The Heroes: Team RWBY | Team JNPR | Ozpin and Oscar
Remnant: Sanus (Eastern) | Sanus (Western) | Anima | Solitas
Antagonists: Salem's Faction (Salem | Cinder Fall) | White Fang | Grimm Bestiary
Beyond Remnant: The Ever After
Due to this series being an Alternate Continuity of the main series, this character page for RWBY: Ice Queendom in turn focuses on the anime's version of these characters as well as any new characters that are introduced.
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Protagonists
Team RWBY
Ruby Rose
Lucid Dream
Voiced by: Saori Hayami (Japanese), Lindsay Jones (English)
Ruby Rose is a girl who is enrolled into Beacon Academy two years early after demonstrating her fighting prowess against Roman Torchwick and his men.
She wields Crescent Rose, a mechanical scythe that can also transform into a sniper rifle. Her Semblance is known as Petal Burst, and allows her to move with incredible speed.
In the dream-world, Ruby wears casual, messy clothes and her weapon can collapse down into a snowboard.
- Book Dumb: Although she has natural fighting talent, she admits that her grades at Signal Academy aren't the best. She later sleeps through Professor Port's class, only waking up when he unveils a caged boarbatusk for someone in the class to fight.
- Colorful Contrails: Whenever Ruby activates her Semblance, her super-fast movements are accompanied by a trail of highly-stylized red rose petals that dissipate into the wind.
- Damn You, Muscle Memory!: When Ruby tries fighting in the dream-world, her attempt to use her combination scythe-gun option doesn't work as planned. Weiss doesn't realize how Crescent Rose correctly functions, so placed the scythe blade and gun barrel at opposite ends of the weapon. Ruby isn't impressed and concludes she'll give Weiss a crash-course in how her weapon works after the Nightmare's been defeated.
- Heroic BSoD: In Episode 8, Ruby is reduced to tears as she contemplates her selfishness and failure to consider Weiss's feelings. Trapped in her own guilt and despair, she sinks into a stupor, mumbling apologies to a Weiss who isn't there. She is infected by the Nightmare that is infesting Weiss, and sinks into a dream-world of her own making, even as she's still trapped inside Weiss's dream-world.
- Sinister Scythe: Her weapon is primarily a scythe, though it can transform into a sniper rifle.
- Something about a Rose: Her last name is Rose and when she uses her Semblance she appears to turn into a flurry of rose petals.
- Swiss-Army Weapon: Crescent Rose is a scythe that can transform into a rifle. In Weiss' dreamscape, the weapon collapses down into a snowboard.
- Was It All a Lie?: When Ruby sees how Weiss' inner self is treating the people she knows in real life, Ruby accuses her of lying to everyone for her own personal gain, and states she won't have anything to do with Weiss once they've dealt with this situation. Although Weiss looks briefly stung by Ruby's rejection, Ruby doesn't notice and Weiss swiftly moves past the moment.
Weiss Schnee
Nightmare Side
Voiced by: Yōko Hikasa (Japanese), Kara Eberle (English)
The heiress of the Schnee Dust Company, Weiss is motivated by the desire to uphold her family's legacy.
Her weapon is Myrtenaster, a rapier with a revolving chamber that allows her to use various Dust types in combat. Her Semblance produces glyphs that allow her to create a range of different effects, especially when combined with Dust.
Within her own dream, she wears a military costume like those worn by Atlas Military commanders.
- Academic Alpha Bitch: She prides herself on a perfect performance and can't stand Ruby's various quirks. She ends up opting for pretending to be a friendly teammate in hopes of "fixing" her team leader.
- Adaptational Jerkass: Weiss misconstrues Port's advice to be a better teammate, believing she'll get automatic teammate points for "fixing" her leader's flaws. She also appears to be more bigoted than in the original continuity, crying when realizing she has a Faunus teammate; Yang calls her out for it, asking Weiss if she's just pretending to like her other teammates as well. The Nightmare accuses her of just pretending to get along with other people, a conclusion that Ruby also comes to when confronting Weiss in the dream world.
- Armor-Piercing Question: While arguing over Faunus, Weiss demands to know if Blake has ever attended the funerals of the people killed by the White Fang, faced the pain of their loved ones, and whether she understands how much they've made Weiss suffer. It triggers Blake into lashing out that "we're" tired of being pushed around, outing herself as a Faunus and a former White Fang member. Blake turns tail and flees, not realizing that her Armor-Piercing Response caught Weiss by surprise; Weiss is left to rethink how she handles her relationship with Blake in future.
- Badass in Distress: In fact, being a badass only made her even more vulnerable to the Nightmare, as it easily overpowers her and leaves her comatose in the real world due to having a huge reserve of energy to feed off of. While the Nightmare works on breaking her down from the inside, her teammates have to travel into her dreams to rescue her. Unlike other examples, Team RWBY has to fight Weiss herself as much as the Nightmare, on account of Weiss's inner demons making her adversarial to her teammates.
- Big Sister Worship: She believes in Winter's opinion above all others. In her dream world, Winter is depicted as a Great Big Book of Everything that Weiss refers to for guidance and what judgment calls to make.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: After her discussion with Port, Weiss resigns herself to tolerating her teammates; she concludes from Pyrrha's acceptance of Jaune that it's perfectly okay for her to act as a supportive teammate to Ruby if it means she'll earn points for "fixing" a bad leader. When she's openly bigoted about the missing Blake's Faunus nature, Yang bluntly asks her if that means she's just pretending to like Ruby (and by extension, everyone else). A fact only cemented by Weiss's nightmare self blaming Yang for coddling Ruby, then deciding to lock them, and Blake, away forever.
- Cheerful Child: Manifested as an army of Mini Mes in her dreamscape representing her bottled up happiness. They get progressively creepier the longer they're out, eventually turning Kaiju-sized and rampaging through the city.
- Dramatically Missing the Point: When she sees Pyrrha happily accept Jaune as leader despite his weaknesses, she concludes that the behavior is to earn "points" by fixing a bad leader and decides to do the same with Ruby. She doesn't understand that Pyrrha has faith in Jaune's leadership potential, nor does she see that Pyrrha and Jaune have become genuine friends.
- Dream Weaver: Nega-Weiss is capable of effortlessly soloing the rest of her team, has an army of robot soldiers, access to infinite Dust that she can summon out of a portal, and is capable of summoning multiple Ursa (when at this point in the main series, she couldn't summon anything and even as far in as Volume 8 tends to stick to summoning one thing at a time). It reflects both the Nightmare's influence and Weiss' own warped perception on being perfect.
- Fangirl: From the moment Weiss realizes Pyrrha is at Beacon, she tries to team up with her to no avail. She reveres Pyrrha's accomplishments, believing that the two of them could be the best together, oblivious to Pyrrha's visible discomfort about being put on a pedestal. Her dreamscape takes this further by centering the town square entirely on Pyrrha.
- Fantastic Racism: While Weiss distrusted Faunus at the start of the original show, it was tied to her belief that any one of them could be allied with the White Fang, an organization that has contributed to her family's grief. Here, she openly hates all Faunus, believing them to be naturally opposed to humans. When she finds out that Blake is a Faunus, and seemingly a member of the White Fang, she's more upset about her teammate being a Faunus than her possibly having ties to a terrorist group. In her dream, the White Fang are portrayed as literal monsters, being Grimm-like humanoids wearing White Fang uniforms, and Nega-Weiss treats Blake as a blight on her perfect empire. While a Nightmare-induced exaggeration of her worst traits, that isn't far from how Weiss thought of them prior to her Character Development.
- Inelegant Blubbering: Despite trying to appear above everyone else, she openly and loudly cries like a spoiled child after complaining to Yang about how nothing about her time in Beacon has been going her way.
- Innocently Insensitive: She doesn't seem to realize that her reverence of Pyrrha makes the girl in question uncomfortable.
- In-Universe Nickname: After learning about Weiss' Nightmare Side, the other characters start to refer to her as "Negative Weiss" ("Nega-Weiss" for short).
- It's All About Me: Weiss consistently acts to fulfill her own desires, and reacts badly when things don't go her way. Her tearful breakdown in front of Yang over her failures ends up looking more like self-pity as a result.
- Jerkass Has a Point: During an argument with Yang, Weiss surmises that Ruby is so reckless because she is constantly hungry for approval, which she attributes to Yang spoiling her sister with attention. Weiss may have been looking for reasons to talk down to her leader, but her accusation is accurate. Ruby's own father, Taiyang, made a similar observation before his daughters went to Beacon; the difference being that he encouraged Yang to allow Ruby some space to become independent.
- Protectorate: Nega-Weiss locks those who are precious to her inside prisons not to punish them but to protect them and keep them "pure". As a result, Team JNPR, Ruby, Yang and the Little Weiss's are all being protected by being locked away. The jail that trapped the Sillies turns out to have been a protected zone thanks to the yellow Relic. Jaune only realises that once he realises the prison has been overrun by the Nightmare after he removes it and gives it to Ruby.
- Nice to the Waiter: In spite of her negative qualities being more pronounced here, Weiss still treats her family's servant Klein with kindness and gratitude, showing that she is still good deep down.
- Summon Magic: Nightmare Side Weiss has already fully realized Schnee family's power to create ice replicas of those they have defeated, being able to summon multiple Ursa replicas at once.
- Tsundere: For as much as even Weiss' inner self chastises Ruby for her seeming childishness and impulsivity, deep down Weiss holds a deep affection for her. Unfortunately, Nega-Weiss twists this affection into a possessive obsession and tries to imprison Ruby to keep her for herself.
- What the Hell, Hero?: When Blake goes missing, Yang begins to suspect that Weiss is only pretending to be a good team player and accuses her of being a bad friend and not liking her teammates. The Nightmare accuses her of the same thing, and when Ruby sees how Weiss' dreamscape is treating the people she knows in real life, she reaches the same conclusion. She accuses Weiss of lying and informs her that once they've dealt with this threat, she will never speak to Weiss again.
Blake Belladonna
Lucid Dream
SPOILERS
Nightmare SideVoiced by: Yu Shimamura (Japanese), Arryn Zech (English)
A cat Faunus who used to belong to the terrorist organization known as the White Fang, until she abandoned it for a more honourable path.
Blake's weapon is Gambol Shroud, a katana that can transform into a gun; it is attached to a ribbon that allows it to be used like a chain-weapon, and the sheath can be wielded as a cleaver. Her Semblance is known as Shadow, and allows her to create shadow clones.
In the dream-world, Blake possesses more Faunus traits than normal, which are also more visible.
- Adaptation Dye-Job: In the original web series, Blake has pure black hair. Here she has black hair with purple underdye.
- Armor-Piercing Response: While arguing over Faunus, Weiss' demand to know if Blake has experienced the funerals of people killed by the White Fang and the suffering of the survivors like her, triggers Blake into accidentally revealing she's both a Faunus and White Fang. Her response "We're tired of being pushed around!" stops Weiss in her tracks and leaves her stunned. When they reunite, Weiss tells her that she's thought about the situation and has decided to accept that Blake is no longer a member of the White Fang and that she wants Blake to confide in her teammates in future. Blake agrees to do this.
- Cat Girl: She's a cat Faunus who possesses the ears though not the tail of a cat. Her ears are usually obscured by her bow in order to hide her heritage due to Faunus discrimination among humans.
- Cool Mask: When Blake comes up with a plan to fight Nega-Weiss, she dons a Grimm mask so that she can play up to Weiss' prejudice against the White Fang. Blake voluntarily becomes infected by a Nightmare so that she can transform into her own nightmare form, which turns out to be based on Adam. As a result, she wears a patterned mask that's similar to Adam's.
- Doppleganger Spin: Her Semblance allows her to create copies of herself. Using Dust she can make them out of various elements, like ice.
- The Dreaded: In Weiss's nightmare, Weiss is obsessed with Blake, building her up as this mysterious girl that she can't stop thinking about. As a result, she and the constructs in her dreamscape single out Blake as the worst of the Faunus due to both Weiss's prejudice and Blake being a member of the White Fang.
- Evil Costume Switch: When Blake decides that she needs to help Weiss by playing into Weiss's nightmares about the White Fang, she changes her entire appearance to play into that evil role. She allows a Nightmare to infect her and the nightmare form the Grimm transforms her into is a gender-bent version of Adam. She has a jacket and mask that's based on his, and wears thigh-high boots instead of trousers. Weiss is completely thrown by Blake's new appearance and attitude when they next meet.
- Internal Reveal: The audience is told that Adam and Blake are Faunus and White Fang when they're introduced attacking a train. However, her Beacon peers don't know this, and her team only finds out when she accidentally outs herself during an argument with Weiss.
- Katanas Are Just Better: Her weapon is primarily a katana. After Blake lets the Nightmare corrupt her in Episode 10, her weapon gets altered slightly; the blades of both parts of Gambol Shroud become red, with the katana part of her weapon becoming longer and serrated, likely inspired by Adam's sword.
- Variable-Length Chain: The ribbon tied to Gambol Shroud seems to be as long as it needs to be, with the other characters even acknowledging it when Weiss' interpretation of the weapon allows Blake to throw it across a lake and pull it right back. In her nightmare form, the ribbon literally even becomes a chain!
- Walking Spoiler: Nothing can be said about her nightmare form without giving away the climax.
- Willing Channeler: Blake tells Shion to let herself be possessed with the Nightmare that possessed Jaune as a gamble to make herself be strong enough to fight Nega-Weiss. Her being a willing host to the Nightmare makes her significantly stronger at the cost of possibly making it harder for her to be freed from it due to how fast the Nightmare is growing in her.
Yang Xiao Long
Lucid Dream
Voiced by: Ami Koshimizu (Japanese), Barbara Dunkelman (English)
Ruby's vibrant older sister, Yang has an outgoing, protective personality and a zest for life.
She uses a pair of gauntlet-shotguns called Ember Celica, which can fire explosive Dust rounds. Her Semblance is called Burn, and allows her to convert energy from the damage she takes and redirect it back against her opponents.
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- Adaptation Personality Change: Minor example, but her more callous moments - such as abandoning Ruby on their first day or her rudeness towards Penny - have been overhauled to be more in line with her later, snarky but maternal characterization
- Cool Big Sis: She's Ruby's elder sister and she's very supportive of Ruby both on and off the battlefield. Weiss's nightmare self calls her out on this and blames both her and the support she gives for the way Ruby is.
- Deadpan Snarker: So much that Blake at one point has to reign her in. Twice.
- Fashionable Asymmetry: Her outfit in Weiss's dream has one of its pant legs cut off, with the bare leg instead covered by a thigh-high stocking.
- Feet-First Introduction: Yang is introduced this time around arriving at Summer's grave on her bike. The wheels and her feet are introduced first as she stops the bike, with the rest of her revealed as she dismounts.
- Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: She's snarky and doesn't hesitate to tell people (especially Weiss) what she thinks of them but Yang is as loving and warm as could be.
- Power Fist: Her weapons are a pair of gauntlets (that double as shotguns).
- Tranquil Fury: Nega-Weiss telling her she spoiled Ruby too much makes her furious, but instead of exploding warm and bubbly Yang turns ice cold.
Team JNPR
Jaune Arc
Dream Actor
Voiced by: Hiro Shimono (Japanese), Miles Luna (English)
Jaune comes from a family of great warriors but struggles to live up to his legacy.
He carries his family's heirloom weapon, Crocea Mors, a sword that possesses a scabbard that can expand into a shield.
- Achievements in Ignorance: His lack of training and under-developed Aura saves his life when he's attacked by a Nightmare. He is better able to hold it at bay than a fully-trained Huntsman by virtue of it not having enough to feed on to overpower him quickly. He just barely hangs on long enough for his teammates to locate and defeat it.
- Adaptation Personality Change: A minor example. In RWBY, Jaune liked Pumpkin Pete's Marshmallow Flakes cereal enough to have turned in fifty box tops to get a free hoodie with the mascot on it. In Ice Queendom, he admits that he doesn't like the cereal, something he and Pyrrha have in common.
- Badass Cape: Inverted example. In Weiss's dream, Jaune first manifests with a heroic-looking cloak. However, he finds it too cumbersome to wear, it flies in his face when he tries to fight on the back of a train, and it exacerbates his portrayal as a person who is out of his depth in combat. He ends up discarding it.
- BFS: Within Weiss' dream, Jaune gets a fancy sword that is about as tall as Jaune's entire body, and way too heavy for him to lift comfortably. Blake suggests that it reflects how Weiss doesn't think Jaune is good enough to carry his family weapon. It's heavily implied to represent his true untapped Aura and Semblance.
- Butt-Monkey: In just two episodes, he gets viciously shot down by Weiss when he tries to flirt with her, gets dragged away by Weiss when he seems to hit it off with Pyrrha, gets flung face-first into a tree during Beacon's initiation exam, and becomes the Nightmare's first on-screen victim. The guy just can't catch a break.
- Chekhov's Gag: Jaune's dream form gives him a giant sword that is too unwieldy for him to use, resulting in the characters assuming it's how Weiss sees him and subjecting him to a variety of slapstick moments until he loses the sword, and it winds up embedded in a train roof, unable to be moved. It gets ignored by everyone after that until it turns out to be unexpectedly useful. The sword is a manifestation of Jaune's Aura, protecting everyone in the train by acting as a Nightmare repellent and allowing Jaune to help an infected Ruby in a way that hints at what his unawakened Semblance is. The same goes for his cloak, which Yang picks up.
- Commonality Connection: He ends up hitting it off with Pyrrha over their shared dislike of Pumpkin Pete's Cereal, which Pyrrha was forced to be the mascot for as part of her celebrity status.
- 11th-Hour Ranger: After several failed attempts to reach Weiss in the dreamscape, a new plan is hatched to make use of Jaune's previous exposure by having him join the girls in the dreamscape. While still weak and inexperienced, Jaune brings powerful gear that proves vital to the team — a sword and cloak that both protect against the Nightmare.
- The Immune: A downplayed example. As he was a host for a Nightmare already, other Nightmares will assume he already has a Nightmare feeding off him and will thus ignore him if he comes into their vicinity. However, if Jaune gets too close to another Nightmare, he will start experiencing potentially lethal physical pain.
- Inadequate Inheritor: In the Nightmare's Psychological Torment Zone, representations of the previous warriors in his family berate him for failing to live up to his family's legacy. He tries to argue back that he can do it, but is reduced to a small child with bunny ears in his pain and despair.
- Sarcasm-Blind: He takes Weiss's clearly sarcastic remark that he's her type to mean that she's interested in him.
Nora Valkyrie
Dream Actor
Voiced by: Aya Suzaki (Japanese), Samantha Ireland (English)
A very energetic girl who joined Beacon Academy with her childhood friend, Ren.
Nora wields Magnhild, a war-hammer that doubles as a grenade launcher.
- Carry a Big Stick: Her weapon is a war-hammer, which can transform into a grenade launcher.
- Genki Girl: She's very upbeat and energetic.
- Innocently Insensitive: When Shion says that Jaune will be ignored by the Nightmare as a result of being a previous infectee, Nora phrases it as him being not worth noticing.
Pyrrha Nikos
Dream Actor
Voiced by: Megumi Toyoguchi (Japanese), Jen Brown (English)
A fighter who is already renowned as four-times regional tournament winner by the time she joins Beacon Academy.
Pyrrha wields both Miló, a javelin that can transform into a sword or a rifle, and Akuóu, a shield.
- The Ace: She's a skilled fighter, having already won four tournaments even before coming to Beacon.
- Dramatic Irony: In episode 5, Pyrrha's dream version represents Weiss' desire to be something different while trapped in the cage of trying to be what she believes her family wants her to be. What Weiss doesn't realize is that this is eerily similar to how Pyrrha is in reality: a girl trapped by her successes and wanting to be free and something different.
- Extreme Doormat: Despite her visibly not being the most comfortable with Weiss's attitude and the fact that she revealed her name to the rest of Beacon's new students, she doesn't speak up and just makes an attempt to remain polite and friendly with her.
- Stop Worshipping Me: She silently chafes whenever Weiss emphasizes her celebrity status or otherwise shows reverence towards her; she reacts with visible displeasure when Weiss reveals her name to the rest of Beacon's new students. This is reflected in Weiss's dreamscape, where she's the mute centerpiece of it.
Lie Ren
Dream Actor
Voiced by: Soma Saito (Japanese), Neath Oum (English)
A mellow student who came to Beacon Academy with his childhood friend, Nora. His grounded behaviour balances out her antics.
Ren wields the double handgun-blade combo called StormFlower, which he uses with techniques resembling Chinese martial arts.
- All Asians Wear Conical Straw Hats: The Dream Actor version of Ren sometimes wears a conical hat to fit into his Chinese influences.
- Guns Akimbo: He fights using twin handguns that have daggers attached to them.
- Straight Man: He functions as this towards Nora, doing his best to reign in her antics in a moderately exasperated tone that indicates that he's used to them.
Beacon Academy Staff
Professor Ozpin
Voiced By: Kazuhiko Inoue (Japanese), Shannon McCormick (English)
The mysterious Headmaster of Beacon Academy.
- Character Narrator: As in the original series, Ozpin concludes the finale with a narration offering a more hopeful counter-argument to the mysterious woman that has provided the opening and closing narrations.
- Good Cop/Bad Cop: While Glynda is a stern professor quick to reprimand students, Ozpin offers a more warm and relaxed sort of authority. When Ruby is detained for fighting off Roman's goons, Glynda's lecture is interrupted by Ozpin arriving with a plate of cookies. Even when dealing with more troubling situations, Ozpin smooths over his stern words with kind words and offers of support.
Glynda Goodwitch
Voiced by: Masumi Asano (Japanese), Tiana Camacho (English)
A skilled Huntress that teaches at Beacon Academy, acting as the Headmaster's assistant and most trusted subordinate.
- Good Cop/Bad Cop: Glynda provides the more stern approach to dealing with students, with sharp reprimands and a riding crop as a weapon. This contrasts and plays off Ozpin's more warm and easy-going demeanor, with her giving hard lessons and him sweeping in to soothe things over with supportive words and a plate of cookies.
- Out of Focus: She plays a smaller role in Ice Queendom, as a result of most of the story focusing on the Nightmare.
Shion Zaiden
"My name is Shion Zaiden. I'm a Nightmare Hunter."
Voiced by: Hiroki Nanami (Japanese), Kdin Jenzen (English)
A Nightmare Hunter who is tasked with capturing a unique type of Grimm that can possess humans. They are a visiting professor to Beacon Academy.
Their weapon is a dreamcatcher that is attached to a staff; the strings can be extended to net the Nightmares they hunt. Their Semblance allows them to send others into a person's dreams.
- Ambiguous Gender Identity: Shion's appearance and outfit is effeminate and their gender is unstated in the episodes, but Japanese promotional material uses male pronouns while Rooster Teeth considers them non-binary. In Episode 10, Blake's pronoun-free Japanese line is subtitled by Rooster Teeth as "let's ask right away" but by Crunchyroll as "let's ask her right away".
- Canon Foreigner: Shion does not exist in the original show, and is a character created for this anime's storyline.
- Cast from Hit Points: Discussed. When a person enters a Nightmare victim's dreams, they take several coins with them, which can perform a number of effects each time they're spent in a parking meter, such as creating portal-doors, maps of where they've been or decoy dummies, and communicating directly with Shion. Although they superficially look like an example of Cast from Money, the coins are part of Shion's Aura and "spend" some Aura with each use. A dream-walker therefore must use each coin carefully; if they run out of coins, they will be cut off from Shion, who will no longer be able to help them.
- Cast from Money: Discussed and Averted. Although a person who enters a Nightmare victim's dreams takes with them coins that will create a number of useful effects when spent in a parking meter, they're actually Aura-linked. What's being spent is not money, but Aura. A person who runs out of coins, runs out of access to Shion's Aura.
- Dream Weaver: Their Semblance lets them send people into dreams to combat nightmares.
- Magitek: Shion's mobile workshop utilizes various old-time technology such as a desktop computer and dial-up phone to interact with their Semblance. The objects that they can create in other's dreams also have more of a rustic feel to them
Schnee Family
Jacques Schnee
Dream Actor
Voiced by: Madoka Shiga (Japanese), Jason Douglas (English)
Weiss' father, the cruel and abusive head of the Schnee Dust Company.
- Abusive Parents: Jacques makes it abundantly clear that he expects Weiss to fail, and has her fight a massive Grimm just to prove it.
- Adaptational Early Appearance: In the original show, he doesn't appear in person until the very end of Volume 3 and isn't introduced properly until Volume 4. In the anime, he is introduced from the outset overseeing the test he's trying to use to prevent Weiss attending Beacon Academy.
- Adaptational Jerkass: While he's not a great person to begin with, Jacques is a bit more Faux Affably Evil in the main series. Here, he's actually shown rooting for Weiss to fail.
- Big Brother Is Watching: In Weiss' dream, every wall is covered in posters of him and there are statues of him everywhere. The eyes of the posters and statues appear to be surveillance cameras.
Willow Schnee
Dream Actor
Voiced by: Gara Takashima (Japanese)
Weiss' mother, who is an alcoholic that spends her days sitting in the garden, drinking.
- Adaptational Early Appearance: In the original show, Volume 4 confirms that Willow's still alive and spends her days drinking in the garden, but she isn't introduced until Volume 7. In the anime, she's given a brief cameo where she's seen sitting in the garden and drinking as Weiss walks past on her way to her test fight.
- Alcoholic Parent: As Weiss is walking through the Schnee Manor with Klein, she sadly notices Willow drinking in the garden; she observes how early in the day it is to be consuming alcohol, while Klein simply reacts with silent sadness behind her.
- Living Shadow: In Weiss' dream, Willow is merely a shadow on the wall who drinks and laughs but otherwise does nothing, reflecting how absent she has been in Weiss' life.
Winter Schnee
Dream Actor
Voiced by: Ayako Kawasumi (Japanese), Elizabeth Maxwell (English)
Weiss' older sister, a specialist in the Atlesian military.
- Adaptational Early Appearance: In the original show, Winter is introduced in Volume 3, during the Vytal Festival. Here, she's introduced in the first episode, observing the test that allows Weiss to go to Beacon Academy.
- Great Big Book of Everything: In Weiss's dreamscape, she takes the form of a book that Weiss regularly consults to decide how to pass judgment onto others, which symbolizes how much Weiss relies on her sister for guidance.
Whitley Schnee
Dream Actor
Voiced by: Marina Inoue (Japanese), Howard Wang (English)
Weiss' younger brother.
- Adaptational Early Appearance: Doesn't appear until Volume 4 in the original show, and is hardly even hinted at.
- Bat People: Dream Actor Whitley is a anthropomorphic bat with a human-like head with hair wearing a suit similar to what Whitley normally wears.
- The Gadfly: He flits around Weiss' dream-world as a bat that constantly spies on everyone in the empire and enjoys throwing sarcastic remarks at Weiss to attack her self-esteem.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Despite constantly needling Weiss, he seems visibly pleased after she successfully defeated the Arma Gigas.
Klein Sieben
Voiced by: Ken Uo (Japanese), J. Michael Tatum (English)
Loyal servant of the Schnee Family. He has a Semblance that gives him seven separate personalities, all of which have their own voice tone and eye color.
- Adaptational Early Appearance: He first appears in Volume 4 in the original show.
- Animate Inanimate Object: The dream versions of Klein take the form of various objects; one is a jail cell door, while another is a candle flame.
- Literal Split Personality: In Weiss' dream, his seven personalities exist as separate beings.
Others
Taiyang Xiao Long
Voiced by: Kenyū Horiuchi (Japanese), Burnie Burns (English)
Ruby and Yang's father, who is an instructor at Signal Academy.
- Adaptational Early Appearance: Taiyang is quickly introduced in the first episode, and is present for the end of Ruby's first fight against Roman. In the original show, he has a brief background cameo at the beginning of Volume 3, but doesn't enter the show properly until the end of Volume 3.
Penny Polendina
Voiced by: Megumi Han (Japanese), Taylor McNee (English)
A strange girl whom the team meet during a trip to the town; she has a cheerful but stiff personality.
Penny uses Floating Array to control an arsenal of swords with micro-thin strings that can shoot blasts of energy.
- Saying Sound Effects Out Loud: Periodically does this, such as her first scene where she voices the sound effect for grinning when Ruby tells her that they're friends. It adds to her odd nature.
Sun Wukong
Voiced by: Tomoaki Maeno (Japanese) Michael Jones (English)
A monkey Faunus who arrived in Vale as a stowaway.
- Everyone Has Standards: He's an unapologetic lawbreaker, but he dislikes the White Fang for using force to get what they want.
- Lovable Rogue: He's introduced messing with the police as they attempt to apprehend him for stowing away on a ship, but it's clear from his interactions with Blake that he's got a good heart despite not always adhering to the law.
Salem
Voiced by: Kikuko Inoue (Japanese), Jen Taylor (English)
A mysterious narrator who introduces the audience to the world of Remnant in the first episode.
Antagonists
Roman Torchwick
Voiced by: Shin-ichiro Miki (Japanese), Christopher Wehkamp (English)
A crime lord who mainly pulls his operations in Vale.
Roman uses a walking cane named Melodic Cudgel, which can shoot explosive rounds resembling Roman candles.
- Classy Cane: Roman is smartly dressed in black trousers, gloves and derby hat, and a white overcoat with red inner lining. His cane is designed to fit into his outfit's style and colour scheme, and can be used as both a walking accessory and a gun.
- Dastardly Dapper Derby: His primary accessory is a black bowler hat, creating the appearance of a classy gangster.
- Hiding Behind Your Bangs: His hair covers one of his eyes, to indicate that he's a deceitful character.
White Fang
Adam Taurus
Voiced by: Yuichi Nakamura (Japanese), Garrett Hunter (English)
Blake's partner when she was part of the White Fang. He is introduced leading a train robbery that ends with Blake abandoning him for a different life.
Adam's weapon is a red chokutÅ (Wilt), which is accompanied with a sheath (Blush); the sheath has a shotgun-like mechanism.
- Fantastic Racism: When he decides to drive an Atlas train into a ravine to get rid of the cargo, Blake points out that there are human workers aboard. He responds that they're "only human".
- Horned Humanoid: It's slightly obscured by his swept back hair, but he has two jagged dark horns growing out of his head, indicating his nature as a Faunus.
- Malevolent Masked Man: Like most of the White Fang's grunts, he wears a white mask with red markings over the top half of his face, and he has no problems engaging in acts of terrorism to further the White Fang's cause.
Grimm
Nightmare
Voiced by: Daiki Kobayashi (Japanese/English)note
A Nightmare is a plant-like Grimm that has various appearances depending on what state it's in. When dormant, it looks like a curved seed husk. When active, it has two forms: a tangle of thorny vines that creeps across the ground and a smaller, fight-capable form with a rose-like head and thorny tentacles. It is capable of possessing people, trapping them in nightmares from which it feeds.
- Big Bad: The reason the series happens, having claimed Weiss as its latest victim with the rest of Team RBY having to enter Weiss' dreams and destroy the Grimm to save her.
- Bizarre Alien Biology: Even by Grimm standards the Nightmare is weird. It's a Grimm that looks like a seed when dormant; when activated, it sprouts thorny vines that will latch onto a person and drain their Aura. When the students are first introduced to it, Glynda warns them that there are special or unique Grimm in the world that are unlike the more common bestial ones that most people learn about.
- Dissonant Serenity: Victims of the Nightmare see images of themselves smiling happily while telling them that they are worthless.
- Dream Within a Dream: The only way to save someone from a Nightmare is to enter their dreams. However, the Nightmare can infect anyone who does that. If that happens, the would-be rescuer becomes trapped within their own dream-world on top of being trapped inside the original victim's dream.
- Enemy Within: The Nightmare appears to its host as images of themselves, playing up their insecurities and feeding off their nightmares. The victim is therefore trapped inside their own mind as it is turned against them by the Nightmare.
- Mark of the Beast: Its victims can be identified by the thorn patterns it leaves on their skin as it burrows within.
- Psychological Torment Zone: The Nightmare traps its victims in a nightmare that confronts them with their fears, doubts and worst aspects of themselves. For example, Jaune is assaulted by his armor and sword, telling him he's not fit to be at Beacon or to live up to his greater family legacy.
- Your Mind Makes It Real: Anyone who touches Nightmare's thorns inside a dream will have the same damage reflected upon their real self. When Ruby's hand is scratched in Weiss's dream, her physical hand begins bleeding when she wakes up. There is also a finite window within which to rescue a victim as the victim's death will also kill anyone who is still within their dreamscape at the time.
