Characters / Sam & Max

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The Eponymous Duo

Sam

Sam

Voiced by: Bill Farmer (Hit the Road), Harvey Atkin (Cartoon), David Nowlin (Telltale Series, Poker Night 2, This Time It's Virtual!)

"You crack me up, little buddy!"

Sam is one-half of the titular Freelance Police and is depicted as a six-foot tall anthropomorphic dog in a Film Noir-styled suit and fedora. He tends to come off as more level-headed and less violent than his partner Max, but not by much. He's passionate about justice, heavy weaponry, and bluegrass; and, to a lesser extent, popsicles, although he's self-conscious about his weight. He retains a mostly laid-back personality, except for his enthusiasm for his warped sense of justice. Max is usually the only thing keeping him from taking his "job" too seriously.

Although most of the time he acts like a human in a dog costume, Sam sometimes behaves like a dog, sticking his head out the window, whining, growling, or enjoying dog treats. He was born March 3rd, presumably sometime in the 1970's, and has been best friends with Max ever since they were children. Since then, they'be been inseparable, living and working together. He wields a Hand Cannon revolver, which he's quick to use, despite having terrible aim, or the fact he doesn't know what the word "aim" even means.

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• Acquired Poison Immunity: In "The City That Dares Not Sleep", he mentions that he's developed an immunity to chocolate (one of the substances that is poisonous to dogs) due to consuming so many fudge ice cream bars.
• Adaptational Badass: In the games, he's a MUCH better shot with his gun than in the comics, able to hit whatever he's aiming at with ease. Though this trope is played with and balanced out by him not being as trigger happy and generally refusing to use his gun on living people.
• Adaptational Heroism: Downplayed, but his Comedic Sociopathy is reduced in the games compared to in the comics and cartoon. This is likely done to make him, the Player Character, more of an Audience Surrogate.
• Adaptational Intelligence: Not that he was ever dumb, but the games turn him from "relatively cool-headed and a somewhat rational thinker" into an outright Guile Hero capable of tricking, deceiving, and manipulating everyone - from jackass country singers to eldritch abominations intent on destroying the world - in order to get what he wants. The Telltale games do make him wield the Idiot Ball from time to time, though. Much of this can fairly easily be traced back to simply them being adventure games - by their very nature, Sam is going to need to solve just about every single one of his problems of off the back of his wits alone.
• Ambiguously Bi: the Sam & Max franchise doesn't have a lot of romance in it, but of the few times the topic has come up, Sam has been shown in such a light with both male and female characters.
  • In "The Penal Zone," when you find a wedding ring, you can use it on Max and he'll imagine proposing to him. Sam decides not to do it, but you can also use it on an obviously male gorilla guard and he'll actually get through most of the proposal before being shot down.
  • In “Abe Lincoln Must Die!”, Sam makes the startling discovery that Max is his soulmate, at least according to Sybil’s matchmaking service. Max is equally taken aback, having been assigned Sam as his soulmate. The two agree never to address the matter further.
  • Additionally, in Poker Night 2 when asked about his relationship status, he will say that he is "off the market" confidentially. Seeing as how all of the females in his day-to-day life are either taken or uninterested, Max is the only logical candidate for this.
  • He's seemingly excited when he hears there's going to be a stripper at Golem Lincoln's bachelor's party... which turns to shock and dismay when the stripper turns out to be Jurgen's Monster.
  • In the comics, when Max is kidnapped as a sacrifice by a bunch of volcano god cultists, he gets very interested in the prospect of nubile cultist women and has to force himself to remember Max's dilemma.
  • As the player navigates the Tunnel of Tough Love in Sam & Max: This Time It’s Virtual!, Max offhandedly asks Sam "How are things with Susan, anyway?". Sam huffs "I don't want to talk about it."
• Barefoot Cartoon Animal: He wears no shoes at all. This gets used for a couple of jokes in "They Stole Max's Brain!", when Sammun-mak bans, then admires aglets, the little plastic things at the end of shoelaces.
• Bear Hug: When he's feeling affectionate towards Max, he will pull him into one.
• Berserk Button: Several, including calling him McGruff, calling him fat, trying to give him pink bellies, and especially trying to harm Max. He nearly shoots a kid who calls him fat despite said kid being his past self.
  • "They Stole Max's Brain!" reveals his biggest one. Even temporarily, Don't kill Max. He'll remind you that between a hyperviolent Id-driven lagomorph and a 6 foot tall dog man, you should be more afraid of the dog baring his teeth.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Sam can be pretty scary when someone presses one of his Berserk Buttons. Max is usually the only one who can calm him down. Between the laid back giant dog with a sweet tooth and the cheerfully violent hyperkinetic rabbit-thing, it's telling that the latter is the Morality Chain.
  • In Episode 303 of the Telltale Games series, "They Stole Max's Brain!", we learn Sam doesn't look too kindly on people who steal his best friend's brain. It not only presses one of his Berserk Buttons in an epic way, but also means Max is not here to calm him down. On the plus side, we get to see Sam parody gritty film-noir detectives (such as Flint Paper).
• Big Friendly Dog: Meets all three criteria on average, but definitely not all three all the time. Also, kind of touchy about the "big" part.
  • Definitely big in a height sense as well. In Poker Night 2, he comes up to Ash's bicep, even without his hat. Purcell at one point says that if Sam were a real-life dog, he would be closest to an Irish Wolfhound. As the picture in the link shows, Irish Wolfhounds are enormous.
• Big Fun: Most of the time, Sam is very polite and genial towards other people, if a bit snarky. This is especially true of Sam's characterization in the Animated Series.
• Big "NO!": Howls this in "They Stole Max's Brain!" when he sees the lobotomized shell of his best friend.
• Catchphrase: Several, including:
  • "You crack me up, little buddy!"
  • "Well, here we are in/on/at [name of location]..."
  • "Holy/Sweet [elaborate nonsequitur]!"
• Cold Ham: Sam never raises his voice and generally keeps a laidback, calm demeanor, but he's prone to over-the-top, flowery metaphors, wacky dialogue, and going on random tangents.
• Despair Event Horizon: In "The City That Dares Not Sleep", losing Max for real. He is completely silent and wanders aimlessly through the city, hugging himself and looking like he's going to cry.
• Drives Like Crazy: The best thing you can say about his driving is that at least he's not Max.
• Expospeak Gag: Sam will nearly always say something elaborate and overly erudite as opposed to simple. Amusingly complicated phrases, sometimes having Max lampshade it, are the cornerstone of his wordplay.
• Expansion Pack Past: Occasionally he will remember when he did some sort of job after getting out High School and before become Freelance Police. For example, he was a circus acrobat, a cranny plumber and...a monkey. He also apparently went to flight stewardess school, which is why he sometimes offers people warm towels or pillows during interrogations.
• Extreme Omnivore: Max is just a regular junk-food hoarding Big Eater, but Sam is definitely one of these. Just listen to one of his pizza orders.
• Finger Gun: His favorite gesture when he is not actually holding a gun.
• Furry Reminder: When he finds a chocolate bar in Max's inventory in "The City That Dares Not Sleep", he remarks that Max had been trying to poison him. Thankfully, he's been eating enough fudge bars to build up an immunity to chocolate.
• Guest Fighter: One of the opposing players in Poker Night 2.
• Hand Cannon Revolver: His weapon, "Betsy / Big Kill", complete with Infinite Ammo.
• Hates Being Touched: The only person that he lets touch him is Max.
• Heartbroken Badass: Noir Sam from "They Stole Max's Brain!" is basically a parody of this: He's not only imitating resident badass Flint Paper, he also has an option in the interrogation wheel to go into rambling speeches.
• Heroic BSoD: "The City That Dares Not Sleep"'s ending credits are nothing but him walking alone through the city towards the harbor, a stunned expression on his face as the Lonely Piano Piece does its thing.
• Heroic Comedic Sociopath: However, compared to Max, he can pass for normal. The games make him even milder, due to his position as the Player Character. He still counts, though, as someone who cheerfully inflicts pain and suffering for mild amusement, or simply because it's the most convenient way to deal with a problem.
• Hollywood Tone-Deaf: He howls his songs.
• I Call It "Vera": His Hand Cannon is called "Betsy" in the comics. It's never called by name in the Telltale games, but Team Fortress 2 calls it the "Big Kill".
• Immune to Mind Control: In the games by Telltale Games, Sam has a hypnosis-blocking device built into his hat from the end of "Culture Shock" on. Unfortunately, when he became "Noir Sam" in "They Stole Max's Brain!", he ditched the hat while on his rampage to figure out what happened to Max's brain meaning he was unable to protect himself when Sammuk-Mak rewrote reality. Whoopsie.
• It's Personal:
  • He has particular enmity towards Jurgen for killing him and Max to turn them into zombies.
  • His reasoning of turning into Noir Sam is because someone stole his buddy's brain and he wants answers.
• Jerkass: Even though he and Max are best friends, he seems to abuse him quite often when rushing for the phone or just out of the blue. But who knows, Max probably enjoys it. He also busted the tail light on some random and unfortunate driver's car, pulled him over and fined him $10,000 for driving with a broken tail light that Sam caused.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: He does still tries to help others intentionally, even if it doesn't benefit him at times, and he's generally polite.
• Late to the Punchline: It takes Sam absurdly long to get Superball's "As a medium, I'm more of an extra small" joke, but when he does, he cracks up.
• Mad Libs Catchphrase: "Holy/Sweet non sequitur!"
• Mask of Sanity: While at first glance he seems to be the relatively-normal Straight Man of the pair (and he'd certainly like to think he is), observing him long enough makes it clear that he's almost, if not just as violently insane as Max; he just needs a reason before he starts shooting. God help you if you give him one.
• My Greatest Failure: Sam is unable to save Max at the end of "The City That Dares Not Sleep".
• The Nicknamer: Lou the Bowling Ball, Steamy the Boiler, Donkey Wrong for Skun-ka'pe, and so forth.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: Invoked by some of Sam's voice actors.
  • Bill Farmer's terse performance of Sam is patterned after Jack Webb's portrayal of Joe Friday in Dragnet.
  • Harvey Atkin's more upbeat, cheerful portrayal of Sam is patterned after John Astin, best known as Gomez Addams.
• "Not Wearing Pants" Dream: At the end of "They Stole Max's Brain!," we see one of the Samulicra (Dogglegangers) walking towards the duo and Sam makes a crack at the way the clone is dressed hinting that he has dreams about being in public in his underwear.
  Sam: This is just like that dream I had last night. I wonder if he studied for his finals...
• Only Sane by Comparison: Although he's really not sane, he's still much more rational than the eccentrics, wackos, and freaks that make up the rest of the cast.
• Policeman Dog: He's an an Irish wolfhound who works as a freelance police detective.
• Private Detective: His nominal job, although he becomes more of a general-purpose problem-solver/causer as time goes on.
• Psycho Electro: Well, not him. Past Sam, an alternate-timeline Sam created in "Chariots of the Dogs". According to Past Max, he became a monster and was destroyed, much like what happened to Max in "The City That Dares Not Sleep". However, instead of psychic powers, he had monstrous electromagnetic powers.
• Replacement Goldfish: According to Past Max, Past Sam was killed in an incident mirroring Max's death in "The City That Dares Not Sleep", prompting Past Max to time travel in order to team up with Sam.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Sam goes nuclear in "They Stole Max's Brain!" after discovering the titular event, and tears across New York in a barely-coherent hurricane of interrogation until he finds out that his partner's okay. Then he immediately cools down again.
• Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness: Sam is fond of using big words, much to Max's irritation.
• Signature Headgear: His trademark fedora is so slim, it sits on top of his head. Sometime between episode one and two of the first season he managed to fit an anti-hypnosis device (a coat hanger on top of a colander) in it. It's his buy-in item in Poker Night 2, and Team Fortress 2 fans can win it for their very own, where it's called the "Bloodhound." It's wearable by both Sniper and Spy.
• Sophisticated as Hell
  Sammun-Mak: What is a "laser light show?"
  Sam: ...Actually, I kind of forget, but I'm pretty sure they're bitchin'.
• The Straight Man: This becomes a plot point in one episode where a villain Charlie Ho-tep specifically wants a straight man to help out with his plan, and Sam is the perfect kind of easy-to-manipulate character who just does what he's told.
• Sweet Tooth: He's constantly shown with popsicles or ice cream, and is literally unable to resist Fudgie Freeze ice cream bars. This becomes a puzzle in "Beyond the Alley of the Dolls" where you have to make Sam not eat a Fudgie Freeze and instead give it to one of the Samulacra.
• Teeny Weenie: A couple of times in the series, Max hints that Sam might be packing light between his legs. Most notably in Reality 2.0, and rather than denying it, he just takes the same jab at Max!
  Sam: Cool! I have a +2 Sword!
  Max: Oh you're just compensating for something!
  Sam: You're a fine one to talk!
• Trigger-Happy: Not quite as willing to indulge in gratuitous violence as Max, but just barely.
• Unorthodox Reload: Puts more ammo into his revolver by directly splashing it into the chambers.
• Unscrupulous Hero: Sam will do just about anything to solve a case, no matter how much destruction it causes.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: Often snarky, insulting, or downright abusive to Max, and Max usually returns the favor - but it's made very, very clear throughout that they can't live without each other.
• Vocal Evolution: David Nowlin's voice for Sam slowly got deeper over the course of his tenure, before becoming much higher-pitched for This Time It's Virtual.
• Weirdness Censor: Episode 305 reveals that his brain temporarily shuts itself off if it realizes it's about to get some traumatizing information (like, how did the disembodied head of the Lincoln Memorial statue manage to impregnate a human woman?)

Max

Max

Voiced by: Nick Jameson (Hit the Road), Robert Tinkler (Cartoon), Andrew Chaikin (1st episode of Telltale Series), William Kasten (rest of the Telltale Series, Poker Night at the Inventory), Dave Boat (Poker Night 2, This Time It's Virtual!)

"DEATH FROM ABOVE!"

Max is a "hyperkinetic rabbity thing" and the second half of the Freelance Police. Unhinged, uninhibited and near psychotic, Max enjoys violence and tends to prefer the aggressive way of solving problems. Still, he has a sharp mind and an observational nature, and it's apparent that his seemingly short attention span is not because of his inability to focus (although that is there), but instead because he grows bored easily and always wants to try new experiences.

Although he seems to have a heartless personality, he seems to genuinely care about his few friends; he strongly believes in protecting Sam and can be pretty possessive over their status as partners and best friends. He dislikes long stories and rambling anecdotes, and occasionally ask Sam or other characters not to use certain words, such as "ensue" or "acumen."

He was born July 10, presumably sometime in the 1970's, and is about the same age as Sam. For unknown reasons, he has a metal plate in his skull, and in the third season, he develops Psychic Powers. He wields a Luger pistol; but since he's naked, other characters frequently ask him where he keeps it, to which he responds "none of your damn business."

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• Adaptational Nice Guy: He comes off as much more good-natured in the cartoon. Of course, it's still Max and he isn't all sunshine and rainbows, but the Heroic part of Heroic Comedic Sociopath is really emphasized.
• Afraid of Needles: This is only ever mentioned once, but in one of the comics, Max is trying to get a tattoo. When he realizes that the process involves needles, he begins to scream until he actually passes out from fear.
• Ambiguously Gay: Max "doesn't like girls," wishes Sam would stop "looking so damn tasty," constantly attacks Sam (apparently confusing violence with affection,) and confused Sam picking up an engagement ring from the street with a proposal.
  • Of course, after you tinker with time in "Chariot of the Dogs", he acts as if he loses the "doesn't like girls" part of his personality, especially lusting for Momma Bosco. However, afterwards in season 3, Skun-ka'pes scanners indicate that he went back to not liking girls.
  • In "Poker Night At The Inventory", however, he expresses disgust when asked if he ever slept with Momma Bosco.
  • In "They Stole Max's Brain!", Max can talk with General Skun-ka'pe at the planetarium, who claims that according to his scans, Max doesn't like girls despite having expressed a desire to find women. It seems that he really isn't really attracted to the opposite sex, but he feels compelled to act as such due to the aforementioned time tinkering.
  • In "Beyond the Alley of the Dolls", he refers to the Sam clones as "sexually provocative" and "dashing." Except for Sam himself, who insists that they're rakishly handsome brutes, everyone else just calls them portly or half-naked. So...
  • Again, in "Beyond the Alley of the Dolls", they learn that Bosco had to become a male stripper to pay off his debts to the casino in Vegas. Sam says "Ew," while Max says "Interesting."
  • Although he's apparently excited when he hears there's going to be a stripper at Golem Lincoln's bachelor's party... which turns to shock when the stripper turns out to be Jurgen's Monster.
  • Ironically, despite the comics featuring the panel where Sam reminds Max that "he's not interested in women", Max actually expresses an interest on several occasions^note such as the two-page comic from the "Surfin' the Highway" paperback, where a shipwrecked Max hopes to be rescued by a ship full of supermodels — more so than Sam does, in fact.
  • States while his "bliss is separated" (i.e. his vices are wiped from his personality, leaving him peaceful and sincere) that he would like to have Hugh Bliss's love child.
  • Examining the hot tub in Sam & Max Hit the Road has Max excitedly ask to see naked women, before Sam reminds him that he supposedly doesn't like girls.
  Sam: The pool of decadence.
  Max: Bring me as many naked women as my poor eyes can stand!
  Sam: Jesus, Max, you don't even like girls!
  Max: Oh yeah, I forgot.
  • Further muddying matters is the fact that Max will often have to be reminded (typically by Sam) about his aversion to girls.
• Ass Shove: Presumably, where he keeps his gun.
• Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: Max occasionally sputters out that he wants to do this. And in "The City That Dares Not Sleep", he does...but then he's not really himself.
• Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!: "Quick, let's get out of here before Sam gets distract—ooh, switches!"
• Ax-Crazy: A somewhat benign example.
• Badass Adorable: He's a cute and goofy rabbit but he always loves to kick ass.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: His fantasies of rampaging across New York as a Kaiju are granted in The Devil's Playhouse, but it comes at the cost of wrecking the city he nominally protects, unwittingly harming the friends he genuinely cherishes, and results in his own death.
• Berserk Button: Don't call Max short.
  • Even more so, never claim to be Sam's best friend. Demon Peepers never learned, seeing as how Max killed him in about ten seconds when he claimed that.
  • Max has numerous other minor buttons based on his ever-shifting mental state, including being compared to his father and having "Walk Like An Egyptian" quoted at him.
  • He also developed a severe hatred of Banang after Sam kept the gag going too long, going to great lengths to avoid it being mentioned again. He goes absolutely crazy when it actually does get mentioned.
• Bizarre Alien Biology: If Sam is to be believed in "The City that Dares not Sleep", his insides looking like a standard suburban household isn't caused by any eldritch magics caused by his transformation into a fledgling elder god, it just naturally looks that way.
• Blood Knight: Particularly in the cartoon, but Max really loves violence in any shape or form, whether or not he's the one inflicting it, or even if he's on the receiving end.
  "The simulated 3D carnage makes me tingle like a prom queen!"
• Character Catchphrase: When someone asks where Max keeps anything on his naked person, he usually responds with some variation of, "none of your damn business!"
• Cheshire Cat Grin: His default expression, thanks to his wide, jagged teeth.
• Combat Sadomasochist: Max likes being on the receiving end of pain as much as he does dishing it out,
  Max: (after being caught in an explosion) The pain is almost euphoric, Sam!
• Cloud Cuckoo Lander: Max's grip on reality is shaky at best. It's more pronounced in the cartoons, where his inclination to disembowel had to be reined in, but even when he's allowed to be violent, he is (as Sam puts it in the very first episode of the Telltale games) "an unfathomable well of something".
• Cuteness Proximity: When he and Sam meet Baby Jimmy Hoffa in "Moai Better Blues," he's reduced to a pile of mush, squealing things like "He's just adorable!" and "I can't believe how perfect he is!"
• Designated Victim: Not to a ridiculous degree, but since Sam is the player character in the games, it's usually Max who ends up getting captured, killed, or de-brained.
• Ditzy Genius: Max has memorized pi to a thousand decimal places, but can't remember how to open the closet.
• Drives Like Crazy: Both Sam and Max don't pay any attention to the rules of the road, but Max is considerably worse than Sam.
• Everyone Has Standards:
  • In Poker Night at the Inventory, the Heavy's story makes even Max gape; or during Max's conversation with Tycho about what happened during "Chariots of the Dogs."
  "...are you asking me if I ever shtupped Momma Bosco?!"
  • In the animated series, he's horrified by the idea of Prison Rape.
  Sam [inside of a prison shower room]: If these walls could talk.
  Max: I think I'd prefer if they keep their mouth shut.
• Flanderization:
  • Downplayed, but the Telltale games amp up his implied gayness.
  • The cartoon amps up his wackiness as compensation for not being allowed to showcase his violent streak as much.
• Friend to All Children: Surprisingly enough, Max adores kids, even though they're clearly terrified of him. It's particularly evident in the cartoon, but it's demonstrated in the Telltale games (where he performs a Heroic Sacrifice to save Sybil's baby) and the comics.
• The Gift: His psychic powers in season 3.
• Grand Theft Me: In "They Stole Max's Brain!", Sam puts Sammun-Mak's brain in Max's body because Sal was going to throw it out if he didn't start moving around, fully intending to remove it once they got Max's brain back. Things don't exactly work out; Sammun-Mak completely hijacks Max's body and uses his powers to rewrite reality and make him the god-king of the entire planet. Whoops.
• Guest Fighter: One of the opposing players in Poker Night at the Inventory.
• Hammerspace: One of the possible places the completely naked Max could be storing his gun. This has been left intentionally mysterious, but during a brief body swap in "Night of the Raving Dead", Sam's first comment (in Max's body) was "So that's where you keep your gun!", which implies Max has the gun somewhere on his person, raising another possibility. One of the places you get to visit in The City That Dares Not Sleep, however is stated to be Max's Inventory, which is cluttered with different things he's kept on his person all this time.
• Heroic Sacrifice: In "The City That Dares Not Sleep", the Narrator promises to stay behind and get Max back to normal in five minutes—but they only have four minutes before the last Maimtron is fired. For once, there is no magical Deus ex Machina to help them at the last minute, so when Max's powers finally overwhelm him and he's on the verge of actually exploding, he teleports away to Skun-ka'pe's ship to save the city.
• Heroic Comedic Sociopath: Extra emphasis on the "comedic" and "sociopathic" aspects.
• Hidden Depths:
  • Max is apparently writing a poignant Inuit coming-of-age novel. Except he loses a chapter each time he has to make room for anything else in his brain, such as memorizing a new phone number. Sam discovers an audiobook sample of it, among other planned books, in Max's mind in "The City That Dares Not Sleep".
  • The Narrator, his own superego and an integral part of his psyche, loathes him. This pretty heavily points to themes of self-hatred, which coincides with his throwaway comment earlier on that he'd been looking for something to do ever since he found out sudoku "didn't involve ritual suicide" (confusing it for seppuku) and his request to be handed a copy of the magazine "Self-Loathing Weekly".
  • He's a Friend to All Children and absolutely adores them, which is surprising considering how psychotically violent he is.
  • Watches British tv shows since British Brevity makes them perfect for his short attention span.
• Hive Mind: Word of God states that Max's delusions are caused by being part of one, and sharing memories and thoughts with a thousand other Maxes in a thousand other worlds. Later appearances haven't mentioned it, but this could be a good explanation why Sam is completely okay with taking Past Max as a Replacement Goldfish after his current Max's Heroic Sacrifice, since it means they're practically the same Max.
• I'm Taking Her Home with Me!: Despite his sociopathic personality, Max has a fondness for cute things; when he sees something he likes, he will occasionally ask Sam if he can keep it.
• Immune to Mind Control: In the games by Telltale Games, Max can't be hypnotized. Many theories are floated for why this is possible from his inate mental instability to a metal plate in his head or even a mass of lost Q-tips stuck in his ears preventing him from hearing the subsonic waves.
• Insistent Terminology: Whenever someone tries to describe Max physically, he'll often respond with "I'm a lagomorph." Technically it means he's a member of the order Lagomorpha, which covers all species of rabbits, hares, and pikas. Alternately, he's been described as a "rabbity thing", so he might not be any specific species at all.
• Killed Off for Real: One iteration of him, anyway. Fortunately he has a Body Double courtesy of a timeline split in "Chariots of the Dogs".
• Killer Rabbit: Quite literally, though what kind of rabbit is left ambiguous due to the Insistent Terminology above.
• Lacerating Love Language: Max uses violence to express a lot of things, and one of them is love, which is best exemplified by the conversation he has with Sam in "Moai Better Blues" about their office punching bag.
  Sam: I'd hoped after getting a punching bag for the office, Max would stop hitting me all the time.
  Max: But that's how I show affection!
  Sam: Well, could you stop loving me so much before 6 AM?
  Max: No way, Sam! I could never stop loving you!
• Large Ham: In Freelance Police, where he bursts into screaming and yelling at random.
• Let's Get Dangerous!: For all his sociopathy, Max's mayhem is usually limited to extremely poor decision-making and offscreen beatings. But in "What's New, Beelzebub?", Demon Peepers makes the horrible mistake of claiming to be Sam's real partner and best friend, and Max literally rips him apart.
• Like You Would Really Do It: We're told from the very beginning that if Max overuses his powers, his head will most likely catch fire and he will explode. That is exactly what happens, and now he's Killed Off for Real.
• Living Weapon: Sometimes Sam will practically grab him and use him in the literal sense. In Sam & Max Hit the Road he's part of Sam's inventory.
• The Magic Was Inside You All Along: For once, played completely straight in the finale of "Beyond the Alley of the Dolls".
• Mood-Swinger: Max can go from calm to completely ballistic in about .05 seconds.
• Morality Chain: Sam actually has a pretty violent temper, and he only really keeps it under control for Max's sake. As soon as he's out of the picture, Sam can totally snap. Max seems to have some awareness of this and will use his influence to either soothe or goad Sam when he loses his temper.
• More Teeth than the Osmond Family: If there's one thing that Max takes seriously, it's his sharp, bear trap-like teeth.
• Never Got to Say Goodbye: Sam and Max never get a chance to say farewell to each other before "The City That Dares Not Sleep"'s finale, because Max never returns to normal after all. All they get is one last wave.
• Nightmare Fuel Station Attendant: "ENJOYING THE RIDE, SAM?"
• Nominal Hero: He rarely intends to save the day; Sam just points him at the bad guys and lets him go wild.
• No Mouth: When his mouth is closed, usually because he's surprised or contemplative, it completely disappears.
• Pet the Dog: No, not Sam; but in "The City That Dares Not Sleep", the player bears witness to the first and last truly unselfish act Max has ever performed during the "Save Sybil" scene.
• Power Glows: Once Dr. Norrington unlocks Max's full psychic potential we see this come into play.
• Power Born of Madness: According to Papierwaite, the only people on this dimensional plane with The Gift are the insane, the simple, or the defective. Max fits all of these categories.
• President Evil: Max gets elected President of the United States in the first season, and it sticks. He moves the Oval Office to his office and enacts various dangerous laws, with his administration being notable for its many giant killer robot-based policies.
• Psycho Sidekick: Sam's lovably homicidal sidekick. Ironically, he's the more powerful of the Freelance Police. He's the president, high priest, and king of three different civilizations, and as of Sam & Max: The Devil's Playhouse, has increasingly powerful psychic powers. There's a point in "Beyond the Alley of the Dolls" where you can read Sam's mind, and find that he's privately worrying to himself that Max won't want a partner anymore, now that he's so strong. Yet he's perfectly happy to follow Sam around and do what he says.
• Psycho Supporter: Of Hugh Bliss. He's also a huge fan of Flint Paper, and once explicitly states that what he respects about him is the fact that he's really insane. He even writes Fan Fiction about him.
• Puppy-Dog Eyes: Part of his Wounded Gazelle Gambit. Doesn't work that well, though, since his beady brown eyes more closely resemble those of a shark than a puppy.
• Replacement Goldfish: After Max's death in "The City that Dare Not Sleep", Sam attempts to clone him from his DNA to replace him and fails. Soon after, though, Sam meets Past Max from "Chariots of the Dogs" and decides that that's good enough for him. It helps that since Max is implied to be part of a multiverse Hive Mind, he's practically the same Present Max in all but chronological memories.
• Riddle for the Ages: Just where does he keep that gun? See Character Catchphrase above as to Max's usual response, although he did once suggest that he'd tell Sam privately, in a highly controlled situation.
• Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory: Max was not affected by Sammun-Mak's changing of history presumably due to having the Gift.
• The Sociopath: Is frequently referred to as one. How true this designation is depends on the viewer.
• Stylistic Suck: Max apparently dreams of being a writer, and has hundreds of ideas for novels. But none of them are very...good.
• Temporal Paradox: Despite his death at the end of Season 3, his past self quickly appears from the time traveling elevator to fill his recently deceased future self's place, allowing for more adventures.
• They Killed Kenny Again: Counting the comics, cartoon, games, and one unfinished comic which Purcell has posted bits of online, Max has been killed at least 5 times throughout the series (including Bad Day on The Moon, Night of the Raving Dead, The City that Dares Not Sleep, an untitled strip the duo kill themselves to see what happens when people die, and in the aformentioned unfinished comic). In all cases, this was temporary and quickly resolved in one way or another.
• Trigger-Happy: While Sam mostly uses his gun to solve puzzles, Max's solution to almost any problem is to shoot it.
• Toilet Humor: His trademark armpit farts.
• Vocal Evolution:
  • Robert Tinkler initially did an impression of Nick Jameson's voice for the character and gave him a scratchy voice, before dropping the New York accent and giving him a higher-pitched "showman"-style voice.
  • Dave Boat deepened his voice for Max following Poker Night 2, settling into a suitable imitation of William Kasten.
• Wasn't That Fun?: Expect Max to invoke some variation of this after any death-defying escapade.
• Weirdness Magnet
  Max: Alien ships love to abduct me. Is it my fault that I look so probe-able?
• What You Are in the Dark: When separated from Sam, who typically keeps him focused on saving the day, Max's immediate instinct is to rescue Sam and to save the day unprovoked.
• Wouldn't Hurt a Child: Max actually seems to really like kids, even though they're obviously terrified of him. Even just having him wave to them reduces them to tears. In "The City That Dares Not Sleep", when Sybil goes into labor, he manages to regain enough control of himself to order everyone the hell out so that she can give birth safely. This is what ultimately proves to The Narrator that he's capable of being selfless and is worth living. This is despite the fact that he was minutes away from exploding and if they'd stayed a little longer, they could have saved him.
• Your Head Asplode: At the end of "The City that Dares Not Sleep", due to an overload of psychic energy and a nuclear bomb stuck in his head.

Other Characters

Supporting Characters (All Versions)

The Commissioner

Voiced by: Julian Kwasneski (Telltale Series), Dan Hennessey (cartoon)

"If anything happens, I'll deny I ever knew you."

Sam and Max's most frequent employer, in spite of never having been seen in person. All he has to do is call (or send drum signals, or subspace hails), and any task that's too big, too small or too weird for the regular authorities to handle will soon be taken care of. This when he's not berating the duo for the large amounts of property damage, bloodshed, and general mayhem they're prone to causing. Apparently, he hails from British Columbia.

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• Adaptation Expansion: The animated series shows that he has a daughter and a personal almond bar. It also reaffirms that he is, in fact, the commissioner of an actual police force.
• Big Good: His missions help the titular duo focus their violent, destructive, and macabre energies into pursuing acts of justice. Give or take some collateral damage.
• The Faceless: So far, a signed picture of his chest has been his only on-screen appearance.
• The Farmer and the Viper: For whatever reason, he invited Sam & Max to his daughter's wedding. Tear gas bombings and hails of rubber bullets ensued.
• Mundane Utility: The Commissioner usually gives the titular duo missions involving real mysteries or dastardly villains. He's also prone to giving them more banal tasks such as finding his lost keys.
• The Voice: Pretty much, although his voice has never been heard in the cartoon or games. The closest we've come is a word balloon in the comic.

Flint Paper

Voiced by: Tony Pope (Hit the Road), Peter Barto (Telltale Series)

"Flint Paper is insane. I really respect that."

Sharing the office next door to Sam and Max, Flint Paper is more your gritty, hard boiled old school sort of private detective. And when we say old school, we mean Good Old Fisticuffs, lots of gunfire, and pounding on thugs until they squeal. Most of his adventures happen off screen and he's mostly noticed when the sounds of violence leak in from next door but he does occasionally end up helping the Freelance Police and is someone you want on your side in a fight (and not just because the alternative is ending up in a world of pain).

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• Hardboiled Detective: He generally functions as a parody of this, preferring to resolve most of his problems with with violence and only being able to think in Private Eye Monologues.
• Hero of Another Story: He is always seen investigating another case, although there is some professional overlap with Sam and Max in season 2 and season 3 where they investigate the same case in a few episodes. As a result of being busy, he is only sometimes helpful even though he really seems to like Sam and Max just fine.
  Sam: I don't think Flint's taking us seriously, Max.
  Max: If I were as cool as him, I wouldn't take us seriously, either.
• Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique: He even gives classes about it!
• Memetic Badass: In-universe example. Sam goes to him for advice on being a private eye, Max writes Fan Fiction about him, and he's well-known for being able to kill anything.
• Metaphorgotten: Speaks and thinks in convoluted noir-tinged metaphors which often end up in...uncomfortably explicit places. And they usually involve hobos, for some reason.
• Nice Guy: The occasional act of indescribable violence aside, Flint is a pretty swell guy, and is perfectly friendly and cordial with the Freelance Police in every interaction. He even refers to them as his "little pals".
• Nigh-Invulnerable: His character description states flat-out that he cannot be killed, though a briefly glimpsed (and quickly averted) Bad Future in "The Penal Zone" does show him taking a hatchet to the back of the head although he actually died from his peanut allergy moments before. In episode 305, during a fight with Skun-ka'pe's clone ape army, he takes a knife to the back of his shoulder. He quickly pulls it out without any indication of bleeding or pain. That could be considered a Shout-Out because Flint was often seen with a knife in his shoulder in the comics. He's probably used to it.
• One-Man Army: He can face off against an army of cloned alien gorilla minions with just his own two fists, and still hold a casual conversation with Sam like he's just doing the laundry.
• Private Detective: Of a more traditional sort than Sam & Max, although he engages in plenty of weird cases and gratuitous violence.
• Private Eye Monologue: Apparently, he can only think in these.
• Slasher Smile: Dons a real scary one when leading an arrested Grandpa Stinky to the Pit of Contrition for his supposed heresy against Sammun-Mak.
• Weaksauce Weakness: He is deathly allergic to peanuts. So far, no one has been able to successfully exploit it (although Girl Stinky tried once in The Penal Zone).
• You Didn't Ask: In the final episode of season 2 in the games. He'd figured out that Bosco was, somehow, the vandal his mother was after, but he never mentioned this to her because he thought it was obvious.

The Rubber Pants Commandoes

An elite special forces squad of gun-toting babies led by a chimpanzee, all wearing diapers, who occasionally appear to rescue Sam and Max from impending peril. They possess surprising combat prowess and an impeccable sense of timing.

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• Badass Bandolier: At least one of the babies wears a loop of shotgun shells over his chest. Sergeant Blip has a few spare bananas tucked in his belt instead of grenades.
• Cigar Chomper: Sergeant Blip is the gruff veteran who leads the brigade. He's also a chimp.
• Deus ex Machina: Pretty much all of their appearances have them inexplicably busting in apropos of nothing and rescuing Sam and Max from imminent peril.
• For the Evulz: When Sam and Max asks Sergeant Blip how they can thank him and his team for the timely rescue, Blip tells them to Think Nothing of It, because hurting people and ruining things are all the reward they need.
• Silly Simian: Sergeant Blip is a talking chimpanzee, referencing animal guests on talk shows, such as several chimps wearing diapers, sometimes even playing with cigars. You wouldn't think a chimp could lead a black ops team, or that if he could he would still need rubber pants, but it's not the most ridiculous thing to happen in Sam & Max.
• Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: Paratrooping infants, save for Sergeant Blip the chimp, wielding assault weapons and taking down deadly foes with the greatest of ease, all before they can even talk.

Mack Salmon

Voiced by: David Hemblen (Animated Series)

"I've waited long for this moment. For your part, gentlemen, in causing my condition, I will witness your ghastly punishment."

The closest thing the Freelance Police have to a recurring arch-nemesis. A fish in a bowl on top of a fake human body, Mack blames the Freelance Police for his current form and vows revenge on the duo.

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• Arch-Enemy: He certainly thinks of himself as this to the Freelance Police. He's certainly one of the most recurring, showing up in 3 of the 4 Sam & Max media series (including a very minor cameo in the Telltale series).
• But for Me, It Was Tuesday: He blames Sam and Max for him being a fish in a body suit. Neither Sam, nor Max recall any such event.
• Foil: To Sam and Max. In contrast to their personalities, Mack presents himself as a No-Nonsense Nemesis. His name is even an inversion of "Sam and Max" (try saying "Salmon Mack" a few times).
• Involuntary Shapeshifting: According to him at least. He was a victim of this as a result of the titular duo's actions.
• No-Nonsense Nemesis: At the very least he tries to be one. The Freelance Police don't really take him any more seriously than any of the other weirdoes they deal with.
• Riddle for the Ages: How did Salmon Mack end up a fish? And are Sam and Max responsible?
• Revenge: His hatred of the titular duo is driven by this.

Supporting Characters (Animated Series)

Many characters in the animated series were directly adapted from the comics; this section is for characters exclusive to the cartoon.

Darla "The Geek" Gugenheek

Voiced by: Tracey Moore

"Can't they ever take the stairs?"

Added to the series as an Affirmative Action Girl, Darla the Geek, or just "The Geek", is a Child Prodigy Gadgeteer Genius who lives and works below Sam and Max's office building in the "Sub-basement of Solitude". She is the provider of many wonderful toys to Sam and Max, when she's not yelling at them for busting up her lab... again.

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• Child Prodigy: So much so that the President and the head of the United Nations call on her to stop the hole in the ozone layer and an asteroid crashing into earth.
• Gadgeteer Genius: Is very intelligent and is able to make wonderful toys for Sam and Max, from Humongous Mecha to a speedboat to even a drill to the Center of the Earth.
• Gender Flip: Darla was originally supposed to be a boy. The Geek was changed to girl as the network really wanted a recurring female character in the show.
• Insistent Terminology: She hates being called by her full name.
• Little Miss Snarker: Unlike Sam and Max, she is a lot snarkier and has a drier sense of humor compared to her friends.
• Non-Standard Character Design: She's one of the only human characters in the show whose eyes aren't dots.
• Only Sane Man: She's of more sound mind and less likely to cause mindless chaos than Sam and Max.
• Teen Genius: Only a pre-teen and yet is able to be seen as an equal by Sam and Max, and they love her for her insane genius.
• Tomboy: Given that she was originally gonna be a boy in the concept, it seems she still has a tomboyish personality still as she has no problem with doing dangerous stuff and enjoys the violence as much as Sam and Max.

Lorne

Voiced by: Patrick McKenna

THE FRIEND FOR LIFE!

Ahem. Lorne is an obsessed fan of Sam and Max, alternately eager to come to the "rescue" as much as stage his own drama so he can play Distressed Dude and make Sam and Max need to rescue him. The Freelance Police are a bit split about him: Sam tries to be sympathetic, Max is just plain creeped out.

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• Abhorrent Admirer: Sam and Max, mostly Max, really want to keep as much distance between them and Lorne as possible.
• Ambiguously Gay: He has what can be a very effeminate-sounding voice and his actions with getting close to Sam and Max come across as someone with an obsessive crush. A flashback in the last episode, he puckers his lips before giving Sam CPR and seems intent on making it last.
• Ascended Fanboy: Got a few good points after he kidnapped a villain and thinking he nearly got Sam and Max killed.
• Berserk Button: Notably snaps whenever someone gets in his way of satisfying his desire to hang out with Sam and Max.
• Everyone Has Standards: His reaction to thinking he killed Sam and Max shows two things, he's unwilling to be a murderer and would never go as far as to pull off If I Can't Have You… to his heroes.
• Ink-Suit Actor: Bears a strong resemblance to Pat McKenna's best-known character, Harold Green.
• Karma Houdini: In his first appearance, he gets off with a warning.
• Karma Houdini Warranty: Sam and Max arrest him in his second appearance and then subject him to tremendous electric torture (though Lorne doesn't seem to mind). In the literally titled last episode, it is implied Lorne may be in jail for life.
• Loony Fan: Idolizes Sam and Max to the point of being a...
• Psycho Supporter: He sets up a Death Course for Sam and Max to conquer and fakes his kidnapping so he can be "saved" by them. Of course, Sam and Max being who they are, that just finally earns him a few points in their good books.
• Motor Mouth: To the point that Max wants to avoid him as much as possible. He is also very persistent about being their friend.
• Selective Obliviousness: Neither getting a Death Glare from his heroes or Max shouting "STOP STALKING US!" seem to get it through to his head they don't see him as a friend.
• Stalker Shrine: Was later converted into a fan site that made it so he wouldn't bug them ever again.
• Stalker without a Crush: He's obsessed with getting to hang out with his heroes.
• The Team Wannabe: Fancies himself as the "Junior Ward" and would love to be a part of their adventures, with Sam and Max clearly wanting him to stop stalking them.

Supporting Characters (Hit The Road)

Bruno The Bigfoot

Voiced by: Irwin Keyes

The former star attraction of The Kushman Brother's Carnival, Bruno's escape from his icy prison sets the plot in motion, as The Kushmans hire the Freelance Police to track down the escaped bigfoot and return him to the carnival. However, Bruno has no intention of returning, as he's heading for an important Bigfoot Convention.

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• Been There, Shaped History: Well, local backroad history anyway, Bruno was one of the Bigfoot who helped construct the Worlds Largest Ball of Twine many years ago.
• Bigfoot, Sasquatch, and Yeti: As his name indicates, Bruno is a bigfoot, though as Sam and Max eventually discover, they're not nearly as rare as folk myth makes it seem.
• Happily Ever After: After the events of the game, Trixie and Bruno head off to Vegas to get married.
• Human Popsicle: Well, HUMANOID Popsicle anyway, Bruno spent years on display at the carnival trapped inside a block of ice. It's unknown how he ended up frozen in the first place.
• Interspecies Romance: With Trixie The Giraffe-Necked Girl, who's simply a human woman with an extended neck.
• Only Sane Man: Seems to have a bit more common sense than the other bigfoot, and isn't the least bit interested in joining them in some primitivist utopia after the Reforestation of Western North America is successfull.
• Older Than They Look: Due to having been frozen for several decades, Bruno is much older than he looks, having been around since the early 50's at least.

Trixie, The Giraffe-Necked Girl from Scranton

Voiced by: Marsha Clark

The second most popular attraction of the Kushman Brother's Carnival, Trixie is the one who helped Bruno escape, having fallen in love with him despite his frozen, silent state. Like her new boyfriend, she doesn't want to return to her former life as a sideshow attraction, instead hoping to settle down with Bruno.

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• Body Horror: Trixie's neck is horrifically extended from the neck rings she wears.
• The Freakshow: Was a member of the carnivals sideshow attractions alongside Bruno, Hans the Mole-Man, Flambe The Firebreather, and several others.
• Happily Ever After: After the events of the game, Trixie and Bruno head off to Vegas to get married.
• Interspecies Romance: With Bruno.

Shep and Burl Kushman

Voiced by: Tony Pope (Shep) Denny Delk (Burl)

The owners, proprietors and part-time exhibits of the Kushman Brothers Carnival, Shep and Burl are a pair of conjoined twins who spend most of their time in the Hall of Oddities. After their two star attractions escape under mysterious circumstances, they hire the Freelance Police to track them down.

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• Conjoined Twins: The Kushman Brothers are joined at the spine, meaning only one of them can walk at the same time while the other is carried around like a backpack.
• Crappy Carnival: They put so much work into the Hall of Oddities that the rest of the carnival is rather sub-par. For one thing, the Whack-A-Mole game is full of rats, and the Cone Of Tragedy tends to make riders lose all their stuff.
• Failed a Spot Check: Shep is the only one who notices that the "Bruno" Sam and Max brought back looks a bit off (since it's just Conroy Bumpus and Lee Harvey wearing a fur pelt inside a block of ice).
  Shep: Hey Burl, did Bruno always have four arms?
• Full-Frontal Assault: It looks like they're wearing a ringmaster suit, but according to Shep, their skin is naturally green and vinyl-like, so they're actually naked. Doesn't explain the hat Burl is wearing though.
• The Freakshow: Not only do they run one, they're basically an exhibit themselves.

Supporting Characters (Telltale Games)

Bosco

Voiced by: Joey Camen (Seasons 1-2), Ogie Banks (Remastered)

"Hey guys, it's me, Bosco!"

Bosco is the owner of Bosco's Inconvenience store and the Freelance Police's usual go to guy for information or (very overpriced) gadgets. He's cripplingly paranoid of whoever walks in, and in most cases has every right to be.

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• Adam Smith Hates Your Guts: Every time Sam and Max try to buy a gadget from him, he comes up with some outrageous price, and his prices get higher each episode. By the end, he lampshades how Sam and Max still come to him despite the constant ripoffs.
• Amazing Technicolor Population: He's pale violet for some reason. This gets pointed out, too.
• Anxiety Dreams: Zigzagged. During his stint in hell in the last episode of season 2, he's naked. Then, after Sam & Max free him, he can be seen naked at Golem Lincoln's bachelor party. When Sam mentions he's not in Hell anymore, Bosco states that being naked wasn't actually part of his personal hell and that he just likes being naked. Mind you, he's extremely drunk at the time.
• Ascended Extra: Although his actual appearance was offscreen, Bosco's Inconvenience (then named "Bosco's Guns, Liquor and Baby Needs") appears in Sam and Max Hit the Road, 13 years before Telltale made him a major character. Sam and Max can optionally save him from an armed robbery (or at least savagely beat up one of the punks who was attempting to rob him).
  Max: I think that punk learned a valuable lesson, Sam.
  Sam: Me too, little buddy. I didn't realize the lower lip could stretch completely over the head. Amazing.
• Brick Joke: Multiple times across the seasons.
  • In the first season, he wants to build an anti-missile defense system because he believes the US government has a missile trained on him. When Sam & Max make it into the War Room of the White House, they learn that's actually the case.
  • In the first episode of season 2, he mentions his mother sends him a bomb for Christmas every year. In the last episode of the season, she reveals they're actually only clocks.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: He may be a paranoid wacko who sells you "inventions" of dubious quality for exorbitant sums of money, but the gadgets he sells you always do exactly what you need them to. Bosco is also mostly right about his conspiracy theories and a competent engineer.
• Character Catchphrase: Three of 'em:
  • "Hey guys, it's me, Bosco!" when revealing his identity.
  • "It'll work, trust me, trust me!" regarding his crummy invention of the week.
  • "They're onto/after me!" when ranting about the latest conspiracy.
• Conspiracy Theorist: Played for laughs in that even though most of his theories end up being right, he's still portrayed as a complete idiot who is terrible with money, hides behind unconvincing disguises (while standing at the same place inside his own store named after himself), and doesn't seem to realize that all of his conspiracies could be solved in a day if he'd just give Sam and Max the items already. Though in the case of the last point he is Genre Savvy enough to quickly realize that he can literally make up any insane price for junk he has lying around behind his counter and Sam will still end up finding a way to pay the amount.
• Crazy-Prepared: For all imagined threats under the sun.
• Didn't Think This Through: During Culture Shock, he designs an anti-shoplifting system for his store, but he realizes he's got nothing to stop people bringing unwanted items in. After Culture Shock, he decides to rework the shop's security system to stop people from being able to plant items in the store... removing the ability for it to stop actual shoplifters in the process, since he had to reuse parts from the original system. He is unhappy in both cases.
• Dumbass Has a Point: Once the duo finally protest the escalating prices of his inventions at the 100-trillion-dollar mark in Season 1, Bosco shoots right back that all he does is make up the most ridiculous price he can think of, and each time they keep paying it.
• Gadgeteer Genius: While the ones he sells to others are very rudimentary and border on outright scams (a bottle of vodka labeled "Truth Serum", for instance), he is capable of crafting advanced security systems that can do everything from stop shoplifters to fend off nuclear attacks. Too bad he keeps those for himself.
• Half-Human Hybrid: Invoked In-Universe; he disguises himself as a half-elf when he migrates to the Internet in season 1 of the Telltale Games. Of course, being Bosco, he completely fouls up his disguise by presenting himself as vertically bisected between human and elf.
• I Am Who?: Although he doesn't know it, Sam & Max find out in season 2 that he's actually President John F. Kennedy's bastard son, a result of his mother's brief fling with him and her desire to have a child without a boyfriend to tie her down.
• Last-Name Basis: Likely enforced by his only referring to himself as his family name of "Bosco". If Momma Bosco is shown his letter from Vegas she reveals that his first name is "Roscoe."
• Naked People Are Funny: He spends the majority of "What's New Beelzebub?" buck naked. At first it seems like this is part of his Ironic Hell, but it's later shown that his hell was being watched all the time. He likes being naked.
• Only One Name: Unlike most other characters, it is questioned as to whether this is a first name or a last name. If an exclamation by his mother is to be believed, though, his first name is Roscoe.
• Paper-Thin Disguise: His preferred way to hide from his enemies.
• Properly Paranoid: His conspiracy theories get more contrived every episode—and they're always correct.
• Put on a Bus: He went to Las Vegas with Buster Blaster in Season 3, and promptly failed to realize that having a card counter that loudly vocalizes every thought is the worst possible idea for increasing his dwindling fortune. He winds up at least $20,000 deep in debt to what's implied to be the mob and is, thankfully off-screen, forced to work as a male stripper to pay it off.
• Rags to Riches: Because of all the money he makes out of Sam & Max in the first season, he retires his shop in the 2nd.
  • Riches to Rags: However, as of the 3rd season he's burned through his fortune enough that he goes to Vegas with Bluster Blaster as his card counter to try and revitalize it. This fails because he chose Bluster Blaster as his card counter and he winds up deep in debt and working as a male stripper to pay it off.
• Sanity Slippage: His mental state is constantly degrading during Season 2, leading to his being abducted by T.H.E.M. This slippage reaches its climax when he and Momma Bosco's ghost meet in the present and he realizes that every bit of his paranoia is because his mother was looking for his temporally displaced self for his whole life; every real and imagined threat that plagues him is because of people she hired trying to track him down. After that moment of lucidity, he snaps again harder and develops a twitch in his eye.
• Shoplift and Die: More like "Shoplift and Get Bonked By a Boxing Glove", courtesy of BTADS (Bosco Tech Anti-Delivery System). He even integrated his anti-missile satellite defense system into BTADS.
• Temporal Paradox: In episode 204, when he ends up aboard the time-traveling spaceship of T.H.E.M, he inadvertently travels back to his shop when his mother owned it in 1962, where his panic at seeing her causes him to damage some things. She declares a vendetta against this "mysterious vandal" that results in her inadvertently harassing him throughout his life. Also overlaps with Grandfather Paradox, as he inadvertently contaminates his mother's Uterine Replicator with cow's milk and causes himself to be turned into a half-human, half-cow. A condition that Sam & Max temporarily exaggerate.
• Twitchy Eye: When he finally learns that the people harassing him over his life have mostly been detectives trying to find the man who vandalized his mom's store before he was born — which was Bosco himself, due to Time Travel — he develops a very twitchy eye, then promptly scares his mother by ordering her to get out of his proverbial hair.

Momma Bosco

Voiced by: Cathleen Riddley

Bosco's Sassy Momma, Momma Bosco is an even greater Mad Scientist than her son, without the extreme paranoia. She is killed in the present by an explosion and became a ghost, but Sam and Max go back to the 1970s to meet her alive self. In the past, she's a lot more abrasive, but by season 3 she has mellowed out.

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• All Girls Want Bad Boys: When Max bluntly insults her and tells her that he's not interested in her, she immediately becomes infatuated with him, even declaring she'll give up her original plans to become a single mom. Ironically, when Sam then adjusts Max so that he does express an interest in girls, she promptly does another 180 and goes back to hating men again.
• Back from the Dead: By possessing a less-than-perfect clone of her.
• Does Not Like Men: Is constantly putting men down and denouncing them at the slightest excuse for perceived sexism. That said, this only applies to her young self in the 1960s; the older Momma Bosco from season 3 has seemingly grown out of this. And regardless of which version, she has always loved her son, even if she wanted a daughter.
• Gadgeteer Genius: Makes a child-making device, hundreds of cloning machines, and a portal to another dimension.
• Insane Troll Logic: Much like her son, her rationale behind her decisions... don't make a lot of sense. A saner alternate version of Bosco mentions that his mother is "extremely contrary". Seems to have gotten saner by the events of season 3.
• Interspecies Romance: Played for laughs, but she is initially attracted to a time-traveling Max.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Her obsession with finding out who the person who wrecked her store is directly the cause of Bosco's rampaging paranoia as she hired detective after detective to find someone who perfectly fit his description not knowing that the person she'd been hunting for was a time-displaced Bosco himself. She shows regret and shame when she learns she's the reason Bosco is the way he is.
• Straw Feminist: Played for laughs. Momma Bosco is not only a Sassy Black Woman, but is also very annoyed when others (in her eyes) fail consider that she is an 'independent' woman and doesn't need a man for anything, even to have a child. However, she ends up falling for Max of all people.
• Techno Babble: A never-ending fountain of this in Season 3. Eventually, she confesses that she's just making it all up as she goes.
• They Call Me MISTER Tibbs!: She insists on the salutation Dr. after earning her PhD.
• Took a Level in Kindness: Being dead must have mellowed her, to the point of being one of the most helpful characters in Season 3.
• Uterine Replicator: Builds a device that can take DNA from two people and mix them together to create a fully-developed child without the need for her to ever be pregnant or engage in sex. In the 1960s.
• Why Couldn't You Be Different?: Implied; in her first appearance in episode 204, she makes it very clear that she's expecting her artificially produced child to be a daughter, and that she really isn't a fan of the male gender. With Bosco making it clear how poorly he and his mother get on, it's obvious that she never did forgive him for being her son instead of the daughter she wanted. Despite this, she does still love her son greatly.

Sybil Pandemik

Voiced by: Amy Provenzano

Sybil is a very multi-talented woman. So talented that she has mastered many jobs, able to fill out five roles of a seven person team. She's also the wife of the Lincoln Monument.

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• Balloon Belly: After spending most of Season 3 out of action due to being still on her honeymoon, Sybil makes her triumphant return in the final episode to help Sam... the thing is, she is also HEAVILY pregnant. She is decidedly insecure about her protruding gut, which becomes a problem when Sam offends her by accident.
• Bridezilla: Implied; in the season 2 finale, her preparations for her upcoming wedding to Lincoln have Jurgen's Monster, who she is using as her sounding board, begging for death. And Sam actually has to shoot him (temporarily) dead in order to complete a puzzle. Of course, it could just be the fact that the Monster is being made to help plan his unrequited love's wedding to another.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Subverted. She's eccentric and goes into whatever random job that catches her interest, but she's not guaranteed to be competent at the job she gets. Her first appearance has her be tricked into misdiagnosing Sam with Artificial Personality Disorder, and later she ends up buying the United States of America as Queen of Canada, which apparently doesn't go over well with the residents of Canada.
• Longest Pregnancy Ever: Justified, as she's carrying some sort of human-golem hybrid in her. That sounds like it would take longer to develop. That doesn't change the fact that she's in her fifth trimester.
• Modest Royalty: Still works out of her office when she temporarily becomes Queen of Canada, and the only sign she is is the Royal "We" she adopts. It's cold in Canada, she doesn't want to freeze.
• New Job as the Plot Demands: Provides the page image. She rarely holds the same job twice, and they get more outlandish each episode. Each of her jobs helps the Freelance Police, mostly by sheer coincidence.
• Noodle Incident: Either before or during Season 3, Sybil somehow got a job as a scuba diver, a brain surgeon, a veterinarian, and weirdest of all, a dark wizard. The fact that she fills this role instead of certified sorcerer Papierwaite implies she's somehow more experienced than he is.
• Nice Girl: If only by comparison. She's one of the few characters that shows Sam and Max even common courtesy instead of brushing them off; for example, she greets them by name instead of "Oh, it's you two", and is usually friendly to them.
• Only Sane Man: For a little while, she appears to be the only rational, although a little scatterbrained, character in the series. Then she falls in love with and marries the Lincoln Memorial.
• Pregnant Badass: In the Season 3 finale.
• Punny Name: It appears to be a play on the term "civil pandemic".
• Put on a Bus: She's still on her honeymoon in Season 3. But she returned in time for the finale.
• What Does She See in Him?: Several other characters wonder just why it is that Sybil is attracted to the Lincoln Memorial during Season 2. Most notably, during "Moai Better Blues", if you talk to Girl Stinky at the start of the chapter and ask her how to "help Sybil", she suggests that Sybil should dump Lincoln. Later in that chapter, their relationship hits a rocky spot when she finally clues in that he's insisted on their particular picnic spot so that he can ogle the Moai statue nearby... which he compounds by suggesting she get plastic surgery to look more like her!

Philo Pennyworth / Mr. Featherly

Voiced by: David Boyll

A trained Shakespearean chicken actor.

---

• Berserk Button: Do not bring up Colonel Sanders.
• Classically-Trained Extra: Zigzagged. He's really classically trained (at the Globe Theatre, no less) and obviously doing roles far beneath his talent but doesn't seem all that bothered about it, explaining to Sam & Max that a true actor should give their all for whatever role they've been cast... even something as absurd as this. Once Midtown Cowboys becomes a smash hit in Germany, he's actually quite happy with it, and happily abandons plans of acting in theater again because his Mr. Featherly role is far more profitable.
• Fake Americaninvoked: He talks with an English accent, but drops it for his Midtown Cowboys character.
• I Am Not Spockinvoked: Undergoes this and the I Am Not Leonard Nimoy trope in-universe. In the first season, he gets annoyed when people mistake him for his sitcom character. In the second season, after Midtown Cowboys turns into a surprise hit in Europe, he legally changes his name to Mr. Featherly to make it easier to cash in on that foreign popularity and is now irritated whenever someone calls him Philo Pennyworth.
• Live Item: In Chariot of the Dogs.
• Only in It for the Money: The reason he's fine with starring in such an awful sitcom, especially once it finds a huge audience overseas.

The Director

Voiced by: Dianne Nola

The cranky, short-tempered director of W.A.R.P. studios. She despises Myra Stump for hypnotizing almost all of her cast and crew, forcing her to take whatever talent she can get to keep the rest of the studio running.

---

• Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": No name is ever mentioned. She's just "The Director."
• Offscreen Teleportation: She can appear in every room just before you enter, but refuses to tell how that's possible. Industry secret.
• Prima Donna Director: Subverted, surprisingly. The Director is cranky and short-tempered, but mostly because of the extreme stress of running an entire TV studio with only a skeleton crew, and her actors and staffmembers getting sucked into Myra's talkshow and not returning in days. She's actually pretty patient with Sam and Max, even when they're actively trying to annoy her, and will do as many takes as are needed without blowing her top.
• Product Placement: She's a huge fan of the revenue they bring in, and works them into the Midtown Cowboys script no matter how inappropriate or bizarre they might be.
• Unkempt Beauty: Sports rather scruffy attire and messy hair, but still looks good.
• Unknown Rival: Myra doesn't seem to be aware that she hates her.

The Bug

Voiced by: Brendan Q. Ferguson

The Bug is exactly what he sounds like: a listening device, able to mimic the voice of anyone he hears and remember entire conversations.

---

• Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: Unlike most of the other characters that disappeared at the beginning of Season 3, there's no reason given on why he wasn't included, implied or otherwise.
• Drill Sergeant Nasty: A somewhat ineffectual one, thanks to his stature.
• The Informant: Well, he is a ''bug''...
• Literal Surveillance Bug: He's a talking cockroach that listens to and flawlessly repeats whatever he hears. That's as literal as it gets.
• Live Item: Sam keeps him inside his coat, like everything else.
• Shell-Shocked Veteran: When he isn't bossing Sam around, he's looking back on his traumatic war experiences. He even has "Post Insecticide Stress Disorder", causing him to rant about events tied to specific smells. When he smells bleach, he flashes back to a battle over Hamburger Hill (a garbage pile behind the Burger Buddies restaurant on West 5th Avenue, not the one in Vietnam).
• Verbal Tic: Whenever he says something, he usually says the last word twice. Twice!

Harry Moleman

Voiced by: Tim Talbot

Harry is a hilariously antisocial moleman, and seeming chew toy of fate.

---

• Becoming the Mask: After disguising himself as the don of the Toy Mafia for a sting operation, he settles into the role so much he actually becomes don of the Toy Mafia.
• Butt-Monkey: Almost nothing goes his way, especially when Sam and Max get involved. For example, in "The Penal Zone", he trades an (unknown to him but known to Sam and Max) winning lottery ticket in exchange for one of General Skun-ka'pe's "vacation tickets"... which are actually keycards to the general's moleman processing machine. Not only did he lose out on millions of dollars, he almost got killed.
• Don't Fear the Reaper: Had a brief stint as Death.
• Early-Bird Cameo: He can be seen on a poster in Brady Culture's Home for Former Child Stars in "Culture Shock" before he properly appears two episodes later.
• Fantastic Racism: He has a deep and intense hatred of zombies, due to their clumsiness and habit of breaking knick-knacks.
• The Mole: Quite literally in "The Mole, the Mob, and the Meatball".
• New Jobs As The Plot Demands: Not nearly as often as Sybil, but he's been a police informant, don of the crime syndicate he was infiltrating, docent of the Church of Prismatology, potential suitor of Sybil, the Grim Reaper, and wannabe spirit medium.

Agent Superball

Voiced by: Peter Barto

Superball is a secret service agent, and Max's vice president. Although he keeps a bored tone to his voice, he's capable of matching Sam and Max's snarky antics

---

• The Comically Serious: He almost never drops his stoic and deadpan attitude, even in the face of Sam and Max's regular shenanigans.
• Cool Shades: "These sunglasses aren't cheap."
• Creepy Monotone: The dude's not fazed by anything, though he claims otherwise.
• Hidden Depths: Apparently he has a really good singing voice, as shown in The War Song.
  • He also took twelve years of professional dance lessons.
• Manly Tears: Subverted. After the failed attempt to clone Max following his death, he declares that he "can't do this," and bursts out sobbing.
• Mysterious Past: If you use the Nutrition Specs on him, Sam says that he's comprised of "20% mysterious, and 80% sheer awesome."
  "Hmm, that's down 10% from last season."
• Not So Stoic: Max's death is too much, even for him, and causes him to run away while crying uncontrollably.
• Older Than They Look: Looked exactly the same age way back in The '60s when he started the job. When asked, he Hand Waves it as "clean living". Superball gives the Hand Wave in response to Sam's assertion that he looks as young as he does due to time travel.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: Superball is just a codename, and goes by nothing else.
• Psychic Block Defense: "I am afraid that the contents of my mind are classified, sirs."
• Punny Name: Superball is a "bouncer," get it?
• Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory: Along with Dr. Norrington, the Molemen, Max, and the organization he works for, he did not have his memory affected by the Sammun-Mak incident.
• Single Tear: He sheds one in a vision of the future, but if it ended up happening, we missed it along with whatever truly beautiful or tragic thing provoked it. Given the context of the season's ending though, it's likely it was his reaction to seeing Max's Heroic Sacrifice or the start of his Inelegant Blubbering.
• That Makes Me Feel Angry: Because he rarely actually emotes.
  Superball: (Complete monotone) That makes me extremely alarmed.
  Max: Get a hold of yourself, man. We can't think with all your hysterics.
• Took a Level in Kindness: By Season 3, he stops being a roadblock to Sam and Max's attempts to get into places and presents himself as a more active ally. While he's still evasive or seemingly emotionless, it eventually becomes clear that he has gained genuine affection for the duo when he bursts into tears upon Max's death.
• Wild Card: Despite working for Max, he often passively blocks or ocassionally outright sabotages the team at times. In other episodes, he's a staunch ally to their causes. At the same time, given who Max is, its hard not to suspect that Superball's mostly just trying to keep the country in relatively safe hands.

The Giant Stone Head of Abe Lincoln

Voiced by: Roger L. Jackson

The remains of the Lincoln Memorial, animated by hydraulic motors with the purpose of running for president. It Makes Sense in Context. After losing to Max in the election, he went on a rampage through the US and was blown up by a nuclear warhead, leaving only his disembodied head. He later marries Sybil Pandemik, whom he met when Sam arranged a date between the two of them to scandalize him and lower his ratings in the aforementioned election.

---

• Golem: Seems to be a mix of this and a Humongous Mecha; he is made of marble and very towering in height, but it sounds like his body has robotic parts to help him move around.
• Heel–Face Turn: Started as an enemy of Sam and Max, later reforms when they help him get with Sybil.
• Kavorka Man: He's not exactly a handsome man, given he's a giant sculpture of Abe Lincoln's severed head, but the attractive Sybil Pandemik is dating him throughout Season 2... despite some rough spots here and there, they ultimately get married, to everyone's disbelief.
• Losing Your Head: Inverted; he was reduced to a head when he got blown up by a missile. Got his body back in Season 3.
• Put on a Bus: He's still on his honeymoon with Sybil in Season 3, though he comes back in the last episode to lead the Maimtrons' charge against the rampaging monster.

The Computer Obsolescence Prevention Society (C.O.P.S.)

Voiced by: Jared Emerson-Johnson

The C.O.P.S. are a support group for outdated electronics, introduced in the Season 1 episode, "Reality 2.0". The four founding members are Bob Bell, a telephone who talks like a smarmy phone-tree narrator; Curt 286, an old desktop computer with a monotone voice; Chippy, a Pong machine who communicates in digitized blips and bleeps; and Bluster Blaster, an old arcade machine with No Indoor Voice. They run a number of dubious businesses in Season 2, and in Season 3 they get a new member, an old printer/scanner named Carol, and offer the services of their "Crimetron" to Sam and Max.

---

• Animate Inanimate Object: Zig-zagged with them. They're fully sentient computers that run a variety of miscellaneous businesses during the series, like an auto-body shop. That said, they are never shown physically moving at any point, and no explanation is given how they do anything on their own.
• Artificial Stupidity: Bluster Blaster is this incarnate. His Tic-Tac-Doom game is basically playing that game at level 0. The objective of the game is to actually lose, and he's so bad at it that it's harder than it seems.
• Berserk Button: WE HATE BAGPIPES!. They also deeply resent the Torture-Me-Elmer toy, and their first challenge to Sam and Max is to run over and shoot as many of the masochistic dolls as possible.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: They're largely incompetent in most of their ventures, but their stint in Pimp Le Car has them perform a surprisingly good job of pimping out the DeSoto with only decorative decals and the occasional actual modification (at the very least Sam and Max are impressed). And despite some minor hiccups, their Crime-Tron service in Season 3 works exactly as advertised.
• The Bus Came Back: Buster Blaster came back from his trip to Las Vegas, though without Bosco, in "Beyond the Alley of the Dolls". He's gone again by "The City That Dares Not Sleep", having run off with Carol.
• Do-Anything Robot: Debatably. They can do a lot of things that should be beyond a telephone, pong machine, arcade cabinet and desktop computer's capabilities, like acting as the servers for "Reality 2.0", pimping out cars or acting as medics. It doesn't mean they're good at it, mind you, but they try.
• For Inconvenience, Press "1": Played with at times with Bob the telephone.
• Fun with Acronyms: This leads to a little confusion when Sybil first mentions them.
• Heroic Comedic Sociopath: Bluster Blaster.
• Hidden Depths: Chippy is quite artistically inclined. He provides the backing music for the C.O.P.S' song, created the decorative decals to decorate the Desoto with (his mother was a label maker), and even willingly takes Specs musical challenge with his soul on the line, too confident in his skills to be able to be talked down by the others. He needs help in that last instance, but that could be due to being forced to improvise.
• I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: Carol leaves the C.O.P.S to run away with Bluster Blaster, but Curt claims that he's fine with this as long as she's happy.
• Large Ham: All of them are this to certain levels, though Curt is more of a Cold Ham, but especially Bluster Blaster.
  "I AM BECOME DEATH!!"
• Luke, You Are My Father: It turns out Sam created Bluster Blaster. Played with, as he apparently was aware of this, but nobody ever asked.
• Machine Monotone: Curt 286.
• New Job as the Plot Demands: After their introduction in "Reality 2.0.", they spend the series jumping between business ventures. They have been game developers, auto body shop owners, inventors, and criminal investigators.
• No Indoor Voice: Bluster Blaster, for the most part. He temporarily gets a quiet Simpleton Voice due to an accident just before "Night of the Raving Dead", but he's back to his usual noisy self by season 3.
• Noodle Incident: Towards the end of season three, reading Bluster Blaster's future shows him, apparently, enthusiastically drifting through space. We're given no clue as to why.
  • Additionally, Bluster Blaster's words imply he had a falling out with the rest of the C.O.P.S and it's never elaborated over what, though it's very likely it has something to do with his lightning-induced injury from testing the antenna in Night of the Raving Dead and the fact that the other C.O.P.S tried to profit off the excess of his prescription medicine.
• Offscreen Teleportation: They hop locations from time to time, but we are never shown how, as they are otherwise incapable of moving on their own. "What's new, Beelzebub" has them teleport to the scene of Maimtron's reactivation, and return back to their garage without explanation.
• Put on a Bus: In Season 3, Bluster Blaster is on a road trip with Bosco to Las Vegas.
• Quip to Black: Curt gets his by the boatload in 305.
• Sophisticated as Hell: Curt 286 shifts between technical terminology and casual lingo in his dialogue, all spoken in his usual Machine Monotone.
• The Speechless: Supposedly Carol, but it's equally possible she's just a regular, non-sentient machine and the C.O.P.S. are just delusional.
• Terse Talker: Bluster Blaster mainly speaks in short utterances. The few times he speaks longer sentences than that are when he's either under the influence of something, or when Curt and Bob aren't available to do the bulk of the talking for him.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: Bluster Blaster was a lot friendlier in the past when he was first made. Sam and Max bringing him more in-line with his present self is part of a puzzle.
• Token Girl: Carol—or so the C.O.P.S. claim. "She" never speaks or displays any signs of sentience, so there might just be a weird case of Cargo Ship.
• Tropaholics Anonymous: They're a quartet of old computers that spend most of their time trying to get past how old they are.
• The Unintelligible: Chippy only communicates in electronic boops and bleeps, although there may be more to it than that.
  Max: That one's^note Chippy my favorite. It sounds like he's always cursing.
  Curt: That is because he is.
• We Want Our Jerk Back!: Bluster Blaster, after his "accident" in Night of the Raving Dead.
• What the Hell, Hero?: They're horrified when Noir Sam threatens Carol at gunpoint in "They Stole Max's Brain". They've gotten over it by their next scene, though.
  Bob: Audiences across the country agree: you're a monster, Sam!
  Curt: What have you become?

Sal

Voiced by: Vegas E. Trip

Originally The Unseen fry cook at Stinky's Diner until season 3, Sal is a human sized cockroach with a laid back personality. Has the notable achievement of being the only person in the entire series who could be described as friendly, kind, considerate, nice, or completely sane.

---

• Butt-Monkey: Double-Subverted; even Max is incapable of making fun of him, given how nice and simple he is; but every puzzle solution which involves Sal will somehow inflict physical damage on him.
• Gentle Giant: Despite being a giant cockroach, he's actually a skilled chef and a very nice guy Makes it a Tear Jerker when he dies from radiation poisoning.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Undergoes death by radiation poisoning to save the city.
• Nice Guy: As mentioned above, Sal really is a good guy to know. Even Max doesn't have the heart to make fun of him via Psychic Ventriloquism.
• Starcrossed Lovers: Has been carrying on an affair with Girl Stinky, which is genuine on his side.

Girl Stinky

Voiced by: Melissa Hutchison

Stinky's granddaughter, and perhaps the laziest creature within a five block radius of the Freelance Police office. Sam and Max suspect she murdered Grandpa Stinky and stole his diner, but don't do anything about it. She tries various half-assed ways of making money in season 2 before Grandpa Stinky reclaims his diner. By season 3 she and Grandpa run the diner together, but argue over how to run it.

---

• Brilliant, but Lazy: She's lazy as hell, but she manages to come up with a decent plan to get rid of Grandpa Stinky in "The City That Dares Not Sleep". She would've gotten away with it too, if it weren't for Sam. Not to mention the various secret tunnels she's installed in the diner, which, again, weren't noticed until Sam got to them.
  • She's also the only non-supernatural being who will notice if Max tries to use mind-reading on her (besides Sam, of course).
• Consummate Liar: Getting a word of truth out of her is a never-ending war. Most of the cast gives up by the start of season 3.
• Hartman Hips: Has a very large and wide butt.
• Hesitation Equals Dishonesty: Subverted, actually.
• Implausible Hair Color: The only human we've seen with an unusual hair color (seafoam green). A hint at her (possible) supernatural origin.
• Male Gaze: When talking with her in Season 3, the camera is angled in a way that gives us a good look of her butt.
• The Münchausen: In Season 2, she tells all sorts of outlandish lies about her adventures with various celebrities.
• Multiple-Choice Past: Is Girl Stinky actually the Cake of the Damned giving life or a mermaid using it as a cover story?
• Obviously Evil: Everyone knows she's planning to kill Stinky to get his diner, which she denies (poorly), but nobody cares.
• Our Homunculi Are Different: Created from a cake. An evil cake, made from an entree, dessert, and side... and an appetizer... Or maybe not, if Flint's projector-and-fog-machine theory is actually correct.
• Our Mermaids Are Different: As something of The Un-Twist in "The City that Dares Not Sleep". She wears a tiara, she has a seashell necklace, she has a sea star on the back of her ponytail, she has an Implausible Hair Color, she has a fish on her apron to make up for the signature tails associated with mermaids, and she can go by Stinky and be followed around by flies because those are fish things. Mind you, the man suggesting this is Flint Paper, who is... not altogether there, and we see her change back and forth between human and cake forms in the second season's final episode.
• Phoneaholic Teenager: She spends almost all of her time in Season 3 texting/calling Sal.
• Psychic Static: Not only is she one of only two non-psychic characters to notice Max can read her mind, but she's the only one that can counteract it—by thinking about shoe shopping. Max is horrified.
• Red Herring: A very fishy lady, but she's rarely directly responsible for whatever's going on at the moment. Her story about Grandpa Stinky's round-the-world cruise/Himalayan mountaineering adventure seems like an obvious lie, but is not only completely true, but his death is actually Sam and Max's fault due to their time-traveling antics.
• The Slacker: Never seems to actually run her diner, and spends almost all of Season 3 texting. Most puzzles involving Stinky involve trying to work around her lies, her laziness, or both.
• Starcrossed Lovers: It looks like that between her and Sal, but she dumps him when Skun-Ka'pe provides a better opportunity to kill Grandpa Stinky. That, and Sal had just been eaten by Max.

Grandpa Stinky

Voiced by: Roger L. Jackson

The owner of the local diner, self-professed Social Darwinist, and overall grouch.

---

• Back from the Dead: As of "What's New, Beelzebub?".
• Evilutionary Biologist: His ultimate plan is to improve the human race by culling those too weak to eat his vile cooking and survive.
• Expy: To Poopdeck Pappy, both grouchy old misogynist sailors white beards.
• Father Neptune: Looks and acts like a man who has been out to sea at times, and even acts as a sort of tough guy.
• A Fool and His New Money Are Soon Parted: After Sam gives him a winning lottery ticket, he immediately gives all the money to Skun-ka'pe, believing (falsely) that he's been made second-in-command of his army. He never gets that money back.
• "Freaky Friday" Flip: With one of Skun-ka'pe's mooks in "The City that Dares Not Sleep". And after all's said and done, he doesn't get his body back.
• Giftedly Bad: The man was able to make a thinking, human(ish) being by making a cake out of tar, fish fingers, coffee ice cream and a rib. Even he wasn't expecting that variation on the Cake of the Damned to turn into Girl Stinky.
• Greed: Most of his plans in Season 3 involve making a fortune with his evil recipes.
• He-Man Woman Hater: Sam once described him as being "quite the misogynist" to which Max agreed.
• The Insomniac: As of the end of Season 3, he hasn't slept in 1096 days (3 years).
• Killed Off for Real: Only halfway; his body is destroyed in the nuclear explosion that also killed General Skun-ka'pe, Girl Stinky, and Sammun-Mak. On the other hand, his brain was transferred into one of Skun-ka'pe's gorilla henchmen, so he may return.
• Lethal Chef: He is being one on purpose, in an attempt to weed out "inferior" people that can't handle his awful food, thus creating a master race.
• Let's Get Dangerous!: "Looks like it's time to boil the haggis!"
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: Looks and sounds quite a bit like Sean Connery.
• Social Darwinist: Wants to create a master race who can survive his toxic recipes.
• Super Gullible: His cantankerous attitude notwithstanding, he never meets a Con Man that doesn't get one over on him. Whizzer, Skun-ka'pe, Sammun-Mak... he's never able to resist a single one.
• Tattooed Crook: The tattoo on his forearm spells "Satang" in Nordic runes.

Jimmy Two-Teeth

Voiced by: Joey Camen

Jimmy Two Teeth is a rat that lives in Sam and Max's office. Though he's often stealing things and otherwise living up to the reputation of his species, he does it to support his family. This doesn't stop him from being rather despicable or annoying.

---

• Character Catchphrase: "Beat it."
• The Informant: Well, he is a rat.
• Hidden Depths: He is a petty criminal, but he's doing it to support his son Timmy. When he isn't involved in some scheme, he lobbies for affordable healthcare for the aged and underprivileged (as shown in "Abe Lincoln Must Die!")
• Morality Pet: Jimmy is incredibly rude to everyone—except his son Timmy and his wife Mary. He's a total softie around them.
• Put on a Bus: It's implied in season 3 that he's living it up on the money Max paid him for spreading the bubonic plague.
• Red Boxing Gloves: Eventually confiscated by Max. Implied to be loaded, which is why he's so dangerous when using it.
• You Dirty Rat!: While has a few soft spots, Jimmy is a thoroughly unpleasant petty crook.

Timmy Two-Teeth

Voiced by: Joey Camen

Jimmy Two-Teeth's son. He suffered from Tourette syndrome, leading Jimmy to gather money through criminal activities and boxing.

---

• Back from the Dead: Is killed and revived by Sam and Max in "What's New, Beelzebub?".
• Hollywood Tourette's: He's afflicted with "Terminal Tourette's Syndrome", which causes him to "curse" uncontrollably and will kill him if he sets it off too much. It's revealed at the end of season 2 to be a more realistic case than originally assumed as he's not really swearing at all. Hell's censorship department was simply being too overzealous with him and the feedback was causing his body to gradually break down. Once he's uncensored he notes that his health has improved.
• Littlest Cancer Patient: Played for Laughs. Timmy somehow manages to make Hollywood Tourette's seem like a serious affliction.
• Sir Swears-a-Lot: Subverted; once uncensored, his vocabulary is PG-rated at worst. But he does need to be uncensored in order to figure out Peepers's birth name: Dick Peacock.
• Symbol Swearing: Humorously, he only knows how to write using this as he hasn't gotten to proper letters in his home-schooling yet.

Satan

Voiced by: Roger L. Jackson

The ruler of Hell himself, until the Soda Poppers took it over, at least.

---

• Affably Evil: He's technically evil, but he's polite, soft-spoken, well-mannered, an equal-opportunist employer and all around perhaps the friendliest person you meet in the games after Pedro and Sybil.
• Badass Decay: Invoked In-Universe; episode 205 has him explain that his powers have dwindled as a result of people treating him with less fear, courtesy of his appearance in things like mascots or advertising logos.
• Big Red Devil: Has the Classic Satan look; huge horns, red skin, and goat-like legs.
• Deal with the Devil: Actually manages to pull one of these on Sam, but it doesn't last long.
• The Devil Is a Loser: In episode 205, he is actually just a middle-level manager in Hell under the Soda Poppers. When he gets fired, he ends up homeless and cleaning windshields for spare change.
• Do Wrong, Right: After Sam & Max accidentally get him fired from his position in Hell, he explains he's actually very proud of them, because even if it caused him some inconvenience, they were engaging in the kind of behavior that he pioneered.
• Evil Brit: He talks with a somewhat posh, British accent.
• Punch-Clock Villain: You can hardly call him an antagonist. In fact, you actually have to help him at one point.
• See You in Hell: Played for laughs; in the epilogue of episode 205, he mentions to Sam & Max that they are "going to be seeing quite a lot of each other", making it obvious that they are still damned to go to Hell when they die because... well, they're Sam & Max, you need a list? Neither of them catches on to the insinuation, though. That or they're completely unconcerned given how easily they escaped what he claimed was an inescapable personal hell designed for them.
• Villainous Respect: Despite them getting him fired, Satan is proud of Sam and Max for engaging in the kind of behavior that "he" pioneered.
• Waxing Lyrical: He introduces himself to Sam and Max by the way of an Obligatory Joke:
  "Pleased to meet you. I hope you've guessed my name."

The Narrator / Max's Super-ego

Voiced by: Andrew Chaikin

In The Devil's Playhouse, the series gains an actual, visible narrator. With not a hint of color on his person excluding the rose on his chest, he shows up at the beginning and ending (and sometimes the middle) of every episode at his grayscale desk in a black room, to remark on the story's progression at every major turning point.

---

• Affably Evil: He's pretty deadpan and calm when he explains his evil plan. He even apologizes for his crack about Sam's weight.
• And I Must Scream: His backstory. Max doesn't so much personify pure id as completely ignore his superego, which leads to the Narrator feeling neglected and frustrated. Eventually, he grows so tired of being ignored and having no way to express himself that he decides to make it all end - in a fantastic psychic explosion (that will destroy the whole eastern United States), created by pushing Max's mind as far as it can go.
• Big Bad: Of the whole Season 3, it turns out.
• The Conscience: Literally. Subverted in that he's initially out to kill Max for always ignoring him.
• Deliberately Monochrome: As part of Season 3's Twilight Zone-esque theme. If you really think about it though, it also works a bit in its own right. He's Max's super-ego, one of the most firmly practical and logic-driven parts of the brain... i.e., "seeing the world in black and white."
  • It apparently applies to his room in general: When Sam walks in on him in The City That Dares Not Sleep, he also turns black and white except for his tie, which turns red. He only goes back to normal when leaving the room.
• Despair Event Horizon: Goes through this before the events of the season due to never being recognized or listened to, driving him to enact his plan to kill Max, and by extension himself, along with most of the Northeastern US.
• Disproportionate Retribution: He's tired of getting ignored, so he's going to kill Max by pushing his mind to its limits and making him actually explode. Then again, considering he's Max's conscience, and Max is, well... See And I Must Scream and Despair Event Horizon.
• Driven to Suicide: His master plan is to finally free himself of the burden of being Max's unappreciated, unused superego by having Max overwork his brain until he can go out in a fantastic psychic explosion that will destroy the eastern United States.
  • He changes his mind when he realizes that Max is capable of selflessness, but still gets his previous wish in the end.
• Exact Words: Before The City that Dares Not Sleep starts, he proclaims to the player that "one of these characters will betray you" while surrounding himself with portraits of characters from all three seasons. Here's the thing, he's talking about himself.
• Foreshadowing: A delightfully meta case at that. His voice actor, Andrew Chaikin, was Max's voice in the first episode of the Telltale series before being replaced the very next episode.
  • Immediately following his "YANK THE CHORD!" spiel to an unconscious Max in ''Beyond The Alley of the Dolls", the lagomorph becomes noticeably more focused and methodical in his efforts to save Sam and stop Charlie, hinting at his true nature as the rabbit's superego.
• Fourth-Wall Observer: While some other characters have this trait to a degree, he is the one who speaks the most directly to the audience. He even keeps addressing them after the reveal.
• Ghost in the Machine: He's the sentient manifestation of Max's superego (conscience), who lives inside his brain. And no, his existence has not been an easy one...
• Heel–Face Turn: May be a subversion or a Heel–Face Door-Slam depending on whether-or-not Max actually exploded at the end.
• Hidden Depths: Not for the Super Ego himself, but for Max. Considering his own Super Ego hates him, this seems to imply Max has self-loathing problems. This makes a few previous jokes in the series a bit more tragic.
• Interactive Narrator: Subverted. He actually does exist within Sam & Max's universe, since he's really Max's super-ego and lives inside his brain, but continues to narrate somewhat and address the audience beyond the fourth wall even after this is revealed.
• Large Ham: Anybody can just narrate a story. This guy throws so much charismatic flair into it that he'd put Rod Serling and Alfred Hitchcock to shame.
• Mr. Exposition: He spends most of his time narrating the beginnings/endings of The Devil's Playhouse's episodes. There's far more to him than that though...
• No-Respect Guy: He's spent God knows how many years trying to guide Max into controlling his most primal urges, appreciate the finer things in life, and act selfless as well as socially acceptable. Of course, it's all in vain, and he is never recognized for his efforts.
• Sarcasm Mode: If told he's lying about his role in the events of the season, he proceeds to spin an absolutely hilarious yarn about being an angel or some such. He then makes it even funnier by saying that's ridiculous and that his being the manifestation of the super-ego of a talking rabbit who has psychic powers is a simpler and more believable explanation. It doubles as a huge Take That! to the fans who were insistent that he was some mighty benevolent force acting to help Sam and Max.
• Something about a Rose: The only bit of color on his person is a single red rose.
• Villainous BSoD: Breaks down into this when Max decides that everyone should save Sybil, rather than simply going on selfish impulses, realizing that Max does still have hope to be better.
• Walking Spoiler: He plays an integral role in the final episode of The Devil's Playhouse.
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: While not always a particularly popular opinion, definitely a possible and existing one, due to his And I Must Scream backstory. ^note Though it's more like "I Have A Mouth And Am Screaming As Loud As I Can But No One Can Hear Me", which may be worse.

Sameth and Maximus

Voiced by: David Nowlin (Sameth), William Kasten (Maximus)

Sam and Max's great-grandfathers from the 1910s. They win a trip to Egypt and are tasked with retrieving the Devil's Toybox for Mr. Papierwaite. They succeed, fight off Papierwaite's betrayal, and get killed by a passing curse in their basement, where Sam and Max find them years later.

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• Dashingly Dapper Derby: Sameth's bowler hat, in place of his grandson's detective fedora, is used to place him within the old-timey era.
• Doomed Predecessor: Their skeletons and the immensely stupid deaths that rendered them in such a state show how dangerous Season 3 even for protagonists who are as crafty and capable as their great-grandchildren.
• Hobo Gloves: Maximus wears fingerless gloves, being an early-1900s street urchin.
• Generation Xerox: They're basically identical to their grandsons. The only differences between them and their descendants are that Sameth has a mustache and has a slightly different suit and hat, and Maximus actually wears clothes. Maximus also would've had a Newsie Cap, but it was removed since it kept clipping through his ears. You can still see it on the concept art that appears on the transition cards for the episode though.
• The Slacker: Unlike their great-grandsons, who have a job of sorts, they don't seem to do anything more than sneak into theaters and steal ketchup bags from restaurants. The two of them are implied to either be vagabonds or con-men.
• Sophisticated as Hell:
  Maximus: Why can't people just all get along, Sameth?
  Sameth: Because most people are *bleep*'d, Maximus.
• Waistcoat of Style: Sameth's suit is almost the same as Sam's, but rendered old-fashioned with the addition of a vest under the coat and stripes on the pants.

The Mole Cultists

The remains of the molemen. The molemen were the ones who deposed Lord Sammun-Mak years ago and guarded the Devil's Toybox. Millennia later, the last of the molemen (Nefertiti, her father, her mother, and her grandfather) emigrated to New York when the box was stolen by Sameth and Maximus, where they once again gained the Devil's Toybox. A century later, the last cultists guard the toy box when Sam and Max find it.

---

• Generation Xerox: All the molemen look the same except for whatever they are wearing.
• Identical Grandson: Either Harry is over a hundred years old, or one of his ancestors has the exact same voice as him.
• La Résistance: To Lord Sammun-Mak's reign.
• Never Mess with Granny: Nefertiti lives to the modern day and helps take down Sammun-Mak.
• Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory: Were unaffected by Sammun-Mak's changing of history due to their Molemen heritage.

Doctor Norrington/Yog-Soggoth, Elder Fiend of the Dark Dimension

Voiced by: Chuck Kourouklis

A disembodied voice that gives advice to Max when he is trapped as a brain. He wants to return home and is more than happy to work with Sam and Max to do that.

---

• Anti-Villain: He has mellowed into this by the time we meet him, and seeks to preserve the real world rather than destroy it.
• Celebrity Impersonator: He sounds remarkably like Tony Jay. Perhaps justified, since this is the type of role he often takes. Considering what he is, it could be a Shout-Out to Jay's role in Legacy of Kain.
• Deadpan Snarker: Occasionally. Mostly towards Papierwaite and his near constant whining from Episode 4 on.
  "Walk it off, Princess."
• Did We Just Have Tea with Cthulhu?: He's surprisingly suave and personable for an Elder God.
• Eldritch Abomination: A very washed-up one though.
• Evil Is Not a Toy: Downplayed. He was the creator of the Toys of Power and stresses several times that they need to be destroyed in order to preserve the boundaries between the real world and the Dark Dimension. He doesn't deny they're toys, but they're toys meant for an Elder God. Not for mortals to screw with.
• Greater-Scope Villain: Subverted. Though his actions in the backstory drive the plot of the season and the story seems to set him up as one, he never serves as an antagonist and actually helps Sam and Max.
• I Was Quite a Looker: He claims this if you examine a certain object in Papierwaite's office while he's present.
• Large Ham: By way of Purple Prose.
• My Little Panzer: Among the toys he gifted Junior was the Cthonic Destroyer, effectively putting a dangerous device that could seriously wound and even destroy Dark Dimension denizens in the tentacles of an actual child.
• Retired Badass: He once ruled the entire universe and savored the taste of human misery along with the other Elder Gods, but has since claimed age has mellowed him.
  • Retired Monster: He also sheepishly admits that he and the other Elder Gods enjoyed the taste of mortal flesh too.
• Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness: To Max's chagrin.
• Stop Worshipping Me: He never wanted anyone to summon him. He was perfectly content being left alone in the Dark Dimension with the other Elder Gods, and now all he wants to do is to go back home. Papierwaite's awe-struck reverence seems to get on his nerves, too.
  Max: You look like something my non-existent cat coughed up!
  Papierwaite: Curb your tongue, rabbit—
  Yog-Soggoth: No, no, Papierwaite, the naked one is right! This debased form is but a pathetic shadow of my former glory!
• You Cannot Grasp the True Form: Or so he thinks. He states most humans go mad upon seeing him, but none of the characters who have been known to have seen him seem affected. He is significantly depowered, however, so that might be a factor. As is the fact that he's talking to Sam and Max when he says this.

Rogues Gallery (Telltale Games)

Brady Culture

Voiced by: Brian Sommer

The creator of "Eye-bo", which claims to be the art of amazing ocular exercises. The Arc Villain of 101.

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• Attention Whore: His plan was to hypnotize the world into worshiping him. Sam uses this to his advantage to defeat Brady.
• Big Bad Wannabe: At best, he managed to hypnotize three washed-up child stars to do graffiti, stuff a therapist into a closet, and fill a convenience store with free tapes. He didn't even make his "ocular exercises" on his own; Brady stole prototype hypnosis goggles from Hugh Bliss' gift shop on the moon.
• Evil Laugh: Needs practice at first. He gets better at it.
• Funny Afro: The Freelance Police keep it as a memento afterward.
  Max: He howled like a sick wallaby when I shaved it off him! Good times.
• Starter Villain: The first antagonist in the Freelance Police games, and the only one not directly working for Hugh Bliss or his organization in the Save the World arc.

Myra Stump

Voiced by: Dorothy Gallagher

A popular talk-show host, who appears in 102: "Situation: Comedy!". She's holding her audience hostage for reasons unknown, and Sam and Max are tapped to free them.

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• Blah, Blah, Blah: Her ranting quickly devolves into this.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: She's actually being hypnotized by one of the Toy Mafia's hypnotic teddy bears.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: Think a naggy, scandal-hungry, and white Oprah Winfrey. She even gives her audience members gifts, although she's reduced to giving them non-dairy creamer after days of holding them hostage.

The Toy Mafia

Voiced by: Vegas E. Trip (Chuckles), David Boyll, Jared Emerson-Johnson

An organized crime family whose members all appear to be wearing giant toy bear heads. They run Ted E. Bear's Mafia-Free Playland and Casino and the accompanying toy factory. Collectively, their only appearance is in Episode 103: "The Mole, the Mob, and the Meatball", but two of its members - Chuckles and Don Ted E. Bear himself - make appearances in later episodes.

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• Blatant Lies: Ted E. Bear's Mafia-Free Playland and Casino! Bring the whole family!
• Creepy Monotone: Cuddly Bear, the card dealer. "Wanna play cards?"
• The Family for the Whole Family: They're involved in all sorts of illegal activities, but at least they aren't outright killing people. Played With, as while two of their quests they give to Sam and Max are relatively benign (namely stealing something back that was stolen by another criminal, and forcing a store to stock Ted E. Bear merchandise against their will), their third task is to murder Sybil to prevent her from testifying in court as a witness against the Mafia, and to ensure the kill is gruesome to warn other would-be rats - while Sam and Max thankfully find a way to fake Sybil's death through a textbook Staged Shooting, as far as the Toy Mafia was concerned, they saw Sam using his big gun to blast a hole in Sybil's chest. And when Sam and Max blow their cover to the literal Mole in Charge, the Toy Mafia chases after the duo's DeSoto in their own car, firing their own pistols with full intent to kill. Overall, the game proves that the Toy Mafia are willing to kill rats and coppers, it's just never shown to succeed on-screen to keep the game's age rating down.
• Malevolent Masked Men: Every member wears a giant multi-colored teddy bear head.
• Man Behind the Man: The Toy Mafia is sandwiched firmly between both sides of this trope, at they're revealed to have been the ones to have brainwashed Myra Stump through one of their hypnotic teddy bears... And in The Stinger of 103 Chuckles reveals he's a Man In Black (Agent Chuckles), who was using the Toy Mafia to distribute the hypnotic teddy bears under orders from the US government. Only for episode 104 to reveal Agent Chuckles was really taking orders from the Internet (as in, the Anthropomorphic Personification of the Internet, as a unhinged AI trying to trap everybody in the "Reality 2.0" game), and then episode 105 to reveal the Internet itself was corrupted by "Roy G. Biv", a.k.a. Hugh Bliss! It's... complicated, to say the least.
• Paper-Thin Disguise: The enterprise as a whole to the point of parody.
  • Zig-Zagged, in that the masks themselves successfully conceal the voices and identities of each member (to the point that it's dramatic when they take them off to reveal their true identities. Whether it's the literal Mole in Charge, or a Man In Black manipulating the Toy Mafia as part of a Government Conspiracy)... But between the multi-colored gangster suits and fedoras, and talking exclusively in mafia-movie Wiseguy cliches, and it sinks any chance they have at convincing anybody they're not criminals.
• Suck E. Cheese's: Their "Mafia-free" Playland and Casino is, well, The Casino version of these, as all the "staff" wear "costumes" with bear heads, and the games and decoration have utterly cheesy theming, from a slot machine shaped like a literal "One-Armed Bandit", to a "Whack-the-Rat" game where the player shoots rats that are "singing", and avoids the ones who "keep their mouths shut".
• Villain Song: "Just You and Me (And Ted E. Bear)"
• Welcome to Corneria: The card dealer, again.

Hugh Bliss

Voiced by: David Boyll

A former stage magician and the founder of Prismatology, a self-help guide/cult, Hugh Bliss is a friendly but very creepy albino guru. Max likes him, Sam doesn't. Eventually revealed to be a sentient collection of bacteria that live off of happy thoughts that want to make the entire Earth happy whether they want to or not. Later shows up in season 2.

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• Abhorrent Admirer: To The Director.
• Affably Evil: He's genuinely friendly and cheerful, even when Sam's being rude to him. He keeps it up even when he's about to conquer the world.
• Barefoot Loon: Mixed with Barefoot Sage. He usually goes barefoot, which seemingly alludes to his New Agey persona.
• Big Bad: Of Season 1.
• Camp Straight: Between the high-pitched voice, the enthusiasm for unicorns (he's the only one who seems willing to rub Sam's unicorn), and rainbows, the only thing that keeps him from qualifying as Camp Gay is his crush on The Director.
• Character Catchphrase: "Hi, I'm Hugh Bliss!" *ding!* (wiggles fingers in an arc)
• Church of Happyology: His cult is called Prismatology and his book is titled Emetics, and true to the meaning of the word and the beliefs espoused within, the cover depicts someone happily vomiting a rainbow.
• Creepy High-Pitched Voice: He has a rather effeminate high-pitched voice, which combined with his Dissonant Serenity, as well as being albino, lend him an air of creepiness, which turns out to be fitting when he is revealed as the Big Bad of Season 1.
• Devil in Plain Sight: He's Roy G. Biv, the mastermind behind the events of season 1. You can tell immediately that the rainbow-themed Hugh is Roy G. Biv's real identity since the name is a well-known mnemonic that stands for the seven colors of the rainbow. The joke around this comes in the episode after it's revealed, where Sam quickly figures out the connection to Bliss... but through exceedingly complex Insane Troll Logic, and it's treated a big revelation.
• Easily Forgiven: Inverted in that it's HE who easily forgives Sam and Max. In 205, when he is encountered in Hell, he refuses to talk to them at first, until you select the "I'm sorry" dialogue option. Afterward, he'll chat away like nothing ever happened.
• Even Evil Has Standards: He finds the contents of Max's mind to be unspeakably depraved.
• Getting Smilies Painted on Your Soul: His ultimate goal is to use his hypnotic machine on the entire Earth, causing everyone to become genuinely happy Prismatologists... and assume his persona at the same time. As he feeds on the endorphins released by happy humans, this would let him feast eternally and incidentally rule the world as its most beloved member.
• Giggling Villain: He's constantly launching into the creepiest tittering.
• Head Turned Backwards: When you talk to him in season 2, rather than getting up from his chair, he just twists his head around backwards to look at Sam & Max.
• Nightmare Fuel Station Attendant: He's just creepy, and not just about his worrying levels of happiness, either. In "Abe Lincoln Must Die!", using The Bug on him results in him monologuing... only for him to say he knew they were listening the whole time. That's not even getting into the fact that he's the Big Bad of season 1 and a colony of sentient germs.)
• Honor Before Reason: As head of Hell's FCC, he make's sure Granpa Stinky's personal hell abides to his guidelines. When Timmy Two-Teeth ends ups in Hell, his constant swearing gets Demon!Girl Stinky in trouble and he cancels the show, Freeing Grandpa Stinky.
• Punny Name: Hugh Bliss, as in Hubris.
• Stage Magician: Hugh Bliss was a skilled and successful stage magician before he created Prismatology. He teaches his various magic tricks to fellow Prismatologists and when he decided to kill Sam, chose to do so with with deadly versions of classic magic tricks.
• Villainous Breakdown: He is actually upset and becomes very unstable when Max replaces him in his Mass Hypnosis machine to the point of being Laughing Mad and homicidal during the confrontation.
• Weaksauce Weakness: He's skilled in magic, can read minds, and his nature as a colony of space germs means he can't be killed by conventional means. But as a being made entirely of bacteria, he's near instantly killed by boiling water.
• The Worm That Walks: Turns out he's a sapient colony of space germs.

Leonard Steakcharmer

Voiced by: Carter Coleman

A cheating card player, first appearing in "The Mole, the Mob, and the Meatball". Sam and Max tie him up and interrogate him, then leave him in their closet and forget about him. His subsequent appearance in their closet becomes a Running Gag.

---

• And I Must Scream: See, after every episode, Sam and Max puts an artifact/keepsake from the last episode into their closet. After the third episode, they put Leonard in the closet, after tying him up and with his mouth taped shut. It's heavily implied that he's been living in that closet for months! Max also makes an off-hand comment that he remembers to feed Leonard regularly...with spiders and the deed to the United States. Eventually he dies, but just ends up in an identical closet in Hell. Luckily for him, he shared his personal Hell with Sam who, out of pity, releases him... with his mouth still taped shut. Evidently, Telltale felt sorry for him and decided to finally release him.
• Disproportionate Retribution: Apparently being told "yo momma" jokes about his beloved mother and being stuffed in a closet and fed nothing but dirt and spiders is Sam and Max's idea of just punishment for stealing a rotting meatball sandwich.
• Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas: Sam and Max break his spirit doing the interrogation by telling "yo momma" jokes.
• The Informant: But only once.
• Reused Character Design: He is basically Boris Krinkle from Telltale Texas Hold'em, but with a handlebar mustache. It is even lampshaded a couple of times.
• Smug Snake: He's pretty proud of his winning streak, especially considering he's a cheater. Once he loses, though...
• Younger Than They Look: The carbon-dater in Lincoln Must Die says he's actually only 19, and apparently he looks and sounds so much older because of a life of hard gambling.

Shambling Corporate Presence

A demon who debuted in "Reality 2.0", but doesn't make its first visual appearance until "Ice Station Santa".

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• Blob Monster: He's a blue, gelatinous thing with amoeba-like tentacles and Extra Eyes. Max compares him to a "latex glove full of jelly".
• Early-Bird Cameo: He debuts in "Reality 2.0" as a minor antagonist, but only in a text adventure sequence with no graphics. He doesn't visually appear until "Ice Station Santa".
• Immune to Bullets: Shooting it is pointless due to its amorphous composition.
• The Slacker: Spends all his time in Hell playing Minesweeper instead of working.
• The Unintelligible: It's only able to speak by saying "Blarg".

Jurgen

Voiced by: William Kasten

The villain of "Night of the Raving Dead". Jurgen is a vampire who is building an army of zombies from his nightclub in Stuttgart. Sam and Max stop him and he is sent to Hell. In season 3 we learn how he became a vampire, thanks to Sameth and Maximus.

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• Ambiguously Gay: Max calls him "fruity" in Night of the Raving Dead, and probably for a reason.
• Agent Peacock: He apparently beats Sam and Max in a fight, and throws Sameth and Maximus out of his train room while still human.
• But for Me, It Was Tuesday: While he resents Sam & Max for getting him killed, it's rather apparent who has a bigger grudge against who whenever he talks to them after Night of the Raving Dead.
• Character Catchphrase: "Yeeees?"
• Evil Redhead: Zigzagged. While he has blood-red hair as a vampire, his natural hair color is actually black. But he had sandy blonde hair when he was still a mortal.
• Evil Sounds Deep: He’s got a fairly deep and smooth voice, complimented by his accent (which is funny considering that he’s voiced by William Kasten, who also voiced Max.)
• Gratuitous German: While not present in his first appearance in "Night of the Raving Dead", in "The Tomb of Sammun-Mak", this trope is in play. Justified in that he's a native of Stuttgart and this was when he was much younger and probably still learning how to speak English.
• Goth: While he definitely fits the bill in "Night of the Raving Dead", no longer so in "The City That Dares Not Sleep"; he is once again wearing the attire he wore in "The Tomb of Sammun-Mak", stating that "Goth was so three years ago", and that early 1900s fashion is the new style to go.
• Jerk with a Heart of Jerk: Think he might have been a decent person before he became a vampire? Guess again. "The Tomb of Sammun-Mak" reveals he was always a nasty guy.
• Older Than They Look: True, this trope is in effect by default by being a vampire, but when he was still a mortal, he spent 50 years stuck on an ancient Egyptian wall as part of a curse and didn't age a single day when Sameth and Maximus free him. So he would be, chronologically speaking, around 70 to 80 years old when he became a vampire, but still with the body of a 20-something.
• Our Vampires Are Different: In this case, they're campy, contagious, and gain power from admiration in addition to blood.
• Popularity Power: A literal example. He gains power by following trends and gaining the approval of his followers.
• Sassy Secretary: Like all of the other villains that die in seasons 1 and 2, we see him working for Hell. He's forced to work as the secretary in Hell's foyer and act as Satan's assistant. He's understandably unhappy with Sam and Max for putting him into this situation.
• Smug Snake: A scheming bad guy, but never impressive.
• Super-Reflexes: Probably his only true fighting skill. He's fast enough to snatch Sam's bullets out of the air and effortlessly swat vampire-killing wooden stakes out of peoples' hands. Only Jesse James' hand is fast enough to keep up with him.
• Vampires Own Nightclubs: He turned his castle into a dance club called the Zombie Factory.
• Vampires Are Sex Gods: He's even more "tragically sexy" to Nefertiti after he's turned.

Pedro

Voiced By: Roger L. Jackson

An elderly time-traveling mariachi who, alongside temporal doppelgangers of himself from early points in his timeline, travels through time in order to play at the birthdays of people. This has required him to make a rather unfortunate alliance with Hell, however.

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• Affably Evil: Pedro is very friendly, polite, easy-going and reasonable fellow. If it weren't for the whole "harvesting souls for Hell" thing, he'd be an unabashed Nice Guy, and even with that detail, it's hard to really get upset with him.
• Character Catchphrase: Did someone say…Birthday?
• Deal with the Devil: Literally; to pay for their time-traveling spaceship, Pedro became an outsourced soul-collector for Hell and asked their new boss to cosign the loan.
• Fun with Acronyms: "T.H.E.M" turns out to not only be Bosco spelling "Them" out of fear, but an actual acronym for Pedro's little organization: the Temporal Headquarters of Enlightened Mariachis.
• Future Me Scares Me: Well, more like annoys. Young Pedro dislikes both of his elderly counterparts and thinks they are holding him back; he wants to abandon the birthday singing gig to try and make it as a solo singer.
• I Hate Past Me: Young Pedro is, frankly, a jerk, and a conversation with Elderly Pedro has him reveal that it really irks him that he's stuck managing the soul-crushing & delivery system and being a general handyman whilst Young Pedro has appointed himself the captain.
• Punch-Clock Villain: Whilst Pedro, Pedro and Pedro do harvest souls for Satan, it's entirely because that was the contract they signed in order to get Satan to cosign the loan for their time-traveling spaceship. As their musical number states, they're not even aware that they're technically in league with Satan or that they're sending souls to Hell.
• Stereotype Reaction Gag: After first meeting the three Pedros, when Sam & Max first approach Elderly Pedro and Sam address him as Pedro, the Mexican mariachi angrily dresses Sam down for stereotyping... then, when Sam apologizes, he laughs and admits that he was kidding, as Pedro is his actual name.
• Undignified Death: Elderly Pedro learns that he is forecast as dying due to inhaling printer ink fumes, which he angrily notes is a stupid way to die.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Pedro just wants to bring everyone in the world delight by playing mariachi music for them on their birthdays. In pursuit of this goal, he's willing to take on a temporary contract harvesting souls for Hell.

The Soda Poppers

Voiced by: Doug Boyd (Specs), Peter Barto (Peepers), Michael Barrett (Whizzer)

A group of three brothers, Specs, Peepers, and Whizzer, who were the former child stars of the popular Show With In A Show The Soda Poppers. In the first episode, they get sucked into Brady Culture's hypnosis scheme. They then appear throughout the series, usually in very annoying ways.

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• Big Bad Triumvirate: Of Season 2.
• CharacterCatchphrases:
  Specs: You made me mess up!
  Peepers: I can see you!
  Whizzer: Time out for number one!
• The Chew Toy: All three often wind up at the end of some form of comic abuse by Sam and Max in each episode they appear in, even before the two start getting annoyed by the trio. This doesn't end even after it's revealed they've been evil the whole time.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: In the epilogue for season 2; after vowing they'll return, the lava from "Moai Better Blues" rains down on them and they burn up into nothing, screaming briefly in pain before they melt away, leaving only Peepers' disembodied eyeballs floating along in the lava.
• Evil Costume Switch: Peepers and Whizzer's costume change simply consists of their regular costumes recolored in black with some flame decals added. Specs, however, shows up wearing an SM-style mask and pair of pants in black leather with decorative spikes and criticizes his brothers for their lack of imagination.
• Evil Is Petty: They want to get revenge on Sam and Max simply because the duo disrupted their birthday party in Season 1.
• Eye Beams: Peepers gains the powers to fire these when he becomes a demon prince at the end of episode 205.
• Fantastic Drug: Soda Pop is treated as being this for Whizzer, with a critical quest even requiring that Sam & Max force him back off the wagon when he tries to get over his addiction.
• Former Child Star: While they still look like children, their careers peaked then crashed in the 1970s.
• For the Evulz: Beating Brady Culture to death after "Culture Shock" let them discover that they really enjoy committing evil acts. While they do want to take revenge on Sam and Max for ruining their birthday, their motivation to overthrow Hell is to revel in the suffering of the damned and to bring Hell on Earth.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: Go from being the unwitting pawns of Brady Culture, the villain in episode 1 of Season 1 to the leaders of Hell and the Big Bad Triumvirate of Season 2. They even have Brady and Hugh Bliss, the latter the Big Bad of Season 1, under their thumb.
• Incredibly Lame Fun: Demon Peepers would rather count change and do research than engage in anything Max would do when he replaces him as Sam's partner. Sam considers it unimaginable torture.
• Man on Fire: After falling into a lava pit, they swear to meet Sam and Max again, only to be burned alive by the lava transported at the end of "Moai Better Blues".
• Neat Freak: Specs. His perfectionism even applies to graffiti.
• Older Than They Look: They are forty-somethings who look like eight years old.
  • However, if you look closely at their faces during conversations, you can clearly see they all have five o'clock shadows. Whizzer also has a bad case of male pattern baldness as well.
• The Perfectionist: Specs, which apparently caused him to be a terror during the filming of his show. He apparently demanded 11,000 retakes of his signature line "You made me mess up!" during one episode's filming, made all the worst by the fact he'd say the line again after every bad take.
• Plot Allergy: Whizzer can't eat tomatoes or he'll be in the restroom for hours with diarrhea. Even eating something that's only touched a tomato will have this effect on him. Naturally you need to give him a birthday cake covered in red "frosting" (actually ketchup) to continue the game.
• Potty Emergency: Whizzer's shtick, as his nickname and catchphrase indicate. It's a side-effect of his addiction to soda pop, and he does start to get over it when he manages to get off the pop... until Sam & Max force him off the wagon again.
• Sibling Rivalry: Exaggerated. When they get into politics, it escalates into Civil War.
• Start of Darkness: Beating Brady Culture to death shortly after "Culture Shock", which caused them to discover they really like being evil.
• Theme Tune: More Than Jerks, an instrumental version of which is also used as the driving theme for the first two seasons.
• Unfortunate Names: One quest in "What's New, Beelzebub?" involves finding out that Peepers's real name is Dick Peacock, not that the trio's nicknames are any better.
• Urine Trouble: Whizzer's power as a Demon Prince is to spray flaming urine at his foes.

General Skun-ka'pe

Voiced by: Roger L. Jackson

The first Arc Villain of Season 3, Skun-ka'pe comes to Earth looking for the Toys of Power so he can take over the galaxy. Not the main villain, but he shows up enough times to be a really big pain in the ass. Has a really good talent for getting gullible people to help him, but also has many spots of gullibility of his own, particularly where the aforementioned Toys are concerned.

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• Abhorrent Admirer: Towards Girl Stinky. She uses this to her advantage.
• All There in the Manual: The official animation Sam & Max Secret Origins: Skun'kape details his childhood and career prior to the third Season, revealing his motivations and real name (Arthur J. Thompson).
• Arc Villain: Of "The Penal Zone".
• Bad Liar: Makes a pathetically token attempt to hide his true intentions in his first appearance.
• Badass Normal: Subverted. He successfully pretends to lack psychic powers long enough that it catches Sam and Max completely off-guard when he uses future vision to derail their first plan to defeat him.
• Big Bad Duumvirate: Forms an alliance with Papierwaite to gather all the Toys of Power within the Devil's Toybox, using a combination of his technology and Papierwaite's magic. Breaking this compact is the only way to move forward in the episode.
• Cold Ham: Frequently speaks in a low, subdued manner, rarely ever yelling unless particularly aggravated. He also makes a number of grandiose movements and gestures.
• Freudian Excuse: His childhood, as shown in Sam & Max Secret Origins: Skun'kape, really kind of sucked. His father would constantly destroy his toys and scold him for reading comic books or playing, the other kids bullied him mercilessly in school and the teachers would blame him for it, and finally he ended up in a boring job in some random factory, from which he was ultimately fired. When he lost it and began smashing things in an explosion of pent-up fury, he caused a literal explosion that caused him to inadvertently develop psychic powers, giving him the strength to take out his lifetime's frustration on first his world, and then the universe.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: He was originally just an oft-bullied child with an interest in comic books, but after getting fired from his job at a factory, he threw a violent fit that caused some of the machinery to explode. The explosion lodged a piece of cabling in both his forehead and the back of his skull, which made him psychic and allowed him to take over his home planet with relative ease.
• The Heavy: He's not the biggest villain of Season 3, and is only the main antagonist for its first episode, but his arrival on Earth is what kickstarts the various conflicts and schemes centered around the Devil's Toybox.
• Hijacked by Ganon: They Stole Max's Brain retroactively reveals that he appeared during the last minutes of the previous episode to steal Max's brain offscreen.
• Humiliation Conga: His brief reign as a recurring villain doesn't go well for him. He's trapped in the Penal Zone for what's apparently years on his end, brainwashed into serving Sammun-Mak, his supposed super-strength outmatched by Sam's, immediately traumatized by being surrounded by hundreds of clones of the man who defeated him, and then immediately dragged into the night by said clones the second he gets his confidence back. Its hard to blame the guy for trying to pull the below-mentioned Screw This, I'm Out of Here!.
• Obviously Evil: As Max says, he makes his appearance on Earth in a giant warship shaped liked his own head, with laser-beam eyes. It's not hard to connect the dots from there.
• Psychopathic Manchild: With the addition of his backstory, it starts to become clear that much of Skun'kape's stint as an intergalactic criminal is a pathetic attempt to live out his fantasy of being his favorite fictional character rather than face the reality of adult life. Causing death and mayhem on a massive scale is just a good time to him.
• Screw This, I'm Out of Here!: After everything he gets put through in The Devil's Playhouse, the only thought on his mind is getting as far away from Earth as he possibly can. Unfortunately, Max had other ideas...
• Suspiciously Specific Denial: Ties into Bad Liar.
  Skun-ka'pe: On every planet I visit, all of the local mole people are invited to ride my fantastic gamma beam to a wonderful off-world vacation they'll never forget! (Beat) ...I don't kill them.
• Villain Decay: While the main villain and a serious threat for the first episode of Season 3, by Beyond the Alley of the Dolls he has been reduced to whimpering in a corner in Stinky's Diner and is quickly taken out by the Sam clones early on in the episode.

Monsieur Anton Papierwaite

Voiced by: Andrew Chaikin

The second Arc Villain of season 3, Papierwaite is the one who gave Sameth and Maximus the task of getting the Devil's Toybox so he can summon his master Yog-Soggoth. He survives to the present day, where he teams up with Skun-ka'pe to gain the Toys of Power again.

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• Arc Villain: Of "The Tomb of Sammun-mak".
• Badass Bookworm: Papierwaite is kind of dorky, but he's skilled in all manner of dark magic.
• Heel–Face Turn: In "Beyond the Alley of The Dolls", it's revealed that he's been trying to destroy the Devil's Toybox since his defeat in "The Tomb of Sammun-mak".
• Evil Is Hammy: He's not the hammiest character by a long shot, but just listen to him talk about the Dark Dimensioooon! The others are never particularly impressed.
  Papierwaite: If that monkey dares touch my tapestry, he shall feel my hot, explosive wrath!
  Max: Yeah, just keep your hot wrath off my jar. Takes forever to clean.
• Evil Sorcerer: Shows himself to be quite skilled with magic after merging with Yog-Soggoth.
• Humanoid Abomination: Sort of. Doctor Norrington AKA Yog-Soggoth is apparently merged with Papierwaite's body after his defeat at the end of The Tomb of Sammun-Mak.
• Motor Mouth: If you get him started on one of his favorite subjects, especially Yog-Soggoth, he will not stop gushing about it. Even Yog-Soggoth himself gets fed up with him.

The Pharaoh Sammun-Mak

Voiced by: Nikki Rapp

The original finder of the Devil's Toybox, Sammun-Mak used them to take over ancient Egypt, only to be deposed by the molemen and have his brain put in a jar. In "They Stole Max's Brain" the pharaoh borrows Max's empty head and acts as a substitute Max for Sam.

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• Arc Villain: Of "They Stole Max's Brain".
• Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!: His greatest weakness.
  • "Attention everyone! From this point forward, those little things at the end of your shoe laces, ag...lets? Yes! Aglets are hereby decreed to be the most horrible things in all the world!"
  • "Attention everyone! This is Sammun-Mak, Lord of all Creation! Forget what we said before! From now on, toasters are officially the most horrid, beastly things in the whole wide world! And if you see a toaster, and you want to make us happy, break it into tiny little bits!"
  • "Greetings, everyone! This is Sammun-Mak the Divine speaking! From this day forward, toasters are the most exalted things in all the universe, ranking just below yours truly on the awesome-meter! Just thought you should know."
    • All of the above happens within a matter of minutes.
  • When back in "The City That Dares Not Sleep" on Skun'ka-pe's flagship, he is having trouble controlling his thoughts enough, having to tell Sam to stop talking about a certain thing to keep himself from diverting his attention towards said object. Sam still manages to eventually outsmart him by saying "Rabbit Season".
• Bratty Half-Pint: It takes about three minutes for his squeaky-voiced arrogance to get annoying. Very very annoying.
• Brain in a Jar: Twice; once not long before his death, and second after Sam stabbed him with the Brain Screw,
• Enfante Terrible: To homicidal, tyrannical levels.
• Family-Unfriendly Death: He's ultimately defeated (for the second time) when Max tricks Sam into stabbing him in the face with the Brain Screw. His brain survives a little longer, only to be blown up a week later by Giant Max's explosion
• Finders Rulers: A variation. He only became Pharaoh because he had the Gift, and, using the Devil's Toybox, altered reality so that he was in a position of power. He does the exact same thing a thousand years later.
• Foreshadowing: If Sam inspects the Brain Screw while Sammun-Mak is with him, the young Pharaoh gets an inexplicable fear reaction to it. The Molemen of the past used it to remove his brain during their uprising. Sam unwittingly uses it in the altered timeline to remove it again.
• Nepharious Pharaoh: Despite his young age, his god complex and Psychic Powers make him a serious menace provided he can stay focused for more than a few minutes.
• Power Perversion Potential: An example of his Troubling Unchildlike Behavior is given when he gets the Rhinoplasty, relating a tale of how he would use its shapeshifting powers to peep on whatever it is that goes on in the "Temple of Adolescence".
• Reality Warper: Once he gets his hands on the Devil's Toybox, he immediately uses it to reshape reality to his ever-shifting whims.
• Royal "We": Almost always refers to himself with the first-person plural, to Sam's annoyance.
• Sixth Ranger Traitor: It looks like Sammun-Mak is slated to become a protagonist or at least a sidekick, given that he is in control of Max's body for a little while. Then he catches sight of the gradually-filling Devil's Toybox, and things go way south from there.

Clone Master/Charlie Ho-Tep

Voiced by: Roger L. Jackson

The Arc Villain of "Beyond the Alley of the Dolls", Charlie Ho-Tep is one of the Toys of Power, the one that enables ventriloquism. He was played with by Junior, the first owner of the Toys of Power, for one hour before being discarded. In the present, he brainwashes Sal and Girl Stinky and uses Mamma Bosco's cloning technology to create the Samulacra so he can find the Toys of Power.

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• Actually Pretty Funny: When Max uses Psychic Ventriloquism on the Statue of Liberty to use his voice for a voting joke, he'll admit it's "funny stuff", although he says he's an anarchist.
• Arc Villain: Of "Beyond the Alley of the Dolls".
• Berserk Button: Do not mention that Junior never loved Charlie. He'll drop everything he's doing just to rub you out.
• Chekhov's Gunman: What seemed to be just a psychic toy item turns out to be one of the game's major antagonists.
• Climax Boss: The fourth episode, in general, clarifies most of the backstory of the Devil's Toybox, the game's Plot Device. His defeat is caused by the box being destroyed.
• Creepy Doll: He was this even before The Reveal.
• Demonic Dummy: It's a toy that belongs to an ancient Eldritch Abomination.
• The Dog Was the Mastermind: Who could have guessed that the mastermind behind the clones was actually Charlie Ho-Tep, or that an item used by Max was actually sentient the whole time?
• Fatal Flaw: His sheer rage. While he’s two steps ahead for the vast majority of the game, reminding him that Junior hated him pisses him off and will make him attack you. Once you figure this out, he goes down fast.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: Almost nobody who picks up Charlie Ho-Tep wants anything to do with him, to the point where he's the only Psychic Toy that Max attempts to reject entirely. This even extends to his Freudian Excuse as even Junior considered him to be creepy and his least favorite toy.
• Freudian Excuse: His entire reason to be as a toy is to be played with. However, Junior played with him exactly once for an hour before shoving him back into the Devil's Toybox and never doing so again because he was too creepy for the young Eldritch Abomination. He spends the entirety of his speaking screen-time ranting about memories of that hour as if it was years instead, obsessed with summoning Junior back from the Dark Dimension to play with him again.
• Heart Is an Awesome Power: The ability to throw his voice great distances allows him to communicate with his minions and make deals with certain cast members to facilitate his plans while being stuck in Max's inventory with the duo being none the wiser to what he's doing.
• Hive Queen: To the Doggelgangers.
• I Reject Your Reality: Junior loved him and did NOT toss him back into the toybox after an hour of playing with him
• Punny Name: Almost sounds like Nyarlathotep.
• Undignified Death: He spends his entire death sequence whining about Junior putting him back in the box and screaming "WHY WON'T YOU PLAY WITH ME?" before exploding. Max even Lampshades it.

Samulacra (or Doggelgangers)

Voiced by: David Nowlin

Clones of Sam created in a massive cloning chamber to find the Devil's Toybox. Basically, zombies, they're naked except for gold short-shorts, and can only say "toys".

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• Doppelgänger: To Sam, due to cloning.
• Fan Disservice: Naked except for golden shorts. Sam's rather embarrassed about this.
• Felony Misdemeanor: One of them swipes Sam's hat, and Sam has a grudge against him for the rest of the episode.
• Hive Mind: They seem to have very little capacity for independent thought and are controlled by either a microphone in Bosco-Tech's sub-basement or directly by Charlie Ho-Tep's piano. Attempting to use the Mind Reading power on them results in Max getting a Poke in the Third Eye as he get bombarded with every one of the over a thousand clones mentally chanting "Toys!" at the same time.
• Insistent Terminology: A Running Gag throughout "Beyond the Alley of the Dolls" is that Sam and Max can't agree on what to call them. Sam calls them "Samulacra", while Max adamantly calls them "Doggelgangers". Both refuse to budge on their decisions.
  • Even the dialogue wheel gets in on this, as the first option when speaking about them to another character is always "Samulacra" and the second is always "Doggelgangers".
• Kick the Dog: The aforementioned beloved Plushie Clone is the second victim of Monster Max's rampage.
• "Not Wearing Pants" Dream: Upon seeing the first clone enter the room at the end of "They Stole Max's Brain," Sam comments "This is just like that dream I had last night. I hope he studied for his finals..." Considering how the clones are dressed, we can safely assume Sam has nightmares about being in public in his underwear.

Junior

An ancient elder god, and grandson of Yog-Soggoth, who's birthing wails shattered pangea and wreaked havoc across the omniverse. As any good grandparent would do to deal with a rampaging youth, Yog-Soggoth gave him the titular toys of power to play with.

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• Enfant Terrible: As young eldritch horrors from the Dark Dimension are to do, he began wreaking havoc across the omniverse the moment he was born. It necessitated that Norrington bring over his old toys to the mortal realm in order to keep him distracted from destroying everything, and he's apprently still whining about having lost them in the move millenia after the Elder Gods' banishment.
• Small Role, Big Impact: He only appears as a gestating blob of eldritch horror in the finale of "Beyond the Alley of the Dolls", but he's the reason why the Toys of Power and the Devil's Toybox are in the world of Sam and Max in the first place, having been his to begin with.
• Tom the Dark Lord: The most destructive of the elder gods is called Junior. Norrington admits that you'd need several more larynxes in order to pronounce it correctly.

Antagonists (Hit The Road)

Conroy Bumpus

Voiced by: Tony Pope

A diminutive country western star originally from Liverpool, now residing in Bumpusville, a massive Graceland-esque mansion in the American Midsouth. He serves as the main antagonist of the game, determined to capture a Bigfoot to complete his collection of animal trophies.

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• Bad People Abuse Animals: His mansion has a huge room of stuffed animal trophies, and he forces Bruno and Trixie to be part of his menagerie when he catches them, attaching them to wiring that shocks them if they don't play along with his music. Apparently his father was the one who taught him animal abuse was an exciting hobby.
• Berserk Button: Never make fun of his hair.
• Dodgy Toupee: Wears a massive pompadour wig almost bigger than he is, underneath he's bald as an egg.
• Laser-Guided Karma: After all he crap he put Sam and Max, not to mention Bruno and Trixie through, he ends up replacing Bruno as a carnival exhibit, frozen inside a block of ice with Lee Harvey.
• The Napoleon: Compensates for his short stature with a tyrannical and abusive personality.
• Shrine to Self: Bumpusville, which is filled with portraits and statues of himself, all of them showing him as tall and muscular.
• Sunglasses at Night: Is never seen without his sunglasses.
• Villain Song: "King Of the Creatures".

Lee Harvey

Voiced by: Denny Delk

The right-hand man and body guard of Conroy Bumpus, always at the beck and call of his diminutive boss.

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• The Brute: Constantly beats people up at Conroy's orders. And sometimes without it.
• Dumb Muscle: Can barely remember to blink and swallow without his boss reminding him.

Rogues Gallery (Animated Series)

The Mad Thespian

Voiced by: ???

A deranged classical actor who constantly speaks like a character from a Shakespeare play.

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• Badass Cape: Even Max admits not many villains would be able to pull off a maroon velvet cape like the Thespian does.
• Disney Villain Death: Seemingly recieves one at the hands of Sam who throws him off the clock tower they were fighting on, but there was a tarp beneath them.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Even he's horrifed by the deranged extremes Lorne (The Friend for Life!) goes to in his obsession with Sam and Max.
• Expy: Of Eric from The Phantom of the Opera, there's even a poster in his base, an abandoned theatre, for a show called The Phantom Creep.
• Wicked Cultured: An evil lover of the performing arts, it goes with the territory.

Kent Standit

Voiced by: ???

The head of the SFDA (Snack Food and Drug Administration) who's on a quest to deprive children all over America of their favorite snack foods. For their own good of course.

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• Evil Is Petty: Seems to be out to ban beloved snack food items just for the hell of it, after Sam and Max manages to convince him that the Macguffin's are good, he just goes after the next thing on his list, because according to him, he "needs to ban something"
• Government Agency of Fiction: The SFDA is a parody of the real life U.S Food and Drug Administration, except it apparently only regulates junk food. It's not entirerly clear exactly what kind of "drugs" the title refers to.
• I Do Not Like Green Eggs and Ham: His entire episode is basically one long reference to the original story, complete with a total change of heart once he tries a Glazed MacGuffin. Or rather, when Sam and Max manage to forcefeed him one.
• Punny Name: "Can't stand it"
• Villain Has a Point: Strictly speaking, Standit has a point about Glazed Macguffins, since there's apparently some sort of health code violation in their production (the recipe exceeds the amount of chicken lips allowed by government standards), but it's clearly a secondary concern for him since he mostly just seems to enjoy banning stuff.

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