Characters from the Goosebumps novel Piano Lessons Can Be Murder
Jerry Hawkins
Jerome "Jerry" Hawkins
Portrayed By: Ben Cook
The main protagonist of Piano Lessons Can Be Murder. He and his family just moved into town, and he comes across a ghost in his new house and a creepy teacher in his new music school.
- Adaptation Dye-Job: He describes himself in the book as possessing brown hair. The episode, however, depicts him with blond hair.
- Allergic to Routine: He gets easily excited and distracted, and has to have something to focus on to get his entertainment going, which is why he dislikes labor. While helping his parents move their belongings into their house, he jokes that he's allergic to work.
- Bratty Half-Pint: He likes to play plenty of jokes, especially towards his parents, which gives them plenty of grief. Not only that, but he can also be quite whiny for his age, especially when it comes to getting people to listen to his story.
- Break the Haughty: He undergoes quite a rude awakening upon encountering ghosts, killers, and insane lunatics.
- Class Clown: He always takes on this role whenever he goes to any school, and he doesn't take long to do so when he arrives at his new school.
- Crying Wolf: Because of his constant pranks and sly personality, he has a hard time convincing his parents about the ghost that he hears at night. And even when they can see that he is clearly serious, they decide to send him to a therapist instead of believing him.
- Embarrassing First Name: He is not fond at all of his first name, Jerome, and is displeased whenever his mother uses it towards him when scolding him for his unruly behavior
- Hidden Depths: In addition to his ability to play the piano well, he also has a knack of pitching a ball well, which is why he decides to join baseball after his adventure involing pianos and ghosts. Naturally, he is very good at it, with many of his teammates complimenting him for his perfect hands.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: He is easily very mischievous and uncooperative, but he genuinely cares about people in distress, especially the ones which he learns are dealing with trauma from the local tragedies.
- Literal-Minded: During one session with Dr. Shreek, he tells Jerry that his hands are alive and let them breathe, as in that is energetic with his hands. Jerry, however, thinks that Dr. Shreek is telling him that his hands are living things that talk to him.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: He has such a rambunctious personality and short attention span that when he politely greets Mr. Shreek upon first meeting him for his first piano lesson, he notices his parents exchanging surprised glances at each other, wondering how he could be so well behaved.
Andrew Toggle (Unmarked Spoilers)
Andrew Toggle
Portrayed By: Géza Kovács (TV)
"I love beautiful music, Jerry. And music sounds so much better, so much more perfect, when human mistakes don't get in the way."
An inventor and robotics expert obsessed with creating beautiful music. He secretly operates a music school via posing as the janitor, to find people with beautiful hands which he then chops off for the sake of converting them into machines because he can't create hands from scratch.
WARNING: Toggle plays such a huge role in that practically all of his tropes were once spoiler-tagged. Though the tags have been removed for aesthetic purposes, massive spoilers still follow below.
- And I Must Scream: His fate at the end of "Piano Lessons can be Murder" is spending eternity perfecting the piano in the basement of the music school.
- Asshole Victim: One of the most depraved villains in the entire franchise, and his final fate is implied to be equally horrible.
- Big Bad: Of Piano Lessons Can Be Murder.
- Brilliant, but Lazy: He's tried creating robotic hands from scratch but he kept failing, so he decided the easier thing to do would be to kill people, steal their hands, and then install wiring inside them so they can play music. In the TV show, it seems as a child he took piano lessons but was too lazy to actually practice. His teacher mentions he was a very clever child, but also very lazy.
- Cool and Unusual Punishment: In the TV show, his former teacher is punishing him by making him practice the piano for eternity.
- Cut Lex Luthor a Check: For how talented he is with machines, Toggle would rather keep to himself and use his genius to reanimate robotic hands than anything really beneficial. Then again this just shows what a petty, selfish human being he is; he could just as easily do good work for people, but chooses not to because he only cares about his own gratification.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: An elderly man who is a little too excited about giving a 12-year-old boy piano lessons? Hmmm...
- The Dog Bites Back: Dragged to his death by the hands of the students he harvested and enslaved. School reunions can be a pain, eh, Toggle?
- The Dog Was the Mastermind: At first it seems Dr. Shreek is a madman with an unhealthy obsession regarding music and hands, but then it turns out he was a robot the whole time... and Toggle is the aforementioned madman with the unhealthy obsession.
- Evil Old Folks: At least in the TV series. He gives off some rather pedophilic vibes in the book, which are not toned down for the live-action adaptation.
- Evil Teacher: His "greatest creation", Dr. Shreek.
- Faux Affably Evil: Constantly acts cheery and pleasant, which makes him all the more terrifying.
- Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse: The Tv episode reveals Toggle's murders were borne from his insecurity over his own Piano skills. The ghost of his teacher lets him know that was no excuse for his own laziness and punishes him.
- Helping Hands: Creates these out of the bodies of his victims. They do end up being helpful, but certainly not in the way he wanted.
- Humans Are the Real Monsters: It really says something that in a series full of ghosts, aliens, and other bizarre monstrosities, this man, an average human engineer, manages to stand out as one of its most murderously heinous villains.
- Inferiority Superiority Complex: Quite possibly. He seems to have this image of himself as a "brilliant robotician", but when the ghost of his teacher chides him for being a lazy student, Toggle breaks down crying and petulantly whines that he did his best. It's subtly implied that he killed all those people not just for their hands, but because he was jealous of their musical gifts and wanted to show up his teacher.
- Manchild: Once the ghost of his old piano teacher puts him in his place, he's a huge baby.
- The Man Behind the Man: He created Dr. Shreek and made him the figurehead for the music school so he could stay behind the scenes and continue killing people.
- Obliviously Evil: He sees nothing wrong with his vile deeds, so much so that he thinks Jerry should be volunteering for his experiment. This doesn't really make him that pitiful or tragic, and only emphasizes how callously apathetic he is to the lives of his victims.
- Never Found the Body: In the book, the ghosts of his victims reclaim their hands, then carry him away to an unknown fate.
- Non-Action Big Bad: He has fantastic technological skill, but as the ghosts of his victims prove, he's no fighter.
- Powered by a Forsaken Child: Uses all the hands he steals to form the ultimate piano concerto.
- Psychopathic Manchild: In the TV version, when the ghost woman finally confronts him over the evil he's done, Toggle begins whining like a little boy, saying "I tried my best! I practiced every day! But it was never good enough for you! 'Faster, Andrew! Again, Andrew!'"
- Ridiculously Human Robots: Dr. Shreek, again, and several other "instructors" Jerry sees around the school. Not human enough, apparently, and that's where the students come in...
- Self-Made Orphan: Implied in the TV show, where it appears the ghost who has been following Jerry was Toggle's old music teacher and may have been his mother. She also appears to be his first victim.
- Self-Serving Memory: In the TV episode, when the ghost of his teacher mentions the above Brilliant, but Lazy part, Andrew argues that he practiced every day, but it was just never enough for her.
- Serial Killer: Has a very big body count by the time Jerry becomes a student at the school. Just look at the number of hands he's stolen in the TV episode as further proof of this.
- Small Name, Big Ego: Dr. Shreek claims he's a world famous robotician. Given that Toggle actually admits he programmed him to say that, and we never hear anyone else mention this about him, it speaks volumes just how deep in his delusions he is.
- The Sociopath: He's perpetually friendly and nonchalant even when it's clear how twisted he is, uses his talents for insanely petty and self-serving reasons, and apparently sees nothing wrong with murdering as many innocents as possible to achieve his goals.
- They Look Just Like Everyone Else!: Eccentricities and inventions aside, he's a regular, kindly fellow, which makes it all the more ironic when his atrocities are revealed.
- Villains Want Mercy: In the book, when the ghosts of his angry victims show up to take revenge, Toggle pathetically wails and begs for mercy, something he no doubt heard many times from them. Obviously, he gets none.
- Walking Spoiler: In fact, EVERY trope listed under this character folder about him was spoiler marked at one point, and in vast amounts!
- Would Hurt a Child: He's implied to have already killed several and planned to do the same to Jerry.
Dr. Shreek
Dr. Shreek
Portrayed by: Aron Tager
The head teacher of a piano lessons school Jerry is made to attend, who oversees the building with Mr. Toggle, and has a very alarming interest in Jerry's hands.
- Ax-Crazy: Shreek shares his master's depraved fascination with using hands for twisted experiments.
- Bad Santa: Somewhat invoked by his design. He's described as a round, jolly man with a white beard. The winter setting of the story also helps this.
- Beard of Evil: A creepy robotic Serial Killer with a Santa-like beard.
- Berserk Button: He goes ballistic when Jerry comes to his school to inform him that he no longer wants to take lessons with him, and chases him down in rage. Given that he is actually a robot, this "button" per se is actually part of his programming.
- The Dragon: He serves as Toggle's loyal muscle and efficient weapon for both luring and killing any poor soul who attends the school.
- The Dreaded: Given how Kim immediately reacted with tremendous fear when Jerry told her that he is taking piano lessons with Dr. Shreek, and how she reluctantly explained in detail to him later, this teacher is the center of plenty of frightening rumors in the town regarding him and his music school. The truth about him is actually stranger than that.
- The Heavy: Until Toggle is revealed as the true mastermind, Shreek is the most prominent antagonist, as he's directly running the school and an implicit serial murderer.
- Innocent Blue Eyes: He has blue eyes that sort of twinkle when Jerry looks at him. Subverted, as this is a show of innocence when he is actually quite guilty of a multitude of evil secrets.
- Names to Run Away from Really Fast: As if the surname "Shreek" was not a sinister sounding name already, he is revealed late in the story to be quite a deadly lunatic.
- Red Herring: He's already quite odd from the get-go, and while he's definitely behind the disappearances, he's not the true villain of the book.
- Ridiculously Human Robots: Dr. Toggle admits to Jerry that Dr. Shreek is his best robot yet, which truly shows given how lifelike he seemed, and yet nobody else ever suspected a thing about it beforehand.
- Robotic Psychopath: Dr. Shreek is deliberately designed as an android Serial Killer to provide his creator with new test subjects.
- Sliding Scale of Robot Intelligence: He seems to fall into type 3, as while he's fully subservient to Toggle, he's also autonomous enough to pose as a human being on his own.
- Walking Spoiler: Granted, he is not actually the main antagonist of the story, but he is quite ripe to ignite spoilers in a conversation.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: Toggle shuts him down before he can kill Jerry, but it's unknown what happened to him after his master's death or if he was eventually discovered along with Toggle's lab.
- Would Hurt a Child: It's implied Toggle uses this mechanical madman to kill his young victims for him to avoid getting his hands dirty.
