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Curtis Craig
Played by: Paul Morgan Stetler
The main character, a troubled man who works at the company Wyntech.
- Alliterative Name: Curtis Craig.
- Artificial Human: Curtis, to replace the real Curtis. As a result, he has a hard time connecting with people, but gets the consolation prize of being sexually desirable to everyone he meets, man or woman.
- The Beast Master: Curtis is somehow able to command his rat to fetch his wallet out from under the couch, using a granola bar to lure it in.
It's eventually revealed that Curtis is an alien made from dead rats and that could have given him a telepathic connection toward rats. - Break the Cutie: Let's face it. Curtis Craig received this in one form or another for his entire life. Which is a part of the Hecatomb's motivation for killing people. See the Grand Theft Me entry below.
- Chick Magnet: There's only two people in the office who aren't into Curtis in some form. Hell, even Trevor and Bob,
allegedly wants him. - Dark and Troubled Past: Oh...man! Curtis Craig defines this trope. His mother dressed him like a girl, subjected him to electric shocks while he was strapped to a chair, as well as chased after him with a knife with the intent to kill him. She kept on calling him "a monster", which was apparently her reason or excuse for abusing him. Curtis ultimately finds her having committed suicide. His father seemed to neglect him, kept looking at him with sad eyes, and tried to protect him from his mother - but not enough. He is shot to death by WynTech goons, and Curtis finds his dead body. It is later revealed that his father worked with Paul Allen Warner on experiments with a portal between dimensions. While no one was looking, PAW grabbed young Curtis and tossed him into the portal. Curtis apparently came out, but he was never quite the same. The reason for that is... you know what, you should look at the Tomato in the Mirror entry below.
- Gayngst: Curtis outright admits to have this in one of his therapy sessions, confiding that he's attracted to Trevor as well as Jocilyn, and has polyamorous fantasies about the two of them.
- Jerkass: As you go through the game it's really hard to feel sorry for him at all. He cheats on Jocilyn with Therese and tries to cover it up, withholds evidence and obstructs justice, and proves to be no better than Paul Allen Warner in that area.
- Jerkass Has a Point: Curtis after Jocilyn says he's acting weird following Bob's murder. He says, "Oh, I'm sorry, Joss. I guess finding disemboweled dead guys in my cubicle just throws me right the fuck off."
- Kavorka Man: Curtis, as mentioned is decidedly attractive to all the characters despite being ridiculously plain in both appearance and personality. This is apparently a new development, since he's just as confused at everyone he knows suddenly coming on to him as the audience.
- Lack of Empathy: Curtis most certainly has this. He compares the death of Bob Arnold as road-kill found on the road. He also admits to his therapist that he truly feels no connection to people. He apparently considers his pet rat Blob to be his only family. There are reasons for this, however. That, and he does have moments of actual empathy.
- Limited Wardrobe: Curtis seems to wear the same grey pocket-T every day.
- Loners Are Freaks: Curtis is most certainly a loner, and at home he treats a pet rat named Blob like the only member of his family. He has a few friends in the workplace, like Jocilyn and Trevor. It turns out that he has reasons for living like this. This trope becomes a problem for Curtis when Detective Powell questions him about where he was when a murder happened. He tries to explain that he spent the night in his home with Therese. Unfortunately, he is unable to tell her where Therese lives because he does not know that. Also, he does not want to explain to her that Therese broke into his home and he not only did nothing about it, but he engaged in bondage sex with her. Detective Powell can tell (maybe) that Curtis is a loner and she is convinced that he is serial killer because he is a loner.
- Really Gets Around: Curtis, courtesy of the powers of the Kavorka Man, sleeps with both Jocilyn and Therese, starts visiting a bondage/swingers club with the latter, and has his best friend Trevor declare his undying love for him although Trevor dies before their relationship can become physical.
- Replacement Goldfish: Curtis is an alien who has shapeshifted into the form of the real Curtis, who has been trapped in fake!Curtis' home dimension.
- Ridiculously Average Guy: Curtis. At least in the first part of the game.
- This Loser Is You: The game flip-flops on this with Curtis. On one hand, almost the entire office has the hots for him (maybe even Bob if you believe what his actor has to say about the character,) but on the other hand he's still a geeky loser and The Chew Toy, regular referred to as "Rat Boy."
- Tomato in the Mirror: Curtis is actually an extradimensional alien. The real Curtis never left the alien dimension, and has mutated and developed psychic powers to torment the clone Curtis with past dimensional barriers.
- The Chew Toy: Curtis Craig is either this or The Woobie. You decide!
- Two First Names: Curtis Craig.
Trevor Barnes
Played by: Paul Mitri
One of Curtis' colleagues at Wyntech and his Best Friend.
- Break the Comedian: Trevor, a Deadpan Snarker extraordinaire who enjoys things like comical puppets, trading cheeky emails with Curtis and telling spectacularly ridiculous stories. However, as the story goes on and the bodies start piling up, Trevor's witticisms start seeming like deliberate attempts to keep him and Curtis from going insane from stress as they delve deeper into the mystery. Once Trevor realizes how much danger they're in, though, all jokes are off: his last email to Curtis is a horror-stricken "FORGET WYNTECH AND GET OUT OF THERE NOW!" In his final scene, a deeply-shaken Trevor decides to go to the cops and blow the whistle, soberly warning Curtis to stay as far away from the action as possible so he doesn't get hurt. And then the Hecatomb murders him.
- Bury Your Gays: Trevor doesn't make it to the end of the game.
- Camp Gay: Trevor is a fairly realistic example, although it's implied he's intentionally playing up the stereotype, as he completely drops it once things get serious.
- The Cutie: Trevor Barnes, Curtis' adorably snarky best friend who's always there for him, no matter what.
- Gay Best Friend: Trevor Barnes to Curtis.
- Only Sane Man: Surprisingly, Trevor. He's a pretty efficient hacker and, at the game's climax, tells Curtis he needs to get the hell out of WynTech. Why he decided to wait around in the highly isolated store room just to tell Curtis not to go to WynTech is another matter though... If he had just gone to the police before that, the outcome of the game might have turned out better.
Jocilyn Rowan
Played by: Monique Parent
One of Curtis' colleagues at Wyntech and his girlfriend.
- Yandere: Jocilyn in one of Curtis' visions, where she pulls a gun on Curtis so that if she can't have him, no one will.
Therese Manning
Played by: Ragna Sigrun
One of Curtis' colleagues at Wyntech with an interest in BDSM.- Cruel and Unusual Death: Therese is stabbed, gagged, held up by a hook and electrocuted to death in her own blood, with her cries of help being ignored as people assume she's working with a client.
- Depraved Bisexual: Therese is a dominatrix who regularly frequents an S&M club. Not so bad by itself, but otherwise she comes across as a complete nutcase. She stalks Curtis to make him her new lover and goes so far as to break into his apartment and install a bondage body harness in his bedroom without his prior consent while he was away. When he objects because he has a girlfriend (Jocilyn), Therese tells him that she's welcome too because she finds her a 'real cutie'.
- Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping: Therese gets an odd foreign accent on a few lines. The actress' real name is (according to The Other Wiki) Ragna Sigrun, which is Icelandic. So presumably that's her real accent slipping in through her put-on American accent.
- Really Gets Around: Therese as well, being a frequent patron of an S&M club in town.
Bob Arnold
Played by: Don Berg
One of Curtis' colleagues at Wyntech who is a rival to Curtis for the new promotion.
- Asshole Victim: Bob is the Sitcom Archnemesis that everyone in-game hates, and when he gets killed the characters seem more affected by such a gruesome death being done in their office more than the actual person who was killed.
- Jerkass: Bob, to the extreme. "Stealing files" is the worst Curtis accuses him of when the detective asks him what Bob did to wrong him, but Bob straight-up sabotages Curtis's computer and was preparing to brick his entire hard drive when he got murdered. Mind you, Curtis did not even get to find out what Bob was doing in his cubicle, which is why "stealing files" was his worst accusation.
- Sitcom Archnemesis: Bob.... He's a rival employee of Curtis, both dislike each other, and they're simply fighting over a promotion at work. It is such a pity that Bob found out in the hardest way possible that he was not in a sitcom.
- Tsundere: Believe it or not, Bob may actually be this towards Curtis, according to his actor (he was just in extreme tsuntsun mode out of denial for his possible feelings for him.)
Tom Ravell
Played by: Michael Taylor Donovan
One of Curtis' colleagues at Wyntech. Team leader.
- Nice Guy: Tom Ravell, who is the only one of Curtis' coworkers apart from the somewhat-irritating Jocilyn who doesn't verbally abuse him, stalk him, conduct evil experiments with an interdimensional portal, or waste his time with a pointless story about potatoes.
- Too Dumb to Live: Tom Revell goes into WynTech to type up a report of Paul Allen Warner's conduct, so he can send it to the Board of Directors and take down PAW. This would be fine, except he is all alone in the cubicle farm in the middle of the night. One would think he would take precautions after a murder occurred across the room a day earlier and PAW told him "YOU ARE A DEAD MAN!" But no, he did not.
Paul Allen Warner
Played by: Warren Burton
CEO of Wyntech.
- And I Must Scream: Paul Allen Warner ends up as a severed head hanging in Dimension X and still alive in The Stinger. He gasps with a look of terror on his face, lacking the capacity to do anything else.
- Big Bad: Paul Allen Warner. However, Paul Allen Warner's status gets hijacked by the Hecatomb, and Paul Allen Warner is treated like nothing more than an afterthought by the end of the game.
- Lack of Empathy: Paul Allen Warner. Just about every scene involving him in some way demonstrates this trope in disturbing ways. One particularly creepy example takes place shortly after Bob's murder. If Curtis goes back into WynTech, he will find PAW working in his office. That's right, PAW is working in his office, on the heels of a gruesome murder, one that took place in the cubicle farm next to his office, and one that caused trauma to a large number of his employees and leave work for the rest of the day. Is that awful or what?
- Obviously Evil: Paul. Allen. Warner. If you can't figure out he's evil in some way within the first minute of meeting him, you're not exactly a good judge of character. This is apparent even before he's introduced:
- He casually dismisses the environmental damage caused to a species of fish in the company's efforts to get needed ingredients for drugs in an email message.
- He gives a cover story for the lower levels of the building being restricted and he backpedals in an email message - "We are trying to keep you out, I mean in!" (Strange, you would think that you cannot backpedal in an email message).
- Curtis calls Paul Allen Warner on the phone to let him know that he completed an assignment, and Curtis is told "Well done, my boy! Well done! I am going to keep my eye on you!" (PAW says this in a rather creepy way).
- Curtis goes into PAW's office and finds a lot of mounted animals on the wall (Which is creepy, because why would anyone want to mount animals on the walls of his or her company office?).
- Curtis remembers how he heard Paul Allen Warner yell "I'll kill you, you son of a bitch!" to someone who is imploring him to stop doing something that's obviously immoral.
- To reiterate — All these examples take place at the beginning of the game before you actually meet the guy. And after you do he spends the entire game acting as suspicious, creepy, and sinister as possible, stopping just short of regularly breaking into diabolical laughter.
- You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Actually subverted; Warner survives this attempt, and ends up having his decapitated head attached to a series of tendrils in the alien dimension. The way Curtis looks over at him at the end implies Curtis put him through the portal.
Detective Powell
Played by: Regina Byrd Smith
A homicide detective in the Seattle Police Department.
- Heteronormative Crusader: Powell expresses her disgust at Curtis and Therese's "strange way" of showing affection through bondage and pain.
- Jerkass: As detailed under Police Are Useless, she is terrible and unprofessional at her job as well as a very vicious, unsympathetic individual overall, harassing Curtis with no actual proof just because he acts strangely. One can not really blame Curtis for obstructing justice if the main police unit involved in the case is this awful and incompetent.
- Police Are Useless: Initially averted, but quickly played straight to the point of being painful to watch. The only time you see the police in action after Bob's murder is Detective Powell, who is not a credit to the force for many reasons including the following:
- She allows Paul Allen Warner to get his office back to work the day after the murders, ruining the crime scene, and all she does is threaten him with an obstruction of justice, no actual action is taken.
- She latches onto Curtis as her prime suspect with absolutely no evidence aside from he acts a bit weird and suspicious, ignoring the idea his odd behavior may have something to do with his cubicle being the site of a horrific murder. She also questions him alone every time despite being convinced he's a homicidal maniac.
- She lets Curtis know he's her prime suspect and intimidates him with a warning that if she finds any shred of evidence to point to him, she's locking him up. She then never puts him under surveillance of any sort, or does any sort of actual interrogation.
- After Tom is killed, Curtis told her he overheard Paul Allen Warner and Tom arguing about Warner forcing everyone to come in to work the day after Bob's murder, the argument including Warner threatening Tom's life, and he suspects a company conspiracy is to blame for the killings. She never even considers the possibility he may be on to something. Hell, it's almost as if she deliberately refuses to consider it purely because Curtis is the one who said it.
Dr. Rikki Harburg
Played by: Cynthia Steele
Curtis' therapist.
- Asshole Victim: Curtis's therapist is pretty useless, and her reflections on their sessions behind his back make it pretty clear she's not particularly interested in his wellbeing.
- The Shrink: Dr. Harburg.
Dr. Terrance Marek
Played by: Michael David Simms
The head psychiatrist at the Bedlam House Curtis was sent to.
- Karma Houdini: Doctor Marek, the man who put Curtis through at least a year of torture, and was apparently in league with Paul Warner, only gets his comeuppance in a dream-like scenario; the real one goes unpunished.
- Psycho Psychologist: Dr. Marek is a complete psycho running a hellish Bedlam House where he tortures his patients. He's also in league with a Corrupt Corporate Executive and merrily sacrifices his patients to be consumed by interdimensional aliens. He also bugged his colleague Dr. Harburg's phone to keep tabs on Curtis.
Marianne Craig
Played by: Denise Loveday
Curtis' late mother.
- Driven to Suicide: It's implied that Curtis's mother sub-consciously knew that Curtis was an unnatural imitation of her real son and that the conflicting emotions of love and revulsion drove her insane, causing her to torment the boy and finally kill herself.
- The Cuckoolander Was Right: While she obviously went nuts because of it, Curtis's mother could somehow tell the boy was an alien monster and not really her son.
The Hecatomb
Played by: Burt Bulos
A mysterious demon tormenting Curtis.
- Evil Twin: Inverted; the game's main villain is the original Curtis Craig, while the hero is an alien who has taken on his form.
- From Nobody to Nightmare: The original Curtis Craig. He started out as a young, innocent boy, got thrown into a transdimensional portal, was used as a guinea pig, and ended turning into the Hecatomb, a cannibalistic monster with psychic powers and a hunger for murder.
- Evil Is Visceral: The Hecatomb, the hallucinations he causes, the deaths he causes, his projection, and his real form, the original Curtis Craig. Everything about the Hecatomb defines this trope.
- Humanoid Abomination: He appears to be a human encased in fungus-like plating.
- Tortured Monster: The Hecatomb turns out to be the original Curtis Craig, sacrificed to the aliens by Paul Allen Warner. He has been encased in their organic matter and mutated to the point that his organs are outside his body and he will die if his biomask is removed. In his torment he uses his psychic powers to lash out at everyone he can and tries to drive alien Curtis to madness for inadvertently stealing his life.
- Transhuman Abomination: Being trapped in Dimension X has warped his body and given him immense psychic powers.
- Was Once a Man: The Hecatomb. Would you believe that a human being ended up becoming a monster that only has a few human-like characteristics?
- Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: The Hecatomb is revealed to be the original Curtis Craig, thrown into the alien world when he was young by PAW and forced to grow up in a hostile alien dimension. He wants to destroy alien Curtis and kill his friends out of revenge.
