Characters / The Sinking City

As this game relies heavily on piecing together information about its cast by yourself, beware of unmarked spoilers.

Main Characters

Charles Reed

Charles Reed

The player character. A private investigator who sails into Oakmont to investigate the source of widespread madness and haunting visions affecting him and others throughout Massachusetts. Due to an unknown accident at sea that left him the Sole Survivor of his ship, he has been granted psychic abilities that guide him to solve cases.

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• Action Survivor: He can tangle with gunmen, monsters, and cosmic horrors and get out alive in the end. In the No Choice ending, he manages to escape Oakmont as everything goes to hell, and is seen after a Time Skip clearly traumatized, but with his life and humanity intact nonetheless.
• All for Nothing: Possibly. If Reed sacrifices himself to loop the Cycle and buy humanity another few centuries, van der Berg is seen awaiting another boat coming into Oakmont, implying that he's drawn another Seed to the city sooner than expected.
• Anti Anti Christ: He's the one designed to bring Cthulhu's seed to Cthylla and start the End of the World. He may not succeed in thwarting it but he can certainly try.
• Badass Longcoat: As expected of a Hardboiled Detective, he has a nice selection of these to wear.
• Berserk Button: He does not take kindly to people calling him "Charlie".
• Book Dumb: A Downplayed Trope example. Reed grudgingly admits he never went to college and regrets it.
• The Chosen One: He became the host of the Dreamer's Seed after his accident, and, as the only Seed host among the Chosen Few, is meant to release Cthylla and destroy the world. He can choose instead to restart the loop or try to Take a Third Option.
• Deadpan Snarker: He may be tired and shellshocked, but he has a sharp tongue when he feels like it. Perhaps best exemplified when he repeatedly needles the KKK's "Imperial Wizard" to show him a magic trick.
• Dirty Cop: If the player chooses, he can be played like this. For example, you can accept the bribe the Innsmouther that killed Albert Throgmorton gives you, then betray him to Robert.
• Dreaming of Things to Come: At the start of the game, he is having nightmares representing his future troubles in Oakmont.
• Expy: He is one to the unnamed protagonist of Dagon, being a WW1 vet who lost his ship and discovered some unspeakable horror on an isolated island. He can also end up committing suicide.
• Everyone Has Standards:
  • If his conversation with the KKK is anything indication, Reed doesn't care for them at all.
  • He's also remarkably tolerant of homosexuality, especially during a time such as the 1920s.
• Face Death with Dignity: He's stoic and unemotional when he's committing suicide to restart the cycle, and likewise when he strides up to the reawakened Cthylla.
• Fatal Flaw: He will accept any job with the promise of pay. Depending on how you play, this can have painful results.
• Great Detective: With the combination of his psychic abilities and natural intelligence, he can solve practically any case as long as there's some tiny shred of evidence. He's already solved a murder within an hour or so of stepping off the boat. Fittingly, unlocking the right costume lets him dress up as Sherlock Holmes.
  • Hardboiled Detective: He also fits most of the traits of the typical noir gumshoe, being a cynical loner who's not afraid to start punching and shooting when the situation calls for it.
• The Hero Dies: There's no real way for him to get out of Oakmont alive; he either sacrifices his life to restart the Cycle and buy humanity a few more centuries, or he dies when the awakened Cthylla absorbs him. He can opt to do neither and flee the city instead, but Johannes will track him down and start another flood with him at ground zero, though this might or might not be just another hallucination.
• Heroic B So D: If his sanity gets low enough, he starts to put his own gun to his head as the world turns into a gray mass.
• Heroic Sacrifice: In the Sacrifice ending, he commits suicide to restart the Cycle again and keep Cthylla from destroying humanity.
• Kleptomaniac Hero: He is forced to loot the cities' houses because of rare resources.
• Naïve Newcomer: Charles is often referred to as 'newcomer' rather than Mr. Reed, and his complete lack of knowledge about Oakmont or its customs serves to fill the player in on what exactly is going on around here. Often people will respond to Charles' entry-level questions by commenting that he really is a newcomer after all.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: Physically, he looks like a grizzled H.P. Lovecraft. It's easier to notice in cutscenes, when he's not wearing his hat.
• Not So Above It All: During the first case, you can enter the room of a former railroad worker who has a model train. Inspecting the train will prompt Reed to go "Choo choo" before giving an embarrassed "Ahem".
• Occult Detective: Didn't mean to become one, but he quickly finds he doesn't have much of a choice.
• Pet the Dog: Despite his crass and cynical demeanor, he's genuinely nice to the few people who deserve it and will stick up for them if he can. He clearly cares a lot for Joy in particular.
• Pragmatic Hero: There's a number of ways to make your fight through Oakmont considerably easier. For example, the easiest way to kill the nigh-invulnerable Usha is to shoot her when her back is turned.
• Psychometry: Played with in that it isn't clear if he is always touching the objects in question, but Reed can glimpse into the past of occult artifacts with his sixth sense to gain clues.
• Sanity Slippage: His sanity slowly drops whenever he looks at particularly grim sights, occult artifacts, or monsters. Depending on the choices you make, he can start acting like a murderous loon partway through the game to reinforce this.
• Screw the Rules, I Have Connections!: The Oakmont police would happily arrest him but the opening mission puts you in the favor of the last remaining Blue Blood of the town.
• Shell-Shocked Veteran: Reed served in the U.S. Navy during the Great War as a diver and was the Sole Survivor of the USS Cyclops when it sank. The experience left him traumatized, and he spent a considerable amount of time in psychiatric care because of it.
• Sherlock Scan: His fragile mental-state allows Charles to look into the past to see events as they happened. He is also able to go into "concentration mode", allowing him to notice points of interest in his surroundings.
• Shoot the Dog: A lot of the choices in the game are based around the idea you need to do one of these.
  • Whether to turn Lewis Flynn over to Robert Throgmorton and the police for certain execution. If you release him, you're letting a murderer go but if you don't, he's possibly not guilty by reason of insanity though this is confirmed later to not be the case.
  • Whether to kill Bethany Throgmorton or allow her to resurrect her dead son with Black Magic.
  • Whether to turn over George Cavendish to the EOD or help him with his plan to poison people in order to frame them.
• Would Not Shoot a Civilian: Well, much. If he kills two civilians in the game, he will go irrevocably insane and kill himself.

Johannes van der Berg

Johannes van der Berg / The King in Yellow / Hastur

The man who invited Reed to Oakmont to find the solution to his problems. He is the first person Reed meets after stepping off the boat, and provides him with important services throughout the story, though Reed is sure there's more to him than he's letting on.

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• Affably Evil: Consistently polite with Reed, even when he's threatening or confusing him.
• Astral Projection: He's the astral projection of Hastur, the King in Yellow. His true form is unseen, but shooting him toward the end completely drains your sanity meter.
• Berserk Button: Downplayed, but he really doesn't like rudeness or hostility, no matter how justified.
• Big Bad Duumvirate: With Cthylla. While she is the ultimate source of the problems, he has his fingers in nearly every crime Reed tangles with on the surface and is actively working to get Cthylla freed.
• Deadly Deferred Conversation: Case 6 begins with Johannes promising to explain some key information about your situation... just as soon as you drop by his theatre. He's been shot dead by the time you arrive, and even worse, you're taking the fall for it.
• Deadpan Snarker: While he's quite cheerful and friendly in the beginning, he gets snarkier as the game goes on, especially after you solve his murder where the entire conversation is just crammed full of snark.
  • He also notes that underwater is "not the best place to be unconscious."
• Irony: You can get him back for framing you for his own murder by actually murdering him. Not that it sticks.
• A Form You Are Comfortable With: The human avatar of Hastur, half-brother of Cthulhu.
• The Heavy: Since Cthylla is sealed away and has no active role in the plot, Johannes manipulates events from behind the scenes to free her.
• Karma Houdini: No matter the ending, there's no way to bring him to justice for orchestrating the end of the world. Even if Reed loops or breaks the Cycle, he will eventually get exactly what he wants sooner or later. The most you can do is shoot him when he reveals his treachery, which just rewards you with massive Sanity Slippage.
• Manipulative Bastard: Toward the end of the game, Reed finds notes revealing that through the Yellow Kings gang, he's been behind every case he's solved thus far, all part of the plan to obscure the truth and guide Reed down to Cthygonnar.
• Meaningful Name: Johannes van der Berg means "Gracious god of the city," fitting both his true nature and the way he goes about expressing it.
• Mysterious Backer: He's clearly very wealthy and knowledgable about the problem, and he's helpful to Reed throughout the game, but much about him is unknown at the start.
• Not Quite Dead: Being merely the projected form of a very powerful Great Old One, getting riddled with bullets obviously doesn't stick, whether it's Glenn or Reed doing the shooting.
• Obviously Evil: Your Mysterious Backer clad in a distinctive suit who seems to know everything about your situation and promises that "he's the kind of man who finds you" if he needs you? It's pretty obvious from minute one that there's something very shifty about the guy; even Reed picks up on it.
• Really 700 Years Old: Given his identity as Hastur, Cthulhu's half-brother, it's a given.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: Taking more hostile conversation options can result in this.
• Walking Spoiler: While his yellow suit will quickly tip off Mythos fans, nothing about him is revealed for most of the game.

Robert Throgmorton

Robert Throgmorton

Head of the Throgmorton family, one of Oakmont's three Grand Families, "blessed" with distinctively apelike features. He sincerely cares about Oakmont and is attempting to guide it through its trying times, but his vicious bigotry against the Innsmouth refugees clouds his judgment.

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• Affably Evil: Snobbish, prone to using the police as his personal goon squad, and viciously racist against Innsmouthers. He's also one of Reed's few allies in the city.
• Ambiguously Bi: Brutus Carpenter calls Robert this but during the Fathers and Sons quest, you can find a photo in the Carpenter Manor that depicts Brutus and Robert sharing a kiss.
• Arbitrary Skepticism: Although he is capable of understanding that his brother's soul has been trapped in a mirror and acting accordingly, he seems incapable of comprehending that the undersea ruins drove his scientific expedition mad; if Reed breaks the news that Harriet Dough died or had to be killed, and insists it's because of what's down there, Robert accuses him of favoring "more rational explanations over the inane" and docks his pay severely. In what's perhaps a mercy, his insistence on probing the irrational at all costs leaves him unable to understand that he sent his own son Albert to his death, for nothing.
• Berserk Button: Do not mess with his son Albert, or he will apply whatever force he can to the guilty party.
  • He takes very poorly to Reed calling him a bigot, despite his clear racial prejudice against Innsmouthers.
• Bestiality Is Depraved: His father Francis left for Africa with his "mother", where he was conceived. The problem is that his "mother" wasn't his birth mother; rather, Francis got a little too close with an unusually evolved female gorilla he named Rosie. Robert doesn't outright acknowledge this, instead saying Francis bred with a royal family that strengthened the Throgmorton bloodline, unless you bring him the mirror containing his little brother's soul, in which case he'll remark directly that a Sumatran orangutan would provide a worthy body for him.
• Big Good: Despite his smug and menacing attitude and his early game bigotry, he's ultimately the strongest force out to protect Oakmont and its people, and one of the only prominent public figures not compromised by one of the many gangs or cults.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: Robert's early 20th century Old Money values combined with his knowledge of the occult as well as absolute pride in being a gorilla-human hybrid make him one of the weirdest people in a city of weirdoes to a 21st century gaming audience.
• Blue Blood: Is from an Old Money aristocratic family and a "certain royal family." Subverted in he's a Half-Human Hybrid.
• Collector of the Strange: Like his late father, he adores the finer things in life and collects weird trinkets, including going out of his way to obtain a cursed mirror. Though he's actually after the mirror because it contains his supposedly dead brother's soul.
• Dramatic Irony: Robert is incredibly proud of his heritage despite the fact that almost all of the rest of the world (especially in the 1920s) would consider it horrifying.
• Expy: Clearly inspired by Arthur Jermyn, although, like a true aristocrat, he handles the implicit knowledge of his ancestry with denial and Cultural Posturing rather than suicidal horror.
• Good Is Not Nice: Robert Throgmorton is a smug and impatient bigot who isn't afraid to get his hands dirty, but he's the closest thing this game has to a genuine Big Good.
• Good Parents: He absolutely loved his son and cared deeply for his well-being.
• Hidden Depths:
  • After Reed proves himself a capable ally, he's willing to listen to him about his treatment of the Innsmouthers and agree that his attitude towards them has caused a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy of them causing trouble for him. He can also be convinced that Oakmont needs optimism and good leadership rather than more fierce protection.
  • He's also the only person funding Oakmont's library, firmly believing that the people need the entertainment and escapism provided by books.
  • Robert also wants to restore his brother to life by providing a new body and is disgusted by his father's treatment of him. Sadly, he plans to do it with an orangutan.
• Jerkass Has a Point: Robert is a snob and uses the Oakmont police as his personal thugs but the Innsmouthers include what amounts to an apocalyptic terrorist cult. One that formerly controlled the Innsmouthers home and still dominates their lives. You can make a very good argument that he's Properly Paranoid about them rather than just being a bigot.
• Old Money: The Throgmortons were a wealthy and rich family before Robert came into his position as the head of the family.
• Out of Focus: He loses prominence after the first few cases and his side case chain as Reed stops reporting directly to him, thus being Locked Out of the Loop when the more cosmic goings-on start to happen.
• Papa Wolf: He shuts down the entire port when Albert goes missing there, and when he finds out his son has been killed, he rains hell on his murderer should Reed allow him.
• Parental Favoritism: It's revealed his father, Francis, considered Robert his "true heir" rather than Robert's older brother Hammond who he conceived with his human wife. So much so that Francis hired a magician/mirror-maker to freeze Hammond's soul into a mirror so Robert could be Francis' inheritor. Francis seemed to believe this was a merciful act since he wasn't actually killing Hammond and the spell could be reversed eventually, without seeming to consider that Hammond's body wouldn't be preserved and without it bringing him back would be tricky to say the least.
• Pet the Dog: He provides sole funding to the Oakmont University Library, allowing it to remain open.
• Properly Paranoid: Not only did an Innsmouther murder his son, they sabotaged the expedition, and are planning to help bring about the end of the world. Just not all of them.
• Screw the Rules, I Make Them!: The police take orders from him and allow you access to their files as well as break the law as long as he has your back.
• Sophisticated as Hell: When calm, he is gentlemanly and well spoken. He slips some much more brutish and vulgar words in when he's angered.
• Troubled Sympathetic Bigot: Pins the city's slow decay on the Innsmouthers just as much as the Flood, and his vendetta only increases once Albert is murdered by one, but it is shown to come from a genuine desire to protect his city. Even if Reed doesn't come out and call him a bigot at the end of "Quid Pro Quo" — which greatly upsets him — he still urges Throgmorton that his refusal to welcome or help them in any way is only making things worse for everyone; disquieted, he says he'll think about the matter.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: Despite being one of the key characters, Reed does not see a hallucination of him committing suicide at the end of the Cycle as he walks toward Cthygonnaar. It's thus unknown what became of him by the end.
• You Are What You Hate: While Reed can't point this out to him, he's nearly the same as the Innsmouthers he so despises, except his ancestor mated with gorillas instead of with the Deep Ones (granted, the Deep Ones are actively hostile towards humanity while the gorillas Francis found seem to be human sympathetic or at least neutral to humans).

Ebernote Blackwood

Ebernote Blackwood

The last remaining member of the Blackwoods, a Grand Family that has all but disappeared from Oakmont alongside the Marshes. He works as a street preacher, but is actually a high-ranking EOD member secretly working against them from within.

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• Ambiguous Situation:
  • His condition by the end. When Reed sees him in Cthygonnar before the ending choice, is he still dead and just another hallucination, or did he ascend to a higher plane and manifest to take a small part in the destiny he was denied?
  • Does Ebernote want to free Cthylla or does he want the Dreamer's Seed so he can avert the apocalypse for revenge?
• Ax-Crazy: It doesn't exactly take a psychic detective to see that he's kind of lost his marbles. And that's well before you find the graves in his basement from all of the failed ritual subjects.
• The Beastmaster: He can summon the wylebeasts and unleash them upon his enemies by painting special runes on the environment.
• Big Bad Wannabe: He's simultaneously the highest-ranking member of the Esoteric Order of Dagon we meet and a rogue element working against them for his own ends, and he puts pressure on you for several cases to get what he wants. Ultimately, though, he's swimming with much bigger fish in the form of the Great Old Ones, who will kill him through Reed's body if Reed agrees to follow his plan.
• Chekhov's Gunman: You first meet him at the start of the third chapter, seemingly as an unimportant preacher who provides background about his family. It takes several more chapters for him to emerge as a major character.
• Defector from Decadence: He was a prominent leader in the EOD, but has turned his back on them, either out of violent jealousy, a desire to stop the apocalypse, or some combination of the two.
• Evil Sorcerer: The closest thing one can be in a Lovecraft setting, as a depraved cultist and powerful wielder of various dark arts. How evil he actually is is left up to player interpretation, though.
• Evil Versus Evil: He spends a lot of time wiping out other evil-aligned groups; first he unleashes a horde of wylebeasts on the KKK so he and their other prisoners can escape, then he leads his remaining allies and more wylebeasts to massacre what remains of the EOD in the Temple of Dagon, before finally taking out a large number of Yellow King gunmen despite having been wounded in the previous battle.
• Facial Horror: As a result of his Marsh blood, he's undergoing the first stages of Innsmouther Syndrome. His eyes are mismatched and one has a severe cataract, his face sags like parts of it don't fit, and there are bloody gills opening up across his neck.
• Freudian Excuse: He was raised and trained all of his life with the expectation that he was to be the next Chosen, only to be passed up and find someone else hosts the Seed. When the Blackwoods made their exodus from Oakmont to live among the Deep Ones, they decided to leave him behind, disappointed with his perceived unworthiness. He has been living in violent denial and jealousy ever since, and is determined to take what he believes is his no matter the cost, even if it means turning on the EOD and killing countless people.
• I Just Want to Be Special: His whole M.O. His actions against the E.O.D., his desire to help Harriet and his attempts to save Reed are motivated by his desire to acquire the Dreamer's Seed for himself and become chosen. Doubles as a Freudian Excuse as he initially held a privileged position due to his mother's belief that he had the Seed, and was thus their messiah. When he was found to lack it, his family became cold and resentful towards him to the point of disowning and abandoning him when they all returned to the sea. This starts his quest to acquire it to spite his family and the Deep Ones. He gets positively ecstatic if Reed agrees to the ritual, and tries to kill you if he doesn't. He almost succeeds, resulting in one of the few times the Great Old Ones intervene directly.
• Karmic Death: After all of the murders and crimes he's committed for his plan, Ebernote will always meet a well deserved end. If Reed rejects his ritual, he shoots Ebernote to death; if he agrees, he's possessed by a supernatural force — likely Cthylla or Hastur — and murders the shocked Ebernote with his bare hands.
• Prophet Eyes: As a result of his Innsmouther Syndrome, he has one severely cataracted eye, and he definitely fits the bill of "prophet".
• Squishy Wizard: Ebernote is no tougher than any other human enemy, and doesn't even carry a weapon (being only armed with his fists), but he'll summon several wylebeasts to assist him if you start a fight with him.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: He claims to only be interested in taking the Seed out of Reed and into himself so that he can end the madness without forcing anyone else to sacrifice their lives, thereby justifying his many murders. His honesty is doubtful, but it's up to the player's judgment whether Reed helps him or not.
• Younger Than They Look: His disfigurements and deep voice make him seem like a grizzled old man, but the rate at which Innsmouth Syndrome displays itself means he's closer to Reed's age.

Harriet Dough

Professor Harriet Dough

A respected archaeologist and leader of the expedition Robert Throgmorton sent down to investigate the cause of Oakmont's perils. She went missing along with the rest of the team, but soon turns out to be in very different circumstances.

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• Ambiguous Situation: Did Harriet Dough actually drown or was she killed by the Yellow Kings whose master knows that Reed is the Chosen One?
• The Chosen One: Both she and Reed were picked among this Cycle's Chosen Few. Unfortunately, only one Chosen bears the Dreamer's Seed and can actually make the journey; Blackwood initially believes she is the one, but Reed proves him wrong one way or the other.
• Damsel in Distress: She was kidnapped by the EOD, who left the rest of the expedition to suffer and die. Reed spends several cases trying to track her down and rescue her. She's being held in their headquarters at the undersea Temple of Dagon, though by the time Reed gets there, Blackwood has done most of the work for him already by wiping the EOD out.
• Out of Focus: Despite her critical importance to a large chunk of the plot, Reed only meets her in person once. And she either dies by his hand in said scene, or dies off-screen while he is recovering in the hospital.
• Morton's Fork: No matter Reed decides, Dough ends up dying, either directly at Reed's hand or by drowning on the way back to the surface. There can only be one Chosen.
• Sacrificial Lamb: She must die by the end of "Nosedive"; either Reed kills her to ensure his destiny as the only Seed, or she is found dead in the water afterward, implied to have been killed by Blackwood or the Yellow Kings.
• Sanity Slippage: As is to be expected, discovering the temple in the sea floor and removing the Seal from its pedestal did a number on her mind.
• Walking Spoiler: Due to being offscreen for most of the story, it's hard to discuss her without spoilers.

Oakmont Residents

Anna

Anna Cavendish

A prominent figure in the EOD, who spends her days handing out free fish to the populace of The Shells.

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• Big Bad Wannabe: Anna is the head of the EOD in Oakmont after the Blackwoods' disappearance. However, the cult's efforts are almost immaterial to everything going on.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Plays up the image of being a good, charitable woman who's unaware of the true nature of EOD. In reality, she's knows full well it's actually the Esoteric Order of Dagon. Even if Reed sides with her over her ex-husband, she tries to have Reed killed then disappears.
• Equal-Opportunity Evil: Reed notes that Anna, a native Oakmonter and full human, is much higher in rank in the EOD than many Innsmouthers with Deep One heritage, while trying to convince Throgmorton that just because someone is an Innsmouther doesn't make them culpable for the EOD's actions.
• The Face: The EOD's most visible and friendly public representative, and the first living member Reed meets.
• Faux Affably Evil: She's a fiercely devout cultist feared even by her own subordinates, but she puts on a warm public persona and rarely drops her Nice Girl facade around Reed. If Reed sides with her and tells her about George's plan, she repays him by sending him to be killed in an ambush.
• Interspecies Romance: As part of the Order, she's revealed to have been impregnated by a Deep One, as she insists that her child was "blessed by the sea". Revealing this caused her husband to cross the Despair Event Horizon.
• Schmuck Bait: Anna sends you down to meet with the EOD's leader after you do her a favor. She, instead, has her followers try to murder you.
• Torture Technician: Daryl is terrified of her punishment, as she tends to be particularly brutal when it comes to mistakes. It's all but outright stated that the hidden Torture Cellar in the fish storage is for her personal use, as there's another one in the basement of the Fish Market; Daryl will likely meet his end in one of these rooms if you rat him out to her.

Bethany

Bethany Throgmorton

The ex-wife of Hammond Throgmorton who has been imprisoned in an asylum for decades.

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• Abusive Spouse: Her husband put their son into a coma by stripping his soul from his body and then had her committed to an asylum to divorce her. It doesn't get more abusive than that.
• Ambiguous Situation:
  • There's a good question as to whether Bethany is insane at all.
  • Whether she believes the mirror will resurrect her son or turn him into an undead abomination.
• Black Magic: Has been studying it in order to figure out a way to free her son from his imprisonment.
• The Determinator: Bethany wants to bring back her son, no matter the cost since he's suffering a Fate Worse than Death.
• Fate Worse than Death: Is attempting to free her son from one of these.
• Mama Bear: Everything she's done so far has been for her son.
• Not Quite the Right Thing: If she frees her son's spirit from the mirror, it returns to his body. Which is a mummified seven year old's corpse. It starts knocking on its coffin almost immediately.
• Shoot the Dog: If the player characters want to stop her plan, they have to kill her.

Glenn Byers

Glenn Byers

A resident of The Shells who becomes instrumental to the plot of the late game.

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• Finger in the Mail: The men who kidnapped his wife sent him her finger when he refused to cooperate.
• Frame-Up: Drunnon forced him to seemingly murder Johannes van der Berg and frame Reed for it, as part of Johannes's final test of Reed's sense of morality.
• Identical Stranger: He looks very similar to Reed (though much less scruffy, worn, and scarred), something both of them are confused about. It's left ambiguous whether this is a convenient coincidence, or if larger forces orchestrated their resemblance.
• I Have Your Wife: His wife and son were kidnapped by Billy Drunnon and the Yellow Kings.
• My God, What Have I Done?: He can't live with the guilt of killing a man and getting away with it, so he's prepared a confession for Reed to pass along after his family is returned. It's up to Reed whether that confession makes it to the cops or not.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: Like Reed, Glenn bears a physical resemblance to H.P. Lovecraft. He's also from Providence, Rhode Island, same as Lovecraft.

Brutus Carpenter

Brutus Carpenter

The elderly patriarch of the Carpenter Grand Family, and a powerful figure in Oakmont's criminal underworld. He asks Reed to solve the mystery of an attempt on his life in exchange for smuggling Fred out of the city.

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• Bestiality Is Depraved: Accuses the Throgmortons of this. Notably, he's a Hypocrite who had one with Robert himself.
• Depraved Bisexual: Apparently had some sort of relationship with Robert Throgmorton.
• The Don: The head of a powerful gang, with a long history of cruelty and power abuse to match.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: He does genuinely care about Graham, even though he knows his son doesn't return much of the affection. Should he be informed that Graham was behind the assassination attempt, he's seriously shaken and heartbroken.
• Even Evil Has Standards: For all his faults, he won't hurt women or children. His henchmen, however, aren't as discerning.
• Evil Old Folks: An unrepentantly cruel tyrant for most of his long life, and neither his advanced age nor his close scrape with death have left him much better. Even his own son loathes him.
• Faux Affably Evil: He's fairly polite to Reed in their interactions unless Reed mouths off to him, but he's still a selfish tyrant who will commit brutal violence for fairly petty reasons. At the end of the case, asking him how things will turn out once the culprits are brought to justice has him coldly respond that things will go back to just how they used to be, seemingly confirming that even his talk of reforming was a lie.
• Heel Realization: Claims to have gone through one of these following his near-immolation. A bit of questioning reveals that he hasn't, really.
• It's All About Me: He's monstrously self-centered, even after proclaiming that his Near-Death Experience has left him a changed man. A certain note in his bedroom reveals that he believes only he is worthy, out of every single person in Oakmont, to receive the immortality Redemption Church has been tempting him with.
• Kill and Replace: He suspects this to be the case, as he encountered a Doppelgänger just after his near assassination. He's right; Graham wants to replace him with a clone who will then step down, allowing him to become the Carpenter patriarch.
• Kill It with Fire: He had a traitorous courier burned alive to set an example. Fittingly, he himself was dropped off in a crematorium as a supposed corpse, and was nearly burned alive before he woke up and escaped.
• Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil: He's mentioned to have defiled several women and gotten away with it.
• Shotguns Are Just Better: He'll whip out a shotgun from underneath his jaunty smoking jacket if you start a fight with him.
• Schmuck Bait: Believes the Redemption Church will give him immortality. They intend to Kill and Replace instead.
• Wolfpack Boss: If you decide to kill him, old Brutus is no tougher than any other human enemy but is backed up by a large number of goons (probably the most in any single firefight in the game) who will start blasting you from all directions as soon as you initiate hostilities.

Graham Carpenter

Graham Carpenter

Brutus's son. Despite his off-putting appearance, he's a much nicer and more altruistic man than his father.

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• All for Nothing: A headline said he passes even if you side with him, possibly killed by the Redemption Church.
• Ambiguously Evil / Black-and-Gray Morality: The central dilemma of the chapter. Graham is clearly a Nice Guy through and through compared to Brutus, but it's unclear whether he's in danger of being compromised by the Redemption Church cultists, or if he can resist them despite them helping him with his plot. The fact that he makes a generous donation to the church once he's in power doesn't help matters. Also doesn't help that Reed never bothers to warn him that the Church is an evil cult, likely figuring that killing their leadership and banishing the avatar of their god would be enough.
• Driven to Suicide: If he survives to the end of the game, Reed sees a projection of him burning himself alive at the end of the Cycle, quietly repenting for his sins before he lights the match.
• Facial Horror: He was gruesomely disfigured while fighting in WW1, and now wears a Richard Harrow-style tin mask on the scarred half of his face. If Reed kills him instead of Brutus (either personally or by ratting him out to his father), his ghost will show up in Reed's hotel room to give him the now-useless mask as a sign of forgiveness, revealing a horrific visage with no eye and a severely damaged mouth.
• I Am Not My Father: He deeply resents Brutus for holding Oakmont under his thumb for so many years, and has resolved to be a better man.
• Killed Offscreen: If you choose him over Brutus, you can later find newspapers reporting Graham's death as headline news. Before the ending, there is absolutely no other indication of his death - no NPCs discussing it, no rumours, no journal entries, nothing. Unless you just happen to see one of these newspapers on a table in a house somewhere, you can completely miss this development and not discover he is dead until Cthygonnar.
• Kill It with Fire: If he is still alive by the time Reed enters Cthygonnar, he douses himself in gasoline and burns himself alive, seemingly following the lead of the St. Michael's Church worshippers.
• Nice Guy: A genuine altruist who hands out free food to the needy and despises his father for tainting the Carpenter name with his lifelong cruelty. He's so nice, in fact, that he'll even forgive Reed for killing him, showing up as a ghost to give him a hug and his mask before vanishing.
• Shell-Shocked Veteran: Fought in the trenches of Meuse-Argonne and suffered a disfiguring wound to his face that forces him to wear a half mask. When Reed asks him about it, Graham politely says he'd rather not discuss the war.

George Cavendish

Professor George Cavendish

A professor at Oakmont University's Department of Medicine. He's also Anna's ex-husband and the perpetrator of the poisoning plot.

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• Ambiguously Evil: An odd variant. There's no doubt that he's a mass-poisoning criminal, but Reed has to decide whether he's a Well-Intentioned Extremist up against an even greater evil, or a petty bastard just out to get revenge on his ex-wife. If you talk to him again, he states he will turn himself in as he knows he has committed terrible crimes, but believes stopping the EOD was worth it. He's also noted as wanting to make sure Professor Westerbrook (from whom he stole the poison) isn't blamed for his crimes, which indicates he's not a psychopath as Reed assumes if he sides with Anna over Cavendish.
• Bald of Evil: "Bald as an egg", to quote Daryl, and a man willing to commit mass murder by spiking the free fish supply with ricin.
• Crazy Jealous Guy: One interpretation of his mass murder plan is that he's just determined to avenge his wife's adultery.
• Did Not Think This Through: His plan is to turn the public against the EOD then surrender for his role in the mass murder, which will expose everything he's done to frame them. Reed can't point out the contradiction.
• Evil Versus Evil: He's fighting against the Esoteric Order of Dagon, one of the most dangerous groups in Oakmont, but his method of doing so is to poison hundreds of civilians with ricin.
• False Flag Operation: Daryl's plan is to poison large amounts of the fish supply in Oakmont in order to turn the public against the EOD.
• Green-Eyed Monster: He might very well be fatally poisoning hundreds of people just to knock Anna down a peg for betraying his trust.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: The EOD will survive no matter what he does because they're not really interested in converting the whole of the populace but destroying the world.
• Police Are Useless: Believes this with (justifiable) reason. However, he's actually probably wrong in that Robert Throgmorton has been using them against the Innsmouthers fairly often.
• Walking Spoiler: As the culprit of the third case.

Billy Drunnon

Billy Drunnon

A crusty drunkard who frequents the Seven Oaks Bar in Salvation Harbor. He saves Reed's life late in the game after Reed nearly drowns on a dive.

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• Affably Evil: When he's confronted later, even when Reed has resolved to kill him, he's unfailingly polite and genuinely seems to regret having to turn a gun on him.
• The Alcoholic: Known throughout Oakmont for being a layabout drunk, and has been admitted to the hospital several times for cirrhosis and related illnesses.
• The Dragon: Johannes's.
• Early-Bird Cameo: He is standing outside of the bar in the first mission.
• Mouth of Sauron: Seems to act as Johannes / Hastur's main liaison in the criminal world, relaying his orders and directly handling schemes he doesn't want to be personally tied to.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: Suffice to say he's not quite as incompetent and inconsequential as he first appears.
• Wolfpack Boss: He packs a shotgun but otherwise is no tougher than any other human. However, he's got several buddies standing behind him who'll all start attacking if you start a fight with him.

Lewis Flynn

Lewis Flynn

An Innsmouther fisherman who lives and works in a communal fishing house the Grimhaven Bay port. When Albert Throgmorton was dragged into the house and started spreading his madness, Flynn shot him and gave chase, ultimately killing him for reasons Reed is left to determine.

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• Accidental Murder: He claims that he blacked out when Albert started screaming, and when he awoke, he was halfway across the port and Albert was dead. He's lying.
• Ambiguously Evil: It's Reed and the player's job to determine whether he's being truthful about being driven to violence by Albert's aura of madness, or if he used it as a cover for his vendetta against the Throgmortons. Turns out he was put up to it by the Yellow Kings, though his personal hatred could have fueled him.
• Because You Were Nice to Me: If you cover up his murdering of Albert, he leaves a note on Reed's hotel door thanking him for being the first pureblooded human to ever be nice to him, and begging him to get out of Oakmont before it's too late.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: A late-game note in the Yellow Kings' hideout reveals that he murdered Albert on their order, meaning that the sob story he gives is almost certainly a lie.
• Death Faked for You: You can choose to cover up his murder of Albert Throgmorton by claiming he was killed by wylebeasts attracted to him by the blood on his clothes from the murder.
• Fantastic Racism: As an Innsmouther, he suffers under it from the Throgmortons and native Oakmonters in general. Suffice to say it's made him bitter.
• Foreshadowing: Reed's investigation contains a few hints that he's lying about the crime not being premeditated long before the evidence proving this turns up:
  • Reed's "Mind's Eye" ability shows him the moment Albert began levitating, triggering the madness outbreak that resulted in his death, which shows that it was set off by a voice that sounds a lot like Lewis reciting an eldritch incantation just beforehand.
  • During retrocognition, observant players may notice that Lewis didn't panic like the others when Albert began levitating, almost as if he knew it was going to happen. Because he caused it and took advantage of the madness outbreak to kill him.
  • Retrocognition also shows that Lewis yelled "Take this, ape-face!" while he was shooting at Albert, hinting that he was in control of his mental faculties and was targeting Albert out of a personal grudge against the Throgmortons.
  • The crime, in which the killer shot Albert through the head execution-style and then hid his body in a nearby warehouse, seems too methodical to have been the act of a man not in control of his actions, and his attempt to hide from the police afterwards gives the lie to his claim that he didn't know he'd done it; he'd have no reason to hide if that was the case.
• Hypocrite: He laments how the Innsmouthers are treated unfairly by Oakmonters for being outsiders, before almost immediately making a bigoted remark about Reed being an outsider.
• Karma Houdini: Potentially. You can let him go only to find out he was part of a conspiracy to murder Albert all along.
• Let Off by the Detective: Reed can help him get away with his crime.
• Sympathetic Murderer: Lewis Flynn, the suspect in your first case, claims he only committed the murder during a supernaturally-induced psychotic break and can't remember doing it, and that he has a family to provide for and was the subject of racial discrimination. You can either help him escape or turn him over to what will essentially be a lynch mob. Much later in the game you find evidence strongly indicating the murder was premeditated, backed up by how methodical the killing and crime scene were, how calm Lewis seems all things considered and the fact that retrocognition shows him taunting Albert during the attack, suggesting that his sob story about committing the murder while controlled by supernatural forces was a load of bunk. You do find evidence he does indeed have a family, and the racial prejudice he faced as an Innsmouther may have played a role in his willingness to commit the murder.

Fred

Fred

A rogue EOD member who asks Reed to help him get out of Oakmont in exchange for telling him what he wants to know.

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• Chain of Deals: Getting Fred out of town isn't a simple process. People in Oakmont don't do anything for free, and everyone you have to work with to make it happen wants something in exchange.
• The Mole: He's in contact with George Cavendish, and has been feeding him information about the EOD in exchange for passage out.
• Only Sane Man: Probably the most clear-headed member of the EOD, even if he's not as nice as Daryl. He can see the impending trouble in Oakmont coming from a mile away, and he wants nothing to do with any cult business.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: All he wants is to get the hell out of Oakmont. Unfortunately, that's easier said than done, forcing Reed to jump through a lot of hoops with the Carpenters for him.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Probably doesn't realize that his contact plans to engage in mass murder.

Dr. Grant

Dr. Grant

The eccentric head doctor of the Hospital of Saint Mary.

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• Cloud Cuckoolander: When he isn't coldly brushing Reed off, he seems... a bit too into his line of work.
  Dr. Grant: "Patient or visitor? Hold on, hold on" - giggles — "let Dr. Grant guess..."
• Jerkass Has a Point: Informing the public the wylebeasts are being created by cannibalism, bad dreams, and evil cults aren't probably going to make things any better. The city is already on the verge of tearing itself apart without these added problems.
• Lack of Empathy: He doesn't display much concern for Reed, nor a great deal of sympathy for the wylebeast victims Reed reports to him about. He also wants to go through the vigorous and time consuming peer-reviewed scientific process before letting anyone know about the fairly obvious and potentially life-saving information Reed discovers about the wylebeasts, such as that their vomit is contagious and eating human flesh can make you turn into one of them.
• Mad Scientist: Albeit, that actually allows him to make some significant observations about the problems in Oakmont.
• Morally Ambiguous Doctorate:
  • His introduction can have him giving Reed pills which, immediately upon being taken, completely deplete his sanity meter and trigger horrible hallucinations. When confronted seconds later, he excuses the whole thing as an unexpected side effect. He doesn't do much afterward to improve Reed's opinion of him.
  • Notes you find indicate he didn't take the wylebeast outbreak seriously in the past, being fixated on his initial diagnosis that his patients' symptoms were caused by intestinal worms, resulting in them either dying or turning into wylebeasts. He does seem to take the wylebeast problem more seriously at the moment, though, but when contagious madness starts spreading through Oakmont via the Cthygonnaar expedition survivors, he once again dismisses it all as an outbreak of intestinal worms (Truth in Television, as tunnel-vision fixating on their initial diagnosis is a problem all too common among doctors).

Daryl Grimes

Daryl Grimes

The security guard for the EOD's fish storage.

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• Anonymous Benefactor: He whittles wooden toys and donates them to the local orphanage, remaining faceless likely due to his fear of anti-Innsmouther prejudice.
• Charles Atlas Superpower: Pleasant as he is, he's strong enough to throw a harpoon across the room hard enough to completely bury it in the wall.
• Friend to All Children: He willingly makes and donates toys to the orphanage, which the children love.
• Token Good Teammate: One of the few truly good people involved in the EOD, as well as the only major Innsmouther character whose goodness Reed doesn't have to call into question. The man anonymously donates handmade toys to orphans, for gods' sake!
• Video Game Caring Potential: You can lie about his involvement in the break-in, reporting to Anna that he got knocked out fighting the intruder rather than falling asleep upstairs. You can then go back to him and convince him to get as far away from Oakmont as he can, as the deception will no doubt be discovered sooner or later. He takes Reed up on this and vanishes.
  • Video Game Cruelty Potential: ... Or you can rat him out to Anna for making a mistake, leading him to almost surely be tortured to death.

Joy Hayden

Joy Hayden

The librarian of Oakmont University Library, who has her Mouth Stitched Shut for reasons she's not willing to clarify.

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• A Day in the Limelight: While most of the other archive managers get little characterization or interactions, the "Silence Is Golden" side case focuses heavily on her past and Dark Secret.
• Break the Cutie: She's somewhere around 75% of the way through the process by the time Reed arrives, with Granny Weaver killing her dog and turning it into a stuffed animal as the potential last straw.
• Dark and Troubled Past: She used to be a rather successful celebrity singer, until Granny Weaver was loosed upon her for talking about Oakmont's secrets, leading her to lose her ability to sing altogether. She now lives quietly as a librarian unrecognized by most people, constantly terrified of saying anything out of turn and letting Weaver back into her life to do something worse — which she eventually does anyway.
• Mouth Stitched Shut: The most distinguishing thing about her. She can just barely speak short sentences through it, but is unwilling to take the stitches out. It was inflicted on her by Granny Weaver as punishment for talking about Oakmont's secrets with outsiders, and even after Reed banishes Weaver, she's too afraid to cut her own punishment short.
• Nice Girl: One of the kindest people in Oakmont, and one of the few who never has a disparaging word to say about Reed or other newcomers. Reed clearly takes to this in kind and grows to care for her over the course of her side case.

Joseph Hill

Joseph Hill

An archaeologist and occult expert Reed is sent to meet near the end of the game, in hopes that he'll know how to access Cthygonnar.

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• Driven to Suicide: If he's still alive when Reed descends into Cthygonnar, he kills himself at the end of the Cycle. However, he does this even if you already killed him earlier, which calls into question how real the visions in Cthygonnar are.
• Early-Bird Cameo: In one side-quest of the game you're tasked with recovering 3 missing corpses from the cemetary. When investigating one of the bodies you'll learn someone named "J.H." has hired a group of graverobbers to acquire several of the older corpses from the cemetary, including one of a wizard.
• Evil Versus Evil: He's a real piece of work, but he's up against Usha, an undead Mayan priestess who murders and feeds on innocent people. Reed ultimately has to choose which one he favors and kill the other, though he can betray both.
• Immortality Seeker: The sores on his face make it clear he is suffering from an exotic tropical disease that's about to kill him, and it's implied he hopes Cthygonnar can offer him a much longer life.
• Tattooed Crook: His face is covered in ritual tattoos, and he's as criminal as they come.
• Torture Technician: He tortures the corporealized spirits of the dead to learn their secrets. He tortured Usha in captivity for days, including pouring acid on her, in an attempt to get her to spill the secrets of Cthygonnar.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: In his own words. His justification for torturing Usha and leaving his partner for dead is that he must do everything in his power to open the way to Cthygonnar so Reed can stop the madness. Whether or not he actually qualifies is up to the player to decide.

Caleb Lyons

Captain Caleb Lyons

The captain of the Oakmont police department. He hates newcomers just as much as most other locals, but he takes a particular dislike towards Reed for embarrassing the cops by solving crimes.

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• Chekhov's Gunman: Upon introduction, he threatens that he's keeping a close eye on Reed and will be on him the moment he slips up. After being scarcely relevant for most of the game, he shows up in one of the final chapters to arrest Reed for Johannes's apparent murder.
• Dirty Cop: He is in Robert Throgmorton's pocket, which helps you as it allows you access to police records.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: When Reed talks to him late in the game after getting bailed out of jail, he asks why Lyons has such a bitter grudge against him. Among other reasons, Lyons lists off that Reed keeps breaking locks, trespassing on private property to steal things, and waving his guns around in public — all things the player will have casually done many times by now.
• Police Are Useless: He certainly isn't doing much to help the city become a better place.
• Rabid Cop: He's far more concerned with getting something to stick to Reed because of his personal vendetta than he is with actually solving the problems plaguing Oakmont.
• The Resenter: He is deeply upset at Reed solving the Throgmorton murder within minutes of his arrival in Oakmont.

Gordon Meyer

Imperial Wizard Gordon Meyer

The Imperial Wizard of Oakmont's Ku Klux Klan chapter, which he runs out of the Orion Gentlemen's Club in Advent. Reed stumbles on him dealing with the messy aftermath of a wylebeast rampage.

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• A Father to His Men: He might be the leader of the KKK, but he truly cares about his men. He was willing to let Blackwood get a massive head start because he wanted to take care of his men who were injured first.
• Asshole Victim: Blackwood may be a bad guy in his own right, but nobody is angry at him for unleashing wylebeasts on the KKK and its leader, especially after they gruesomely murdered several of his followers and kidnapped him. Goes double when Reed inevitably pisses him off enough to spark a shootout, leading to his death.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Subverted. In the club's basement, Reed finds that Meyer was having his men murder Blackwood's imprisoned allies despite Blackwood begging for their lives. If confronted about how immoral and dishonorable this is, Meyer immediately draws his gun.
  • As a meta example. Reed can rob everyone blind, murder every person he meets, use strychnine on an elderly woman just so her son can get his inheritance quicker, and in general be as much of a bastard as possible. However, there is no dialog option for siding with the Klan. No matter how evil you play him, he has some standards.
• Hated by All: Everyone in town, from the Throgmortons and Carpenters to the Yellow Kings and EOD, sees the Klan as either an thorn in their side or a civic disgrace; they've even been investigated by the police a few times and forced to masquerade as a gentleman's club.
• Hate Sink: In the few minutes of conversation you can have with him, he demonstrates not a single sympathetic quality. Reed in turn doesn't take him or his plight seriously in the least, and can even Troll him by repeatedly poking fun at his "Imperial Wizard" title until he starts shooting. In fact no matter what conversation options you take, Reed will inevitably taunt Meyers into a fight, even though Meyers gives up Ebernote's location willingly and Reed gets nothing out of starting a fight with him. The guy just rubs Reed the wrong way that much, especially after he had his men execute Ebernote's men after they had already surrendered.
• I Just Shot Marvin in the Face: Since several of his men are huddled behind him, it's very likely that provoking them into a shootout will result in him getting shot In the Back by one of his own oblivious troops.
• Jerkass: Smug, sleazy, and a racist murderer to boot.
• Politically Incorrect Villain: Doesn't get much more politically incorrect than "leader of the Klan", does it?
• Shotguns Are Just Better: He and most of his men are armed with shotguns, which can be a pain since Reed provokes a fight with them while standing just a few meters away from them.
• Small Name, Big Ego: Refers to himself proudly as a "Imperial Wizard", a title reserved for the Klan's national leader; in reality, under the terms of the Reconstruction or Second-Era Klan, he would be a Cyclops or a Giant/Titan at most, since his dominion doesn't extend beyond Oakmont. Reed doesn't pass up the chance to needle his pomposity.

Milton Pierce

Milton Pierce

A candidate in the running to be Oakmont's mayor.

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• Frame-Up: Orchestrated Reed's apparent murder of Johannes in cooperation with the Yellow Kings. You can return the favor by framing him for the same crime, resulting in him being arrested and hanged.
• Greed: The driving force of everything he does, right down to having his mother poisoned so he can get his inheritance early.
• Hate Sink: Reed doesn't exactly take a shine to the guy. He's one of the few people in Oakmont with absolutely no redeeming qualities.
• Playing Both Sides: Despite his nativist rhetoric, his only firm ideological position seems to be "power hungry politician". Notably, he's on good terms with multiple factions including Robert Throgmorton, the EOD, and the Yellow Kings, despite their wildly conflicting ideological objectives.
• Psychopathic Manchild: He asks Reed to poison his own mother so he can get his inheritance a few years early, hoping to use the money to bolster his already prosperous campaign.
• Stupid Evil: He's not exceptionally bright, even leaving aside his plan to build a wall around a city that is already completely cut off from the world by the Flood. This can be his undoing, as the amount of circumstantial evidence he left lying around makes it very easy for Reed to pin Johannes's murder on him.
• Trumplica: Although he shares few of the mannerisms or physical attributes, the spirit is there, including the "Make X Great Again" slogan and the promise of building a wall to keep foreigners out.

Jimmy Price

Jimmy Price

A fisherman Reed meets at the end of the game, hunkering down in his house as Cthylla's influence starts to overtake Oakmont. He caught a lucky break after fishing up a lot of ancient golden artifacts around the nearby monolith, but things have taken a turn for the worse in his life.

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• Despair Event Horizon: He's clearly been pushed to the brink by the drownings of his entire family.
• Driven to Suicide: A vision in Cthygonnar reveals that he hanged himself shortly after Reed's last dive.
• Only Sane Man: The last Oakmonter Reed meets before the end of the game, and fittingly one of the most clear-headed and sympathetic. He and Reed have a cogent conversation about their situation and what they hope they'll get to do when the madness is over, and it clearly has an impact on Reed.

Sidney "Squint" Stokes

Sidney "Squint" Stokes

An Irish American thief who is involved in a magic mirror's theft.

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• All for Nothing: Sidney gets stiffed on the payment for stealing the mirror and potentially arrested, robbed, or both by Charles Reed.
• I Need a Freaking Drink: Sidney's remorse is confirmed by examining the empty liquor bottle in his home.
• Justified Criminal: Sidney just wants to raise enough bullets (Oakmont's currency) to bury his mother.
• Kick the Dog: He depicts his employer as someone who killed his partner for no reason. In fact, according to Bethany Throgmorton, he hit her up for more money.
• Killing in Self-Defense: Sidney killed Herbert Glover because he was shooting at them. However, Sidney was robbing the man at the time.
• Let Off by the Detective: Sidney can be let go by Reed due to the extenuating circumstances.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Sidney is horrified by what he's done and drinks himself silly after doing it.
• Sympathetic Murderer: Sidney Stokes broke into an art collector's house to steal a mirror in order to get enough funds to afford a proper burial for his recently deceased mother. When the art collector caught him in the act and started shooting, he killed him in the commotion, and feels terrible about it. You're given the choice of either turning him over to a biased justice system that will likely give him a far harsher sentence than his crime warrants (with a side order of police brutality/enhanced interrogation), or letting him get away with murder with absolutely no consequences other than his own guilt.
• Video Game Cruelty Potential: There's an option to steal Sidney Stokes' secret bullet stash in "A Delicate Matter", which he was saving to get his mother a proper burial. The trophy / achievement text even ends with "You Monster!". You can also turn him over to the police, which is at least justified by the fact he's a murderer.

Albert Throgmorton

Albert Throgmorton

Robert Throgmorton's son. He was sent down as part of the expedition to the sea floor, and unfortunately, returned to the surface as the apparent Sole Survivor. By the time Reed arrives, he has gone missing in the port, and quickly turns out to be dead.

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• Boom, Headshot!: How Flynn killed him.
• Go Mad from the Revelation: As a result of what happened to the expedition beneath the sea, he was found babbling incoherently and lashing out at those around him.
• He Knows Too Much: No matter what Lewis's motives are determined to be, Robert suspects Albert was killed because he managed to escape the fate that befell his colleagues. Turns out he's not far off; Johannes orchestrated his death to keep information about the Seed guarded, and to push Reed down the right path.
• Posthumous Character: He's killed minutes before Reed gets to Oakmont.
• Sole Survivor: The only member of the expedition who successfully made it back to the surface.

The Mythos & Other Horrors

The Thing Beneath Oakmont (Unmarked Spoilers)

The Dreamer's Hidden Daughter / Cthylla

A Great Old One residing far beneath the waters of Oakmont, giving visions to the Chosen Few to guide them to Cthygonnaar. She is actually Cthylla, one of the Star-Spawn of Cthulhu, and is waiting for the Chosen bestowed with the Dreamer's Seed to release her to trigger the end of the world.

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• Big Bad Duumvirate: With Johannes / Hastur. She is the source of the visions, madness, flooding, and wylebeasts — everything plaguing Reed and the residents of Oakmont.
• Canon Character All Along: It's not revealed until near the end of the game that she's Cthylla, though "the Dreamer's Hidden Daughter" is a dead giveaway.
• Eldritch Abomination: The daughter of Cthulhu and Idh-yaa. What little we see of her in the Annihilation ending resembles a gigantic ball of tentacles or sea anemone with a glowing Flower Mouth.
• The End of the World as We Know It: If she is freed from Cthygonnaar, Oakmont will be flooded completely and the world will be destroyed — because Cthylla rising is tied to Cthulhu's awakening, and when Cthulhu awakens, the rest of the Great Old Ones will follow.
• Orcus on His Throne: Cthylla spends the entire game slumbering in her undersea prison, but her very presence beneath Oakmont is the source of all the madness afflicting the city.
• Psychic Dreams for Everyone: Has been inducing many people in and around Oakmont with nightmares and madness since the sea floor cracked open, which draws Reed to the city in the first place.
• Sealed Evil in a Can: Sealed inside a massive temple at the bottom of the ocean, right underneath Oakmont.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: Instead of Cthulhu, we get his daughter as one of the Big Bads.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: If Reed chooses to free her, she immediately kills him, which may well be a mercy at this point.

The Dreamer

Cthulhu

THE Great Old One and most famous face of the mythos. A slumbering giant dreaming beneath the sea, awaiting the day of his and the other Old Ones' awakening.

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• The Cameo: In the form of dozens of obelisks, tomes, symbols, and other depictions of him.
• The Ghost: As is often the case for Cthulhu Mythos adaptations, he doesn't actually appear in person.
• Greater-Scope Villain: It's only lightly touched on in the game, but those familiar with the Mythos will put together that he's ultimately responsible for everything going wrong in Oakmont. Cthylla is his secret daughter, meant to give birth to his reincarnated form if his body is ever somehow destroyed. One of the frescoes in the Temple of Dagon clarifies that Cthylla is only awakening because her father is starting to stir in R'Lyeh, meaning the emergence of all Great Old Ones is nigh unless the Cycle restarts. Hastur, meanwhile, is Cthulhu's half-brother, and while they traditionally don't get along very well, Johannes seems completely set on having his brother and niece awakened.

The Fecund Mother

The Fecund Mother / Shub-Niggurath

Also known as The Black Goat Of the Woods With a Thousand Young, an Outer God of fertility worshipped by many in Oakmont, including the cult underneath Redemption Church. Part of her briefly manifests during the battle with the cultists in her undersea temple.

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• Always a Bigger Fish: She is a full-fledged Outer God, leagues above the Great Old Ones like Cthulhu in terms of power and importance. Luckily, she's one of the calmer abominations in the Mythos, and has almost no direct bearing on the trouble in Oakmont.
• Boss Battle: They're the first unique boss enemy you'll face in the game, as well as the only mandatory boss fight in the game's main questline (Fighting Usha can be avoided by either siding with her or tricking her then stabbing her in the back, Granny Weaver is part of an optional side-quest, and the uber-wylebeast is part of a DLC sidequest).
• Cult: Has one worshipping her based in and under Redemption Church, but secretly spread throughout the entire city.
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: Reed successfully fends off a manifestation of her after taking out her cult. However, being an Outer God, it's highly unlikely Reed actually hurt her.
• Eldritch Abomination: One of the most bizarre and powerful in the setting. Statues in Redemption Church depict her as a grotesquely bloated thing with a head entirely taken up by a Lamprey Mouth and no clear lower body.
• Lamprey Mouth: Depicted with this. She manifests as a giant one poking out of the floor in her boss fight.
• Monster Progenitor: The most famous in the mythos. Fittingly, she rampantly gives birth to human clones and wylebeasts during the boss fight.
• Mother of a Thousand Young: The Trope Namer. She is known in and out-of-universe for her rather preposterous birth rate.
• Tactical Suicide Boss: Downplayed; while you can beat her by picking up and throwing the explosive cysts she vomits at you back into her mouth, you can also defeat her just by shooting her a lot.

Usha

Usha

A Mayan priestess who once served as the guardian of Cthygonnaar, unearthed by Joseph Hill in an effort to learn its secrets. She is unwilling to reveal anything to anyone except the Chosen, and is dead set on killing Hill for his transgressions.

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• Being Tortured Makes You Evil: Subverted. She's very sore about being held captive and tortured, but she's still a vampiric undead who has to kill humans to sustain her unlife.
• Climax Boss: If Reed chooses to kill her, she is the last mandatory boss fight, fought right before the finale, and suitably one of the hardest in the game.
• Evil Versus Evil: A homicidal vampiric priestess versus a casually racist, greedy occultist. On the whole, Usha comes across as noble and dignified and while she does need to kill humans to survive she doesn't seem to kill unnecessarily or out of cruelty, while Hill is an incredibly entitled asshole but doesn't seem to be a murderer.
• Foil: Turns out to be one to Hill. If you side with her and kill Hill, upon speaking with her you'll learn that she has the power to speak to the dead and wants to prevent Cthylla's resurrection just like Hill does, having been a companion of her Cycle's Chosen who sacrificed himself to restart the Cycle. Also, it's implied she speaks with the dead consensually as equals instead of trying to dominate and control them like Hill does.
• Hidden Depths: She doesn't want to kill the man whose body she has taken over, and at heart, she just wants to be set free from her duties and allowed to live a life in the new world.
• In the Back: If Reed accepts her plan and lulls her into a false sense of security, he can kill her without a fight when her back is turned.
• Lightning Bruiser: Extremely fast, highly durable, and capable of dishing out a lot of damage.
• Nigh-Invulnerable: No matter what kind of punishment her physical form takes, she'll always come back. Hill and Reed eventually figure out how to dispel her powers and put her down for good.
• Our Vampires Are Different: An undead Mayan priestess who exists as a mummified corpse but can be reawakened, capable of many supernatural feats including teleportation and Demonic Possession, who must regularly feed on the blood of innocents.

Dagon

Dagon

The gargantuan progenitor of the Deep Ones and object of worship by many Innsmouthers.

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• The Cameo: You can find an obelisk of him in the more flooded areas of the city. The giant Innsmouther face Reed sees in one of his nightmares may also be a representation of him.
• The Ghost: Like Cthulhu, he never appears in person. Though you do visit a temple dedicated to him, which also contains the unhatched egg clusters of several Deep Ones.
• Greater-Scope Villain: Having also served as this in The Shadow Over Innsmouth proper, he's more or less at fault for the whole situation with the Esoteric Order of Dagon and the other problems with rogue Innsmouthers.
• Sea Monster: He's depicted just like a bigger version of the Deep Ones, being a giant fish-humanoid creature.

Granny Weaver

Granny Weaver / Anne Osborne

A mystical entity feared by many Oakmonters, said to manifest and brutally punish anyone who threatens Oakmont's secrecy.

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• Bad People Abuse Animals: To punish Joy for talking about the city's secrets, Granny Weaver killed Joy's dog and turned it into a teddy-bear.
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: Reed manages to banish this tremendously powerful spirit with nothing but his wits and a lot of firepower.
• The Dreaded: For much of the town, but especially Joy, who has suffered under her threat for years.
• Evil Old Folks: The everlasting spirit of an elderly woman, and she takes extreme glee in dishing out all manner of cruel punishments to those who break the code of secrecy in Oakmont. She even murdered her own granddaughters for gossiping about witchcraft to their friends.
• Flunky Boss: She summons wylebeasts to assist her in combat. Unlike Ebernote Blackwood, she can do this throughout the fight instead of just once, can take a lot of damage, and also fires magical projectiles.
• He Was Right There All Along: While fighting wylebeasts in the basement, Weaver's silhouette can be seen standing at the top of the stairs. If Reed looks away for a split second, she vanishes.
• Humanoid Abomination: It is implied that Granny Weaver is more than just an urban legend, having killed Joy's dog and neighbors and compelled her not tell anyone about her, with notes claiming that she is the spirit of a witch that fled Salem.
• Mouth Stitched Shut: Her specialty, as seen with Joy and her granddaughters.
• Optional Boss: Fought at the end of "Silence Is Golden", a completely optional side case.
• Our Ghosts Are Different: She's long dead, but can be drawn into corporeal form and is visible to anyone in the vicinity. And if someone manages to banish her, she can't emerge for the next hundred years, though she will always come back in the end.
• Witch Hunt: She's one of the accused witches who escaped Salem back when the witch trials were ongoing. Unlike many examples, though, she is a real witch — and an incredibly dangerous one at that.