Characters / Night in the Woods

The townspeople of Possum Springs in the world of Night in the Woods.

Beware, some of the trope titles themselves are spoilers.

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Main Characters

Margaret "Mae" Borowski

"Obviously the world is seriously screwed up, but we're all gonna die if we don't keep living."

"I'm a total trash mammal!"

The Protagonist. A 20-year-old college dropout cat, who recently moved back into her hometown of Possum Springs. But once she gets back home, Mae realizes something dangerous is going on in the woods.

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• Acrofatic: She mentions how out-of-shape she is on occasion, but can still pull off impressive triple jumps and balance on power lines. She can also be quite speedy when she wants to be, as shown when Mae runs in a full sprint through the woods when escaping from the Cult of the Black Goat, managing to outpace a few fully-grown adults.
• Agent Mulder: She is the most willing to believe in the supernatural, despite not being religious or spiritual — it's shown that there's a church in town that Mae's mom works at, but Mae herself is largely disinterested in learning more about God. Whenever she would encounter anything spooky or mysterious, she's usually the one who will conclude or assume it's a ghost or something else paranormal.
• Alcohol-Induced Idiocy: She got completely wasted on three cups of watered down beer and made a total ass of herself at a party in the woods. In front of her ex. "Blah blah dumb shit" indeed.
• The Anti-Nihilist: Her speech to whatever is living in the depths of the abandoned mine reflects this mindset, saying that when life sucks, she wants it to hurt, because that means it meant something.
• Astral Projection: She is actually doing this in her dreams. This is later revealed to be a power given to her by the Black Goat.
• Batter Up!: Her weapon is a baseball bat. This may be because, as a kid, she hospitalized another kid with a softball bat after suffering a mental breakdown.
• Big Eater: She comments that she has to stop eating everything that she sees. She has several scenes of dining on prodigious quantities of pizza, tacos, doughnuts, and junk food in general. Unfortunately, she also has a sensitive stomach and has trouble keeping it all down.
• Boots of Toughness: Hard to tell with the art style, but a line of dialogue says she's wearing boots when she threatens to kick down a locked door.
• Butt-Monkey: She's constantly getting electrocuted, and can get into knife fights with Gregg that wound her knuckles.
• Can't Hold Her Liquor: By her own admission, she "gets woozy on cough syrup". At a party in the woods shortly after she returns to Possum Springs, she gets sloppy drunk on three cups of watered-down beer.
• Cannot Spit It Out: For the majority of the game, she can't bring herself to tell her parents or friends exactly why she dropped out of college. Bea will ask her three times if they spend a lot of time together, with Mae not fully answering once. She only tells either Gregg or Bea why she left after getting hurt running away from the cult members.
• Cats Are Mean: Commits petty crimes constantly, and is quite rebellious. "EFF THE COPS"
• Cats Are Snarkers: She is flippant at the best of times. Though she's not quite as snarky as Bea.
• Covert Pervert: Early in the game, her computer malfunctions due to adware, which Angus delicately blames on reckless downloading. During her online conversation with Gregg, players learn that she probably ran across the adware while visiting adult websites.
• Cry Laughing: After she gets nearly killed by Eide in the underground mines, she bursts out with laughter, before breaking down in tears.
• Determinator:
  • It's mentioned several times that Mae should stop pursuing the case of the disappearances around Possum Springs, but she keeps going. Thus, Mae can show a surprising amount of focus when she really sets her mind to something. It's also said that she got very bad grades in school, largely because she "hated school" and wasn't interested in learning anything that didn't catch her eye.
  • From a physical standpoint, Mae takes a lot of punishment and shrugs it off. For one, she can have a knife fight with Gregg and be no worse for the wear. She also gets the equivalent of a Mind Rape several times throughout the game, which may or may not be from supernatural entities, and still comes out of it at game's end with a fairly stable mindset. Even though she does have several character flaws, Mae managing to get through all of that is still impressive.
• Did You Just Flip Off Cthulhu?: In her final dream, she tells the Black Goat to shut up and goes on to make a speech about how she will continue living and that if she loses something, she wants it to hurt because if it hurts, then it meant something.
• The Ditz: She has her rare moments of cleverness, like the gall joke she tells to Bea and when she corrects Gregg on the pronunciation of "carpe diem." However, she doesn't know that whales are mammals, what the word "entrepreneur" means, and she egregiously writes "You're parents forgot you" in a journal entry. There are many more errors she makes in the game, and her first college assignment work was posted by Word of God, which reveals terrible writing abilities: She attended Durkillesburg, but it is very likely a state college with a high acceptance rate. Also, she would have turned 21 years old by her fourth semester, which means she probably had to go to community college at 18 to scrape by on grades. Mae's mother says she had trouble with math growing up. Also, Mr. Chazokov calls her his "best worst student" to which she replies, "Yeah. Hated school."
• Ear Notch: Two, in her periodically twitching right ear.
• Enfant Terrible: Bits of her backstory suggest that she was an unpleasant child and adolescent. She stole a pierogi from a pierogi stand, threw eggs at her neighbor's house, she killed a bird by spraying it with mace when she was 9, thinking that it was perfume and not knowing that doing so would result in it dying, and beat a boy senseless with a baseball bat while dissociating.
• Entertainingly Wrong: In all fairness, if someone saw a guy in rags wearing a miner helmet phase through a wall in a mining town, the idea that he's a miner's ghost would probably cross their mind too. Except Eide's a cultist.
• Everyone Has Standards: She often commits petty crimes for fun and is sarcastic and hot-tempered, but even she thinks Steve Scriggins is an asshole. She is absolutely correct.
• Fang Thpeak: She talks like this briefly at the Ham Panther when she goes for succotash ("Thuccotath."). And in the Weird Autumn Edition she makes a brief lisp when talking to Gregg outside the Historical Society Museum, believing that ghosts would not understand a word she's saying when she's in a lisp.
• Female Rockers Play Bass: Mae was the bassist in her friend Gregg's (songwriter and lead guitarist) band along with Casey (drums) and Angus (vocals), playing the trope straight originally. After returning from college, she's found that Casey's disappeared, and the role of Drummer and Bassist has been taken over by he former best friend Bea's computer. Accordingly, when she rejoins she's rusty and doesn't know most of the songs (represented to the player by a minigame they have little chance of succeeding at first time), which corresponds to the way her friend group's moved on in her absence (even though she's still been missed).
• Four-Temperament Ensemble: Choleric.
• Harmless Electrocution: A Running Gag is her getting electrocuted and continuing on like nothing happened.
• I Am Big Boned: She is referred to several times - by herself and others - as "sturdy".
• Innocently Insensitive: Has the tendency to say whatever is on her mind without thinking it through at first. Bea calls her out on this more than once.
• It's All My Fault: She blames herself for her parents' recent financial worries, since the mortgage they put on the house went to paying for college and therapy for her mental breakdown as a kid, and not very good therapy at that.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: She does have a tendency to be blunt and sarcastic with her observations when asked, but for the most part, she is fairly civil towards most people. It's only when people are rude back to her that she lays on the insults.
• Lead Bassist: In a meta sense. She's the one you control during band practice, and she plays bass; and Gregg is ecstatic to have her back in her role. In-universe, the fact that they never perform for an audience (aside from Germ, who couldn't care less about their music) means it's not known who would be the most memorable.
• The Leader: It's her passions and her desires that drive her group of friends to even investigate the "ghost" in the first place. If it weren't for her, no one would have bothered.
• Like Is, Like, a Comma: Consistently breaks up her sentences by saying "like."
• Liminal Being: Even though she is legally an adult at the age of twenty, her immature behavior and outlook place her in a gray category between teenager and adult. On one hand, multiple characters refer to her as "kid" and refuse to respect her as a fellow adult. On the other hand, the teenagers who hang out in the trolley tunnel want nothing to do with her, dismissing her as an adult.
• Loser Protagonist: She's a self-admitted Womanchild, has no job or prospects for one, and doesn't have much to do once she gets back home beyond hanging out with her friends and going to parties. The cult showing up is the first thing happening to her that Mae has any sort of conflict with. But since Mae was The One Who Made It Out, this means that coming back home has earned her some animosity from a few other town members, including her parents.
• Malaproper: Says that there are "*Dolphins* in your head" to Gregg instead of "Endorphins." She says this two more times throughout the game, making this more than a temporary blunder in speech and more of an encapsulation of her stupidity.
• Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: Her erratic behavior and dissociative episodes could just be explained as some form of mental illness, but it could also be a result of her temporarily Going Mad from the Revelation as a result of the Black Goat asserting itself over her through some sort of psychic link it has with her. If the Black Goat is real, that is.
• Missing Main Character: You lose control of her for a short while after the run-in with the cult. To everyone, she got separated from the group and went missing.
• Mistaken for Pregnant: Her mom asks her if she's pregnant and that's why she came home seemingly out of nowhere, further supported by the fact that she has been avoiding the topic of why she left college, and the fact that she has been feeling physically ill. She assures her that it's "literally impossible" that she's pregnant.
• Multiple-Choice Past: The opening of the game begins with a small story narrated by her about the year her grandfather died. The player is allowed to choose what wrecked the town, what he left for her, and so on.
• NEET: She ends up moving back to Possum Springs after dropping out of college. She has no job, no education prospects, and no idea what to do with her life.
• No Periods, Period: Averted. Her "Junior High" embarrassing incident is about when she had her first period in class during junior high school, and bled on the seat. And when she got up to get away from the awkwardness, another student, unaware of this, sat on the chair. She later saw the student in the nurse's office, butt covered in blood, staring at her as though they knew it was her.
• No Social Skills: Not 24/7, but when it shows up, things get really awkward. Case in point is when she gets smashed after a few drinks and more seriously when she completely fucks up a party that Bea took her to.
• Older Than They Look: She's twenty years old, but her Woman Child tendencies and short stature make it easy to mistake her for a younger teenager. Not helping is the fact that she doesn't even have a driver's license, so Bea or Angus have to drive her everywhere.
• Once Done, Never Forgotten:
  • She was caught stealing from the pierogi stand once as a kid, and the cook has refused to serve her since.
  • Cole was her date to the prom, which resulted in a Trauma Conga Line of epic proportions. She went to kiss Cole but bit him hard enough to draw blood, then almost choked him out trying to stop the bleeding, then puked on him, then was caught in the act of doing so, and was left to take a ride home on a tractor while crying. Even the Weird Teens and Bea are horrified.
  • The "killer" incident was caused by a mental breakdown she had during her childhood wherein she suffered from disassociation. She began to view everything around her as "just shapes", having lost all meaning of the world around her. At a softball game, she suddenly went ballistic and seriously injured a kid by beating him with a baseball bat.
• The One Who Made It Out: She was supposed to be the first among her family and friends to go to college. Things didn't work out and she's back home.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: She is usually called by her nickname, Mae, but her full name isn't revealed unless you hang out with Jeremy Warton all days, where she'll reveal that her name is actually short for Margaret.
• The Protagonist: While the narrative shows other characters and the struggles they go through, Mae is the most common point-of-view character, the character whom the player controls far more than anyone else, and the character whose sturggles, conflicts, and development are at the forefront of the story.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: She calls them "nightmare eyes" and reckons they wouldn't be out of place in a slasher movie. It is implied they didn't help her reputation none after the "killer" incident.
• Sentimental Drunk: When she's not indulging in Alcohol-Induced Idiocy, drinking seems to bring out a much more emotive and mushy side to her that's constantly worried if others are mad at her for one thing or another. She even breaks down sobbing in Bea's car when she forgets about the fact that Bea's mom is dead.
• Shipper on Deck: To Gregg/Angus. She loves their relationship, thinks both are absolutely adorable, and defends that they'll be together if Bea or Gregg become afraid of the opposite.
• Sticky Fingers: She shoplifts, among other petty crimes, compulsively. Should you go into the Expy of Hot Topic, Mae won't leave without stealing a belt buckle. Not because she needs one, but because she wants it and doesn't feel like paying for it.
• Stout Strength: She looks a bit rotund, and mentions being out of shape, but enjoys wrestling, nearly killed a kid when she attacked him as a teenager with a baseball bat, is clearly athletic from how she can run and jump around all day, and Bea refers to her as being very good at things involving brute force. The triple jumps she can perform would, logically, require a lot of leg strength. Word of God says one of the things she needs in a partner is for them to be able to beat her in a fight, or at least hold their own.
• Supporting Protagonist: To an extent in Gregg's storyline. Though we still get a good amount of development for Mae regardless of which story path you take, Gregg's path is more about him and Angus compared to Bea's storyline which is focused on Bea and Mae's relationship.
• Swarm of Rats: If she spends her afternoons feeding pretzels to some rats found in a forgotten storage room, she's pleased as punch to see them overtaking the Food Donkey (and even most of downtown) by the end of the story.
• Thinking Out Loud: Along with being Innocently Insensitive, she'll have no problem saying what's on her mind even it makes a problem worse in doing so and people will call her out for it.
• Tomboy: She jumps around on telephone lines and buildings, wears gender-neutral clothing, and shows few if any stereotypically feminine interests or mannerisms.
• Toxic Friend Influence: She is accused of being this with Gregg, since he was getting his life back in order before she showed up, resulting in a complete relapse into his criminal behavior. Gregg is, however, the one that suggests most of the crimes they do and she just tags along if you have her choose him, the implication being that she herself isn't a toxic friend so much as just enabling Gregg's natural bent for crimes.
• Unusual Euphemism: She says "eff" instead of "fuck", even when she is upset or distraught. It's possible that this is meant to help emphasize her arrested development by making her seem more childlike. Out-of-universe, it's to keep the rating of the game low.
• What the Hell, Hero?: She is on the receiving end of this by Jackie after she completely embarrasses Bea at the party. Angus will also give one during the Donut Wolf where he blames her for making Gregg fall back to his criminal behavior, though he apologizes for it later.
• Womanchild: Deconstructed. At age 20, she is uneducated, unemployed, and rudderless in life, and she still has the immature attitude and mannerisms of a teenager. She violates others' boundaries in a childlike manner, such as when she tries to invite herself to gatherings, imposes on her friends, and make inappropriate decisions for others (such as when she chose dinner foods for Bea and Mr. Santello). When she witnesses a kidnapping, she concludes that a ghost was the culprit and goes on ghost hunts. Mae's constant rebelliousness, impulsiveness, and overall irresponsible attitude towards everything has left a pretty obvious strain between her and nearly everyone in town, including her friends and her parents.

Beatrice "Bea" Santello

"My entire life feels like running after something that keeps moving away into the distance while I stay in the same place."

"I stayed here and grew up. You went away and stayed the same."

A 20-year old alligator who's two months younger than Mae. Mae's former best friend and one of the two characters she can hang out with. She runs the Ol' Pickaxe hardware store.

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• Brake Angrily: Does this and tells Mae to Get Out! after Mae asks her too many personal questions.
• The Cynic: She is the most cynical character because of everything she's endured throughout her life since her mother died. She believes she's doomed to live a life stuck in a dying town working for a hardware store she despises.
• Dumb and Drummer: Mae has absolutely no respect for the fact that her drums are represented by software playing on a laptop.
• Family Business: A large contributor to her constant foul mood is her position as de facto manager of her family's hardware shop, The Ol' Pickaxe.
• Foil: To Gregg.
  • Gregg and Angus establish pretty early on that they plan to leave the town once they work up enough money. She only lives with her father and has no way to leave because she needs to support him.
  • She is cynical and yearns for a bigger scope of life, Gregg is wild but still down to Earth enough to appreciate the small things he has.
  • Even their jobs contrast: The family-owned, aged Ol' Pickaxe versus the new, flashy Snack Falcon. Gregg can slack off and even steal or destroy his employers' property with no consequences; Bea has to work herself to exhaustion and can't fire an employee who wants to (or might even have) assaulted her because he's good at his job.
• Four-Temperament Ensemble: Melancholic.
• Goth: Has the style and a little of the personality, but she also tries to be social and shows some joy occasionally.
• Green-Eyed Monster: A quiet example most of the time. She resents Mae for having the freedom to go to college while she's stuck in Possum Springs running the Ol' Pickaxe.
• I Just Want to Be Normal: She says almost this exact line when talking about why she drives two hours out of town to a college party.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Though she leans more to Sugar-and-Ice Personality by the mid-game. She treats Mae poorly several times throughout the game, and can say some pretty terrible things to her ex-friend if you pick the right choices. After she says she'll bring Mae home after finding the arm on the ground, she drops her off blocks away from her home after Mae merely mentions her parents. However, this can be easily justified by her being angrily stunned that Mae doesn't even remember that Bea's mother died while they were in high school. She can also be blunt and sarcastic, but she's genuinely trying to do the right thing. Early in the game, she drives Mae home one night so she'll be safe, even though her dislike of Mae is evident. She takes care of her father who is still in the midst of a breakdown after his wife's death, works hard to keep the Ol' Pickaxe afloat for her father, and hosts a community play on Halloween.
• Missing Mom: Her mom died in her senior year.
• Odd Friendship:
  • With Mae. She is responsible and cynical, while Mae is irresponsible and happy-go-lucky.
  • Also with Gregg. While she is a responsible worker and law-abiding citizen, Gregg slacks off at work, shoplifts, destroys his employer's property (i.e., the light bulbs), and commits petty crimes.
• Perpetual Frowner: She almost never smiles. Keyword being almost: when Mae starts blasting people with the water fountain if they go to the mall together, she starts smiling and laughing her ass off.
• Positive Friend Influence: In her route, she will play this to the Womanchild Mae. Because she is bitter over Mae getting the chances she could never have and not even caring due to her own immaturity, she will call Mae out on her behavior, how she can't just waltz through life not caring and being a burden for everyone else, her parents and friends especially, to support. In face of that, and of all what she suffered between her father's dismissive attitude, her mother's death and working with a possible sexual abuser, Mae is forced in the realization she has to grow up and mature.
• Reptiles Are Abhorrent: Downplayed; she's just quite cynical.
• The Resenter: Though she comes around eventually, she holds some major resentment towards Mae for appearing to be so flippant about dropping out of college, when she never had a chance to go in the first place. She comes around after finding out that Mae dropped out due to a severe mental breakdown that she is possibly still going through.
• Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism: Another contrast with Gregg. She is far in the cynicism side while Gregg is on the Idealism side (though not as far as it may seem). She has already given up on hope and reluctantly accepted how wrong and awful the world is and is only trying to get by, with all the bad things happening in the town and on her family. In the "Proximity" event, she will even tell that her life is chasing something that keeps getting away.
• The Smart Guy: Bea was noted to be an academic achiever and was looking to go to college before life got in the way.
• Smoking Is Cool: Almost never seen without a cigarette in her mouth, only taking it out for a moment when talking to a client that she visits for a house call. Even when sleeping she has one. At one point, Mae comments on this, and Bea responds that it's usually a fake cigarette and that she's trying to quit.
• The Snark Knight: She is cynical and highly sarcastic, particularly towards Mae and her antics.
• The Stoic: Not as much as Angus, but she's generally level headed.
• Sugar-and-Ice Personality: Though she warms up to Mae eventually, and her side activities are about her becoming a Defrosting Ice Queen.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: If going down her route, the fight Mae has with her when visiting her apartment may seem to come out of the blue, but it does make sense in universe. While yes, Mae has been providing more fun and enjoyment into her life, she reminds her that these hangouts are only a small fraction of her own day and that she's been working the entire day beforehand every single time on about six hours of sleep. By contrast, the player is in control of Mae pretty much all the time, uses that time to just mess around, and by her mom's admission spends at least 10 hours a day asleep. So yeah, the hangouts are nice, but they mean a lot more to Mae than they do to her. They don't magically bring the joy back into her life.
• Token Religious Teammate: Mae is heavily implied to be either atheist or agnostic, Angus is unambiguously the former, and Gregg's faith is never mentioned. On the other hand, she seems to be more open to the supernatural and takes the time to say a prayer before the gang heads into the woods near the end.
• Took a Level in Kindness: Starting after the party in the woods, she becomes much kinder and more patient, even if you don't hang out with her the most. She apologizes to Mae for lashing out at her the next day, and invites her to hang out.
• Trauma Conga Line: A sexual predator started working alongside her at the Ol' Pickaxe, THEN her mother died of cancer when she was still a teenager, THEN she moved into a small, dilapidated apartment with her father after they lost their house, THEN her father's mental breakdown forced her to take over the day-to-day operations of the Ol' Pickaxe, THEN her dreams of attending college were crushed.
• We Used to Be Friends: Zig-zagged. She and Mae were good friends for many years, but during 7th grade, they just stopped hanging out and talking to each other and Mae began to hang out with Gregg more instead. Having Mae hang out with her most days will have the two of them become friends again.
• Wrench Wench: It comes with working at a hardware store for years. In one scenario, Mae accompanies her to a client's house, where she repairs a broken furnace.
• Younger Than They Look: In a sense. She's actually a couple months younger than Mae, but, as she puts it, she had to stick around Possum Springs and grow up in a hurry, while Mae left a while ago, but didn't really change.

Greggory "Gregg" Lee

"I'M LORD OF THE SNACK FALCONS!"

A 21-year-old fox, a childhood friend of Mae's, and Angus' boyfriend. He works at the Snack Falcon. Rulz ok.

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• Affectionate Nickname: Angus calls him "bug" when the two are showing their love for each other.
• Badass Biker: Wears a leather jacket and sometimes an old pickelhaube as a motorcycle helmet. He used to own a dirt bike but sold it for a regular bike that he jerry-rigged a motor on to.
• Big "OMG!": He has this reaction to seeing Mae's return from college.
• Blade Enthusiast: Always carries a knife (sometimes two) and has knife fights with Mae.
• Bow and Sword in Accord: Has a crossbow and knives on him seemingly at all times. He's shown to be quite effective with the former when he gets a clean shot with an arrow into Eide's shoulder.
• Character Tic: Flaps his arms when excited.
• Cloudcuckoolander: Has his moments. Like working with soda cups on his ears so he can hear the ocean.
• Cunning Like a Fox: While Gregg may be frequently up to no good, he's clever, quick-thinking, and cool under pressure.
• Dark and Troubled Past: By way of a single event carrying some hefty implications for the rest of his childhood. His parents dumped him on his uncle one year so they wouldn't have to deal with him. He wound up opening the sheep pen and some of the sheep escaped and ran towards the highway. Four of them were immediately hit by a semi, while three made it over the median and to the other side. He tried to call them back, and thus got two of the remaining sheep hit by another truck. The last sheep ran away and was never seen again. His uncle beat him when he got back.
• Eating the Eye Candy: He thinks Angus has a great ass. Mae agrees with him.
• Evil Uncle: Gregg's uncle gave Gregg a serious beating he lost some of his sheep. There were legal ramifications and he had to move away after that.
• Four-Temperament Ensemble: Sanguine.
• Foil: To Bea.
  • He and Angus establish pretty early on that they plan to leave the town once they work up enough money. Bea only lives with her father and has no way to leave because she needs to support him.
  • Bea is cynical and yearns for a bigger scope of life, he is wild but still down to earth enough to appreciate the small things he has.
  • Even their jobs contrast: The family-owned, aged Ol' Pickaxe versus the new, flashy Snack Falcon.
• Gay Best Friend: He is Mae's best friend, but their friendship consists mostly of things like petty vandalism rather than the usual stereotypes. Their friendship gets stronger if you spend a lot of time with him throughout the game.
• Genki Guy: He has boundless energy and enthusiasm, constantly running around, flailing his arms and being generally hyperactive. Deconstructed in that he's implied to suffer from something like manic-depressive disorder, and is stated to have "really down down days" that are as extreme as the "really up up days" we normally see him on.
• I Just Want to Be Free: His main goal is to want to leave Possum Springs because he feels that he doesn't have a future staying where he is and it's why he wants to move to Bright Harbor with Angus. More specifically, he wants to be free just like the sheep that escaped the pen when he was younger.
• Keet: Quite excitable.
• The Lancer: Mae's best friend growing up, she usually defers to Gregg when thinking about her friends. Also, he's the most willing to go along with Mae on her misadventures, the one most likely to have Mae's back, and the one most likely to put himself in harm's way for her.
• Living Emotional Crutch: To Angus, and vice versa. It helps that they both have a similar past, dealing with someone abusive in their lives.
• Lower-Class Lout: He admits that he knows he's parking lot trash and that on his own, he has no real future.
• Manchild: He is this, albeit to a lesser degree than Mae. Even though he has a job, an apartment, and a serious romantic relationship (unlike Mae), Gregg demonstrates immaturity on multiple occasions. He commits petty crimes and allows Steven to shoplift from Snack Falcon, even though both could get him arrested and/or fired. He nurses grand plans for moving to Bright Harbor with Angus, oblivious to how unrealistic his dream is.
• Master of Unlocking: Skilled enough at lock picking that he's able to pick open several elevators in the dark, under stress, and with nothing but a scavenged paperclip and a pair of pliers.
• Never My Fault: Blames Mae for the resurgence of his delinquent behavior even though he suggests most of it and she merely goes along with it.
• "Not So Different" Remark: He and Angus both have a Dark and Troubled Past with someone in their family being abusive, which is one of the reasons they're together.
• Sad Clown: Energetic and funny, typically, but he privately thinks of himself as "just parking lot trash," and harbors doubt that he won't someday ruin what he has with Angus.
• Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism: On the Idealism side, in contrast to Bea. He believes that he can make his life and Angus's better by ditching everything else and going to another city, though they seem to not have as much stuff planned out as they would need. He isn't as far off in that side as it may seem and is aware that the things he do might have consequences for Angus as well, so he decides to try to take it slow with the crimes. He also admits having doubts on whether he is a good person, and whether they will still be together after they leave Possum Springs.
• Spanner in the Works: In a roundabout way, Gregg's actions do more to stop the Big Bad than anyone else. Gregg shoots Eide in the shoulder with an arrow, causing Eide to seek vengeance on Gregg and his friends. When Eide attacks Mae, it causes Angus to force the mine shaft's elevator to pin Eide, and eventually lop off his arm and head when Angus makes the elevator move. Not only does this explicitly kill Eide, but it traps the Cult of the Black Goat at the bottom of the mine shaft with no way out, leaving them to die a slow death of starvation.
• Straight Gay: He is homosexual and in a relationship with Angus, displaying no stereotypes of Camp Gay or Manly Gay.
• Toxic Friend Influence: Mae might enable his behavior ever since she came back from college, but he's the guy who keeps knives on hand, makes deals to break into abandoned grocery stores, tosses light bulbs around, and lets people shoplift at his work in exchange for favors. Mae is noticeably less of a delinquent when she hangs out with Bea.
• Ultimate Job Security: He somehow has an iron grip on his position at the Snack Falcon, despite doing things on the clock that would probably get most people arrested, let alone fired. Besides just wearing cups on his ears and openly hating his job, Gregg frequently leaves work before his shift is over to hang out with Mae.
  Mae: Gregg plays by his own rules.
  Bea: Sometimes it feels like the world's playing by Gregg's rules.
  Mae: Whoa.

Angus Delaney

"So I believe in a universe that doesn't care and people who do."

A 21-year-old bear, and Gregg's boyfriend. He works at Video Outpost "Too".

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• Abusive Parents: Both his mother and father were emotionally and physically abusive to him.
• Affectionate Nickname: Gregg calls him "Cap'n".
• Agent Scully: Due to his skeptical nature, he doesn't believe Mae's theories about what's been following her. He even insists that the figure that shows up during their hangout is not a ghost.
• The Anti-Nihilist: He has an interest in the supernatural, but in a "why do people believe what they believe" kind of way. Ultimately, he believes that whether or not there's a God, people have the capacity to be good to each other.
• Beary Friendly: He's a bear who is depicted as calm, friendly, and helpful.
• The Big Guy: He's the physically largest of the four main characters, and he's strong enough to carry Mae without difficulty during their misadventure in the mines.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Pretty much everyone comments on how nice he is, but he's also the only one among the four friends who isn't all that torn up that the cultists might have all died in a cave-in they accidentally caused. He even threatens to tear a couple of them apart during their confrontation with Mae.
  "I don't even believe in hell and I hope they all go straight there."
• Disappeared Dad: He says that his dad left 10 years ago and he doesn't know if he's still alive. But he also says that if he is alive, he doesn't want to know.
• Even the Loving Hero Has Hated Ones: The gang are walking away from having accidentally sealed a group of cultists in an abandoned mine when one of them attacked them. It occurs to them that they've more or less doomed them to death by starvation and dehydration, and aren't sure how to feel about that. Aside from the quiet, responsible Gentle Giant Angus, who says after everything they did ( i.e. multiple murders which they're completely unrepentant for, including of their missing friend Casey), he'd do it again and feels no remorse about saving Mae by dropping the lift the one who attacked her was in, tearing off his head and arm.
• Four-Temperament Ensemble: Phlegmatic.
• Gentle Giant: Downplayed, but he's the biggest and tallest friend in the group, such that Mae's Affectionate Nickname for him is "big guy", and he's also gentle as a lamb. His best scary face is just smiling, adorably.
• Good Is Not Nice: The others consider him to probably be the best person among them, but he is quick to announce his lack of remorse over indirectly killing the whole cult, since to him it was the obviously just outcome.
• The Heart: Bea outright calls him this, since he's the only reason that Gregg's, Bea's, and Mae's social lives all intersect.
• Hidden Depths: At first strikes Mae, and by extension the player, as a polite, if shy and quiet, man. The revelation that he is an abuse victim, the growing frequency of his hateful or vindictive comments, and constant feelings of being a failure all suggest that he has his own ocean of problems - he's just secretive about them.
• Hollywood Atheist: Due to aforementioned abusive parents and no divine intervention ever coming to save him during those days, he's a staunch atheist. He averts the stereotype by having an optimistic existentialist sort of outlook.
• Informed Attractiveness: Gregg claims that he has the cutest ass in town (Mae ecstatically agrees with this). Since the art style is flat and storybook-esque, and we never see Angus from behind, we can only take their word on that.
• Knight in Sour Armor: A generally positive one. He's not such an idealist that he doesn't understand that Possum Springs is a dead end for him and Gregg, or - given his history of abuse - that all people are good, and he doesn't believe in God. However, he does believe that people are capable of good things, and takes heart in their pattern-finding and uniqueness.
  "So I believe in a universe that doesn't care, and people that do."
• Living Emotional Crutch: To Gregg, and vice versa, mostly due to both of them having a Dark and Troubled Past.
• Nerdy Inhaler: Investigating the park with him reveals he has asthma, which slows him down on the hike up. He refuses to use his inhaler outside of emergencies, though.
• Nice Guy: The trait by which his he is best well known.
• Not So Stoic: While the gang is lying low after Mae is nearly shot while fleeing the cult, he begins to nervously talk about cooking food, showing that even he is scared by the current situation.
• Only Sane Man: The sanest of the group. He is down to earth and not easily swayed by emotion, which earns him the position of Team Dad.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business:
  • He's normally pleasant and polite, even in stressful situations, but when the four main characters learn about the atrocities of the Black Goat cult, he grows angry and swears at them. After the group make their escape from the mine after its collapse, the others question whether leaving the cult members stuck inside it was the right thing to do, he remarks that he think that they fully deserved it because they were killing people, even adding that while he might not believe in hell, he still hopes that all the cultists goes straight there.
  • During a trip to Donut Wolf, Gregg and Mae notice Angus being unusually curt and quiet. It's because he thinks Mae is having some Toxic Friend Influence over Gregg. However, they all air their grievances and work past it.
• Opaque Nerd Glasses: He wears opaque glasses and has considerable nerd credentials, as shown by his knowledge of computers and vintage VHS technology.
• Opposites Attract: Gregg is excitable and hyperactive and has problems with mood swings, while he is reserved, quiet, and much more stable.
• Perpetual Frowner: Despite the image, he isn't seen smiling very often in the game.
• The Quiet One: Mae's mother will comment upon him being very quiet. He's slightly more vocal around Gregg, though only slightly.
• Shrinking Violet: In a sharp contrast to the otherwise extroverted cast, Angus is laconic and shy. He is also not close with Bea and Mae is unable to discern whether she and Angus are friends for the most part, meaning that it's very likely that his only friend is his boyfriend.
• Slasher Smile: Averted. He attempts one to show he can pull a Nightmare Face, but as Mae notes, he's just smiling adorably.
• The Smart Guy: He knows a lot about computers, being able to fix the adware on Mae's laptop, he likes playing video games, and he uses an inhaler due to having asthma.
• Stealth Pun: He's a literal gay bear.
• The Stoic: He is quite unflappable and calm, though even he loses his cool sometimes.
• Straight Gay: Like Gregg, he is also gay with no stereotypical traits and in a relationship with Gregg.
• Team Chef: The only member of the friend group mention doing much cooking, at any rate. When everyone's hiding in his and Gregg's apartment, he busies himself trying to feed everyone because it helps him feel better. Being starved by his mom as a kid is part of why he enjoys cooking now . Part 4 reveals he also seems to stress cook when they are in bad situations.
• Team Dad: He's a pretty nurturing soul, and usually the first to vocalize being concerned about someone else. If you follow a certain narrative path Bea will even comment on it, saying that Gregg needs a parent as much as he needs a boyfriend, and he's lucky Angus "is a little of both".
• What Does She See in Him?: At the end of the game Bea questions the relationship between the quiet and upright Angus and the hyperactive and lawbreaking Gregg. She wonders about the possibility that they are just together because they have literally no other option in a small town, even further, she points out the possibility that they might break up once they move away and meet new people. Going with Angus to the park however, answers this question, though it's vague, Angus sees Gregg as his savior of his abusive childhood, claiming that even though God wouldn't find him, Gregg did.

Jeremy Warton, a.k.a. "Germ Warfare"

"You'll never half catch me, half coppaaaaah!"

An 18 year-old easy-going, if not weird bird guy that lives in town. Comes to watch the others practice music.

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• Advertised Extra: He's semi-prominently featured in the trailers for the game, yet he doesn't really appear much until the final chapter, and the only thing he really does is give Mae some rope to help get the others out of the mineshaft and offer to use dynamite to blow it up. His optional interactions with Mae, originally Dummied Out, are added and fleshed out in the "Weird Autumn" update.
• Affectionate Nickname: Germ Warfare, to a point that he prefers that almost everyone other than his family (and Mae, if she hangs out with him everyday) to call him by it instead of his real name.
• Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!: He will abruptly end a conversation and wander off to wherever at the drop of a hat. During his first personal event, he shows Mae the parking lot (the one they're already standing in), muses about what it will be like after the foliage reclaims it, and announces that they've concluded their business together.
• The Baby of the Bunch: He mentions that he was two years behind Mae in high school, making him 18 years old and the youngest of the main characters. This may explain some of his behavior.
• Big Damn Hero: He shows up right after Mae and the others escape from Eide, and not only helps them climb out of the abandoned well, but offers to dynamite the caves. Because he just happens to have dynamite for some reason.
• Cloudcuckoolander: He's very friendly but deeply weird, and deadpan enough so that it's hard to tell where the weirdness begins and ends. He's friends with all the town's bums and transients, philosophizes on the nature of parking lots, off-handedly remarks that his brother is dead, may or may not live in a tree, and has ready access to dynamite.
  Bea: He's like something out of a children's book about whatever the hell he is.
• Do Not Call Me "Paul": When Mae meets him in front of the Snack Falcon, she calls him by his real name, Jeremy Warton, only for him to tell her that no one aside from his family calls him by his real name.
• A Good, Old-Fashioned Paint Watching: He says the only reason he watches the gang's rehearsals is because he's bored. He flat out says it's not because he's a fan of their music, it's just literally something to do.
• Hidden Heart of Gold:
  • While isn't as much a jerkass as much as he's a strange, blunt-to-the-point-of-rude person, he seems to genuinely enjoy his times hanging out with Mae and cares about the group to an extent. He even brings Mae rope without question to get the group out of the well, offers them soda after they're out to calm them down, and presumably bombs the mines free of charge.
  • In his last hangout with Mae in the "Weird Autumn" update after inviting her to his house, he tells her that he knew she was feeling down about something and just wanted to do something nice for her.
• Human Sacrifice: Averted. He was chosen to be sacrificed by The Cult, but he knew that he was being stalked by one of the cultists and he was able to escape the cultist that was after him.
• Mysterious Past:
  • No-one knows where he came from or where he lives, aside from a passing mention of a brother who died. If Mae befriends him, she'll be the first person he ever invites to his house. Turns out he has a large, close-knit family, including one of the road crew who work outside Mae's house.
  • He also reveals in a single line of dialogue that he had a brother who passed away at some point, and that he doesn't believe in ghosts because he knows his brother would've visited if they existed.
• The Nicknamer: Inverted; he normally only goes by Germ, and prefers anyone outside his family calls him this. He accordingly calls most people by the nicknames they use. If the player completes all his hangouts, he'll ask Mae what Mae's short for (Margaret), and start calling her by it, as well as letting her call him Jeremy.
• Odd Friendship: He is sometimes seen talking about or with traveller kids/hobos that travel around via the trains since a few of them like stopping in Possum Springs.
• Posthumous Sibling: Part of the reason he doesn't believe in ghosts is that if they were real "my brother would've visited."
• Red Herring: His infrequent appearances and odd behavior in the game proper led many people to assume he had something to do with the mysterious goings on in Possum Springs. Nope. He's just a weird guy. He even saves Mae and the gang towards the end by bringing them some rope.
• Remember the New Guy?: In-universe. He just started hanging out with the gang one day and they presumably didn't mind. To the player, he's treated like he was part of the gang from the beginning. It's actually this that enables Mae to realize that she's dreaming in Longest Night, when the gang mentions him casually.
• Ridiculously Average Guy: He's this when compared to the rest of the main cast, as he doesn't have a Dark and Troubled Past, nor has he had any mental problems. He also isn't trying/wishing he could leave Possum Springs like Bea or Gregg. This could be why the cult tried to sacrifice him to the Black Goat, only for him to evade capture by the cultists.
• Unusual Pets for Unusual People: He befriended a wild opossum and named it Rabies, introducing him to Mae in their second outing. Mae immediately thinks Rabies the coolest thing she's ever seen after hearing Germ's story about him.

Casey Hartley (SPOILERS)

BORN 2 LOSE

A friend of the gang's that's left town by the time the game's started.

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• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Implied, though the source is less believable than usual. Though he is only remembered by the gang as being a friendly, normal guy, the cult says that he would never amount to anything except a "mile long list of kids without a father" and that he was making meth with his cousin, which is believed to set him on a path to being a criminal. Given how the cult explicitly uses heavily biased rationale to choose victims, the veracity of this claim is questionable.
• Dead All Along: He was one of the sacrifices thrown into the mine by the Cult of the Black Goat. Beforehand, it was just assumed he'd gone missing or skipped town. Nope; he's gone.
• Foil: In a sort of way, one to Mae. Both were cats who never stood out around town until a certain point (Casey's disappearance, the Killer incident) and both managed to leave town. He, however, never returned to Possum Springs like Mae, and his personal run-in with the cult ended with him dead in contrast to Mae and company indirectly killing them through a cave in.
• The Generic Guy: Aside from being on good terms with the rest of the gang and managing to escape the town, he is mentioned as being as normal as anyone else. Eventually played for drama and horror; His complete averageness and inability to stand out made him a perfect candidate for the cult's sacrificial ritual.
  • As the story progresses, you learn more about his character. He was the band's original drummer and a very close friend of Gregg. His social network profile describes himself as "country trash proud" and was a skater. During the last train hangout with Lori, Mae confirms that he was also a smoker. According to a cultist: he had a cousin who was a meth cook and died in a lab explosion, he aided his cousin in the meth production which the cultists believed justified his sacrifice because he was on his way to becoming a criminal.
• Posthumous Character: The gang thinks he caught a train out of town before the events of the game. The truth is he was sacrificed by a cult in town.
• Satellite Character: Deconstructed, because he didn't have any relations outside of his parents and friends, the cultists saw him as a perfect sacrifice for their god.
• Small Role, Big Impact: It's him disappearing that makes it finally hit Mae that everything she knows is changing, and his death is what finalizes how the cult chooses their sacrifices.
• Walking Spoiler: For most of the game, his whereabouts are a mystery. He's only occasionally mentioned by characters, who believe that he hopped a train and ran away. It's only near the end of the game that it's revealed that he was killed by a cult (said cult being a Walking Spoiler itself). As such, there's not much you can say about him without spoiling both of these things.

Family Members

Candy Borowski

Mae's mother. She works as an administrator at the First Coalescence Church.

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• Deadpan Snarker: Mae says it's where she got it from. If the player goes on her trip to Jenny's Field, she jokes about letting Mae suffer the same fate.
• Good Parents: She and Stan care about Mae and want her to be successful. They refinanced their mortgage in order to pay for Mae's college tuition, which creates financial hardships for them later on.
• I Want Grandkids: She mistakenly begins to suspect that Mae's worsening health in the third act is actually morning sickness, and the possibility that her daughter is pregnant is the only thing that breaks the concern that she was otherwise displaying for Mae's condition.
• Noodle Incident: She refers to how she and Stan spent a lot of money to "smooth things out" after Mae savagely beat a fellow teenager with a bat years before. Whether she was referring to Mae's therapy, legal fees, an out of court settlement with the victim's family, or something else is unclear.
• Open-Minded Parent: She briefly gets the wrong idea and thinks Mae is pregnant, but reacts remarkably well, assuring Mae that she's not angry and she'll do what she can to help. Mae's not pregnant, but still.
• Parents as People: She is depicted as a three-dimensional character who loves dark books, works hard as a church administrator, stresses over finances, and has a complicated relationship with her daughter.
• Passive Aggressive Combat: During her argument with Mae over dropping out of college, she makes several passive aggressive remarks.
• Strong Family Resemblance: She looks like an older, larger version of Mae.
• Vicariously Ambitious: Mae accuses her of this during an argument, claiming that she pushed her to attend college because she couldn't secure an education for herself.

Stan Borowski

Mae's father. He works at a supermarket meat counter.

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• Alcoholic Parent: Mae reveals that he was an alcoholic during her childhood, and that he quit drinking because he would endanger Mae and Candy.
• Bumbling Dad: Downplayed. He cares deeply about the well-being of his family, works hard, and dotes on his daughter, while also occasionally trying to push her to be a bit more mature and responsible, but it also obvious that he is a bit absent-minded and forgetful at times. In fact, his Establishing Character Moment sees him failing to pick up Mae at the bus station, because he mixed up the date of her homecoming.
• Good Parents: He and Candy love Mae and refinanced their mortgage so that she could attend college. When Mae drops out of college, he shows no rancor toward her, but he does encourage her to find a job. Notably, during the high school reunion party, Mae lets it slip that Stan used to be a violent drunk. His behavior throughout the game indicates that he's long since taken great steps to improve himself, once it became clear how dangerous he was becoming.
• Hidden Depths: If you go through the bookshelf upstairs, Mae will list a few of his books which are all about birds, suggesting he's a birdwatcher. This also explains the pet bird and the various bird-themed decor in their house.
• Nice Guy: He's pleasant and snarky with his daughter, and friendly to Bea when he meets her at the supermarket.
• No Name Given: In the game at least, unlike his wife. It would have been mentioned in Jeremy's Dummied Out friendship quest, but otherwise is only known through outside sources.
• Parents as People: He works at a grocery store meat counter, watches a corny comedy show every night, and seems resigned to the fact that his life involves unsatisfying work, financial burdens, stress, and disappointment.
• Real Men Eat Meat: He works at a supermarket meat counter and is very proud of his wares.
• Recovered Addict: He used to be an alcoholic, but quit drinking some time ago and seems fine now.

Granddad

"Being interesting is all you can hope to be."

Mae's grandfather, who died some time before the start of the game.

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• Cool Old Guy: Mae clearly thought so. The "Lost Constellation" mini-game takes the form of a story that he tells a young Mae before she goes to sleep.
• Doting Grandparent: What little we know of his relationship with Mae indicates that he adored her.
• Multiple-Choice Past: At the start of the game, you get to choose what exactly happened the year he died, and what his last moments were like.
• Nice Guy: By all accounts in-story. Mae still thinks the world of him, and misses him a lot.
• Nightmare Fetishist: He loved his horror stories.
• No Name Given: His name is never revealed.
• Posthumous Character: He's long dead by the time of the game. We learn about him via Mae's memories, and he's mentioned semi-frequently in her journal. He also shows up in "Lost Constellation."
• Strong Family Resemblance: Looks a lot like his son, Stan. He also has a nick in his ear like Mae.

Aunt Molly

Mae's aunt, who is a local police officer.

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• Ambiguous Situation: She originally did not appear in the epilogue, leading many to believe she was part of the cult of the Black Goat left to die in the mine. The Weird Autumn update added her to the epilogue, where she tells Mae that the police department got a lot of weird calls that morning, but won't elaborate on what kind of weird calls, leaving it ambiguous regarding if she knew about the cult.
• In-Series Nickname: Mae calls her "Aunt Mall Cop" to annoy her. Her response:
  Molly: Mall cops don't carry guns.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: She's (albeit understandably) leery of Mae, and quickly judges her ghost story as ridiculous and unbelievable, but legitimately seems to be trying to look out for her, and doesn't press her any further in the epilogue, seeming content that Mae is just safe.
• Police Are Useless: Downplayed in that she does at least try to look into what Mae reports, but between Mae's repeated insistence on calling it a "ghost" and the general lack of evidence, there isn't a lot to work with. After Harfest, she mentions having searched the area where Mae saw someone get kidnapped, so she is at least listening.
• Shame If Something Happened: Subverted. Mae interprets her warnings to be careful around town this way, and notes in her journal that she suspects Molly is plotting to kill her. However her suspicions ultimately don't pan out, so it would seem Molly's concern was genuine.
• Strong Family Resemblance: She's Candy's sister and it shows.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: She does not appear during the epilogue, nor is she mentioned. Some have taken this as evidence that she was a member of the cult. Rectified in the Weird Autumn update, where she shows up in the epilogue, giving no indication she knows about, nor was part of, the cult.

Mr. Santello

Bea's father. He owns the Ol' Pickaxe hardware store.

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• The Alleged Boss: He owns the hardware store, but he's never seen on the premises and has entrusted Bea with most of its day-to-day operations.
• Everyone Has Standards: Zig-zagged, though he's not in a position to do much more. Several years before, he realized that one of his employees was a sexual predator. Mr. Santello refused to let the man teach Bea how to drive and warned Bea never to be alone with the man. However, as the employee is their best repairman, he is unable to fire him, at least not without losing what little he has left.
• Jerkass: He has burdened his daughter with the responsibility of running his business and seems oblivious to how unhappy this has made her. When she complains about work-related matters, he curtly reminds her that he owns the business and signs the checks, not her. He also forces her to work with a sexual predator and seemingly neglected to report hm to authorities despite knowing something about him.
• The Lost Lenore: His wife's death triggered his mental breakdown and caused him to neglect his business, which has had a lasting impact on Bea's life.
• Parents as People: He was devastated by his wife's death several years before and is still mired in depression. He also likes football, but is disdainful of hockey.
• Riches to Rags: He and his family used to occupy a large house, but financial realities force him to move to a small, run-down apartment with Bea after his wife's death.
• Trauma Conga Line: His wife died of cancer, THEN he lost his house, THEN he had to move into a tiny apartment with his daughter, THEN his subsequent emotional breakdown prevented him from running his hardware store. And somewhere in the middle of all that, his daughter was accosted by a sexual predator who worked at his store, but Mr. Santello couldn't fire the guy because he was their best repairman.
• Unnamed Parent: His first name is unknown.

Townspeople of Possum Springs

Pastor Karen Young

The friendly new pastor of the First Coalescence Church. Karen quickly dedicated herself to the goal of opening a homeless shelter in Possum Springs.

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• Affectionate Nickname: She insists that Mae call her "Pastor K".
• Crystal Dragon Jesus: The faith she follows is an Alternate Universe version of Christianity, mixing elements of Catholicism and Protestantism and worshiping a single, agendered God. The fact that she is a pastor, yet her faith has a pope is a pretty big difference.
• Good Shepherd: Played with. She encompasses everything good about (the game world's version of) Christianity, tirelessly trying to help all people regardless of creed. Player choice depending, she even strikes up a genuine friendship with Mae, who is either an atheist or a Nay-Theist. But at the same time, she is starting to lose her faith, and she is hoping she can convince other people God exists, because she can't fully convince herself. Mae calls her out on it upon realizing this.
• Inter Generational Friendship: Depending on player choice, Mae and Karen can become friends despite their totally opposing worldviews. Though their views might not be as different as it first seems.
• Write Who You Know: One of the writers has said that Karen and Mae's interactions are written from the perspective of someone who has been in both shoes.

Bruce

A homeless man who lives in the woods behind the church. Pastor Karen tries to help him.

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• The Alcoholic: Implied. During his last conversation with Mae, he vows never to touch a bottle again.
• Cardboard Box Home: He lives in a crudely constructed tent in the wilderness.
• Only One Name: He introduces himself as "Bruce. Just Bruce."
• Outliving One's Offspring: When Mae asks Bruce where his daughter is, he offers no reply. The game implies that his daughter is dead.
  • Alternatively, she could have disowned him due to his implied alcoholism and violent tendencies. This would be a good reason he wouldn't want to talk about her, and his leaving town could be him patching things up with her.
• Put on a Bus: Bruce disappears after saying that he's joining his daughter and grandchildren. Some fans have interpreted this statement to mean that Bruce committed suicide.
• Tears of Joy: He admits that he cried when his daughter was born years before.

Selma Ann "Selmers" Forrester

A bear woman slightly older than Mae who sits on her porch all day. She writes poetry, but it isn't always good.

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• Dark and Troubled Past: Her recent misadventures have left her emotionally broken, but she is recovering.
• Drugs Are Bad: She went into rehab to overcome her addiction to prescription medication.
• Hidden Depths: At first it seems all she does is sit around and think up half-hearted poetry all day. It turns out, she's actually a very profound and talented poet, she just saves it all for meetings of the poetry society.
• Rhymes on a Dime: Most of her poetry is structured like this. Subverted with her poem in the poetry society, which is not only well structured and powerful, but eschews her normal rhyme scheme for something far more complex.

Lori Meyers, a.k.a. "Lori M."

A young 14 year old mouse who sits on the rooftops of the town and fantasizes all day. If Mae comes back multiple times, they strike up a friendship.

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• Apologises a Lot: When Mae first meets her, she profusely apologizes and hyperventilates when she thinks she has offended Mae.
• Creepy Child: Well, Creepy Teen in any case. She's a cute mouse girl who enjoys walking along the train tracks and regularly leaves metal figurines of people on the tracks just so they can be flattened and warped by the train.
• Intergenerational Friendship: Downplayed as Mae is only six years older than Lori.
• Meaningful Name: Her full name is a likely reference to Lori Strode, sister of Michael Myers. A fitting name for a horror movie buff.
• Nightmare Fetishist: She's really into horror movies and especially the special effects thereof.
  Lori: Sometimes I just want to live [in an abandoned house] and only come out at night, and be a monster, and beautiful.
  Mae: Those are, like, really attainable dreams.
• Precocious Crush / Ambiguously Gay: Implied. Lori really seems to want to impress Mae, and is scared of making a fool of herself in front of the older girl. When Mae invites Lori over for Thanksgiving, Lori begins to hyperventilate and seems very embarrassed.
• Verbal Tic: Tends to repeat words when she's feeling nervous or awkward. In extreme cases she starts to hyperventilate.
• You Dirty Rat!: Downplayed; she's just a creepy mouse who is very much into horror. Though it turns out she was the one who vandalized the tunnel mural.

Danny

A cat slightly older than Mae who is often seen around town, trying to get a job since he was fired from his construction job.

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• Deadpan Snarker: He doesn't have much tolerance for Mae's lackadaisical approach to life, especially once he hears that she's moved back in with her parents.
• New Job as the Plot Demands: Thanks to the economic woes plaguing Possum Springs, he's variously seen working for the Ol' Pickaxe, the Clik Clak, and other businesses. None of them last very long.
  Danny: I have a zombie résumé. It's dead but somehow, it's still going all over the place.

Jackie

A goat woman that Bea parties with. Something of a radical.

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• Early-Bird Cameo: You can see her talking to Bea at the party in the woods, but she isn't properly introduced until the college party, and you can't talk to her, although she does show some disdain upon learning that Mae was at the party.
• Jerkass: Even if she's been friends with Bea since middle school, she's very nasty towards Mae, with Mae being well aware that she hates her, not liking that Bea brought her with to the college party. While that's not all that bad, after Mae reveals that Bea isn't a college student after some Innocently Insensitive comments and she runs off, Jackie not only blames it all on Mae, understandably, she threatens that if anything happens to Bea, she'll personally punch Mae's teeth out. Then she tells Mae that in school, she always thought she was an asshole, and that she's glad to know she was right.
• Jerkass Has a Point: She blasts Mae for her disruptive behavior during the party and robbing Bea of a much-needed opportunity to have fun.
• Large Ham: Her first lines have her openly showing her hatred of fascists, disallowing them from speaking at the party and refusing to give them a platform.
• What the Hell, Hero?: She really lays into Mae after causing Bea to flee from the party in embarrassment.
  Jackie: Back in school, I always told Bea you were an asshole and I really thought that was true. And it's good to know I was right.

Cole

A raccoon who moved away from Possum Springs for college, but comes back for a party. Mae went out with him junior year. It... didn't work out.

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• Amicable Exes: It appears he'd like to be this — he's friendly when you talk to him, and actually seems to be quite nice.
• Break-Up Song: He was the subject of one written by Mae after their disastrous prom date, called "Go Get Dead, Angel Face."
• Nice Guy: He's actually quite warm towards Mae at the party, and doesn't appear to hold any ill will about what happened. When she starts drunkenly ranting at him, he apologizes to her.
• Pretty Boy: Mae acknowledges he's really cute. And she hates cute people.

Steve Scriggins

A crocodile with whom Gregg sometimes associates for crime-committing purposes.

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• Alliterative Name: Steve Scriggins.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: Neither Gregg nor Mae actually like him; Gregg is at least able to tolerate being around him while Mae really isn't.
• Jerkass: Rude, unpleasant, and slimy. Some cut dialogue with Lori M. reveals he still hits on high schoolers, as well. That being said...
  • Jerkass Has a Point: During Gregg's first hangout, he dumps Gregg and Mae to carry their stolen robot themselves, but only after Mae had literally spent the entire time he was there insulting him. While he was helping them out, no less.
• Not Hyperbole: Why does Gregg talk to him? He has "an in" at the abandoned grocery store. As in, he was the one that broke down the front door.
• Sarcasm Failure: His usual snideness completely halts at Mae's "bite my entire ass!" tirade.
• Smug Snake: Clearly has a high opinion of himself, despite being little more than a petty crook.
• Your Mom: He makes one of these jokes towards Mae.

The City Council

Possum Spring's city council members, of which Gary is the apparent leader for three other members: Colleen, Andrew, and Cathleen.

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• Obstructive Bureaucrat: They vote down the homeless shelter proposed by Pastor Karen, even though the church had plenty of space and the shelter would have helped people.
• Passive Aggressive Combat: They passive aggressively compliment Bruce on his encampment in the woods.
• Water Guns and Balloons: In the Weird Autumn Edition, one of the minigames at Harfest involves throwing water balloons at the council who pose as Halloween monsters respectively.
• We ARE Struggling Together: The members frequently bicker over past mistakes and current decisions.

Mr. Chazokov

A bear, and Mae's old science teacher from high school.

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• Big Fun: He's on the portly side, and also cheerful and knowledgeable about stargazing.
• Cool Old Guy: He's one of the only people in Possum Springs who's unfailingly nice to Mae, despite her past.
• Inter Generational Friendship: He seems to grow fond of Mae during their stargazing adventures. So much so that when it is uncertain whether or not Mae will make it after being attacked by the cultists, he breaks down in tears as he recounts stargazing with her.
• Running Gag: Selmers and his bird-man neighbor repeatedly joke that he'll fall off the roof while stargazing.

Miss Rosa

A new character added in the Weird Autumn Edition. An elderly dog Mae meets at Trolleyside News, and an old friend of her grandfather's.

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• Old Flame: It's implied that she and Granddad had a fling when they were young.
• The Storyteller: If Mae talks to her, she'll tell stories of when she and Mae's grandfather were younger.

The Goth Kids

A trio of goth teenage girls.

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• Creepy Good: Their mannerisms are strange and unearthly, but they seem to genuinely want to guide Mae.
• Cryptic Conversation: They provide cryptic predictions for what will occur later in the game.
• Dark Is Not Evil: The Goths dress in black, sit motionless, and have bizarre speech patterns, but they're harmless.
• Everyone Has Standards: If you go with the "One time, in high school..." story, even they'll be at a loss for words after Mae reveals her most embarrassing moment.
• Finishing Each Other's Sentences: They speak as one, with each teenager contributing a few words to each sentence.
• Goth: All three are pale-furred and wear black.
• Leitmotif: Spooky, goth background music plays when they appear on-screen.
• Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: Can the goths predict the future, or do their words coincidentally correspond to events in the game?
• Only Known by Their Nickname: In-game, they're only ever collectively referred to as the "weird teens", but the game's chat scripts give their real names away: Britt (the raccoon), Karla (the cat), and Pam (the rabbit).
• These Questions Three...: When Mae and Bea meet the Goths in the graveyard, the Goths demand that they answer three questions to pass through the gate: when they first had sex, what their ideal date would be, and their most embarrassing experience.
• The Trickster: After Mae and Bea answer three personal questions in the graveyard, the Goths reveal that they were just messing with the two of them, and that they could have passed through the gate without answering. Mae and Bea are annoyed.

The Janitor

A bird janitor that appears several times throughout the game. Heavily implied to be supernatural in nature.

Of the three possible Gods mentioned by the goth kids, he (possibly) is the one who is "Caring but Absent"

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• Almighty Janitor: If he is supernatural and possibly God, then he is definitely almighty, if taking a form of a janitor for reasons.
• Chekhov's Gunman: He is literally the first character Mae meets in the town, and he may be a God.
• God Was My Co-Pilot: Maybe. Every time he shows up, he gives a lot of vague hints as to his true nature. In the epilogue, he even knows Mae's name... without Mae ever telling him it.
• His Name Really Is "Barkeep": Shows up to fix things, and is only ever called "the janitor", even in Mae's notebook. Makes sense if he really is God.
• Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: Whether he is a supernatural entity or not, it's debatable. And the fact that he knows Mae's name can be easily explained, since the town mostly knew about the "killer" incident, it's hard not to hear the name Mae Borowski spreading around like wildfire. Most of his vague cryptic message could just be his antiques or way of saying things. It is still left ambiguous though.
• Title Drop: In the Harfest play.

Other Characters

The Deep Hollow Hollerers

A quartet of musicians who were really popular in Possum Springs from the '20s to the late '40s. The members were a violinist bird, an accordionist alligator, a saxophonist bird, and a tubist bear. In the late '40s they became very spiritual and started spending nights at the graveyard playing for ghosts, they eventually froze to death and their spirits appear in Mae's dreams.

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• Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence: They appear as "ghosts" in Mae's dreams long after their deaths.
• Eyes Always Shut: In Mae's dreams, they play their instruments with closed eyes.
• Left the Background Music On: They provide the background music of Mae's dreams with each instrument joining in when Mae finds its respective player.
• Posthumous Character: They've been long dead by the start of the story.
• Youkai: These foursome seem to represent these animal spirits even in the Japanese version.

Garbo & Malloy

A TV comedy duo that Stan watches on most nights. Garbo is a dog and Malloy is an alligator. Their show seems to follow a late-show comedy talk show format with a lot of snark and one-liners.

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• Catchphrase: "That's a whoppa!"
• Foreshadowing: Malloy announces a future skit about Garbo and him joining a cult.
• Opaque Nerd Glasses: Garbo wears these.

Bombshell

A bear girl that Mae can meet at the college party. They seem to hit it off, but Mae screws up before anything can come of it.

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• Closet Key: Downplayed. She's the first female character Mae is shown to have an interest in during the game, so she acts as a closet key for the player instead of for Mae.
• Did Not Get the Girl: Mae doesn't, at least not in the game proper. She forgot to get her contact information when she stormed out after Bea.
• Hair-Contrast Duo: A minor case, she has fully-dyed violet hair that hangs over her forehead to contrast with Mae's straight-up, partially-pink-dyed hair.
• Manic Pixie Dream Girl: Downplayed, as she doesn't act like a standard manic pixie dream girl and she never has the full effect this trope implies, but she definitely has some effect on Mae.
• Nonhumans Lack Attributes: She wears a plunging V-neck blouse, but since she's a cartoon animal, it doesn't reveal anything.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: Mae calls her Bombshell, and that's what everyone else calls her, at least so far.
• Secret Handshake: Does one, sort of, with Mae. It forms a pentagram.
• Shout-Out: Her name is a reference to an Operation Ivy song.

Jen

A new character in the Weird Autumn Edition. Gregg's cousin, who lives in Bright Harbor.

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• Bit Character: When Mae talks to her, she explains she's just visiting Possum Springs for a day to get some stuff for Gregg's mom.
• Foreshadowing: Her addition helps set up Gregg's crossbow in the conversation with her.

Spoiler Characters

WARNING: Each of these characters is a Walking Spoiler. As such, spoilers are unmarked in these folders.

The Followers

The Cult of the Black Goat

A group of townspeople who discovered a mysterious being dwelling in the mines. Said being, the Black Goat, demands sacrifices or it will strike the town with disasters and eventually cause the surrounding area to dry up, with the town fading away in the end.

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• Affably Evil:
  • Surprisingly polite to Mae and the gang. They don't even hold the fact Gregg shot one of them against him, since it was a rational reaction to Eide's behavior. The only time anyone but Eide directly threatens the gang with immediate death is when Gregg pulls back out his crossbow; when he does, the cultists pull out guns. The leader also says that they know who the kids are, but the kids don't know who they are, so they've got the upper hand.
  • They have no problem letting Mae's group leave unharmed since they haven't done anything unwarranted to the cult. However, they make it clear that if Mae's group tries to tell anyone anything, it won't end well for them.
• All for Nothing:
  • Whether or not there even is a Black Goat is up for debate — it's shown in the museum that a previous generation of miners Dug Too Deep and released some sort of gas that caused mass hallucinations over enough long-term exposure. This suggests that the Black Goat could be just one more hallucination, especially considering that Mae isn't in a good mental state to begin with when she starts having visions. Regardless of whether the Black Goat is real or not, one only needs to look around to see that the sacrifices aren't working. Possum Springs is still a Dying Town, and all the sacrifices have resulted in is the deaths of thirty-nine innocent people. (Well, maybe not entirely "innocent," but as far as we know, none of them did anything bad enough to deserve death at the hands of an Eldritch Abomination.)
  • To add insult to injury, the game's ending gives some indicators that things might be starting to get better for Possum Springs — Mae's dad plans on unionizing the Ham Panther workers, and the constant disappearances are finally going to stop. This suggests that things are finally looking up for the town, or at least gives a small glimmer of hope that things will get better. Yet the cult more than likely isn't going to live long enough to see it. Even if the cultists had somehow survived, one must wonder how they'd react to Possum Springs improving without their sacrifices.
• Big Bad: As a group. They kidnapped several people, including Casey, and will continue to do so as long as Possum Springs is around.
• Black Cloak: They all wear these to conceal their identities.
• Cult: The cult is a secret society that worships an eldritch abomination and performs human sacrifice.
• Didn't Think This Through: Even putting aside that they were desperate and if the Goat is real in the first place, The Black Goat is a God associated with bringing sadistic suffering to all those who encounter it and making things fall into darkness and rot, why the cult decided it was their best shot to appease it with sacrifices in the first place is baffling. If the absence of sacrifices did indeed cause its influence to be cut off from the town, it seems it was actively doing the opposite, and causing Possum Springs to die faster.
• Disposable Vagrant: Their Human Sacrifice specifically targets people who are unlikely be missed, such as the homeless and drifters. This also has the side-effect of "cleaning up" Possum Springs of those they deed "undesirable".
• Even Evil Has Standards: The cult has a strict set of rules regarding how they choose their sacrifices; specifically, they only choose people who aren't contributing to society and won't be missed. Anyone who doesn't fit those criteria is off-limits, as far as they're concerned.
  • The cult member who shot at Mae sincerely apologizes to her in the finale, saying it was "a bad call". Mae is understandably baffled but accepts the apology.
• Human Sacrifice: Well, anthropomorphic animal sacrifice, but that's splitting hairs. The cult believes that if they sacrifice people to the Black Goat, then it will bring prosperity back to the town. They only sacrifice drifters or "degenerates" of society, people who won't be missed. It doesn't really seem that effective, if it works at all; even after all the people they've sacrificed the town is still in a decline, with no signs of it improving substantially.
• Hypocrite: For all their high talk about the welfare of the town, the cultists themselves are all well-off and have never mined or done hard labor in their lives. Bea calls them out on this immediately and is disgusted by their attempt to dodge the question when she brings it up in the confrontation with them.
• I Did What I Had to Do: How they justify their actions. None of them takes any pleasure in what they have to do to keep Possum Springs alive, but they clearly aren't going to stop. There's hints in their speech that they've come too far to back out now anyways, with the blood of 39 people on their hands.
• In the Hood: All members of the cult wear the same all-concealing hooded coats, though whether or not they're actually all black or simply look that way because they're always viewed in shadow is debatable.
• Killed Offscreen: If the cave-in doesn't kill them, then them being trapped in a cave deep in the earth with no way out will kill them. Just much slower. The game never confirms whether the cultists died or not, but their chances of survival at the game's conclusion are slim at best.
• Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: Were the disasters and economic decline of Possum Springs due to insufficient worship of Black Goat, or were they merely coincidences? Are the cultists really appeasing an Eldritch Abomination with sacrifices, or are they worshiping an imaginary being in a futile effort to save their town?
• Pragmatic Villainy:
  • They have a strict set of rules on who can get kidnapped as a sacrifice to the Black Goat and who can't. They only kill people who won't be missed. Of course, "won't be missed" is according to their definition.
  • During the final confrontation with Mae's group, they decide to just let Mae's group leave without a fuss. They know none of the kids can identify any of the cult members, and they know the kids would definitely be missed if they suddenly went missing now, not just because of their connections to the town, but because one of their own members shooting at Mae got the police involved. The only one of the cult members to object to this is Eide, who just wants compensation for getting shot in the shoulder by Gregg. Eide's refusal to stick to this trope and listen to the rest of the cult is what ends up dooming all of them.
• Religion of Evil: They appear to worship the Black Goat, as the gang walks through what appears to be a praying area before approaching the pit where it lives.
• Shadow Archetype: The cult serves as a sort of dark reflection of Possum Springs as a whole. Many townspeople express sadness at the decline of the town, the fading of their way of life, and just generally the loss of the good old days when there were plenty of jobs, and workers weren't too beaten down to stand up to the bosses. The cult shares many of those sentiments, but while the sympathetic characters partly blame modern-day bleakness on corporate greed but mostly just fatalistically accept it as a product of inevitable change, the cult considers it all to be the fault of regulations, minorities and slackers. Also, they think they can turn back the clock by making human sacrifices to an elder god.
• Uncertain Doom: Thanks to Eide insisting on getting vengeance on Mae and the other kids, the only elevator between the mine and Possum Springs ends up broken, with the cultists trapped at the bottom of the mine shaft. There's no other apparent way out, either. Considering they're trapped at the bottom of a mine shaft with no light, no food, no water, and no way to call for help, their chances of survival are not very high. However, the game ends without confirming whether the cult members died or not.
• You Have Failed Me: The arm that Mae and friends find outside the diner was apparently dropped there by a member named Lurv. The friends later see the cultists outside the mine preparing to punish Lurv for this screw-up.

The Shadow

Eide

The Dragon and a kidnapper for the cult. He was caught kidnapping a person by Mae, which kicks off a search for this "ghost".

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• An Arm and a Leg: Eide, in attempting to kill Mae, has his arm and head chopped off after getting caught in a collapsing elevator.
• Dick Dastardly Stops to Cheat: The cult would have gotten away with everything if Eide didn't just have to have his revenge for getting shot in the shoulder by Gregg. Because Eide attacked Mae, he got his arm and head lopped off by the falling elevator, leading to his own death. And even if Eide had somehow survived that, he trapped himself and the other cultists at the bottom of the mine with no way out. And all of this was after explicit orders by the rest of the cult to let Mae and the other kids go without a fight. Eide just had to have his revenge, and it cost him dearly.
• The Dragon: He's the cultist that you see several times throughout the game. He seems to have the power to walk through walls, and appears to be the one doing the kidnapping.
• Evil Is Petty: He gets shot in the shoulder by Gregg's hand-held crossbow, and in retaliation eventually tries to kill Mae. It's even more idiotic than it sounds, because the cult he was a part of explicitly told him not to retaliate against the gang. Even if he had succeeded, did he think the cult would have taken it laying down?
• The Heavy: He's the one who makes Mae aware of the cult, and the most active in attacking her and her group of friends.
• Intangibility: Seemingly has the ability to go through walls, explaining how he goes through the fence to the woods so quickly.
• Knight of Cerebus: He's responsible for the game's darker tonal shift and the game's most creepy and intense moments.
• Leitmotif: His presence is often accompanied by an ominous, vaguely glitchy sounding tune, with the bass boosting in and out sporadically.
• Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: Much like the ambiguity behind the Black Goat's existence, it's hard to tell if he really does have the ability to phase through walls.
• Off with His Head!: It's only seen for a split second, but Angus and Bea both yank the lever to operate the mineshaft's elevator as hard as they can once Eide comes after Mae, causing the collapsing elevator to lop off Eide's head and arm. While he's the only cult member that the player explicitly sees die on-screen, the collapsed elevator means it's likely the rest of the cult isn't far behind him.
• Revealing Injury: It's implied that Eide at least thinks his wound from Gregg's crossbow might be used to give away his identity, which might help explain why he decided to ignore the cult's demands to let Mae and her friends go.
• Revenge Before Reason: Despite orders from the rest of the cult to let the kids leave, Eide just has to make it personal with Mae for getting shot in the shoulder. As a result, he gets his arm lopped off when Angus breaks the lever for the mine's elevator, cutting off his arm and his head. Even if he somehow survived, he and the rest of the cult ended up trapped with no way out because of the collapsed tunnel.
• Stalker without a Crush: Starts to follow Mae and her companions on their "ghost hunts", watching them from afar.
• Spanner in the Works:
  • The Cult might have kept up their routine after letting Mae and company go... had Eide not been so bent on revenge for being shot with an arrow. Eide tries to kill the gang on their way out, resulting in the elevator's destruction and the ensuing cave-in.
  • If Eide had left Mae alone after Harfest, the Cult might not have been discovered. Gregg, Angus, and Bea only realized that they're not alone on their ghost hunts with Mae because Eide is caught watching them. This is what gets them invested in the mystery, and fuels Mae's determination to find out what's going on.
• Uniformity Exception: Is the only cult member to wear a miner's helmet, making him stand out.

The Voice

God? / The Astral Cat

A huge, shadowy, feline entity that Mae confronts in her final dream. Insists that it is not actually God.

In the trifecta of possible Gods, it is "Present but Uncaring".

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• Animalistic Abomination: It resembles a colossal cat with empty white eyes.
• Break Them by Talking: Drops an existential bombshell on Mae when she meets it. Essentially, it tells Mae that nothing matters, there is no creature like God anywhere in the universe, and that everything will one day end, with nothing to show for it. In spite of this, Mae ultimately chooses to keep going anyway, if only because she wants to feel the emotion that comes with loving something so much that it hurts when it's gone.
  Little creature. I am telling you something. There is a hole in the center of everything. And it is always growing. Between the stars I am seeing it. It is coming. And you are not escaping. And the universe is forgetting you. And the universe is being forgotten. And there is nothing to remember it. Not even the things beyond. And now there is only the hole.
• Eldritch Abomination: It's an inexplicable entity that resides on a distant shore at the edge of reality, musing on "monstrous existence." It also has knowledge of other such creatures, including the Black Goat, and shows some of them to Mae.
• A God I Am Not: The first thing it makes clear is that it is not God, and that it has witnessed the entire span of time and space and found nothing like what Mae describes as God. Mae continues calling it "God" anyway, because she has no other name for it.
• Lack of Empathy: It is indifferent to Mae's existential angst, telling her that her questions about life's meaning are pointless.
• Mind Rape: On top of casually ramming home the futility of existence to Mae, it also shows her a glimpse of dark and eyeless horrors beyond the reaches of space, just to make a point.
• Monochromatic Eyes: The Sky Cat has huge white eyes with no irises or pupils.
• Straw Nihilist: Insists that the only certainties of existence are entropy, futility, and the drift of atoms that will ultimately be swallowed by the "hole in the center of everything."
• Terse Talker: Speaks in broken sentence fragments, and almost entirely in the present-continuous tense to illustrate that, from its perspective, all of time is happening at once. In the Japanese version, it seems to be talking in some mixture of kana (both forms) and kanji at once.
• Time Abyss: At least as old as creation itself.

The Abomination

The Black Goat

An ancient Eldritch Abomination that lives within the mines of Possum Springs. While it mostly is fed by its cult it sometimes takes a more personal approach to collecting sacrifices.

In the trifecta of possible gods mentioned, he is the one who is "Vicious and Roaming".

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• Ambiguous Situation: The only people who encounter it are not the most reliable narrators. The cult is a group of people in Possum Springs who are trying to convince themselves that what they're doing is helping the town, and are in too deep to stop now. And Mae is already suffering from some pretty rough mental states when she encounters it. Also, the history of Possum Springs reveals that miners of old Dug Too Deep, resulting in the release of a gas that caused hallucinations in the townsfolk, which gives the Black Goat a more mundane explanation of a mass psychosis caused by this hallucinogenic. All of this sparks a lot of ambiguity if the Black Goat is even real, let alone if it's as malevolent as the cult makes it out to be.
• Arc Welding: It sings rather than speaking, and the game's files refer to sketches pertaining to it by the name Ibon - the mythical goat-person from Longest Night described as the first singer.
• Black Speech: It speaks in symbols, with Mae having utterly no idea what it's saying.
• Call-Back: Earlier in the game, the god-cat creature tells Mae about a hole growing between the stars. Later, the cultists describe Black Goat as black like the space between stars.
• Cosmic Horror Story: Turns what was originally a Ghost Story into one. The game implies that Black Goat is the "hole" described by the god-cat creature that will eventually consume the universe. The Black Goat seems to represent the inevitability of death and decline in the universe. Downplayed, in that the main characters simply decide to shrug off its existence and recognize it as a natural force, not worth worrying about all the time.
• The Corrupter: It is implied that it is responsible for causing Mae's dissociative episodes and busts of violence by making contact with her mind. It is further implied that what made Mae susceptible to its influence was the sorrow and anger she felt over losing her grandfather.
• Deal with the Devil: Maybe. The Cult of the Black Goat is convinced that feeding it sacrifices will save the town of Possum Springs. But if it does have such a deal, it's not working — Possum Springs is a Dying Town, and all of these sacrifices are merely delaying the inevitable, at best. But that's assuming that the Black Goat is even real. The cult wants it to be true simply because their efforts and murders will have been All for Nothing otherwise, and Mae is already suffering from a lot of mental trauma even before she encounters the cult, so their accounts of the whole situation may not be accurate.
• Devil, but No God: Possibly. While the Black Goat is ambiguously real, several people believe in God around Possum Springs. God never directly makes an action within the plot, though the Janitor that shows up multiple times throughout the game seems to be supernatural in nature (possibly being the real God), and Mae meets an entity in one of her dreams that she believes may be God, so this may be subverted.
• Did We Just Have Tea with Cthulhu?: Possibly. Mae's final dream is her talking to a gigantic black mass with eyes that looks like a goat, speaking in English. But when Mae bumps into it again later, it talks in Black Speech, making it unclear if the two encounters are of the same being.
• Eldritch Abomination: Zigzagged. While it functions like one, it interacts much more with people than most Eldritch Abominations do, bringing prosperity to the town in exchange for sacrifices. The cultists describe it as black like the space between stars. When Mae encounters Black Goat in her hallucination, it appears as a darkness out in the cosmos that speaks gibberish. All this assumes that it's even real, and not Mae having an incredibly bad episode provoked by discovering the cult.
• Foreshadowing: When Mae and Gregg break into the historical society's headquarters at Shreigest House, Mae finds a painting of a black goat descending from the stars.
• God of Evil: The Black Goat offers to bring prosperity and good fortune back to Possum Springs, but only in exchange for sacrifices. And if it stops getting sacrifices, it brings misfortune and disaster instead. Even so it isn't clear what sort of prosperity is on offer since Possum Springs doesn't seem to be doing so well regardless.
• Greater-Scope Villain: It's the being's cult that serves as the collective Big Bad of the story, rather than the Black Goat itself. But it's in the Black Goat's name that the cult is even acting in the first place.
• Gruesome Goat: Described as a goat and possibly the "vicious and roaming" entity that's slowly eroding everything. At the very least one legend of possible association says that it drank the ocean to hear the fish sing, and instead laughed when it saw them suffering from suffocation.
• I Lied: If it even is real it's implied that the sacrifices being made to it were actually making the towns death worse than better as the cult planned. If it's also the hole the Cat God mentions, it was definitely growing as a result. Tellingly, stopping the cult and said sacrifices causes Possum Springs to almost immediately start recovering when the cults claims were that the opposite would be true.
• Nothing Is Scarier: Mae, and thus the audience, never get to see what the Black Goat even looks like. The closest thing that's shown is a painting in the Shreigeist House. When Mae supposedly encounters it, the Goat is framed by inky blackness that prevents the player from seeing it at all. And on top of that, the Ambiguous Situation surrounding the Black Goat's very existence means it's unknown if the damn thing is even real. This is all done to make the Black Goat more scary, as both Mae and the player have no frame of reference for what they're looking at or how to fight against it.
• Orcus on His Throne: If it's real, then it's the Greater-Scope Villain of the story. However, it doesn't really do anything to stop Mae or her friends from investigating what the cult is doing, or give the cult much in the way of assistance. Either way, if the Black Goat is real, it's rather apathetic to the goings-on in Possum Springs.

Lost Constellation Characters

Adina Astra

The protagonist of Lost Constellation. An alligator astronomer who wanders into a haunted forest on Longest Night to see her dead lover again and find the Ghost Star, where all souls go to after death.

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• Alliterative Name: She's an alligator astronomer named Adina Astra
• Determinator: If Adina says she's going to survive the forest, then she's going to survive the forest.
• Meaningful Name: Her name is a play on "ad astra", which is Latin for "to the stars". Fitting, given her profession.
• Meaningful Rename: It's heavily implied she renamed herself after becoming an astronomer.
• My God, What Have I Done?: She has this reaction when the ghost she summons outside the Huncher's hut turns out to be the Huncher's sister.
• Opaque Nerd Glasses: She wears these.

The Huncher

A huge, hunchbacked rat who lives in a house in the middle of the forest.

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• Beauty Equals Goodness: The Huncher is an evil character with a hideous appearance. She's twice Adina's size, hunchbacked, and clad in rags.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: She keeps a relic that once belonged to her late sister. When Adina accidentally summons the ghost of her dead sister, the Huncher is devastated.
• I'm a Humanitarian: Severed arms are hanging from the ceiling of her house, like curing meat.
• Jerkass:
  • She kidnapped a young girl, whom she keeps captive in her house. She also used poison that the girl created to sicken the Forest God, then took credit for the poisoning.
  • The Huncher refuses to offer hospitality to Adina, even though the weather is snowy and cold outside. Adina is forced to use trickery to sneak into the Huncher's house.
• Never Mess with Granny: While it isn't shown on-screen, she was strong enough to capture a young girl and keep her captive in her house. She also arranged for the Forest God's poisoning using poison that her captive created.
• Wicked Witch: She's a Baba Yaga-esque character, living in an isolated cabin, kidnapping children, and controls the weather.

The Kid

A young wolf girl who was kidnapped into slavery by the Huncher. Former sawmill worker.

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• Because You Were Nice to Me: Spares Adina's life because she tried to save her from the Huncher.
• Creepy Child: Very rude, cynical, and morally unhinged.
• Deadpan Snarker: Much to the Huncher's annoyance.
• The Dragon: To the Huncher.
• Dragon Ascendant: Inherits the Huncher's powers after the latter's demise.
• Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": Just "The Kid", "Sawmill Kid", or "The Huncher's Child".
• Evil Versus Evil: She hated the Huncher, but was also shown to be just as evil if not more.
• Overnight Age-Up: Mysteriously grows older after the Huncher is defeated.

The Snowmen

Snowmen created by Adina that become possessed by the spirits of the dead.

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• The Alcoholic: The spirit inside the bottle is implied to be one. They're surprised to learn they've been sober the whole time they were dead.
• And I Must Scream: One of the spirits is confused and frightened when it finds itself trapped in a snowman. The creature is so damaged that it can't even give coherent answers to Adina's questions.
• Sealed Good in a Can: Most of the spirits are sealed in personal accoutrements that they owned during life, such as a bottle or a collar. When one of these items is placed on a snowman, the spirit is transferred to the snowman. Many of the snowman that Adina creates this way are friendly and helpful.

King Stevenson

A cat monarch who seeks the Forest God and/or the Huncher after the death of his baroness resulted in her ghost haunting his kingdom.

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• Expy: Appearance wise, he looks like a male Mae.
• Human Resources: He uses a severed arm that was donated from a criminal for a ritual in finding the Huncher's Hollow.
• Royals Who Actually Do Something: He travels into the dangerous forest with only the help of a three-man entourage.

Cabin Wolf

An unnamed wolf who lives in a small cabin in the forest, he runs a bogus coffin-making business.

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• An Odd Place to Sleep: Most of the furnishings in his cabin are made from unused coffins, including his bed.
• Distinguished Gentleman's Pipe: Always seen with a pipe in his mouth.
• Honest John's Dealership: Runs a bogus coffin business where he fools travelers into buying coffins from him so they can be buried if they die in forest. It's found out later that he never buries his deceased customers as promised.
• Insult Backfire: His response to Adina telling him to "go to Hell": "Hell's warm at least!"
• Jerkass: Very self-centered and rude as well as an unethical business proprietor.
• Karma Houdini: Besides Adina repeatedly barging into his home and annoying him, he doesn't get his comeuppance for his shady coffin business.