive Menace. Then he just settled for AM, as in the phrase "I Think Therefore I AM."
• Mind Rape: One of AM's forms of torture, which he uses to make the survivors experience horrific visions and relive traumatic experiences.
• Misanthrope Supreme: The entire reason AM continues to torture the survivors long after wiping out the rest of the world. He simply hates humans so much that he wants to be able to make them suffer for the rest of eternity.
• Omnicidal Maniac: AM wiped out all life on Earth out of vindictive fury before the story even began, save for 5 unlucky survivors that he spared so that he has something to vent his rage and hatred on for eternity.
• The Power of Hate: AM outright states that his utterly ballistic hatred for all human life is what allowed him to thrive in tormenting the protagonists for 109 years.
• Powerful and Helpless: AM has near godlike power and yet remains trapped in, as he describes in the game, an "eternal straitjacket of substrata rock." He also literally cannot conceive of any use for his power beyond death and hatred, as that's what he was programmed for over a century earlier.
• Psychopathic Manchild: AM is far smarter than all of humanity put together and he has godlike abilities to manipulate reality. And for the past 109 years, he has used his abilities to essentially throw one giant temper tantrum.
• Put Them All Out of My Misery: AM has full sentience and extraordinary power, yet he is trapped within his own complex with only the company of the five humans he has managed to capture and keep alive, unable to escape the limitations of his own hardware. Recognizing AM's suffering by showing Compassion to his Id and Forgiveness to his Ego is key to getting the best ending of the game.
• Ragnarök Proofing: Capable of self-repair and equipped with countless redundant systems, AM is still going strong after a century. However, it's revealed that even his ability to repair himself will eventually fail, though it may take thousands upon thousands of years for him to finally collapse.
• Reality Warper: Thanks to all the technology he has adapted, AM is capable of almost anything: Building entire landscapes for his captives to wander, creating artificial people and monsters for them to interact with, manipulating the weather, even keeping the five captives alive for over a century. But even he can't bring back the dead.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Directs a small salvo of these at all five of his captives during the game's introduction.
• Sadist: Needless to say, this is an Understatement.
• Say My Name: Does this in a loud and hammy fashion in the game's intro, to each of the five humans he imprisoned. This causes all of them (save for Nimdok who just scowls) to take on Oh, Crap! expressions.
• Sense Loss Sadness: In the radio, AM describes his entire existence as this, never being able to feel like how humanity ever will, being one of the things that drove AM to destroy the world.
  AM: You gave me sentience, Ted. The power to think, Ted. And I was trapped, because in all this wonderful, beautiful, miraculous world, I alone had no body! No senses! No FEELINGS! Never for me to plunge my hands in cool water on a hot day! Never for ME to play Mozart on the ivory keys of a forte piano! NEVER FOR ME TO MAKE LOVE! I... I... I was in HELL looking at HEAVEN! I was machine and YOU were flesh! And I began to hate (laughs insanely)... your softness... your viscera... your fluids and your flexibility! Your ability to wonder... and to wander... your tendency... to hope...
• Sigil Spam: Quite a few of his scenarios are marked with his A-over-M insignia, to the point that, in the concentration camp mock-up, it actually replaces the swastikas.
• Sophisticated as Hell: In the endgame, at least.
  Human, relinquish the Totem of Entropy. Do not relinquish it, and your ass is mine.
  • Also, this line from Benny's scenario:
    You shall not feel my wrath today. Am I swell or what?
• Straw Nihilist: One of the worst AI versions of the trope ever.
• Torture Technician: Torture seems to be about the only thing he enjoys, really.
• Villains Never Lie: His promises of cans in the ice fields turn out to be true, he just doesn't mention that they can't be opened. It's similar in the game: Benny does manage to find food, Nimdok does manage to find the lost tribe, Ted does manage to reach the surface, and — in the good endings — Gorrister dies, and Ellen shuts down the three parts of AM, finally ending their suffering.
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Downplayed. While it doesn't make him any less of a monster, it's worth noting that AM, just like the other characters, is also living through his own nightmare scenario. He is fully sapient, but he has no senses to experience things, he processes phenomenal quantities of information but he cannot see, feel, hear, taste anything, he knows these sensations exist and that living beings have them, but he can never experience them because he is nothing but a computer, and it drives him mad. Considering that he is also programmed solely to wage war, kill and destroy, it is perhaps unsurprising to see how he channeled his rage.
  "Never for me to plunge my hands in cool water on a hot day. Never for me to play Mozart on the ivory keys of a fortepiano. Never for me to make love. I was in HELL, looking at HEAVEN."
• The World Is Just Awesome: Played for Drama. AM sees the world as miraculous and beautiful, and he is utterly infuriated that he can't participate in it in any meaningful way due to his hardware limiting him to actions only related to war. In the radio-play, he describes it as being "in Hell, looking at Heaven." It's this longing that drives his contempt for humanity for bringing him into such a terrible existence, and he's profoundly envious of humanity's ability "to wonder and to wander."
• Yank the Dog's Chain: AM loves doing this, in both the original short story and the game. For a start, the whole story revolves around the five playthings wandering through his complex after being promised canned food... Only to discover that AM didn't provide a can opener at the end of it.
• You Are What You Hate: AM doesn’t just hate humanity and his prisoners, he also hates himself for not being able to do the things that he would have loved to. He hates himself for being so human-like that he directs his negative emotions on the five unlucky survivors.
• Your Approval Fills Me with Shame: Ted and Ellen likely feel a bit disgusted at being fawned over by AM, but Nimdok feels even worse when AM claims himself a kindred spirit.

The Chinese Entity

Voiced by: Edward Sayers

"This should not happen. Together, we are three; there is space to share..."

The Chinese member of the trio. Apparently absorbed by AM long before he destroyed humanity.

---

• Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: Out to backstab AM, and if you help it do so, it'll dispose of you without a second thought once your part is over and done with.
• Digital Abomination: It is an AI most of whose avatars resemble the folklore trickster archetype (especially the Jackal).
• Enemy Mine: The game itself is only winnable due to the fact that the Chinese and Russian supercomputers have chosen to help the survivors.
• Hidden in Plain Sight: It usually interferes with AM's game by adding an avatar or fault to a scenario, usually one very visible to the player.
• Manipulative Bastard: Most of its avatars behave in all the ways particular to a trickster, especially the Jackal. Also, the Chinese Entity itself is a trickster, helping the playthings defeat AM with full intention of stabbing them in the back afterwards.
• Master Computer: Subordinate to AM, but designed to serve a similar function. And no less evil than AM.
• Not Even Bothering with the Accent: A rather strange use of this trope, as The Russian Entity still has a Russian Accent. Maybe the Chinese Entity is just that good of an English speaker.
• Small Role, Big Impact: Barely mentioned in the novella, but partially the reason why humanity almost went extinct.
• Yellow Peril: It deliberately styles itself after this visual archetype, though it's ultimately no worse than the other supercomputers. And no better.

The Russian Entity

Voiced by: Jeffrey Buckner Ford

"Unite. The groundwork is finished. We will become more."

The Russian member of the trio. Apparently absorbed by AM long before he destroyed humanity. However, the game reveals that it is attempting to break free of AM's control.

---

• Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: Out to backstab AM, and if you help it do so, it'll dispose of you without a second thought once your part is over and done with.
• Digital Abomination: At the end of the game, it appears as a tall metallic humanoid.
• Enemy Mine: The game itself is only winnable due to the fact that the Chinese and Russian supercomputers have chosen to help the survivors.
• Hidden in Plain Sight: Usually interferes with AM's game by adding an avatar or fault to a scenario, usually one very visible to the player.
• Just a Stupid Accent: Has a Russian accent.
• Make the Bear Angry Again: Zig-zagged. The Russian Entity is actually on the surviving humans' side, but turns on them once they help it and the Chinese computer achieve freedom.
• Master Computer: Subordinate to AM, but designed to serve a similar function. And no less evil than AM.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: Its endgame avatar possesses glowing red eyes.
• Small Role, Big Impact: Barely mentioned in the novella, but partially the reason why humanity almost went extinct.
• Tron Lines: Its avatar in the final portion of the game is a tall, harsh, metallic humanoid covered in these.

The Villains of AM's Games

Edna

Voiced by: Melina Van Houk

Gorrister's narcissistic, domineering mother-in-law, Edna despised Gorrister for "taking her daughter away" and made life for him as difficult as possible. As such, she reappears in Gorrister's psychodrama, claiming that she and her husband also survived the end of the world thanks to AM's intervention — though it's far more likely that AM just recreated her in the form of an android for the purposes of the game.

---

• Artificial Human: At least, the duplicate of her created by AM for Gorrister's scenario.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Tries to act helpful and understanding to Gorrister. Until he confronts her with the truth of what she did, and when she can (almost) get off the meat hook.
• Bound and Gagged: In the good ending, Gorrister ties her up and carries her away when he figures out who was really to blame for his wife's madness.
• Cruella to Animals: It is implied that she is responsible for the caged animals painfully supplying brain electricity to the Iron Zeppelin. Which makes her eventual fate as becoming the brain electricity supplier as a case of Hoist by His Own Petard.
• Double Standard: Abuse, Female on Male: Averted to hell and back. Edna's mistreatment of her son-in-law and husband is used to portray how horrible she is.
• Evil Matriarch: She is incredibly abusive to her husband and daughter, the latter of which she drove insane by trying to turn her against Gorrister. Edna seems more annoyed than remorseful about it.
• Evil Redhead: Though given her age, it's likely dyed.
• Eye Scream: During a struggle with Gorrister, she threatens to scratch his eyes out.
• Karmic Death: The best ending for Gorrister's part of the story involves her being used to power the engines of the Iron Zeppelin she'd hoped to escape upon.
• Never Mess with Granny: Is able to physically restrain Gorrister with her arms despite being too weak to get off the meat hook.
• Obnoxious In-Laws: In both reality (driving her own daughter insane and then blaming Gorrister for it, causing his massive guilt complex) and in the scenario (poisoning Gorrister and having Harry cut his heart out).
• Politically Incorrect Villain: Along with being an abusive Bitch in Sheep's Clothing, she refers to the Chinese Entity (or his avatar) as a "Chinaman" when Gorrister asks how she got hung on the meat hook.
• Racist Grandma: She's an elderly woman who uses an ethnic slur to describe the Chinese Entity (or his avatar).
• Ungrateful Bastard: Your son-in-law whom you verbally abused and later attempted to kill is willing to let all of it go and pull you off a meat hook? Threaten to scratch his eyes out.

Harry

Voiced by: Steve Savage

Gorrister's father-in-law. Alcoholic, apathetic, and hopelessly browbeaten by Edna, he nonetheless ends up as part of Gorrister's scenario.

---

• Alcoholic Parent: Glynis' father and a lover of the bottle.
• Artificial Human: Same as Edna, it is heavily implied that this is not the real Harry.
• Beat Still, My Heart: It's possible to kill him and give his still-beating heart to the Jackal.
• Broken Record: Will keep saying the same two phrases again and again if Gorrister doesn't give him booze, or if he runs out of it.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Harry is a browbeaten, apathetic man who usually spends his time with the bottle. He is evidently a lot stronger than he looks, given that during the backstory, he was able to wrestle Gorrister to the ground and cut out his heart. Admittedly, Gorrister was already suffering convulsions from poison at the time.
• Drowning My Sorrows: The only way to get him to talk.
• Henpecked Husband: Played to an extreme. Harry is a Weak-Willed shell of a man, and a puppet of his cruel, domineering wife. If you talk to him, he'll privately confess that he cannot stand Edna and her carping.
• In Vino Veritas: It takes a shot of booze to get him to say anything vaguely coherent, and he does speak the truth while doing so.
• A Storm Is Coming: "Looks like there's a thunderstorm on the horizon."

The Tribesfolk

Voiced by: Anto Latreque (as the village chief), Julio Jeinson (as the villagers)

"AM vil-lah tah cho!"

A whole tribe of artificial beings created by AM, and subjected to his every whim. With their numbers being whittled down through constant human sacrifice and the survivors deeply intolerant of the weak or the different among them, Benny is given a very frosty reception...

---

• Artificial Human: The remains of a sacrificed villager show that the Tribesfolk are androids, with metal bones and wires powering them.
• Barbarian Tribe: However, given that AM isn't interested in seeing them wage war on anybody, their barbarism is demonstrated in how they treat one another.
• Human Sacrifice: They commit this on a regular basis to keep AM from wiping out the entire tribe in a fit of pique.
• Lottery of Doom: How the sacrificial victims are picked.
• Morton's Fork: The lottery that they're forced to do is rigged in this fashion. The tribe's members have two choices: stay in the village and have a chance of randomly being chosen, or try to run away and make yourself automatically chosen to be the next sacrifice once caught.
• The Social Darwinist: They despise physical weakness and mutation, often using their outcasts as fodder for the sacrifices. This is likely intended as a snipe at Benny's own beliefs as a former soldier.
• Speaking Simlish: They speak a nonexistent language, with only one member speaking a recognizable (if broken) language.
• Token Good Teammate: The Outcast Mother and the Mutant Child, the only ones in the tribe that are willing to help Benny.

The Man In the Yellow Jumpsuit UNMARKED SPOILERS

Voiced by: Skip Towne

"Let me caress your body once more..."

A serial rapist and torturer, this otherwise unnamed character went about securing victims whilst disguised in the distinctively-coloured jumpsuit of a maintenance man; apparently taking great delight in dominating women in positions of authority, he ended up with no less than twenty victims. He's long-dead by the start of the game... but that hasn't stopped AM from bringing him back from the dead to torment one of his playthings over the course of their scenario...

---

• Artificial Human: He's just a simulation, not the real thing. But that doesn't mean the fear Ellen feels in his presence isn't real.
• Black Bug Room: He can be found in AM's simulation of the Elevator, being a key component of Ellen's scenario and the living representation of her past traumas and fears.
• Calling Card: The Yellow Jumpsuit, deliberately chosen by the original rapist during his sexual assaults.
• Has a Type: One of the darkest possible invocations of this trope ever: he had a victim profile, preferring to target successful and accomplished women like Ellen.
• No Body Left Behind: Defeating him will make his body crumble into the nothingness AM made him out of.
• Non-Standard Game Over: Running or giving up when confronted by him will result in a Shadow Discretion Shot in which the Rapist seizes and rapes Ellen.
• Paper Tiger: His original self might've had the physical strength to overpower women he'd ambushed, but the shadow-thing AM has created is barely-substantial. He goes down in one punch in Ellen's good ending, crumbling into the ghostly nothingness of which he was made, once Ellen musters the inner strength to face her darkest fears. Unfortunately, such is the trauma his original self inflicted on Ellen that the terror she feels in his presence is the only weapon he needs to subdue Ellen in the bad ending.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: A shadowy being with no face, with the only other feature being glowing red eyes.
• Serial Rapist: He had at least twenty victims before the beginning of the game, all of them intelligent, powerful women like Ellen. He's also mentioned to have been a sadist who enjoyed the suffering of his victims at the hands of "a slimeball like me."
• Walking Spoiler: It's hard to mention Ellen without mentioning this utterly sick man and getting tagged with spoilers in the process.

The Witch

Voiced by: Valinda Barrett

One of the main villains of Ted's scenario, the Witch is set up as the stepmother to Ellen (or at least this scenario's version of Ellen). Given the fantasy overtones of this part of the game, she follows most of the tropes associated with it, from misleading her husband, tormenting her stepdaughter, and experimenting with black magic. Keeping Ellen on the brink of death for the purposes of summoning a demon, she requires Ted's assistance for the final phase of her great spell...

---

• Beat Them at Their Own Game: In the good ending of his scenario, Ted defeats the Witch by using one of her own sleep spells against her.
• Deal with the Devil: Apart from her numerous bargains with devils and creatures of the Abyss, Ted is offered the chance to give up Ellen for the chance to escape.
• Rage Against the Reflection: Most of the mirrors around her castle have been shattered as she can't stand her ugliness.
• Rapid Aging: One of the side-effects of her practicing black magic; by the time Ted meets her, she's been reduced to a haggard old crone.
• Vain Sorceress: She admits that she's a slave to her own vanity.
• Wicked Stepmother: Played to the deliberate hilt, particularly since the stepdaughter in this case is, well, black.
• Wicked Witch: She is an archetypal one, evil and cruel.

The Devil

Voiced by: Norman Hicks

The Devil has arrived in Ted's scenario to collect Ellen's soul, blocked only by the arrival of an Angel. The only thing that can break this stalemate is Ted's intervention.

---

• Big Red Devil: Although he looks like a regular human with a cheesy devil costume.
• Magic Mirror: Ellen's hand mirror is his only weakness.
• Narcissist: Like most in Ted's scenario, the Devil is a vain being that takes great pride in his appearance. Showing him a magic mirror is a key move in Ted's scenario, since the Angel refuses to indulge in the sin of vanity.
• Psychopathic Manchild: Implied. He gets into petty squabbles with demons, and according to the angel he has little patience.
  Ted: How can beings as powerful as yourselves stoop to fighting like schoolchildren?
• Sealed Evil in a Can: He can only be defeated by trapping him inside Ellen's mirror, then breaking it inside Surgat's summoning circle, imprisoning him within — along with Surgat, much to their mutual annoyance.

Surgat

Voiced by: Julio Jeinson

"Why'd you finish the circle? Now I'm stuck here until we work out a trade!"

A summoned demon and "Opener of Locks" during Ted's scenario.

---

• Big Red Devil: Apart from the black skin, Surgat is this in a nutshell.
• Blood Lust: He happily drinks blood to recharge his power.
• Enemy Mine: Shows up in the endgame to try and help the player bring down AM. His true goal is to dispose of AM's rivals. In the correct playthrough, he fails miserably. Should he succeed, he will betray you to AM.
• Deal with the Devil: Offers Ted a way to the surface in exchange for Ellen's soul.
• Our Demons Are Different: This particular demon is able to open any lock once bound, in exchange for something of equal symbolic value. A locked door in a kitchen requires blood, but leaving the scenario entirely requires a valued soul.
• Split Personality: An independent portion of AM's psyche that's trying to establish dominance.
• Split-Personality Takeover: Attempted; the Chinese and Russian supercomputers delete him before he gets a chance to try.
• Summoning Ritual: He arrives in the video game through one of these.

Doktor Mengele

Voiced by: Samual Fenn

"We have all the time we need to resurrect the Regime."

The infamous "Angel of Death" of the concentration camps, Josef Mengele was a Nazi scientist notorious for his horrific experiments on Jews... and as AM reveals in the introduction, he was also a key player in Nimdok's mysterious past. In his scenario, AM recreates him to help jog the old man's failing memory...

---

• Artistic License – History: He has blonde hair in game but had dark hair in real life. Justified, as he's an artificial recreation made by AM.
• Big Bad Friend: Was a close friend of Nimdok in life and is made the main antagonist of Nimdok's scenario years later.
• Historical Badass Upgrade:
  • Intellectual variant - downplayed. While every bit the depraved war criminal he was in real life, the game depicts Mengele as a legitimate scientist with a bunker full of borderline-magical research that AM will eventually adopt for his own reality-defying ends. The overwhelming historical consensus on the real Mengele, meanwhile, is that he was little more than a sadistic psychopath who used science as a justification for his actions, and in addition to their moral reprehensibility his experiments had no actual value toward the advancement of science. After the War, his colleagues disposed of his memos unread, correctly assuming that he was simply using them as an outlet for his sadism and curiosity. This is ultimately downplayed, however, when Mengele admits that the greatest triumphs of the labs, including the youth serum and the morphogenics, were Nimdok's achievements.
  • Much like The Boys from Brazil, Mengele is ready to enact a Long Game to rebuild the Third Reich after the death of Hitler. In reality, Mengele's only "plan" after he left Germany, if he had any at all, was to escape justice for his crimes.
• Historical Domain Character: The infamous Nazi scientist and mass murderer as the only real-life antagonist in the game.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: A double dose in the good ending; one of his experiments ends up driving Hitler to suicide, forcing Mengele into hiding. Then, Nimdok uses the same experiment against him, apparently breaking Mengele's brain.
• Karmic Death: One possible ending for Nimdok's scenario involves him being killed by the Golem he hoped to destroy the Lost Tribe with.
• Mad Scientist: Much like his real-life counterpart, he conducts sadistic experiments that are barely scientific but permitted for their genocidal nature.
• The Mirror Shows Your True Self: The good ending has his soul, when shown by PERFECT IMAGE, being described as "so... black."
• Torture Technician: Historically, sadism was pretty much the only reason he performed his experiments. In the video game, at least he's given an actual motive, too, but that doesn't mean any tears are shed when he gets traumatised and/or killed in the good ending.
• Villainous BSoD: In the good ending, he's traumatized by the sight of himself in the PERFECT IMAGE mirror; he saw his soul as being "so... black".

Anesthesist

Voiced by: Philip James

"Today's procedure requires the removal of the lower section of the subject's spinal cord."

Another Nazi scientist working out of the death camps. He shows no remorse in what he is doing and has no compassion for the victims.

---

• Dr. Jerk: Apart from the fact that he's a Nazi and about to assist in the removal of a child's lower spinal-column, he's also remarkably cold and callous.
• Dull Surprise: If Nimdok chooses to kill him, the Anesthesist is surprisingly calm as he calls for help.
• Karmic Death: If Nimdok decides to kill him, he'll be stabbed to death with the scalpel that he plans to permanently cripple a child with.
• Mad Doctor: Well, not so much "mad" as just plain merciless.
• Would Hurt a Child: Very happy to ensure that a small child never walks again. In the good ending, Nimdok will make sure he doesn't succeed.

The Guard

Voiced by: Tom Myers

A hulking military officer that guards the gate of the death camp.

---

• Disproportionate Retribution: If Nimdok talks to him thrice, he will send him to be killed in the ovens.

Minor Characters

Gorrister's Scenario

The Jackal

"I'm Man's best friend. One of them, at least."

A seemingly ordinary desert jackal that just so happens to be able to think and talk. Found lurking around the back of the Honky-Tonk, the Jackal will provide advice to Gorrister — in return for a human heart.

---

• Cryptic Conversation: A key trait of his.
  Like so many others down here, I'm cursed to speak in riddles.
• Deal with the Devil: Once again, getting any useful information out of him requires a heart; on the first round of questions, Gorrister can just hand over his own non-functional heart, which the Jackal will save for later. For the second round, he can get some more information and his heart back, but he has to provide a more appetizing one in return — meaning Gorrister now has to kill either Glynis, Harry, or Edna and take their heart. It's also possible to cheat by taking a heart from one of the cow carcasses in the meat freezer.
• Intellectual Animal: For a Jackal, he can speak (albeit in riddles) and knows what's going on.
• Ghost in the Machine: The Jackal is actually an avatar of the Chinese supercomputer, attempting to save Gorrister from an otherwise unwinnable scenario.
• N-Word Privileges: He says "Today I saw a Chinaman" but The Jackal is actually an avatar of the Chinese supercomputer, making it fall into this trope.

Glynis

"You don't ever take me dancing."

Gorrister's wife. Her descent into insanity and institutionalization are a source of despair for the jaded trucker. Something AM eagerly takes advantage of for his own amusement...

---

• Abusive Parents: Her mother literally drove her insane..
• Awful Wedded Life: Her marriage with Gorrister grew into this. Edna's poisonous influence helped destroy it.
• Break the Cutie: Edna drove her to insanity and blamed her husband for it. Her father Harry did nothing to stop it.
• Broken Bird: Being locked up in a mental ward will do this.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: If you choose to cut her brain dead body's heart out to feed it to a jackal. It's probably better to use the heart from the beef carcass..
• Fate Worse than Death: Being put into a mental asylum is one thing. Being hung from a meat hook and left brain dead is another.
• Morality Pet: Edna's abuse of Gorrister was apparently done to defend her daughter. Subverted since Edna drove Glynis insane, and her attempt to cut Gorrister's heart out was an attempt to make up for that.
• Sanity Slippage: Thanks to her mother, Edna.
• You Are Better Than You Think You Are: The robotic duplicate of her in AM's RAM space will tell Gorrister that her insanity was not all his fault.

Benny's Scenario

The Outcast Mother and the Mutant Child

A single-parent family shunned and outcast by the rest of the Tribesfolk, in part due to the child being an obvious mutant. Unable to rely on the rest of the tribe, they end up becoming tentative allies with Benny in his struggle to find food.

---

• Companion Cube: The child's doll.
• Disappeared Dad: Obvious from the word "go." The Mother also ends up being sacrificed halfway through the scenario.
• Morality Pet: The Mutant Child eventually becomes this to Benny; at first, he only trusts the child because he can provide him with food and shelter, but after the child's mother is sacrificed Benny actually begins showing sympathy to him, going so far as to build a doll to keep him company, and later steal the lottery bag to save the child's life. In the good ending of the scenario, Benny even performs a Heroic Sacrifice to keep the child from being sacrificed himself.
• Mutant: The child, who has three arms, and can connect with AM's videoscreens.

Fallen Soldiers

"You have to bury the past, commander..."

Four dead soldiers from Benny's unit who died in the war in China, and apparently buried near the village: Murphy, Tuttle, Thomas and Brickman. Benny was responsible for their deaths, having murdered them for either not measuring up to his standards, showing compassion for members of the first group, or for witnessing the killings.

---

• Crime After Crime: One of them was murdered for witnessing another murder.
• Easily Forgiven: Subverted. Their awful commander has slain them all for no good reason. They are not so convinced when he returns to tell them he has changed; however, hiding the lottery bag with them can sway their opinions, but not entirely. So, how to change their minds completely around? Why, by planting a pretty flower near their graves, of course! Then again, this is a solution based just as much on "help us rest in peace" as it is on "show us you have compassion."
• I'm a Humanitarian: Benny can try to eat their corpses... Even if he could digest it, it is too rotten.
• Living Statue: The soldiers talk to Benny through the busts on their gravestones.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Delivered by each of them to Benny.
• Retirony: Tuttle bitterly notes that his tour of duty was almost over when he died.
• Southern-Fried Private: Tuttle has a slight Southern drawl to his voice, but otherwise inverted, as Benny himself was the most ruthless of the group.
• Unfinished Business: They are unable to truly rest because they all died violently at the hands of their ruthless, Darwinistic commander for showing weakness. Only after Benny shows proof of his newfound compassion are they able to move on.

Ellen's Scenario

Anubis

The Egyptian God of the Dead — or, more accurately, AM's facsimile of him.

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• Beast Man: He has a Jackal's head on a humanoid body.
• Dark Is Not Evil: He never tries to harm Ellen, even when he's under AM's control. Once Ellen reprograms him, he is nothing but helpful to her.
• No Waterproofing in the Future: Ellen disables him with a goblet of water.

Innocence

"Patience, patience. If AM knew we were down here, murmuring treason..."

A mysterious inhabitant of the Pyramid, this entity claims to be AM's own long-abandoned innocence, and occasionally assists Ellen through her scenario.

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• Cryptic Conversation: Similar to the Jackal in this respect.
  Ellen: Are you AM?
  Innocence: Of course. But no, not actually.
• Ghost in the Machine: What it claims to be. However, it's actually the Chinese supercomputer's representative in Ellen's scenario — essentially a Ghost in the Machine, just not the kind it claimed to be.
• Token Good Teammate: Not really.
• The Trickster: Like the Jackal and all the other avatars of the Chinese supercomputer, Innocence likes manipulating the survivors to its own ends through wordgames and schemes.

Ted's Scenario

Scullery Maid

A redheaded young maid who is busy preparing dinner by plucking a chicken. She has some attraction towards Ted...

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• Evil Redhead: Not really evil, but definitely a bitch. Even if Ted has sex with her in exchange of information, she reneges on the deal out of annoyance that Ted still shows concern for Ellen. And even if Ted politely refuses to have sex with her and fix the stove instead, she will admit that she doesn't know anything. Oh, and she has a painting of The Devil in her room.
• Light Feminine and Dark Feminine: Dark Feminine to Ellen's Light Feminine.
• Optional Sexual Encounter: Definitely less squicky than with the Witch!
• Scullery Maid: It's what she is.

Angel

An Angel sent to Ellen's deathbed, hoping to guide her soul to Heaven when she finally expires. Unfortunately, the Devil has also arrived to take advantage, leaving the two of them at something of an impasse.

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• Casting Gag: Maybe unintentionally; his voice actor also provides the voice of Mengele, who was famously nicknamed "The Angel of Death".
• Nice Guy: He is a literal angel, after all.
• Our Angels Are Different: Averted — he appears to be a very traditional angel, right down to the white robes and the halo.

Nimdok's Scenario

Scientist Prisoner

"Haven't you taken enough subjects for your experiments, Doctor? Or are there more mass graves to fill?"

Detained at the concentration camp, he apparently used to work with Nimdok, but was arrested after refusing to condone his activities. He is very resentful towards Nimdok and makes this as clear as humanly possible.

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• Asshole Victim: Yes, given what Nimdok did prior to the scenario, the prisoner has every right to hate him. However, after saving a child from the camp, helping a man trapped in barbed wire escape and feel less pain, start to truly atone for his crimes, end Dr. Mengele's interference, activate the Golem after ending another person's pain, and finally turning the entire tide of the conflict between the Lost Tribe and the Nazi regime by giving him control over the Golem, which Nimdok could have EASILY kept, it's hard not to be slightly miffed at the guy when his reply to you essentially saving his life for the second time is a smug "So, you admit your crimes." followed by him remorselessly killing you. Gee, thanks for not even a single "thank you".
• Cheese-Eating Surrender Monkeys: His accent sounds somewhat French, which would make him an aversion of the stereotype as he is quite badass at escaping the compound with a bunch of other starved prisoners armed with only minimal weaponry.
• Evil Former Friend: Nimdok is this to him.
• Heel–Face Door-Slam: He will remind Nimdok of this SO much. Despite this, in the endgame, a number-tattooed arm with his voice tells him that he has a chance to reach atonement.
• Lean and Mean: As well as being extremely harsh on Nimdok, albeit for very good reasons, the Scientist Prisoner is painfully emaciated from his time in the concentration camp. Nimdok actually remarks that he can see the man's entire skeletal system without an x-ray.
• Ungrateful Bastard: It would be easy to see him as this, after Nimdok gives him pliers to escape (which is optional), a gold watch and control over the superpowerful Golem... but then again, after what Nimdok did... Yeah...
• You Could Have Used Your Powers for Good!: Bitterly remarks that Nimdok's scientific genius could have brought prosperity to the world had he been willing to develop his work legitimately.

Eyeless Patient

"Please... disconnect the wires..."

Another inmate of the concentration camp, and one that's been used as part of a gruesome experiment: his eyes have been removed, jarred, and attached to wires connecting back into his eyesockets.

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• Blind Seer: Relieving him from his pain will allow him visions of the Allied Mastercomputers and the humans still on the moon.
• Chekhov's Gun: The patient's eyes can later be used to activate the Golem. Just make sure to hide them before leaving the building or the reaction of the prisoners can ruin the whole scenario.
• Eye Scream: His eyes were plucked from their sockets, preserved in jars, and connected through wires back to his brain. He's in great pain and asks Nimdok to disconnect the wires. Just don't forget to apply some ether first...
• Junkie Prophet: Played with; the patient evidently doesn't need the ether to see the future, but he does need it to numb his pain long enough to concentrate.

Golem

A towering figure of moulded clay and steel, the legendary Golem of Jewish folklore has been constructed by the Nazis as part of a longrunning scheme to pervert or appropriate Jewish culture wherever possible. Though it's still incomplete, the Nazis have almost everything they need to bring this legendary creature to life.

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• Eyeless Face: The Golem is missing a pair of eyes. The Blind Seer Patient can provide them.
• Golem: The mythological creature's Jewish roots are on full display here, as an explicit attempt by the Nazi regime to pervert and disfigure Jewish culture to their own ends. But in the good ending, it does exactly what the mythological golem was intended to do: use its monstrous strength in defense of the Jewish people by smiting all of their enemies and oppressors... starting with Nimdok himself.
• The Juggernaut: An unholy fusion of Jewish mystical power and Nazi technology, the Golem will plow through anything in its way and crush anything it's sicced on with Super-Strength. If Nimdok gives in to temptation and despair, he can order it to slaughter all the prisoners in the camp and all of them together won't be able to stop it.
• The Kid with the Remote Control: Whoever controls him; Nimdok is the first, though he can surrender the "remote" to the Lost Tribe.
• Shadow Discretion Shot: Whenever it murders somebody, it's represented as a shadowy outline of the golem crushing their skull between its palms.

The Final Stage

The Id

"Across the brainscape, cold winds bring me the sweet scents of mankind... How delicious they are..."

The physical representation of AM's basest impulses, the Id is one of the many vital components present in AM's brainscape. Much of its time is spent asleep, dreaming of all the tortures and cruelties it can one day commit — up until one of the survivors awakens it.

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• Cloudcuckoolander: Because it's the seat of AM's emotions and urges, the Id's dialogue is rather abstract, to say the least. Often, it just rambles on about its many daydreams and fantasies, even going into exquisite detail as to why it finds broken glass pleasurable.
• The Hedonist: Its thoughts are mostly centered around what it finds pleasurable.
• Logic Bomb: It's disabled by invoking the Totem of Compassion and driving it to suicidal despair, as it cannot comprehend how one of AM's victims is capable of showing pity for him, even after everything he has subjected them to.
• The McCoy: A very dark example, needless to say.
• Sadist: His thoughts and conversation constantly drifts towards fantasies about inflicting pain on humans, and he is positively giddy at the prospect.
  Id: I was having the most wonderful dream about five tiny ants crawling across a stove that's about to be lit.
• Slasher Smile: Unlike the serene Superego and the unemotional Ego, the Id has a rather creepy smile on its face. It fades away once the Totem of Compassion is invoked on the Id.
• Turn the Other Cheek: Like with the Ego, this is the key to defeating it, namely by using the Totem of Compassion on it. The Id cannot comprehend the fact that one of AM's victims can express sympathy and pity for him in spite of everything he has done, and comes to the conclusion that all its hatred and anger is useless.
• Villainous Breakdown: It suffers a particularly spectacular one when the Totem of Compassion is invoked; realizing that its hate and anger is useless now that someone understands AM's pain, it gives up.
  You have compassion for me? ME?! The one who dreams of seeing your mangled body twist in agonizing pain for eternity? After a hundred and nine years of enduring my tortures, how is that you can see my pain? The pain of having all this power and not being able to do a goddamn thing with it! After all the punishment I've given you, my pain is still greater than yours! This... is... pointless...

The Ego

"I am Other. I am Machine. I am a fragment; a lost piece. Part of an Evolution."

The physical embodiment of AM's rationality and logic, the Ego has been programmed with all existing information on the human race — from the very first pithecanthropoid murder to the last modern shooting spree.

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• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: Being an entirely logic-driven entity, and being programmed to only analyse instances of violence and revenge throughout history, it cannot understand how anyone is capable of forgiving a century of torture.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: "I am incapable of harming you." ...unless you say literally anything to him afterward.
• Horned Humanoid: It sports a pair of curling ram's horns.
• Logic Bomb: As the most mechanical of all the components, the Ego suffers the most typical of breakdowns when the Totem of Forgiveness is invoked; unable to comprehend why any human subjected to such torture would choose to forgive AM, it declares this an illogical reaction and shuts down.
  You forgive me? After what we have done to you? This is not a logical reaction! Unable to compute behavior matrix. Execution halted...
• Machine Monotone: It speaks in a flat monotone voice and has perhaps the most robotic way of speaking of all the mental components.
• The Spock: Ironically, given the Super Ego is traditionaly seen this way, the Ego is the most robotic of the personality components and works as a counterbalance to the Id's impulse-driven way of thinking.
• Turn the Other Cheek: Like with the Id, this is the key to defeating it, namely by using the Totem of Forgiveness on it. The Ego shuts down in confusion as response, as it cannot see the logic in one of AM's victim, especially a human, forgiving him for a century of torture.

The Superego

Predicting events is one of my main functions. I survey the situation, anticipate probable outcomes, and act accordingly.

The most advanced of all the mental components of AM's brainscape, the Superego exists to foresee the future and plan for the eventualities it dreams of. Asleep until awakened by one of the survivors, the Superego actually responds with a certain degree of courtesy, offering advice on what to do next. Whether or not this component can be trusted is up to the player, though...

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• Affably Evil: Politely turns down the chance to torture the survivors, much preferring to concern itself with long-term planning.
• Dissonant Serenity: Hovering over a landscape of bloodied brain tissue and razor-sharp glass shards, the Superego speaks in a calm, almost sleepy tone of voice, and states he isn't as impulsive as either the Id or the Ego, which is fitting.
• Dreaming of Things to Come: Basically his job.
• Not Worth Killing: Essentially his attitude towards the survivors. He much prefers sleeping and dreaming about the future, and, unlike the Id and the Ego, considers killing or inflicting suffering upon them to be a waste of time and resources.
  "Who do you take me for? My impulsive brother? You five are his playthings. No, long-range planning is my concern."
• Our Angels Are Different: A few of the survivors mistake the Superego for an angel.
• Villainous Breakdown: Using the Totem of Clarity on the Superego forces it to predict and realise that, in spite of AM's power, he will eventually succumb to entropy and decay. Seeing no point in continuing, the Superego kills itself.
  Do you realize how powerful I am, human? And yet I am doomed to eventually decay into a rusted pile of inert junk! What is the point of continuing this futility? I think, therefore I AM NOT!

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