Characters / The Willoughbys

The Quirky Characters who appeared in the film, The Willoughbys.

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Tim Willoughby

Voiced By Will Forte

• Adaptation Personality Change: Tim is shown to be the classic bossy oldest sibling in the book. In the movie, he's still bossy, but he's also much more harried and often the subject of much slapstick.
• Affectionate Nickname: Nanny dubs him "skinny bones".
• Big Brother Instinct: Tim is the eldest of his siblings and does what he can to protect them.
• Butt-Monkey: Poor Tim takes a lot of physical abuse throughout the movie.
• The Cynic: Tim is the only Willoughby kid who is doubtful of Jane's scheme to rid themselves of their parents. Doesn't stop him from being compliant in it though.
• Fatal Flaw: Pride. Tim only survived his parents' abuse with a shred of self-respect by internalizing the glory of past Willoughby's. Unfortunately, it's trying to uphold said glory that makes Tim bossy and inflexible about doing things the Willoughby way.
• Green-Eyed Monster: Becomes jealous when a nanny arrives into their household, believing she's a threat to his authority.
• I'm Not Hungry: Tim has this reaction to Nanny's oats.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Tim has this reaction after he calls the Department of Orphan Services to falsely report Nanny.
• Never Bareheaded: Tim is rarely seen without his World War I helmet.
• Only Sane Man: Tim is the only responsible member of the Willoughbys in that he tries to keep his siblings from drawing the attention of their awful parents.
• Promotion to Parent: Given he's the oldest and Mr. and Mrs. Willoughby are terrible parents, Tim becomes the de-facto parental figure in his siblings' life.
• The Runaway: Tim runs away from his numerous foster parents to look for his siblings.
• Savvy Guy, Energetic Girl: With Jane. He's more cautious and calm in contrast to her energy.
• The Unfavorite: Mr. and Mrs. Willoughby don't especially like their children, but they dislike Tim the most.

Jane Willoughby

Voiced By Alessia Cara

• Age Lift: In the book, she was the youngest of the four siblings. The movie makes her the second oldest, and the Barnabys taking the spot as the youngest children.
• Beautiful Singing Voice: Throughout the film, it is shown that Jane can sing. Unfortunately, her parents discourage her from singing. In the film's climax, Jane uses her singing voice to help calm her brothers after their parents abandon them on top of a mountain.
• Kindhearted Cat Lover: Jane is often seen holding the cat, once he inserts himself into their adventure.
• Nice Girl: Jane is usually the nicest out of her siblings.
• Never Trust a Trailer: The advertising for the film makes it look like Jane is the main protagonist but that role is taken by Tim.
• Nightmare Fetishist: When she thinks Ruth is a dangerous beast, she's outright excited.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: While Jane has a love for singing and is musically gifted, she has absolutely no interest in making music when she's separated from her siblings and forced to live in a foster home of music lovers.
• Savvy Guy, Energetic Girl: With Tim. She's more energetic and upbeat in contrast to his calmer nature.

The Barnabys

Voiced By Seán Cullen

• Age Lift: In the original book, the Barnaby twins are the second oldest of the Willoughby children. In the film, the Barnabys are the youngest.
• Always Identical Twins: The Barnabys have the same appearance, wear the same clothes (aside from the wool sweater), and share a voice actor.
• Big Little Brothers: Going off the doorway height markers in the credits, they’ll eventually grow to be much taller than their older siblings.
• Creepy Good: Despite being a pair of unsettling twins, the Barnabys are ultimately just a pair of neglected kids who want a proper home like their other two siblings, and they don’t actually cause any harm to anyone else.
• Creepy Twins: Mr. and Mrs. Willoughby and the cat think so. Given the twins' vacant stares and low voices, they're not wrong.
• The Dividual: Besides being identical twins and seldom seen apart, they're parents couldn't be bothered to give the Barnabys two first names. They're also forced to take turns wearing a shared sweater. Nanny is the first to treat them like individuals, dubbing one "Barnaby A." and the other "Barnaby B."
• Gadgeteer Genius: The Barnabys love machines, and building Homemade Inventions is their hobby.
• Identical Twin ID Tag: Subverted; the Barnabys share their one turtleneck sweater, so it can't be used to keep track of which twin is which.
• Mundane Object Amazement: The Willoughby home is stuck in the 20th century, so the Barnabys are fascinated by the technology of the outside world, like crosswalk signs and TV.
• Shorter Means Smarter: The more technologically gifted of their siblings and the shortest.
• Vocal Dissonance: They have deeper voices than what's normal for children. Their voices get even more deep once they've grown their moustaches.
• Verbal Tic: They breathe in "hoo-hee, hoo-hee" sounds when turning machine cranks.

Mr. and Mrs. Willoughby

Voiced By Martin Short and Jane Krakowski

• Abusive Parents: Quite. Aside from being horribly neglectful of their kids, they are emotionally abusive, extremely selfish, and have thrown their children to the wolves on numerous occasions. You really can't blame the children for trying to make themselves orphans.
• Anti-Villain: Downplayed. They're the closest things to "evil" in the film but are just extremely selfish and abusive parents.
• Asshole Victim: Enjoy your new home in a shark's G.I. tract, jerks!
• Black Sheep: Father Willoughby differs from his ancestors by not being a great adventurer, instead living off the family fortune, and having a skinny pencil mustache compared to the Willoughby traditional mustache.
• Child Hater: Rest assured, it's not just their own kids they hate. When they discover the Orphan Baby, they demand that the children get rid of her before they're allowed back into the house, with literally zero concern for what might happen to her. Tim even states out loud that their parents hate children.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: If nothing else, they adore each other. Unlike most examples, this is not a redeeming quality. Their obsession with each other gets various tour guides killed, and is a big reason why they ignore their children.
• Evil Virtues: They have nothing but unconditional love for each other. Deconstructed as they refuse to share it with anyone else, even their own children. In-fact, their love for each other is the only redeeming thing about them, if that.
• Hate Sink: They are depicted as nothing less than horribly abusive parents who have little to no redeemable qualities besides their affection for each other.
• Idle Rich: Neither of the Willoughby parents seem to have any kind of job, and they apparently almost never leave their house, implying that they're living off what's left of the family fortune.
• Jerk with a Heart of Jerk: What else can be said when you make your children believe you've taken an oath to change for the better, only to callously shove them to the wayside and leave them for dead?
• Just Desserts
• Lack of Empathy: They don't seem to care about anyone else besides each other. While it's obvious how horribly they treat their children, they also cause the deaths of countless tour guides with their stupidity without ever noticing.
• Lean and Mean: They're both skinny and they mistreat their own children.
• Look-Alike Lovers: Mr. and Mrs. Willoughby resemble each other with their red hair, oval faces, and long necks.
• No Name Given: Their first names are never revealed. They even refer to themselves as "Mother" and "Father".
• Offing the Offspring: Neither one tries to kill their children but they do leave them to freeze death and are not concerned with their lives at all.
• Parental Abandonment: They genuinely abandon their children near the end with no care for their lives.
• Psychopathic Manchild: The Willoughby parents display a profoundly disturbing immaturity throughout the film. They go into tantrums when the children bother them, they panic like frightened puppies when the brochure is dropped into their living room, and they routinely prove themselves to be more self-absorbed and childish than even the brattiest kid.^note Which is ironic considering how much they hate kids. On top of that, neither of them has a job, and their response to running out of money in the middle of their trip is to sell their house so they can keep adventuring.
• Sickening Sweethearts: Mr. and Mrs. Willoughby are this when they aren't parenting their children. Deconstructed as they're depicted as extremely selfish, having no love even for their children as they only give it to each other.
• Too Dumb to Live: Mr. and Mrs. Willoughby, who despite their initial surprise at the brochure being lowered by a string onto the table in front of them, are easily tricked into going on a deadly vacation where they repeatedly escape death by a hair without even realizing it because they're so busy being Sickeningly Sweethearts, especially since they keep knocking their guides into the way of dangers that would have hit them otherwise, blow through all their money and recklessly decide to sell their house so they can keep adventuring, and leave their children for dead after the children saved their lives, only to crash their stolen blimp into the ocean and get eaten by sharks.
  The Cat: How could such clever kids come from these two? I mean, this is Darwinism at work, isn't it?
• Too Upset to Create: Mrs. Willoughbys catchphrase is a dramatic whine of "I can't knit!" whenever she gets upset. So much so that the tardigrades on the yarn she knits with repeats it.
• Uncertain Doom: It's left unknown if Mr. and Mrs. Willoughby are eaten by the shark at the end.
• Ungrateful Bastard: Even after the kids risk their own lives to rescue them, Mr. and Mrs. Willoughby leave them for dead in the middle of a blizzard. That's not to say they didn't get what was coming to them.
• Unholy Matrimony: Downplayed. They're not outright villains but they're a selfish and cruel couple who only love each other.
• Villain Has a Point: Downplayed. They're not villains but are antagonistic, and they make a good point when they call the Barnabys "creepy".

The Cat

Voiced By Ricky Gervais

• Amazing Technicolor Wildlife: Has a blue striped coat.
• Cats Are Snarkers: The cat has shades of this in his narrative, especially since he's voiced by Ricky Gervais.
• From Stray to Pet: The cat gets adopted by the Willoughbys towards the end.
• Interactive Narrator: The Willoughbys' tabby cat is the narrator of the story and helps moves the story along from time to time.
  The Cat: Fine, I'll stop the bus. [The bus Nanny is on to leave the city stops to prevent it from running over the cat] Happy now?
• Papa Wolf: The only reason he seems to hate the Willoughby parents is because of their poor treatment of their children.

Nanny

Voiced By Maya Rudolph

• Beware the Nice Ones: Nanny is a nice, Big Fun woman but she knows when to be stern with children and can go Mama Bear for them.
• Big Fun: A plump and round woman who's funny, attentive, caring, and lovable.
• Dark and Troubled Past: Implied. It's never brought up explicitly, but the Nanny was left in the foster care system with no one wanting to adopt her.
• Large Ham: The Nanny is one. Being played by Maya Rudolph helps.
• Mama Bear: Nanny through and through. She risks her life to keep the Willoughby children together and saves Ruth from nearly getting killed. Makes sense as she becomes their adoptive mother by the end.
• Parental Substitute: Nanny becomes much more of a parent to the Willoughby children in a few hours than their own birth parents ever had during their whole lives. Later she, along with the Commander, becomes their actual parents via adoption in the end.
• Quirky Curls: Nanny has her hair done up into two puffy lobes, making it look like a heart.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: Nanny doesn't hesitate to dish time outs, but she balks at the idea of sending the Willoughbys to the coal cellar as punishment.
• Rough Overalls: Going with her Friend to All Children vibe, she wears overalls throughout the film
• Ship Tease: With Commander Melanoff. Made even stronger when the two of them become the legal guardians of the Willoughby Children.
• Trademark Favorite Food: Implied. Nanny makes oats for the Willoughby children when she first meets them and at the end, when she and Commander Melanoff adopted them. Given she grew up in the Department of Orphan Services and they are shown serving oats to a detentioned Tim, this might also be a justified trope.

Commander Melanoff

Voiced By Terry Crews

• Affectionate Nickname: At one point, Nanny calls him Mel.
• Astonishingly Appropriate Appearance: Not only is his uniform styled after candy, his red skin and puffy blue hair make him look like he's made of candy.
• Doting Parent: He gets attached to Ruth very quickly, and is hesitant to give her up.
• Papa Wolf: Becomes protective of the baby Ruth. This also extends to the Willoughby children as he (with Nanny and Ruth) went to rescue said children from freezing to death in the Alps.
• Ship Tease: With Nanny. Since the two of them both adopt the Willoughby children, it's strongly implied they've become a couple.
• Top-Heavy Guy: Commander Melanoff is built like this with a broad square body and big arms on two thin legs.
• The Wonka: Played with; Colonel Melanoff's commercials are as fantastical as the trope namer, but his factory is mundanely mechanical even if the runoff and exhaust is sparkly and rainbow colored. He does wear the exceptionally eccentric candy based regalia that he does in his commercials, which might be why the Nanny is so surprised to find out that he's real, and peppers his speech with equally eccentric exclamations. The climax of the plot also involves him helping her and the Willoughbys construct a dirigible made of candy that runs off sugar and is propelled by rainbow smoke.

Ruth

• Affectionate Nickname: Melanoff calls her Ruthie.
• The Baby of the Bunch: The only baby in a cast filled with adults and older children. She also becomes this after she and the Willoughby children are Happily Adopted by Commander Melanoff and Nanny.
• Big Eater: For a baby, she can eat quite a lot.
• Doorstop Baby: The Willoughby siblings find one on their doorstep. They're forced to doorstep her by proxy, but not before they name her Ruth.
• Happily Adopted: She, along with The Willoughbys, get adopted by Nanny and the Commander.
• Meaningful Name:
  • Ruth is named by the Willoughbys before they leave her on the doorstep of the Commanders candy factory. Her name, infancy, and adoption is likely a nod to the candy bar Baby Ruth.
  • In the book, the Commander makes a candy bar inspired by her, but they ignore the obvious name and instead it's named "Little Ruthie" and doesn't sell well. But it doesn't matter.
• Punny Name: In-Universe, anyway. Tim names her "Ruth" when the kids are trying to get rid of her, because, as he says, "they have to be Ruth-less".
• Vomit Indiscretion Shot: Ruth does this at the Commanders candy factory. It's even rainbow-colored.

Orphan Services

Head agent voiced by: Colleen Wheeler

• Anti-Villain: They genuinely try to help put orphaned children in homes that would suit them, but their coldness and decision to split up the Willoughby kids put them firmly in the villain role
• Baddie Flattery: The head agent tells the other agents "It's good to see [The Nanny] finally take initiative" while they're on the pursuit of both her and Tim.
• Department of Child Disservices: They're portrayed as cold, unfeeling agents in black who descend upon houses when called and take every child away. They're also seemingly not aware of how badly the Willoughby children are mistreated by their parents.
• Hero Antagonist: The Orphan Services are this, in the Anti-Villain role. Likewise, the head agent definitely counts, as while she is as cold as the rest of them, she actually comforts Linda/Nanny when it looks like the Willoughbys hated her, and later compliments her on taking initiative when she breaks Tim out of their holding facilities.
• The Men in Black: Their attire and attitude fit this trope to a T.
• No Name Given: None of them have any given names, with the head agent only being referred to as "Orphan Service agent".
• Pet the Dog: From the looks of things, they try to put orphan kids in homes that best suit their personalities — for example, free-spirited singer Jane gets put with a commune of hippies, and it's all but said that the sole reason she isn't thriving in her new environment is that she misses her siblings and Nanny.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: While Nanny claims they won't stop until they get the Willoughby children back, they disappear from the plot after she busts all the kids out of their foster homes and Tim decides to save their parents. The last we see of them is at the end, when the head agent allows Nanny and Melanoff to officially adopt the kids.

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