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Our World
Arthur K. Finklestein
The author of the "Jenny LeClue" book series.
- Bait-and-Switch: One scene shows him covered in a red substance, lamenting over how he killed somebody. Turns out he's just covered in some jam that he's eating, and he's upset about having to kill off a character in his story (namely Dean Strausberry).
- Leitmotif: "The Last Dance".
- My God, What Have I Done?: He goes into a complete panic after writing the Dean's death, to the point of crying into jars of jam and later drinking heavily.
- Narrator: Jenny's adventure being a story written by Arthur, he, of course, narrates it as the player unfolds it.
- Interactive Narrator: An ineffective one, as Jenny can hear his safe suggestions and immediately ignore them in favor of adventure and mystery-solving.
- Unreliable Narrator: Which is noteworthy since he should really be more of an omniscient-type, seeing as everyone in Arthurton is his creation. As it stands, he has a habit of narrating things that are blatantly untrue, such as Jenny being satisfied with the rather mundane mysteries he writes for her when she's very clearly not and calling obvious bullying just joking among friends.
- Shipper on Deck: In a non-romantic example, he wants Jenny and Suzie to become friends despite Jenny's insistence against it. He can get his wish, if the player so chooses.
- String Theory: Has a large board in his study covered with the particulars of the plot.
Rufus
Arthur's pet dog.
- Dog Stereotype: Averted. He's a golden retriever who's always mopy and depressed.
Richard Inkwell
Arthur's publisher.
- Big Bad: Kind of. He's the one who pressured Arthur into making the LeClue books darker in order to attract readers again, leading to Arthur writing Dean Straussberry's death. But it's not like he did so out of malice and if his letters are anything to go on, he's always been friendly but firm in his suggestions.
- The Ghost: We never actually see him in the real-world story, since it takes place entirely in Arthur's home.
- Meaningful Name: A publisher named Inkwell.
Arthurton - Jenny and Family
Jenny LeClue
The protagonist, Arthurton's resident Kid Detective.
- Amazing Technicolor Population: Her skin turns green when she swaps to her detective outfit if the player has the Halloween outfit setting enabled.
- Be Careful What You Wish For: She starts out the story frustrated about Arthurton's lack of real mysteries for her to solve and desperately wishing for anything to happen. She gets her wish: Her best friend's father is murdered and her mother ends up the prime suspect.
- Brutal Honesty: It depends on the player, but Jenny can be honest to a merciless degree.
- Colour-Coded for Your Convenience: She typically wears turquoise clothing.
- Deadpan Snarker: Has a tendency to make sarcastic comments, especially at others' expense.
- Fiery Redhead: Can be this at times, depending on what the player chooses her to be.
- Good Is Not Nice: She is certainly the heroine of the story trying to make things right, but that does not mean she is nice most of the time. She tends to be rude, even towards her friends. Again, this depends on the player.
- I Work Alone: Said by her verbatim. Jenny isn't much of a team player, though she can grow out of this if the player lets her.
- Incredibly Lame Fun: She likes helping her mom grade essays.
- Insufferable Genius: This is her usual attitude to dealing with the people around her with less quick wits. Deconstructed, as that attitude is largely the reason she has no friends.
- It Runs in the Family: Clearly, the fact that both Jenny and her mother are the detective type is not a coincidence.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Jenny isn't the nicest girl around, but she's not a monster. When she's given a case, she will solve it, even if she feels its a waste of her talents and she does learn to trust and rely on other people more over the course of the story.
- Kid Detective: The town's resident underaged investigator, a role she takes very seriously.
- Leitmotif: "A Great Detective".
- Nerdy Bully: Jenny can be downright cruel to others if the player allows her to be. For example, at one point she can potentially use her detective skills to deduce that a girl's father is cheating on her mother again. And then use that knowledge to drive her to tears. Almost everyone present agrees that that was way over the line.
- Only Friend:
- Before his father was brutally murdered, Keith used to fill this role. After the incident, he distances himself from Jenny and even tells her he never wants to see her again.
- Suzie considers her to be this for her. Whether Jenny herself agrees with this or not is up to the player.
- Sherlock Scan: Her specialty. Jenny is able to pick up the smallest details and clues and use them to reconstruct a whole string of events.
- Significant Wardrobe Shift: When she finds her mother’s old spy outfit, she dons it and becomes more explorative and detecting.
- Uncertain Doom: If the player makes a certain decision, she will end up transported in a stream of light to God knows where.
Julie LeClue
Jenny's mother, and a professional detective that inspired her daughter. Falsely charged with the murder of the local Dean, Jenny sets out to prove her innocence and find the real killer.
- Brainy Brunette: Has dark brown hair and is a genius forensic scientist, as well as a former spy.
- Missing Mom: She's arrested at the beginning of the story, so Jenny doesn't see her all that much.
- Uncertain Doom: If the player makes a certain decision, she will end up transported in a stream of light to God knows where.
- Wrongly Accused: The story starts with her being accused of having murdered Dean Strausberry.
Henry LeClue
Jenny's father, a scientist that died in a lab explosion prior to the events of the game.
- Disappeared Dad: He's been dead for a year.
- Posthumous Character: He died a year before the events of the game. He's later revealed to be alive, but stuck in an alternate plane of dimension where Arthurton used to be.
Winston LeClue
Arthurton's sheriff and Jenny's grandfather.
- By-the-Book Cop: He adheres strictly to the law, to the point he arrests his daughter-in-law with no hesitation. Understandably, Jenny isn't too fond of him.
- Gruesome Grandparent: Downplayed. He's not outright abusive, but he is extremely emotionally distant and even insensitive at times. He also pawns Jenny off to the Glatz family the first chance he gets.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: As stiff and impersonal as he is, Jenny remarks that he has a soft spot for kittens.
- The Stoic: He rarely shows any emotion, having the same cold glare on his face most of the time.
Suzie Glatz
Jenny's cousin. Well-meaning and intelligent, but her closest friends constantly belittle Jenny, leading to a one-sided rivalry.
- All-Loving Hero: Suzie is a complete sweetheart to everyone she meets.
- Alpha Bitch: Played with. She normally avoids insulting anyone, but her Girl Posse are all too happy to pick up the slack.
- Ditzy Genius: She can get sidetracked easily when she talks about something she's passionate about, but she's a very competent engineer.
- Gadgeteer Genius: Her house has a secret lab that she knows how to fully operate. She's also come up with several inventions that were impressive enough to repeatedly win science fairs.
- Girly Girl: She's the example of one, being an aggressively feminine cheerleader who loves dresses, the color pink and cute plushies.
- Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: A friendly, if somewhat ditzy blonde.
- How Did You Get It?: Asks Jenny about how she got a golden ring and who it belongs to, unaware that it's actually Dean Strausberry's ring. Jenny then has the option to either tell Suzie the truth or lie to her.
- Leitmotif: "Best Friends Forever (I'd Rather Be Burned To Death)".
- Obfuscating Stupidity: She has to do this in public, because she knows her parents wouldn't approve of her scientific endeavors and her "friends" would ostracize her for being a nerd.
- Spoiled Sweet: Despite being the daughter of the richest family in town, Suzie is actually a pretty good person once you get to know her and becomes a great ally to Jenny later on.
- Stepford Smiler: While Suzie is a naturally happy and positive person, she also struggles with being seen exclusively as a stereotypically pretty cheerleader and having to put up a ditzy facade to please her parents and her Girl Posse.
- What the Hell, Hero?: If Jenny doesn't believe her about being a secret Gadgeteer Genius, Suzie calls her out for this reductionist mindset and for how much of a pill she can be to everybody, even her friends.
Florence Glatz
Suzie's mom, and the head of the Glatz company.
- Ambiguously Evil: A few of her lines are pretty sinister, she possesses classified police documents for unknown reasons, and wants to take Jenny dress shopping.
- Ambiguous Situation: Why did she have classified police documents? The question is never answered.
- Southern Gentleman: She's nice to Winston, at least.
- Unexplained Accent: She has a slight Southern accent, despite no one else in the LeClue/Glatz family having one.
Arthurton - Other Residents.
Dean Leslie Strausberry
The head administrator of Gumboldt University, whose sudden murder rocks the town.
- The Atoner: He worked for the Council of Three in the past, but after being confronted by Julie, he decided to betray them and work with Julie to expose them.
- Black Dude Dies First: He's the first character in the story to be Killed Off for Real. Subverted towards the ending after he gets revived by Julie, though it can be double-subverted if the player makes a certain choice.
- Big Fun: A chubby, always friendly man, which makes his violent murder all the more surprising to Jenny who can't imagine how anyone could dislike him to the point of killing him.
- Caring Gardener: Was a hobby-botanist in his life-time and is characterized as friendly to everyone.
- Plot-Triggering Death: Finding out who really killed him and why is the main mystery of the story.
- Retirony: Is killed just a few days before his retirement.
- Uncertain Doom: If the player makes a certain decision, he will end up transported in a stream of light to God knows where.
Keith
Jenny's best friend, and the Dean's son.
- Extreme Doormat: Never stands up for himself and lets others pick on him as much as they want to. Jenny calls him out on this. Later on gets subverted in an ironically dark way: He does manage to stand up for himself - against Jenny when she makes a scene at his father's funeral out of grief, culminating in him terminating their friendship.
- Missing Mom: We never see or hear about his mom. In the library, Jenny mentions that Keith is the only Strausberry left (besides from the Dean), implying she's already passed away.
- "Well Done, Son" Guy: Really wanted to make his father proud when he still lived. He stayed in the Gumboldt Moonbeams, despite hating basketball and being an awful athlete, because he knew it would make his father proud.
CJ
The "town idiot", who believes in shadow men and extraterrestrials. Trusts in Jenny ever since an incident where he chained himself to a building and she picked the lock when he lost the key.
- Cloudcuckoolander: He's the resident crazy old man of Arthurton.
- Conspiracy Theorist: A firm believer in the paranormal.
- The Cuckoolander Was Right: Encourages Jenny to look for mysterious forces, even underground. Which is where the machinery producing magnetic fields keeping Arthurton separated from the rest of the world is.
- Intergenerational Friendship: Has a (for him) rather close friendship with Jenny, despite her being a child and him being an adult man. Jenny likes him because he's the one adult in town who treats her like an equal, not like a child, CJ seems partial to Jenny because she's pretty much the only Arthurton-resident who doesn't think he's a dangerous lunatic.
- Leitmotif: "Aliens in Arthurton".
- Stealth Hi/Bye: Tries to pull this off while he's briefly off-camera at the end of your first conversation with him. While it works from the player's perspective, it doesn't work from Jenny's.Jenny: CJ, I know you're behind the phone booth. I saw you walk over there.CJ: (from behind the phone booth) No, I'm not.
- Talkative Loon: Is this when he speaks to Jenny, though some of his rambling is actually helpful.
- Noodle Incident: Due to being the local conspiracy loony he's involved in a number of them. And almost all of them end in him being banned from the location they took place in, him getting sued or both.
Peggy and Veronica
A pair of Suzie's friends.
- Alpha Bitch: While Suzie is kind but occasionally annoying, Peggy and Veronica are all too happy to be jerks in her place by turning any comments that could at best be construed as Innocently Insensitive into actual insults.
- Flat Character: They only appear at the beginning during the Lake segment and receive little to no character development.
- Girl Posse: To Suzie.
- Palette Swap: They look the exact same sans the color of their hair and skin.
Mr Humdrum and Gail Humdrum
An old couple that hires Jenny for a case.
Tropes that apply to both:
- Punny Name: They are pretty humdrum themselves.
Tropes that apply to Mr Humdrum:
Tropes that apply to Gail Humdrum:
- Blind Without 'Em: She can't see well without her glasses, judging by how she can't recognize Jenny right away.
- Dude, Where's My Reward?: She gives Jenny a nickel for finding her glasses. Jenny isn't exactly thrilled by this.Mrs Humdrum: Now don't spend it all in one place!Jenny: Thanks. I'll do my best...
- Dropped Glasses: She loses her glasses the day before the game takes place. Jenny is hired by her to find them.
- Incredibly Lame Fun: She finds being interrogated by Jenny exciting.
Stephen & Kevin
Two officers in the police force, tasked with keeping an eye on the LeClue household.
- Police Are Useless: They're supposed to be watching over the LeClue house, but all they do is play cards and empty the family's fridge.Jenny: Arthurton's finest, everyone.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: Stephen isn't seen again after leaving Jenny's home. Subverted with Kevin, who appears later in the jail.
The Man In Black
A mysterious man who seemingly has a connection to the disappearance of Jenny's dad.
- Dark Is Evil: He wears all black and is the antagonist of the game.
- Sinister Whistling: The player's very first choice in the game is deciding what he should whistle. While the game labels the options as "creepy" and "totally normal", both of them are equally unnerving to hear.
- Stealth Hi/Bye: As soon as Jenny looks away from him, he seemingly teleports to another location or disappears entirely.
Matt
A gravedigger at Arthurton's cemetery.
- A Bloody Mess: What appears to be blood on his hat and shovel is actually just Arthurtonian clay, which is impossible to get out of fabric.
- Ambiguously Evil: He may or may not be connected to The Man In Black.
- Innocently Insensitive: He repeatedly brings up Jenny's deceased father, seemingly unaware that it's bothering her.
- Mistaken for Undead: His introduction has him rising out of a shadowy grave. He's just a regular(?) guy who was digging said grave to put bones in.
