CURE, CONTAIN, OR ERASE.
From secretaries to surgeons, this page covers everyone in the Hospital who works as an employee.
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Doctors
General
Whatever passes for the Hospital's faculty consists of a group of strange aliens who are essentially living incarnations of a particular branch of medicine, gifted with astounding skill and knowledge in whatever they represent. They're odd fellows, but they earnestly try to do what's best for their patients and themselves.
- Amulet of Dependency: In order to conserve precious perception, the Hospital's connection to its doctors filters it to where its needed. Unfortunately, this also means that the doctors' own good judgement gets lost if the Hospital is crippled. For example, if the Hospital loses its security administration, then the doctors are driven to instinctively resort to erratic and unguided threat neutralization themselves, making them into threats against any patient that is just a little out of place. Likewise, the Hospital has become unable to perceive the Parliament because they have tampered with the algorithm the Hospital uses to prioritize important information, and without the Lab staff, the doctors are unable to learn or adapt.
- Anatomically Ignorant Healing: Part of the reason they can't exactly deal with Fern well is this combined with a bit of Crippling Overspecialization; the Grey Zone(that is, our world) is only one of the many many places patients hail from, with vast difference between each.
- Animate Inanimate Object: Some of them are these, e.g. Dr. Dementist being a sentient pair of dentures supported by metal braces with limbs, and Dr. Gynnie being a giant speculum.
- Anthropomorphic Personification: Each of them is one of a specific medical field.
Word of God says that with the possible exception of the mysterious Dr. Man, all of the doctors are embodiments of things used to promote health or combat illness. - Blue-and-Orange Morality: Most of them are all Cloudcuckoolanders whose universes operate on entirely alien logic and their mindsets are just as bizarre, but they mean well in the end and are just doing their respective jobs as best as they possibly can.
- Cloudcuckoolander: Most of their heads all seem to constantly be in the stratosphere, but Dr. Phage's insanity is even more baffling than that of his peers.
- Cosmic Key Stone: Every member of The Hospital’s staff is this to varying levels of importance for the entire zone, the higher authority the more vital a keystone. Each staff member allows for greater stability and clarity for The Hospital to operate on and their dwindling numbers are cited as a major source of The Hospital's growing corruption and dwindling functionality.
- Fisher King: Each doctor's office reflects the state of their own core. If a doctor is mentally crippled, their office will simplify. If the owning doctor is killed and buried or simply quits their job, their office will decay and eventually disappear as if it never existed. The missing office will return if the owning doctor comes back.
- Hero Antagonist: The majority of the doctors just want to manage the crisis they're in and to cure Fern's baby of the plague afflicting him. Unfortunately, it's quite clear they have no idea how and are unwilling to listen to advice and the Parliament is hitting them with a Perception Filter that is making them forget what procedures they've tried and not noticing The Corruption that's the source of the Hospital degrading.
- Home Field Advantage: Doctor Man implies that much of their power comes from being a doctor integrated with as well as inside the Hospital zone.
- Mad Doctor: Most if not all of them. But that doesn't necessarily mean they're bad.
- Punny Name: The doctors all have one - including Phleboto Mizer, Fleagood, and heck, even I.M. Man!
- Physical God: As well-meaning as they may be, their unholy power is not to be underestimated. The second weakest has a Character Level of 234, and the third weakest is level 950. For comparison, novice human zonehoppers tend to be in the tens, and Fern, a tougher than average human, has a Character Level of 14 at the time this gets revealed.
- Resurrection Sickness: The main doctors are much bigger concepts than Grayzoners, mid-level staff, or even specialists like Dinea or Magdolene. As a result, they are much harder to bring Back from the Dead. In the Hospital's current state, it is unable to resurrect them to their full strength from only a single recovered body part. Instead, that body part must be strengthened by items related to that doctor's field, and even then, they come back to life in a weaker and less stable state than their normal one.
- Sanity Slippage: Affecting nearly all of the doctors, with Dr. Phage suffering the worst. The only doctor completely unaffected is Dr. Magdolene since she has been in the Plank Maze since before the Parliament set up their Perception Filter, while Dr. Man has at least managed to remain lucid due to not being completely integrated with the Hospital.
- Weaksauce Weakness: Aside from Dr. Man, who is immune to Literal Metaphors due to his connection to the Grayzone, the doctors are weak against apples because of the old saying, "an apple a day keeps the doctor away".
Dr. H. M. Phage, T. E.
Pictured above: humongous moron with titanic ego. Do not allow near infants.
- Dr. H. M. Phage, T. E.: (to Fern, after she demands to know where her son is) Forgive my rudeness. I'm Doctor H.M. Phage, T.E, chief physician, radiologist, surgeon, pathologist, pathogen, immunologist, urologist, gynaecologist, reverse gynaecologist, taxidermist, dentist, forensic entomologist, necrobiological reconstructionist, herbalist, fashionist and twin-core husk intersector licensed in all chromatic, material and hypothetical perception zones. I can assure you, sir, your dog is in excellent hands!
The apparent head of the Hospital, though some things indicate there are larger, darker forces that even Phage must answer to. He is the Anthropomorphic Personification of doctors, yet his professionalism leaves a lot to be desired.
- Alternate Identity Amnesia: The Parliament has been tampering with his mind using ducks to make him a quack doctor. He cannot remember what he does when under their direct influence.
- Animal Motifs: With ducks, which in all likelihood represents him as a quack doctor.
- Archnemesis: Questions of actual malice, alien morality, and mutual dislike aside... Fern definitely regards Dr. Phage as her greatest, most despicable adversary. For her personally, (and on our side of the fourth wall,) Dr. Phage is pretty much the poster boy of everything keeping her from reuniting with her son. At first, anyway. It's since become clear that there are far greater forces at work.
- Beware the Silly Ones: The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You from this guy.
- Big Bad: He meets Fern very briefly at the beginning of the story and is mostly unconcerned with her actions, with other characters directly antagonizing her as a consequence of his ignorance/negligence. It's later implied that he's actually under the Parliament's influence. He occasionally seems to snap out of said influence, however.
- Blue-and-Orange Morality: As Fern notes, he wants to hurt her, but doesn't even seem to be aware of it. He is simultaneously in Fern's way by ordering that she not see her son, yet also helping her by refusing to sign off on the termination of a patient who cannot give consent to his own unexistentialization.
- Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Word of God has confirmed that the staff at the hospital are actually the best in their fields, contrary to appearances.
- One scene shows us that Dr. Phage is the only staff member to indicate that he can actually learn, as he questions whether Fern's son is really a dog. He also indicates that he's both pragmatic and empathetic, willing to destroy patients whose ailments threaten the greater multiverse and cannot be cured.
- When he's seen working on a life-form he's more familiar with, he's much more to the point.
- Character Level: At least one digit wasn't clearly visible, but according to Jay's notes, he is at least level 7342, the highest among the staff most people are capable of perceiving.
- Cloudcuckoolander: He may be the ditziest individual on the Hospital staff.
- Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: According to the Ramblin' Evil Colorectal Polyp, Phage is strong, though we've yet to see any feats of strength from him.Polyp: (to Fern) If you're at, let's say, I dunnooooo, a "thirteen" or something maybe, then [Dr. Mizer's] more of a thirteen hundred. Still not as tough as the little nerd he answers to, of course.
- Ditzy Genius: Chip implies that Dr. Phage isn't so easily tricked because he's stupid, but because he perceives so much that Fern's deceptions simply make perfect sense to him.
- Early-Installment Weirdness Was not above hitting on a papillomavirus
before the character was fleshed out and confirmed to be aromantic and asexual. - Escape Artist: Jay has apparently trapped Dr. Phage several times, but he's always broken free.Jay's Journal: Doctor Phage is easily tricked and easily trapped, but he will always find his way back.
- Everyone Has Standards: Can't bring himself to sign off to what amounts to the merciful execution of a patient that is not in a state to consent to said execution.
- Eye Glasses: His eyes are literally his glasses. When he takes them off to polish them, there is nothing behind them.◊
- Fisher King: All doctors of The Hospital have this in effect, but Phage's is the most vital and noticeable. As the conceptual embodiment of doctors, his condition and The Hospital's condition are both intrinsically linked. If The Hospital is degrading and losing stability, so too will Phage in both mental clarity and medical capabilities, and if he is somehow in mortal danger, The Hospital is one foot in the grave if not gone completely.
- Hidden Depths: He's more than capable of discussing matters seriously when it calls for it - see Obfuscating Stupidity.
- Hurl It into the Sun: In Phase 2 of the story, after being trapped in a box for around 100 webpages, Phage comes to the insane conclusion that the true answer to all Fern's problems is to reunite her with her sun. As in Planet Earth's sun. And he intends to make sure it happens.
- Iconic Outfit: Phage loves his bow ties. Every new panel, it magically changes to a different one.
- Ink-Suit Actor: Dr. P◊ is very obviously Dr. Phage as a duck.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: His lunch meeting with Tori indicates that this is what he really is deep down - he may be a kooky narcissist, but he'll drop everything to weigh the options with his staff if they think about doing any seriously dangerous procedures, and he really does care about his patients.
- Mad Doctor: And how. Word of God has suggested that Phage's total lunacy actually aids him in serving the medical needs of so many completely alien life forms.
- Manchild: Everything from his furniture◊ to his computer equipment◊ could've come straight out of a preschool, to say nothing of how he sees the world in the form of crayon drawings.
- Mascot Villain: Or at least mascot antagonist of Awful Hospital. In-Universe, Dr. Phage is also the mascot of his own brand of pharmaceuticals, as "Dr. P."
- Meaningful Name: Dr. Phage is a bacteriophage. Also, the "H.M." and "T.E." part of Phage's name is a Shout-Out to the Oz character, "H.M. Woggle-bug, T.E." With Woggle-bug, the letters stand for "Highly Magnified" and "Thoroughly Educated". It's generally assumed that the same holds true for Phage.
- Mega-Microbes: Despite being one of the smallest doctors, he's still massive for a bacteriophage.
- Mister Big: We have Circula Tori's word that, "with the exception◊ of the interzonal high council, Dr. H.M. Phage, T. E. is the final authority most medifolk are capable of perceiving." And he is toddler-sized next to Fern.
- Moment of Lucidity: The Parliament's efforts have driven him mad, but during a brief Hope Spot, he manages to remember what is really going on and what he needs to do... before the Parliament's influence reasserts itself and drives him even crazier.
- Nerd Glasses: Thick Coke-bottle glasses.
- Not What It Looks Like: The strand of DNA that Phage injects into Fern's son looks like, er, something else. This was dismissed by Word of God:Bogleech: I can confirm that injecting viral DNA is canonically not sexual to Phage and he is not being gross here.
- Nightmare Face: Such a cutie.
- Obfuscating Stupidity: Not to the extent that he's competent, but he's aware of much more than he lets on. Maliciously aware. On a less malicious note, the moment Tori suggests manifesting multiple instances of herself to work on Fern's son (A procedure that could cause incalculable damage to her core, not to mention the entire Hospital), Phage drops the theatrics and discusses the risks with her seriously before solemnly agreeing to at least consider it.
- Obliviously Evil: He appears to be villainous insofar as he has no idea how to treat humanoid lifeforms, and his perceptions of the Hospital are a bit at odds with a human's. Double-subverted when he "purges" the Spore Son and his Mother, which we later learn is a medical procedure just a step below an unexistualization and performed in the direst of circumstances. Phage telling Sporemom that everything was fine was probably a "white lie" to keep her from hysterics. A good deal of his oblivious harm turns out to be due to the Parliament's Perception Filter, which has considerably weakened his sanity.
- Omnicidal Maniac: Played for laughs. He reminds◊ the hospital staff to keep that sort of thing to their vacation time.
- Omnidisciplinary Scientist / Renaissance Man: If his quote is to be believed.
- Pointy-Haired Boss:Dr. Phage: And would you say your workplace relationship with one Dr. H.M. Phage, T.E. is very satisfactory, highly satisfactory, ... or double-plus-good to the tenth power?
Dr. Mizer: ["Pile of Poo" emoji] - Rule of Symbolism: There's a reason Bogleech had a bacteriophage be the head of the Hospital.Bogleech: Dr. Phage is a bacteriophage, a virus that exclusively infects bacteria. Phages were actually all that controlled bacteria before other organisms evolved their own immune systems, and they were investigated as a form of medical treatment before antibiotics caught on. They are in essence the earliest primordial "medicine" on our planet!
- Sanity Slippage: While he has always been a Cloudcuckoolander, there actually was once a time where he was a competent doctor. But he, along with the rest of the Hospital's staff, has been deteriorating, getting less competent at his job, and more oblivious to his surroundings. After getting stuck in a box and finally noticing, a Hope Spot allows him to recover enough sanity to remember the Parliament and realize that ignoring Fern must have left her worried sick... before the Parliament's influence reasserts itself and drives him even crazier to the point of gibbering madness.
- Scary Shiny Glasses: His pose when he declares that he is going to hunt Fern.
- Shipper on Deck: According to Word of God, he ships everyone in the Hospital with everyone in the Hospital (minus himself due to being asexual), complete with gushing about the staff in their personnel◊ files◊ and setting them up on dates.Dr. Phage's File On Molly: Molly's gruff exterior can be disconcerting to her fellow staffers, but I believe she may benefit from more assignments working directly with Phleboto... they would be really cute together.
- Side Effects Include...: Reading the back label◊ of a 'Dr. P' medicine bottle will not inspire consumer confidence.Back Label Of Dr. P's Regurg-I-Syrup: NOT PROVEN TO BE "ALWAYS" HIGHLY FLAMMABLE. "NOT" "KNOWN" "TO" "CAUSE" "TOTAL" "SKELETAL" "EXPULSION" "UNDER" "TESTED" "CONDITIONS." DR. P'S REGURG-I-SYRUP MAY BE HARMFUL IF HARMFUL. ABSOLUTELY NOT RECOMMENDED BEFORE OR AFTER CONSUMPTION OF FOOD MATTERS.
- Stealth Pun: Dr. P being a duck reflects very nicely on Dr. Phage being a quack.
- Super-Strength: Phage doesn't showcase his muscles often, but when he does, it's a sight to behold!
- Through the Eyes of Madness: When the comic briefly follows him, the audience sees that his perceptions of the hospital are much cleaner and happier◊ than it actually is.◊
- Trademark Favorite Food: Yogurt. Phage carries an infinite supply in his personal inventory. There's an element of
Genius Bonus to this. Yogurt's made with bacteria. And Phage is a bacteriophage, which literally means "bacteria eater". - Unperson: If there's one thing that Dr. Phage truly hates, it's complainers and criticizers. He'll completely disregard the existence of such people, if he finds them too overbearing. Just ask Dr. Man and the Depressed Spleen◊.
- Unwitting Pawn: He had Fern's son taken to the Hospital when he discovered just how powerful his illness was in order to try and treat it. But according to Marcie, this became a vector for the illness to spread, and he would have been more likely to recover if he had been left to do so back home in the first place.
- Villain Episode: For a brief time, the Commentators suddenly find themselves playing advisor to HIM.
Dr. Phleboto Mizer
He's always sticking his neck out for his boss.
- Dr. H. M. Phage, T. E.: How are itsnote bioreadings, anyway? The conceptual expansions are on record, but let's not underestimate the flesh-matter symptoms just because they're the simplest to purge!Dr. Mizer: (Skull-and-crossbones emoji),(Ill-looking yellow face emoji), (biohazard icon emoji), (Space Invaders alien emoji,), (screaming emoji)Dr. H. M. Phage, T. E.: Well, I suppose no news is good news.
Dr. Phage's hulking, intimidating right-hand man. He's actually a pretty normal-looking guy, if you can get past the large rusty syringe attached to his spindly neck. He's renowned for his talents as a top-notch transfusionator.
- Advancing Boss of Doom: Fern's confrontation with Mizer plays out in this way. Even though Mizer's a thousand times stronger than Fern, he approached her with slow, hesitant steps, the way a cautious man would approach a diseased, cornered rat.
- Apologetic Attacker:Dr. Mizer: (while closing in on Fern) [Crying Face Emoji],[Syringe Emoji],[Hammer and Wrench Emoji]
- Beleaguered Assistant: Dr. Mizer is quite weary of working under Dr. Phage, and he has a stronger comprehension of the Hospital's deteriorating condition than most.
- Brutal Honesty: While Phage likes to pretend that the Hospital isn't falling apart around them, Dr. Mizer offers a much more accurate assessment of the situation.
- Character Level: According to the Ramblin' Evil Colorectal Polyp, his is somewhere around level 1300.
- Creepily Long Arms: Much longer than his legs and midsection combined.
- Expressive Mask: Like Harmburger, Dr. Mizer doesn't have the most emotive face, but various bugs and bubbles tend to help him on that front.
- Expy: Dr. Mizer's actually one of Pyramid Head and Nemesis, making it very fortunate that he and Fern have rarely crossed path with each other throughout the webcomic!Bogleech: ...he was basically a Pyramid Head or Nemesis of the setting, big and silent and threatening, though in this case, "Pyramid Head" is completely well-meaning; it's just that we're part of the problem that needs to be fixed.
- The Dragon: He's always by Dr. Phage's side, though it's sometimes shown he has more of an act together than his boss.
- Genius Bruiser: If Dr. Man is to be believed.Dr. Man: Fine young lad. Best transfusionator in the range. Cutting edge procedure. Shifts zones without entanglement.
- Giant Medical Syringe: Doctor Phleboto Mizer's head is a huge rusty syringe atop an extensible neck, with his eyeballs floating inside. He actually uses it to inject medications, which might or might not be at all appropriate to the physiology of his patient.
- He Went That Way: Dr. Mizer is a huge sucker for this ploy.
- Intelligible Unintelligible: Speaks in emojis, one step removed from Rebus Bubbles.
- Long Neck: One that's covered in large boils and the length of a giraffe's, when fully extended.◊
- Only Sane Man: Catches onto the properties of grey-zoners faster than Dr. Phage, generally seems to have more common sense, and is more serious about the condition of the Hospital than Phage is willing to acknowledge.
- Punny Name: "Phlebotomize" means "to draw blood".
- Puzzle Boss: Bogleech had a very specific escape route in mind for Fern to take to get away from Dr. Mizer; and the Commentators had only so much time to guess what it was before Mizer caught up to her. (If you read through the comments section on that page, you can see their escalating panic as they struggled to guess!)
- Retgone: This is the big danger Mizer poses to Fern. His head is filled with a substance that'd send her back in time to a point before she got sick, but it wouldn't send her son back with her as well. He'd still be stuck at the Hospital, since "purging" doesn't work on him at all!
- Even more worrying; Willis insists that the "purge stuff" in Mizer's syringe is more dangerous than the "normal" brand his mom uses. It's entirely possible that Mizer's mixed up a toxic concoction that'll both send Fern back in time AND kill her!
- Even more worrying; Willis insists
- Speaking Simlish: Dr. Mizer speaks in emoji, not words.Dr. H. M. Phage, T. E.: And would you say your workplace relationship with one doctor H.M. Phage, T.E. is very satisfactory, highly satisfactory, satisfactorally satisfactory, camembert, or double-plus-good to the tenth power?Dr. Mizer: (smiling piece of poop emoji)
- Stupid Sexy Flanders: He inspires this reaction in Dr. Phage.Dr. Phage's File On Dr. Mizer: He's a loose cannon, that Phleboto! He's just lucky he's so valuable to this operation and smells so nice and there's such an intriguing sensitivity he tries to hide so deeply beneath his rugged exterior and strong hands.
- The Speechless: For a very long time, Fern was incapable of hearing Dr. Mizer at all.Doctor Mizer never makes a sound, but you can somehow infer the vague gist of what he's trying to communicate...and it kind of feels like he has more of an act together than his boss.
- Then for some inexplicable reasonnote , she suddenly became able to hear Mizer's emoji-speak, in the middle of Chapter Three.
Fern: W...what was that?! Did he say something!? Those...weren't words???
Dr. Circula Tori
Don't get on her nerves.
Are you sure you want to click this?
Getting right to the heart of things.
- Dr. Tori: (while performing surgery) ...You can do this, Tori.....it's just like making a sandcastle....
The head of surgery at the hospital, Dr. Tori is responsible for patching up Fern each time she dies. Or so it seems, turns out Snippers Scissie and Scissane were the ones responsible for patching up Fern, while Tori was preoccupied with a much more dangerous patient: Fern's son.
- Animate Body Parts: She's an entire sentient circulatory system which includes a giant artificial heart, that's large enough to circulate her veins and arteries throughout the entirety of the Hospital.
- Character Level: According to Jay's notes, she is level 3000.
- Chick Magnet / Dude Magnet: She seems to be relatively popular amongst the staff, and Magdolene and Flair both have crushes on her. It is also implied that Dr. Phage tricked her and Dr. Mizer into a "date" under the pretense of a work meeting, and they really did get along pretty well.
- Genius Ditz: She manages to slap together Fern back together each time. Nevertheless she still leaves her key card inside Fern the first time she operates on her.
- Genius Loci: She's integrated into the architecture of the Hospital. Many of her eyes, mouths, and blood vessels appear across the various locations and wards that make up the zone.
- Hidden Depths: Tori's as talented at art as she is at surgery! Paintings, interior decorating, sculpting, doodles, she can do it all!
- Impossible Hourglass Figure: Her blood vessels form this kind of figure.
- Independent Limb: Dr. Tori has mouths in multiple locations. They're large enough for an adult human to climb into... not that this is recommended.
- "It" Is Dehumanizing: Yes, she's on record as referring to Fern's son as "it".Dr. Tori: ...we can allow the subject to enter a permanent biotermination state and hope that its condition is one that will unexistiate.
- Lack of Empathy: Circula Tori has a worrying tendency not to see other individuals as people with their own lives and aspirations, but as functions◊ and algorithms. This is downplayed in so far as most of the individuals she treats this way are, in a sense, quite literally conceptual facets of The Hospital and do exist to serve a vital functions within it, making her lack of empathy come across more academic than sociopathic.Dr. Tori's File On Chip: As a core algorithmic conceptoid of The Cafe, Chip fulfills the zone's conceptual functions and subfunctions... as any patron knows, deviation from these behavior patterns could be disastrous for The Concept of Cafe Staff across all conceptual-perceptive reality levels, and are not to be compromised.
- Me's a Crowd: She's so swamped, that she's asked Dr. Phage to authorize her to assemble other versions of herself from parallel universes to take the load off. Phage has allowed her to do this before...but is now against the practice do the danger it both presents to her and the concept of healing itself after her last attempt left both irrecusably changed.
- Monster Is a Mommy: She has a son named Willis.
- Ms. Fanservice: Despite being mostly a bundle of blood vessels, they outline an extremely curvy figure; it's worth noting that, when put back-to-back with other characters drawn nude, she stands out as the only one of them that could be seen as even remotely sexy (yes, moreso than Fern). If certain tropes below are any indication, she seems to know it, too.
- Narcissist: She has several nude portraits of herself in her surgery ward.
- Naughty Nurse Outfit: The bloodstains lend that extra touch of va-va-voom, don't they?
- Nervous Wreck: Always in a state of high anxiety whenever humans are under her knife and spork. Or when you are constantly operating on a child who is literally eating away at the entire perception range itself with no headway in sight.
- Parental Neglect: She's a very inattentive mother to Willis. Which is mostly a result of The Hospital's growing corruption, constantly needing to operate on Fern's child or risk the entire perception range being consumed, and lacking most of her support staff due them being killed and buried.Willis: She...really, um... won't care. ...She hasn't for a lot of layers...
- Pet the Dog: Her glowing appreciation◊ of Cathy as both a co-worker and a friend shows she doesn't completely lack empathy.
- Proud Beauty: As mentioned in Narcissist, she keeps several portraits of herself technically nude in her office, although the "beauty" part is downplayed in that only three of them resemble anything humanoid in shape (and only two of them anything remotely attractive, at least to us). She also seems to be going out of her way to bare the full extent of her figure in this lineup.
- Punny Name: She's an animate network of blood vessels.
- Rule of Symbolism: The part of Circula that's dressed in scrubs and holds sporks is the part she'd prefer for people to interact with, but it's not where her true core is.Bogleech: I've been waiting almost two years to show you Tori's true form, at least as our eyes comprehend it - a gigantic artificial heart, a symbol of the triumph of surgical technology over the limitations of natural life. You can think of the whole humanoid frame we've seen as just a "hand" of Tori, though as a surgeon, she thinks of her "hand" the way we think of our "face," so it's what she illustrates when she paints herself.
- Shrunken Organ: Dr. Tori has a peanut for a brain. However, it's not actually hers—her character file reveals that she removed it from a cadaver, though the staff seems to believe it's a grey-zone brain and helps her in her operations on grey-zone patients.
- Super Doc: What else would you call someone capable of restoring a patient's body back to the way it was BEFORE it was shoved into a meat grinder?
- Techno Babble: To the point where Phage has trouble comprehending her!Dr. Tori: ..er, well, as you know, an aberrant grey-range case has repeatedly necessitated total matter-form reconstitution at a steadily increasing rate of severity concurrent with our manifestation sphere's escalating degree of logic dysfunction.Dr. H.M. Phage, T.E.: Mhm. Mhm. Go on! I understand all of those words!
- The All-Concealing "I": According to Scissie and Scissane,note (with further clarification by Bogleech)note Dr. Tori personally operated on Fern only once: after Fern's first death, where Tori dropped her ID card in Fern's body. All the other times the narrative cut to Tori right after Fern's (and one of Jay's) deaths, she was actually operating on Fern's son.
- The Walls Have Eyes: She has eyeballs as well as veins and arteries all across the Hospital.Jay's Journal: Tori literally has eyes everywhere, but she can't pay attention to all of them at once.
Dr. Ichabod Malachi Man
He's the last sort of doctor you'd expect to find in THIS Hospital; a human one.
- Fern: But where did you come from?Dr. Man: Virginia.Fern: And how did you get here?Dr. Man: Walked.
An enigmatic human(?!) doctornote who (supposedly) walked to the Hospital from his place of origin in Falling Creek, Virginia. Specializing in patients from the paraviolet zone, he's nonetheless familiar with grey-zoner anatomy. Has a serious beef with Dr. Phage.
- All of the Other Reindeer: The other doctors aren't all that fond of Dr. Man. His existence doesn't quite fit the same rules as the other doctors, with the rest of the Hospital's core staff being living medicinal tools. Doctor Man himself suspects that he was only allowed to integrate into the Hospital because of its deterioration, and likens himself to a myrmecophilus symbiote, an intruder that registers to the other Doctors as being one of them and possibly even beneficial, but still not quite fitting in right.Willis: The other grownups didn't really talk about him lots. I don't think they liked him as much.
- Ambiguously Evil: It's hard to pinpoint where Dr. Man's morality lies. By the end of his battle with her, Fern had concluded that Dr. Man is actually on her side.
- Ambiguously Human: He looks human and claims he is from Virginia but his speech and mannerisms are completely different from how any sane human should act. Not even Dr. Man, himself, is sure whether he qualifies as a true human!
- After reading his notes, it only becomes more ambiguous. He seems quite familiar and comfortable with Gray-zone concepts like "time" and is surprisingly unfamiliar with how various pan-zonal connections work, indicating that he may well be a fellow Gray-zoner. However, the journal also contains references to senses and traits that humans don't, as a rule, possess, almost as if to remind us that "Gray-zoner" and "human" aren't necessarily synonymous.
- A later dialogue with him brings up even more questions: even Man doesn't know for certain whether or not he really is a human being from Virginia. His other hypotheses are "I am a parasite who assumed Man's identity and believes itself to be him" and "I am the human patients' desire for a human doctor".
- As seen in 934, Marcy, the concept of Medicine, says that he's human as far as she can tell, but she isn't omniscient, nor does she see everything in the Hospital.
- An Odd Place to Sleep: On his feet, facing his window.
- Battle Theme Music: The Super Smash Bros. Brawl remix of "Chill" from Dr. Mario.
- Big Brother Is Watching You: Dr. Man is the "little brother," watched over by Dr. Phage, who'll punish him for expressing disapproval, even in the privacy of his own office.Dr. Man's Notes: I have learned that to even name him in my private notes is to invite an "employee evaluation" with consistently incommodious outcome. The degeneration of my workspace is a fascinating process to observe in its own right, but potentially detrimental to my research.
- Berserk Button: He is not on good terms with the boss. He has a lot of criticism for Dr. Phage, and unlike Dr. Mizer, Dr. Phage doesn't like him enough to tolerate it, even punishing Dr. Man for complaining in the privacy of his own notes. Just mentioning Dr. Phage will send Dr. Man into a Tranquil Fury, and Fern has to word her way around Dr. Phage as carefully as possible to get any useful response.
- Bizarro World: The world which Dr. Man comes from is Earth-like... yet, as human-looking as he is, Dr. Man only sees "superficial similarities" between himself and humans such as Fern and Jay. It's possible Dr. Man's home world is a Bizarro version of Earth.Dr. Man's Notes: I am to work exclusively with what the notice refers to as "your people". The patients in question are uncatergorizable to our taxonomic system, but apparently exhibit some superficial similarity to our own species on some level I am not equipped to perceive.
- Character Level: It's only 1, meaning he has low Damage Reduction, but he still has some very heavy base modifiers, giving him hundreds of Hit Points. Three or four hundred, in fact, where even the Terrortoma only had 20 or so.
- Cheshire Cat Grin: Always.
- Clark Kent Outfit: Dr. Man is packing some BICEPS underneath that white coat of his!
- Combat Medic: He's a bare-knuckled brawler who throws supernatural punches called Vibropunches.
- Consummate Liar: He's lied to both Fern and Jay about being human. Also, when Fern asked about her son, he insisted that he had "personally seen neither the patient in question nor the facility in which he is presently contained". But this is also a lie.note
- Or Bizarre Alien Senses may be present, along with half-truths. "I have not personally seen" is different than "I have not personally sensed".
- Creepy Monotone: A "cheerfully emotionless" basso profundo that only varies in volume, not tone.
- Dartboard of Hate: He has a poster of a virus that resembles Dr. Phage on one of the walls of his office, with numerous darts sticking in the "head" of the virus.
- Disability Immunity: He is the lowest ranking Doctor in the Hospital by far, and Magdolene says that his integration with the Hospital is not stable, but it is also implied that this is a major reason he has kept most of his sanity compared to the other staff despite the Parliament's Perception Filter.
- Disc-One Final Boss: He's the last person Fern fights in Phase One.
- Dissonant Serenity: His creepy smile never wavers. His mildly affable jokes convey this quality as well.Jay: ...I don't even know if this is real, if you're real, if I'm real. I keep seeing...things.Dr. Man: Seeing "things," you say? If capacity for vision alarms you so, we can certainly rectify that. Heh. Heh. Doctor jokes.
- Everyone Has Standards: Dr. Man fought against the unexistalizer being an option with Fern's son.Lexis: Of course, even Man was completely against the unexistalizer, said it was unethical, said it wouldn't work anyway... pretty sure he was trying to sabotage the thing not long before you last came to.
- Expy: Of Moguro Fukuzou, the Laughing Salesman.
- Full-Contact Magic: His fighting style is some kind of paranormal form of martial arts; his punches don't need to PHYSICALLY connect with his opponents to damage them.
- Ghost Town: Falling Creek, Virginia, which Dr. Man says was his original hometown.
- Glowing Eyes of Doom/Throat Light: Anytime Dr. Man gets especially angry, both his eyes AND his perpetually-clenched teeth glow bright white.
- Going Native: Dr. Man would seem to present an example of a normal human being who has fully acclimated to life outside the gray zone.Fern: Do you know what happened to "Ora?" Next door to you?Dr. Man: Oh, hm, I'm afraid not. It was my designated break period. I dipped into the sub-black for a quick gleamenating and awoke to find quite little left of the sorry thing.
- He Who Must Not Be Named: Dr. Man will not utter Phage's name, and reacts furiously if anyone else does in his presence. Those who REALLY want to discuss Phage-related matters with Dr. Man are advised to find very roundabout ways of referring to him.
- Heads I Win, Tails You Lose: Variation - Fern didn't even "defeat" him. One instant she and her companions were about to deal the killing blow, the next she wakes up in her own room. Although Dr. Man says that Fern's companions DID go on to defeat him right after he knocked her out.Dr. Man: You were also correct that I would not withstand another strike from any two of your party. You were ultimately victorious.
- Hope Bringer: Mind you, it's a very faint ray of hope. Nonetheless, Dr. Man has given his word that he'll examine Fern's son if she's able to bring the boy to him from the Maternity Ward. This will be her goal in Phase Two.Dr. Man: I promised you nothing, Fern. I offered to examine the child, nothing more... and I am the only medical professional in this facility both willing and able to confront your case... assuming your survival.Fern: So that's it, then? You're willing to try and see if you can help...and that's the best I've got?Dr. Man: Perhaps. Assuming your survival.
- Hopeless Boss Fight: What his battle was intended to be. It didn't quite work out that way.
- Human Alien: Dr. Man may be a doctor but he isn't a man… though he's gotten slightly better about passing himself off as one then he used to be in the past.Jay: ...Okay ...What are you...Dr. Man: A fellow humble herman beam, Jaything.
- I Am Not Left-Handed: Later in the fight, he decides to use "Double Intrazonal Spiralcut" instead of his usual Vibropunch; in other words, he uses both hands instead of just one, for twice the damage. Then he decides to end the fight by knocking out Fern so fast, the readers don't even see it.
- Increasingly Lethal Enemy: The first Vibropunch Dr. Man threw against Team Green had a single damage roll; meaning he could only inflict one heart's worth of damage. His second Vibropunch had two damage rolls; so he was capable of damaging two hearts. His third punch had three damage rolls. His fourth punch had four damage rolls...
- It May Help You on Your Quest: After she beats him in combat, Dr. Man gives Fern his Antibiotic Ointment minion as a gift.
- Just Toying with Them: He could have won any time he wanted to during his battle with Fern, but took it easy on her both to illustrate just how powerful the doctors really are, and to study the mysterious forces that have been guiding Fern.
- Locked Out of the Loop: Dr. Man honestly had no idea that any "quarantine" was in effect. His colleagues had assured him that all his patients were being discharged.
- Mathematician's Answer: As his quote shows.
- Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: That he knows Fern's name could be explained by his reading her medical file. That she immediately believes that she told it to him is about par for the course for the Hospital's strangeness.
- Mind Reading: Dr. Man has some form of telepathic ability. He can even hear the Commentators!Jay: ...W...w... wait... I... Did I tell you my name?Dr. Man: "Tell?" Oh, ah, how rude of me... I do forget you little things share thought through the vibration of particles. Novel. Heh.
- Mon: It turns out that, like Fern, Dr. Man keeps a pair of 'helper minions' in his personal inventory, (specifically, his coat.) One's an antibiotic monster, the other's a bandage monster.
- When he initiates a fight with Fern and they come to his aid, it marks the first time in the webcomic that Fern's crew has ever fought multiple enemies at once.
- My Country, Right or Wrong: Dr. Man is aware that The Hospital has many faults, and that the other doctors dislike him. He's also allowed Fern to get away with a LOT. Nonetheless, when push came to shove at the end of Phase One, he felt he had to do SOMETHING to show he was still loyal to his fellow doctors. Thus, he blocked Fern's path to the Maternity Ward.Dr. Man: Faced with a dilemma of this fashion...I am afraid that my loyalty must default to my place of work. If I allow you to continue entirely uncontested...then I will be forced to concede that I am indeed no true doctor.
- Might also be a case of It's What I Do: Man is unsure about his own origins, but he is sure he's a doctor of the Hospital. When push comes to shove, he must act like a Hospital doctor; because otherwise, he'd lose the only role that gives him purpose.
- No-Sell: Fern attempts to use the Danger Apple to beat Dr. Man during their fight. It's as effective at vanquishing him as a Real Life apple would be on a Real Life doctor. Dr. Man, himself, attributes his apple immunity to his being human/humanoid.Dr. Man: (when Fern thrusts the apple towards him) Oh? An interesting notion...but whether I am truly of the grey-zone or the whimsy of its displaced inhabitants, I appear to be quite tolerant of your otherwise most formidable weapon. In any case...I would not recommend wasting such on the weakest of the core medical staff.
- Also counts as Contractual Boss Immunity.
- Nothing Is Scarier: His reveal as a real human was creepier than any monster he could possibly be.
- Only the Worthy May Pass: At least part of the reason why Dr. Man forces Fern to fight him is to establish whether she's truly strong enough to handle what lies inside the Maternity Ward.Fern: I don't want to fight you. I'm tired of fighting.Dr. Man: ...Then you will be most displeased by what awaits beyond, and if you lack the fortitude to subdue me as an obstacle, I am afraid your cause is already lost.
- Perpetual Smiler: Dr. Man is known to have a grand total of two facial expressions: his default all-purpose grin,◊ and his luminously angry grin.◊ Which is technically the same exact grin, except lit like a flashlight.
- Punny Name: Dr. I. M. Man.
- Puzzle Boss: The "puzzle," in this case, was figuring out how high Dr. Man's level and hit points were. Originally, they were listed as "LEVEL UNKNOWN, HEALTH UNKNOWN," but once the Commentators were able to correctly figure it out from the clues, Bogleech went ahead and listed them at the top of the page. Here's how they did it
- This also applies to the method to defeat him. Man had two companions - the Antibiotic Ointment, who nullified "maladies"; and Bandages, who, every time Man was damaged, automatically healed the injury. On top of that, Man's attacks increased in power each turn, essentially putting a time limit on the battle. The solution: poison Bandages (something that the Ointment couldn't nullify) so that, every time it tried to heal Man, instead doubled the damage Man just took.
- Reassigned to Antarctica: Dr. Phage punishes him for speaking badly of him in the privacy of his own notes by demoting him and assigning him to the least sick patients in the Hospital, distancing him from the other staff even further than he already was. Nevertheless, Dr. Man doesn't mind too much since that gives him more time to study how the Hospital and the Perception Range work, as well as make clandestine repairs to the Hospital's decaying functionality.
- Remember the New Guy?: He constantly triggers this reaction in his fellow doctors without even meaning to, with him apparently having a retroactive impact on the Hospital.Dr. Man's Notes: There are times... where my presence goes unnoticed until I initiate an interaction. This is often met with short-lived confusion while their memories "catch up" to my seemingly retroactive presence.
- Shoot the Medic First: Ironically, Dr. Man wasn't "The Medic" in his fight against Fern. That honor went to a Bandage-creature that was with him. For a couple rounds, the Commentators DID try gunning for the Bandages. Then some of them had the bright idea to poison the Medic by pouring Joe's Blackish Foam on it. After this, the tide of battle turned decisively in Fern's favor as all the Bandages "healing" just doubled the damage Dr. Man suffered.
- Southern Gentleman: Claims to be from Virginia and speaks with an erudite manner and somewhat Antiquated Linguistics that would not be entirely out of place for an educated man in the old south.
- Species Surname: Dr. Man appears to be a doctor man.
- Spock Speak: Imagine a Spock who's capable of telling jokes and getting angry, and you've got Dr. Man's speech patterns.Dr. Man: Pardon the cliche, Fern, but you will certainly require whatever assistance you can feasibly procure.
- Stepford Smiler: His smiling seems to be suppressing a great deal of rage.
- Stone Wall: Dr. Man has 400 hearts. What makes this all the more incredible is that Dr. Man is Level 1!
- Suddenly Shouting: This is a bad habit of his. Unusual in that only his volume changes, not his tone or demeanor.Dr. Man: DON'T MAKE THIS DIFFICULT, LAD!
- Tattoo as Character Type: Dr. Man has a Rod of Asclepius tattoo on his arm. (Now THAT'S showing commitment to medicine!)
- Token Human: Not really, but he is the closest thing on the staff.
- Tomato in the Mirror: Dr. Man is not at all certain that his memories, such as they are, are authentic records of his lived experience or fabrications to make his behavior as a human doctor seem more authentic. He could well be an actual human, or he could be a shapeshifting parasite that is so good at fooling people he has fooled himself. That said, the thing he believes is most likely is that he is a doctor.
- Tulpa: This is one of the things Dr. Man acknowledges he might possibly be: the desperate desire of many human patients to find a human doctor in the Hospital... manifested in a physical form.Dr. Man: Alternatively, and perhaps most likely of all, I may merely represent the imperfect perceptual manifestation of the comfortably recognizable, "human" doctor these patients so desperately desire. ...Born from a wish.
- Unperson: Currently, Dr. Man's whereabouts are unknown and his co-workers have forgotten he ever existed.Fern: ...Okay...how does Doctor Man fit in? His office was abandoned.Chip: SEARCHING...S-SEARCHING... N-NO RESULTS FOUND. Did You Mean Duct Tape Man?Fern: Uh, no. Who's...never mind. ...Dr. Man was a human, like me, or looked like one anyway. I'm pretty sure you knew who he was before. Now his office is trashed and we don't know where he went.Chip: If he was indeed a d-doctor with his own w-w-ward and m-medical field, then the case would be that hospital deterioration has either f-folded his role into the staff of another w-ward or he has t-temporarily ceased to exist in hosp//ital conntinuity.
- Verbal Tic: Has a habit of using variations of the phrase "quite a pickle" (substituting "cucumber," "gherkin," etc).
- Wake-Up Call Boss: Invokes this to warn Fern of just how dangerous the Hospital staff — even he, the least powerful of the doctors — are, compared to the enemies she's fought before. Indeed, he manages to effortlessly incapacitate her when she attempts to deliver the final blow on him — and not only is he, by his own admission, the weakest of the hospital staff, he was also holding back.
- Weirdness Censor: As with MANY of the medical staff, the Parliament is an undiscussable topic with him. Unlike the others, however, he recognizes that it's something he's unable to understand thanks to his own difficulties in communicating the Hospital's degeneration to the rest of the staff.Fern: The Parliament. Something called The Parliament seems to be involved with whatever's going on.
Dr. Man: I am... ...Experiencing...difficulties...registering whatever it is you are communicating. - Would Not Hurt A Child: Dr. Man did NOT attack Willis during his fight against Fern. He's also on record for standing up for Fern's son with the other doctors.
Dr. Dementist
Usually, dentist would have their own offices, but this guy's an exception.
- Dr. Dementist: (his diagnosis for Fern's son) Just fill its holes in. Or drill it some holes. Drill it some holes and fill them in. It'll be fine.
The head of The Hospital's Dental Ward.
- Character Level: According to Jay's notes, he is level 2991.
- Depraved Dentist: Just look at his quote.
- Early-Bird Cameo: His first appearance was in the creepypasta bearing his own name, which would later become part of the Awful Hospital canon. In the Awful Hospital proper, he makes an appearance as a silhouette alongside the other head doctors discussing Fern's son's situation before his official introduction.
- Punny Name: A splicing of "demented dentist".
- Unperson: He is missing from Chip's files of the head ward doctors and Willis is having trouble remembering him, meaning that he is one of the missing staff members.
Dr. Phineas Fleagood
Dr. Fleagood does it again!
- Fern: You're the guy in charge of "veterinary" medicine, right?Dr. Fleagood: Sure am, sista! I tell ya, people's BDAOBIGESS ain't so good these layers...and I'd know! *slurp*Fern: Um. Right. Real quick...can you define that word for me?Dr. Fleagood: What woid? BDAOBIGESS? BDAOBIGESS means BDAOBIGESS, toots. Little crittas what's too helpless an' dumb to seek out their own medical attention! My jurisdictation!
The head of The Hospital's Veterinary Ward.
- Ambiguously Evil: So far, it's hard to tell whether he's just as messed up by the Parliament's Perception Filter and the merging of the Maternity Ward and Veterinary Ward's concepts as the rest of the staff is, or if he's actively helping the Parliament and their corruption for his own benefit; the fact that he doesn't seem to care whether he's feeding on pets or babies combined with the fact that both wards just happen to be mixed together thanks to the Parliament's influence implies he might have arranged this just to give himself a bigger food supply, but his short talk with Fern seems to suggest that he might just be unaware that his area of expertise has been screwed with. As seen in 934, Marcy eventually reveals that he genuinely means well, but he was never meant to be part of the Hospital in the first place, implying that he really is just an Unwitting Pawn. Professor Lexicovermus states that he is either their Unwitting Pawn or an agent that has betrayed them.
- A Lizard Named "Liz": A flea named Fleagood.
- Bystander Syndrome: The Hospital is badly suffering from a Critical Staffing Shortage due to the Parliament's sabotage, and his assistants keep disappearing. He says that this isn't his problem, even though their disappearances completely are his problem and are hampering his work.
- Blood Sucker: Dr. Fleagood gorges himself on the blood of the pets placed in his care.Still...it seemed like they were drawing an alarming amount of blood from such a small dog. I was almost positive it had to be too much, but I kept telling myself this was a professional... That was until he finished filling the needle. Without a word, he turned the syringe on the hand puppet, and began to squirt out its contents. I stood petrified, in a stunned silence as the doctor drenched his hand puppet's open mouth in my dog's blood."MmmmMMMMmmMMmmmm...sweet as a kitten's heart!" chirped the helium-voice.
The vet shook his head with a wide, phony grin. "Doctor Fleeeeaaaagooood! You did it AGAAAIN!"
"More...MORE!" the puppet's voice was getting raspier, more intense. - Call-Forward: One of the first things Phage says is "I can assure you, sir, your dog is in excellent hands!" not being able to tell if Fern is male or female or if her son is a baby or her dog. It turns out that Fleagood's Veterinary Ward has fused with the Maternity Ward.
- Cassandra Truth: He was the first member of the staff to discover the Parliment's bioweapon in common household dogs, but the other doctors of the hospital couldn't comprehend what he had found. Ironically, Fleagood then turned to the Parliment themselves for assistance in his research, and Motive Decay seems to have set in shortly after that.
- Character Catchphrase: "Dr. Fleagood does it again," (and variations,) to the point where it's wallpapered all over his waiting room's walls in his Creepypasta.Where the walls weren't plastered with poorly printed cat memes or inspirational posters, they were painted with copyright-safe cartoon animals - yellow Daffy Duck, Goofy as a moose, even a two-eyed Plankton from Spongebob - enjoying various degrees of medical attention from the same orange, Fraggle-looking doctor character. It took me a while to realize it was supposed to be a flea, with Shrek-like antennae and an extra set of limbs. Doctor Fleagood, I presumed. Under every one of these murals were the words "he did it again!" in flowery, purple cursive.
- Character Level: According to Jay's notes, he is level 950.
- Cute Is Evil: He looks like he belongs on Sesame Street, and shows significant signs of corruption if not outright treachery.
- Demonic Dummy: Initially appears to be a Perverse Puppet in his Creepypasta, Dr. Fleagood Does It Again, only for it to turn out that the real puppet is the "human" he's attached to.
- Disability Immunity: Due to not being a proper member of the Hospital, he is able to perceive the Parliament and it's disease. Having said that though, his specialties only allow him to do so much on his own, he is no more able to communicate the disease's nature with the other staff members than Fern, and he is suffering from Sanity Slippage like everyone else.
- Eats Babies: Dogs are apparently a staple of Fleagood's diet. Very worryingly, he is unable to make any distinction whatsoever between babies and dogs: they are the exact same thing to him.
- Establishing Character Moment: When he first sees Fern's son, he insists the baby boy is a dog, and becomes hungry.Dr. Fleagood: (referring to Fern's son) That's one juicy-looking pooch. When's lunch?
- Expy: He shares a good number of visual and behavioral tropes with Looney Tunes characters, and◊ other◊ 1940s-era cartoons.Dr. Fleagood: —> (his first words to Fern) What's up, doc!? ...Is what ya oughta be sayin on accounta I'm the doctor around here! Nyuk, nyuk!
- Four-Fingered Hands: Yep. Count 'em.
- Half-Dressed Cartoon Animal: Fleagood wears a shirt, shoes and a head mirror, but no pants.
- Hated by All: Almost nobody in the Hospital seems to like Dr. Fleagood. So far, the only exception has been the goodhearted Dr. Gynnie.Dr. Gynnie: He hash been nothing but a tremendousssh boon to our work with BDAOBGY!!!Fern: Sorry...what was that last word? I...think I misheard something...Dr. Gynnie: What? BDAOBGY?? We're the MVAETERINNIATRY ward, after all!
- Hidden Agenda Villain: His true intentions remain unknown, but his activities are not on the up and up, and he is effectively draining the health out of Dr. Gynnie.
- Insectoid Alien: He's a humanoid flea-person whose body is made from felt.
- It's Personal: When Cheryl mails him a curse word, he declares that "This means war!"
- Medium Awareness: He is aware that Buzzers perceive a dialog icon and wonders whether it makes him look weird.
- Mister Big: He's about the size of a kindergarten-age child.
- Motive Decay: At first, he just wanted to save his patients. And then, he was trying and failing to get other medical professionals to recognize the grave importance of what he had discovered. And then he was just trying to make himself important.
- Obviously Evil: He's an adorable felt puppet in a work made by Bogleech, who is notorious for having cute things turn out to be either jerks or evil.
- Punny Name: Of "Dr. Feelgood", by Mötley Crüe.
- Red Eyes, Take Warning: An observant reader will see that Dr. Fleagood's left pupil is Parliament red. Another one of many things that suggests he's on their payroll or corrupted by them.
- Shout-Out: Dr. Fleagood unintentionally gives one to The Dogscape.Dr. Fleagood: It's all dog. All of it. Delicious.
- Signature Laugh: "Nyuk, nyuk!"
- Small Name, Big Ego: He should be one of the lowest ranking doctors in the Hospital (as even Fern is able to point out that Veterinary practices would be a specialist focus at best by the logic of the greater perception range), and yet his ego is more inflated than Dr. Phage's and he is convinced that he is the most important doctor in the Hospital. In a sense, he is the most important, in that he is the only doctor still integrated with the Hospital that is capable of perceiving the Parliament's disease properly. However, he is not meant to be directly hooked up to the Hospital at all.
- Unwitting Pawn: According to Marcy, he genuinely means well, but unfortunately, he wasn't meant to be integrated into the Hospital as one of its doctors in the first place, which has been causing problems for both him and the Hospital. The memories of his dead patients show that he was the first to discover the latest version of the parliament's disease, but the Hospital doctors could not understand him, and he ended up turning to the Parliament itself for help.
- Weaksauce Weakness: When Cheryl mails him a jar of teeth, the teeth come to life and start dancing on him much to his horror, possibly because he's a literal chew toy. They don't cause him any permanent damage, but boy do they make him mad.
- What the Hell Is That Accent?:Bogleech: Officially Dr. Fleagood's voice is exactly the same as Jabberjaw (which in itself is a ripoff of Curly from the Three Stooges)
- White Gloves: Classic cartoonish ones, worn over his four-fingered hands.
- You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: When the dolphin assassins he hired trick him into thinking that Fern has successfully been taken out, instead of sending them the promised payment, he sends one of his own minions to take them out.
- You Keep Using That Word: When Dr. Fleagood says "dogs," (okay, "BDAOBIGESS",) he is actually referring to all animals in general. Including babies.Fern: ...You keep saying "dogs." Don't you treat, um, anything else? Fish? Birds? Giant worm monsters or whatever?Dr. Fleagood: Whoa there, toots...we ain't use that kinda discriminatatin' language around here! WetBDAOBIGESS, flappyBDAOBIGESS, writheBDAOBIGESS, never judge no BDAOBGY by its cover!
Dr. Rory Shock
Shock
- Dr. Shock: The, ahh, word you intended was "hypothesis," but there are no mere hypotheses; all that can be imagined already must exist in one perception or another, or, ah, nothing else could exist that would ever conceive of it, In fact, the, uh, grey itself may serve as-
The head of The Hospital's Psychiatric Ward.
- Inkblot Test: Shock's a sapient inkblot.Dr. Balmer's File On Staph: If I◊ wanted a psychiatric evaluation, professor, I could go over to that inane inkblot they employ over at that namby-pamby medical facility.
- Punny Name: His name is based off of the Rorschach inkblot test.
- Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness: Dr. Shock is big on circumlocution, small on actual medical counsel.
- Sudden Name Change: Dr. Shock's name used to be "Froud," as seen in this tweet from Dr. Phage. But later, when listing head ward doctors, Chip gave his full name as "Dr. Rory Shock." Bogleech has since confirmed that he made the choice to rename this character.Commentator: So, Bogleech, what is the explanation for this, if you can tell us? Is Froud a different character, or did you change Rory's last name?Bogleech: I decided a name sounding like "rorschach" and including "shock" just made a whole ton more sense
Dr. Gynnie Specula
Meet your new boss, "Frannie!"
- Dr. Gynnie: I'm Doctor Gynnie Sssssshpecula, but I prefer Doctor Gynnie, or jussssht Gynnie! Courssshe, mossht of my patientssh call me "AAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!!!!! WRONG ONE!!!! WRONG ONE!!!!!!!" Haha, kidding! ....Well, mossshtly kidding.....
The Hospital's gynecologist, and the head of its Maternity and Pediatrics Ward.
- A Lizard Named "Liz": A gynecologist named Gynnie.
- Animal Motifs: It's subtle, but she's highly evocative of a stork. note
- Benevolent Boss: From the very start, Gynnie treats her new temp worker, "Frannie," with patience, friendliness, and respect, despite having to walk her through the basics of Maternity Ward care.
- Big Good: Gynnie's not only a very nice and kind lady, but she's also extremely powerful and is the strongest member on the Hospital's staff... even stronger than Phage, by his own admittance!◊
- Beware the Nice Ones: Phage's file on her warns that while Gynnie "dislikes virtually nothing,◊" she HATES people who betray her trust. So "Frannie" will need to be careful that her new boss never learns her true identity!Dr. Phage's File On Dr. Gynnie: I wouldn't want to be some loopy fool caught betraying her trust in some way. YIKES-A-RONIS! Last one is still trying to figure out how to put itself right-side in!
- Brown Note: Windifred warns Fern not to look at Gynnie's back unless she asks her to for this reason.
- Character Level: According to Jay's notes, she is level 4500, which puts her second only to Dr. Phage, and even so, according to Dr. Phage, she is the stronger of the two. Although it could just be that there were more digits Behind the Black.
- Deep Sleep: As soon as she was done showing Fern the ropes, the exhausted Dr. Gynnie retired to her office and fell into such a profound slumber, that Fern couldn't wake her, even with news of a dolphin infestation.
- First-Name Basis: She prefers being called "Dr. Gynnie" instead of "Dr. Specula."
- Funetik Aksent: Like Lacey, Dr. Gynnie slurs her "S's" into "Sh's". Fern even compares her voice to Daffy Duck, "if he were somewhat squeakier and shouting into an empty trash can."
- Horrible Judge of Character: Towards Dr. Fleagood.Dr. Gynnie: Why, The Fantassshtic Doctor Phineasssh Fleagood issh neither unushual nor in any way ssshusshpischiousssh in the sssshlightesht! He shaysh sho himshelf!!!
- Justified Tutorial: When Fern accepts Dr. Gynnie's offer to show her the ropes of being a Maternity Ward worker.
- Large and in Charge: We don't know yet if Gynnie is the largest thing in the Maternity Ward, but she's definitely the longest!Its rubber glove body undulates on the floor like a stranded eel, continuing out the door◊ into darkness.
- Meatgrinder Surgery: Sweet as she is, there's hints that Dr. Gynnie's medical practices are not entirely on-the-level.Dr. Gynnie: (while sleep-talking) filler with bread...wont know... diff....rence....
- Quest Giver: Gynnie will be assigning Fern tasks to perform, until she's built up enough confidence in her abilities as a "Temp Worker" to have her assist with Patient Zero in the Problem Vault.Dr. Gynnie: Truth be told, though...we can't rule out that I may need your assshishtance with that one on ssshome layer or another. It'sssh an awfully big "maybe," but we'll ssshee what you can handle before we upgrade your clearansche levels.
- Red Eyes, Take Warning: Has a Parliament red dot in the middle of her eye.
- Rule of Symbolism: Gynnie is a speculum, a tool gynecologists use, along with a gloved hand clenched around the speculum, resembling a person using the device and peering through it, and her beaked appearance calls to mind some giant metallic stork.
- Signature Scent: She smells of alcohol and aloe; the smell of dried-up hand sanitizer.
- Stealth Pun: "filler with bread...wont know... diff....rence...."Commentator: "A bun in the oven." Oh, you.
- Talking in Your Sleep: When Gynnie does this, some of it's nonsense, some of it's alarming.Dr. Gynnie: ...he's so sick... Fern.... too late...
- The Heart: To quote Dr. Man, Gynnie's "compassion and patience are considered exceptional among the staff."
- This Is Wrong on So Many Levels!: Gynnie's proposal that Fern's son should be shoved back up her birth canal... just as one would return an unwanted birthday present back in the box it was pulled out from.Dr. Gynnie: (speaking of Fern's son) Didn't it come in with it'ssshhh progenator? Why don't we jusht shtick it back where it came from? Problem ssssholved.
Dr. Ucy
The eye doctor...?
- Dr. H.M. Phage, T.E.: So proud of ALL our doctors! Me, Mizer, Tori, Gynnie, Ucy, Froud, Fleagood, Dementist… and finally… NOBODY ELSE.
Possibly the head of The Hospital's Optometry Ward.
- All There in the Manual: The quote, drawn from Dr. Phage's Twitter, and the drawing of a phoropter on the wall of Jay's room, are the only pieces of evidence we have that a "Dr. Ucy" even exists.
- Character Level: There's a drawing of what appears to be a phoropter among Jay's pictures of the doctors that list their levels. If this is Dr. Ucy, then they are actually the lowest leveled member of staff yet (aside from Dr. Man) at level 234.
- Punny Name: Admittedly, this is guesswork, but if "Ucy" is pronounced "you-see," then considering how naming conventions are in this webcomic, Ucy would likely be an optometrist.
- The Ghost: This doctor's name is Ucy. That's literally the only thing we know for certain about this individual. It might be the tumor in the wheelchair from the creepypastas.
- Unperson: Dr. Ucy is missing from Chip's list of ward heads, and while working towards resurrecting missing staff, one of the vague impressions Fern and company receive are for a staff member in this field.
Dr. Magdolene
Her entry can be found here.
Dr. Dinea
Vould you like some blood drained, dahhlink?
- Willis: WE SPLODED A DOLPHIN AND I HELPED!!!Dinea: Vonderful! Not so vonderful that you vould encounter a dolphin, of course, but its vanquishink is certainly cause for celebration. You are growink up so rapidly, Villis.
A living leech jar working in the surgical ward. She is the Hospital's hirudotherapist, responsible for draining blood from where it does not belong.
- Back from the Dead: She was murdered a while back, but the Crooked Spine managed to smuggle out some of her leeches and sold them to Fern. Fern recycled them a long while later, allowing the surgeons to revive her.
- Blood Sucker: Dinea's leeches, most certainly. Possibly even Dinea herself! It may be part of why she and Willis get along with each other so well.
- Friend to All Children: She's friendly enough to Willis, at least!
- Funetik Aksent: Her accent seems to be, as far as reading it goes, slavic.
- Honorary Aunt: Has been described as such to Willis in Tori's character files◊.
- Live Item: She's a living, sapient jar full of living, non-sapient leeches.
- Living Lie Detector: Dinea's able to tell, right away, that "Frannie" isn't telling her her real name.Dinea: I can see that you are tryink to help, but I know that you are not who you say.
- Rare Candy: Her leeches are this to Willis. They are capable of enhancing his abilities or giving him entirely new ones, and come in such flavors as "fizzy plum bubblegum" and "spicy cherry peppermint."
- Sanity Slippage: She was murdered just a little bit before the Parliament setup their Perception Filter, driving the doctors mad. When Fern arranges her resurrection, she starts to reconnect to the Hospital and become infected by the same corruption afflicting the rest of her colleagues. Nevertheless, she doesn't succumb instantly and manages to share some crucial information before the resulting Weirdness Censor makes her forget anything was ever wrong.
- Sinister Silhouettes: She is first introduced as one of the shadows in the Awful Hospital theme song.
- Suddenly Shouting:Dinea: Our core vards should be General, Surgical, Maternity and Pediatrics, Psychiatric, Veterinary, Inorganic and... WORMS!!! WWWORRRRRRRRRRMS!!!...Our secondary vards are Dental, Optometry, Cardiology, Dermatology and Urology.
- Vampire Vords: Her Slavic-sounding accent involves a lot of Vs.Dinea: Vhat do you say, "Frannie?" Has our Villis been a good child?
- Weirdness Censor: Either the Parliament and/or the Worms have placed this on Dinea... which is why she isn't able to immediately discern that the Hospital shouldn't even have a WORMS!!! Ward.
- What the Hell Is That Accent?: Fern cannot place her accent, and assumes it probably would not have any earthly meaning anyway, though reading suggest it's something Slavic.
Support Staff
Nurse Molly Curdle
Hugging not recommended.
- Depressed Spleen: Ah, yes, the nurse. I do believe she's on orders to keep anyone from leaving the exam ward while the hospital is on alert. Don't bother trying to outrun her; she may look almost as awkward, slovenly, absent minded and devoid of taste as yourself, and she is all of those things, but she can also move exactly as fast as she wants. If you're thinking of having a go at her with that toothpick of yours, I'm loathe to admit that the results would be far worse for you than for her, as fleetingly amused as I'd be by the spectacle. You'd be lucky if they cared enough to put your skin back on.
An animate pile of spent syringes and other medical refuse given form by a pink garbage bag and currently employed by the hospital as a nurse. Most of her duties consist of ensuring that patients stay in their designated wards, no matter what.
- Acrofatic: If the above quote doesn't clue you.
- Battleaxe Nurse: She could stand to murder a few less patients.Spleonard: I'm not certain if Miss Curdle has an intimate understanding of mutual spite or merely a very poor understanding of sponge baths, but in either case, the steel wool was an excellent touch.
- Blob Monster: Without her bag, she's this (the pile of red slop in the background).
- Comically Inept Healing: The way she treats the Depressed Spleen's malaria.Commentator: Shouldn't there be another part to a dialysis? Like, a part where you put blood back in?
- The Ditz: Downplayed, as she's considered functional in terms of the hospital in which she works, however, in comparison to Millie, she's not too particularly bright.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: A female nurse and a male patient end up spending a great deal of time together. The nurse ends up drawing lots of bodily fluids from her patient, and somehow, between one thing and other, her body grows larger and she produces a litter of little ones who look just like her.
- Fat Bitch: She shrivels when there isn't much medical waste to collect, but bloats up alarmingly when she has lots of fluids to siphon off.Bogleech: Thinner Molly is Molly during a drought of activity and monster Molly happens during a glut of disease. It's probably not a permanent, one-way transformation but a cycle.
- Eventually, she can go BEYOND simple "fat bitch" status, to a state that is no longer humanoid…
- Eventually, she can go BEYOND simple "fat bitch" status, to a state that is no longer humanoid…
- Florence Nightingale Effect: Seems she likes miserable mopers suffering from diarrhea of the mouth. Horrifically subverted when Fern finds she has engorged herself on the Spleen's blood.
- Fusion Dance: She combines with her sister, Millie, to form one big biobag factory.
- Mother of a Thousand Young: Given a supply of medical waste, she starts spawning biobags like there's no tomorrow.
- Pardon My Klingon: She speaks entirely in Wingdings profanity.Molly: (In Wingdings) Fuck fuck! Shit piss fuck ass cock puke!Dr. Phage: I'm fine. You?
- Punny Name: "Molly Curdle" with "mollycoddle".
- The Quiet One: To the point of being initially presumed to be The Speechless. But it's probably just as well that Molly keeps silent 99% of the time. Because, as it turns out, this walking bag of garbage is quite the trash talker.
- Red Oni, Blue Oni: Red to Millie's Blue
- Sadist: Gets a thrill out of slaughtering patients brutally.Dr. Phage: Ah, lovely family! Too bad you'll have to purge them.[Molly pumps her fists in a show of joy.]Dr. Phage: No "game" this time, just be quick.
- Although, according to Chip, a "purge" is similar to an amputation of a thoroughly diseased limb, and according to Man, it involves killing the currently ruined biovessel and tossing the core out of the hospital to grow a new (hopefully fresh and uncorrupted) body, similar to deleting and reinstalling a computer program, so it's less evil and more that she *really* enjoys her job.
- Spikes of Doom: Dirty medical needles, to be precise. Poor Fern.
- Tomboy Ponytail: Where her bag is tied on the top of her head invokes this.
- When All You Have Is a Hammer…: When she starts administering a treatment to a patient, she tends to continue repeating the treatment until the patient either recovers or terminates.
Nurse Millie Curdle
How'd she squeeze herself in that tiny waste cabinet in Fern's room?
- Millie: hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhFern: Willis? Is she...saying something?Willis: Ferrrrrn!!! You're hopeless! She says, "Pardon me! Must have lost a few layers...hi there, Willis...are you and this patient and this unidentifiable empty space remaining untroublesome?"
The stodgy, uptight sister of Molly Curdle, who is also a Hospital nurse. Some time ago, Millie slipped inside Fern's waste cabinet because she was bored and needed a break... but an unknown person locked her inside. Millie was completely unable to escape until Fern happened to find the key in Jay's room and set her free.
- Alliterative Family: Millie and Molly Curdle.
- Battleaxe Nurse: What can you expect of a nurse who regards patients as "nasty things?" Though at least she treats Fern nicer than her sister.
- Blob Monster: Just like Molly.
- Early-Bird Cameo: The glow of Millie's eyes have been visible from Fern's waste cabinet since Page 33 of the webcomic. It's not until Page 682 that Millie's able to come out of Fern's trash.
- Foolish Sibling, Responsible Sibling: Millie would seem to be the "responsible" sister, in charge of Molly.Willis: (translating for Millie) You wouldn't have happened to have encountered my sister, Molly, would you? It is an integral part of my function to keep her workplace performance... stabilized.
- Fusion Dance: She combines with her sister, Mollie, to form one big biobag factory.
- Girlish Pigtails: The way her bag is tied on the top of her head invokes something like this.
- Hartman Hips: Compared to how Molly looked when she first appeared, Millie has larger hips and is much more bottom heavy than her sister.
- Jump Scare: How Millie emerges from the waste cabinet when Fern finally frees her.
- Mother of a Thousand Young: She combines with her sister to produce biobags at an even faster pace.
- Notice This: The glow of her emblem tips off the commentators that there's some...thing? important in Fern's trashcan.
- Precision F-Strike: Upon learning that Molly is making lots and lots of Molly Juniors with the Depressed Spleen.Millie: hhhhhhhHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHWillis: ....I'm not a'sposda say that word.
- Red Oni, Blue Oni: Blue to Molly's Red, she being the more calmer of the two.
- Spock Speak: For walking, talking garbage, Millie's rather rigid and starchy.Willis: (translating for Millie) "Who it was that rendered me incapable of reentry into the Hospital, I cannot recall... and it is of little relevance to the duties I must certainly attend to."
- Unperson: It's implied that when Millie was locked inside Fern's waste cabinet, everyone else forgot about her existence. Fortunately, this stopped the moment Millie was outside again.Willis: It's just Trash! GROSS!!!Fern: It's alive, Willis, it's been shifting around in there for ages. The buzzers want me to let it out.Willis: Huh?! It's just Trash! GROSS!!!Any further inquiries are met with the same response, identical as a recording. You get the feeling this is one of those weird "concept" things, like how nobody remembered Jay's victims.
- Weirdness Censor: Millie's blind to the Eyeslob, even when he's in the same room as her, referring to him as "unidentifiable empty space".
The Biobags (The Molly Juniors)
Killer garbage bags that'll explode in your face at the slights provocation! Perfect for Hospital security!
- Lacey:..thoshe lil' round galsh, they mean well enough, but they don't do much other than bouncshe around the room and blow up when they get frushhtrated. Not the kinda shhhervice I come here for, y'know?
The daughters of Nurse Molly. She creates them from medical waste collected from the Hospital's patients. They mostly patrol the hallways, and are just as antagonistic towards Fern as their mother.
- Action Bomb: They're the Bob-ombs of the Awful Hospital universe.
- Blue-and-Orange Morality: The Biobags will try to blow up enemies and friends alike.The Eyeslob: (asking one to be his friend) IZWEGG FRRRGGGTCH??Biobag: Well, sure, but I'm not being much of a friend if I still haven't exploded you.
- Daddy's Little Villain: Mommy's little villains. All of them seem to take after their mother.Biobag: HEHEHEHEH SOMEBODY STEPPED INTO THE WRONG &^#%IN ZONE!!!
- Extra Parent Conception: The red biobags were produced by Nurse Molly and lately at least, Spleonard. When her sister, Millie, shows up, she starts contributing too, resulting in biobags inheriting patches of both of their colors, and eventually purple ones mixing both their colors into one.
- Girlish Pigtails: Where their bag is tied invokes this.
- Godzilla Threshold: They are basically a backup security system that Molly is only supposed to create during big emergencies. As bad as the current situation is, Millie says that it still isn't bad enough to warrant them.
- Money Spider: Justified Trope, in the Biobags' case. Used bandages qualify as medical waste, after all.
- One-Gender Race: Molly's produced only daughters and no sons… and she's named every one of them after herself.Biobag: Oh, you can call me Molly junior. Not to be confused with my older sister, Molly junior, or my younger sister, Molly junior, or my other older sister, Molly junior, or-
- Resurrective Immortality: Even outside the Hospital, they will resurrect 72 hours after they "die".
- Tyke-Bomb: They were born to be antagonistic. Bonus points for the fact that they literally blow up when backed into a corner.
Zoe
Working hard at hardly working.
- Fern: Uh, hi there?Zoe: Hm.
A large mass of protoplasm, who serves as Dr. Phage's secretary (even though she isn't always thrilled by it). Despite having virtually no ability to verbally communicate, she's one of the more empathetic members of the hospital's staff.
- Bookworm: She's never seen without a tome.
- Covert Pervert: Maybe. Just look at what's on her computer monitor.
- The Heart: She's one of the few people on the Hospital staff member to emphasize with Fern's desperate search for her son.
- Mega-Microbes: Zoe's a giant amoeba.
- Professional Slacker: Appears to be so, considering that we only see her reading during work and nothing else.
- Sassy Secretary: It's very clear that she's weary of Phage and disinterested in her work.
- Silent Snarker: Besides her saying, "Hm", anyway
- The Speechless: The most she's done yet, in terms of vocalizing her thoughts, is several variations on "Hm".
Windifred
Cracks under pressure.
- Windifred: I'm getting sick to death of patients who can't seem to stay put in their own wards...but I HATE wasting perfectly good food! Right!?!Fern: ......rrright.
A window who serves as the receptionist for the Hospital's wards.
- Animate Inanimate Object: A talking, sapient window.
- Beleaguered Assistant: It's not easy dealing with a gaggle of impatient patients.
- Feather Fingers: A rare mouth-based variation. Think about what Windifred said about eating wandering patients, then look at her.Commentator: How does she eat patients? Through the holes on her mouth? Every idea scares me.
- Ping Pong Naïveté: She's somewhat dumb in assuming that Fern is emergency assistance on the basis that she can't be a patient, since patients can't go to the Maternity Ward, but she seems even more aware of the missing staff members than most of the rest of the staff.
- Punny Name: Windifred the window.
- Sapient Eat Sapient: She's willing to eat unruly patients.
- Self-Duplication: Like Lacey, Windifred would seem to simultaneously exist in multiple locations at once. More specifically, the entrances of the Hospital's various wards.
- Super Gullible:Willis: Oh, Windifred's not really smart for a grownup. She's SUPER easy to fib to!
- Sure, Let's Go with That: When Windifred spots Fern entering the Maternity Ward, she assumes Fern must be "emergency assistance," since there's no way that she'd be anything else, with a quarantine in effect. Fern goes along with this presumption.
Maternity Ward Door
If he'd been this way to Fern, over 700 pages of this webcomic wouldn't even have happened.
- Flecked with rust, the immovable steel door has some sort of security lock on it. You can see only blackness through the bars, and the faint sounds you can hear remind you more of a sawmill or assembly line than a hospital ward. Buzzing, grinding, clanking and wet splatters echo deep in the darkness. The hastily painted insignia appears to represent an embryo. You don't feel well. You have no hope of guessing the combination if this is where you need to go, but someone or something else here has to know it. For now, you're going to check the other exam rooms. If they put you in one, couldn't they have put your son in one too?
The door to the maternity ward.
- Imaginary Friend: Uh, perhaps? On one hand, the huge impregnable door leading into the maternity ward definitely isn't imaginary. But so far, the only time it's ever talked and shown a sapient personality is from Dr. Phage's POV.
- JerkassFern: So uh, you know anything about the password to that big, rusty metal door down the exam hall?Double Doors: Oh man, what a jerk. What a complete and utter jerk, that guy. Sorry, you won't get anything out of him.
- Locked Door: Very FIRMLY locked against Fern. In order to reach her baby son, she had to discover its password. It took all of three long chapters, but she succeeded, and this door is now unlocked.
- Suddenly Voiced: As pictured. Of course, this is taken from the viewpoint of Dr. Phage, who also imagined a fountain just outside his office.
- Sycophantic Servant: Towards H.M. Phage, T. E.
Scissie and Scissane
They aim to make each one of their operations a Slashing Success!
- Scissie: We'll be in and out in no time! She'll see we can handle ourselves and maybe even promote me! ....And you. You too.Scissane: I just...I can't...what if I screw up...what if she hates me...Scissie: What are you, tweezers? Grow a spine!
Two dim-witted but hard-working pairs of sapient surgical scissors, both among Circula Tori's 212 "snippers," which are the Hospital's primary surgical units. To quote Dr. Tori, herself, they're "exhibiting a questionable performance level," and are desperate to get back into her good graces.
- A Lizard Named "Liz": Both their names start with S-C-I-S-S, just like in the word "scissors".
- Animate Inanimate Object: Self-aware surgical scissors.
- Bumbling Sidekick: They are responsible for "repeated surgical errors and the occasional patient extinguishment."◊ Dr. Tori has forbidden them from participating in further surgeries without her permission.
- Bystander Syndrome: The Hospital's deterioration is very much their problem, but they decide it's not their job to fix it.
- Feather Fingers: They are somehow able to grip paper documents using their blades.◊You hand the papers to the weird, talking surgical scissors... how are they holding them? You're surprised you still care about these questions, but you do.
- Good Old Ways: Scissie is computer-illiterate to the point where she's unaware of what a computer is, and Crash's existence was news to her.Scissie: RIGHT, right, I don't need help from some "commuter" just to chop a few appendages off! If he were critical to the Hospital, he'd already live here, right?Lights: ...comPUTER, Scissie, not "commuter."
- Loophole Abuse: Turns out that Fern's ID disguise really was paper-thin, but the Scissors played along, exploiting the situation to their own ends.Fern: ......You knew.Scissie: Knew?! Knew what?? That an unknown impostor commandeered our supervisor's identity parameters to assign us work we were obligated by standard protocols to accept, fooling us into incidentally demonstrating our full capabilities before the Hospital through no fault of our own?
- Obfuscating Stupidity: Everyone severely underestimates their intelligence, taking their need for approval and general low standing as meaning they lack basic senses.
- Odd Couple: One's more ambitious and willing to take chances, the other's more diffident and "by-the-book". Moreover, there's good indication that they're much closer than co-workers.
- Punny Name: A combo of the word "scissors" and the names "Susie" and "Susanne"Scissane: I mean...if I didn't have Scissie...
- Take a Third Option: Scissie's the one to suggest schroding Crash instead of removing his core.
- The All-Concealing "I": Dr. Tori only brought Fern back from death one time. All the other times it was these two.
Cathy
Oh, what do wee have here?
- Cathy: Ahoy there, stranger! Temp staff, I see! Gynnie runnin 'ya ragged?![Her first words to Fern in the new Cafe.]
The Hospital's friendly biowaste analyst and nursing specialist, who got killed by Jay in the surgery ward's break room. Fern's intervention prevented her death from being permanent, and now she's fine.
- From a Single Cell: While Jay wasn't looking, Fern quietly chopped off one of Cathy's fingers before shoving the rest of her body inside the plank maze, so that Cathy's colleagues could make good on this trope, later on.
- Genki Girl: She's impeccably optimistic and enthusiastic, and Circula Tori's file on her even states that her sense of humor kept many patients happy through long and painful recoveries.
- Hurricane of Puns: Her dialogue is sprinkled with urine puns.Cathy: Don't hold it in, dear, let it flow!
- I Taste Delicious: Uh... possibly, depending on where Cathy actually gathers her "secret syrup" from.Cathy: That health tea of theirs is just to spew for. I should know...it's made with my secret syrup, wink wink! That's why they don't charge me...want a taste?! Still hot!
- Major Injury Underreaction: Her reaction to being riddled with bullets by Jay.Cathy: Oh. Ow. Heyy.
- Nice Girl: She's happy to share her lunch even with complete strangers who'd wandered into the break room, and meeting new people is always a joy for her.
- Non-Human Head: Her head is a portable medical urinal, full of expressive urine.
- Punny Name: "Cathy" as in "catheter", possibly?
- The Heart:Dr. Tori's File On Cathy: I may be◊ the brains, hands, eyes, talent, and good looks of the surgical ward, but I am humble enough to admit someone else is the heart.
- Ultimate Blacksmith: Because Cathy's a urinary being, she has the power to enhance the properties of Fern's kidney blade in all sorts of unique ways.
- Unperson: After gunning her down, Jay intended to bury Cathy in the plank maze; which would've not only rendered her Deader than Dead, but forgotten. Fern managed to thwart this, though.
- Weirdness Censor: In Layer 753 Cathy actually thinks of a way around the dolphin's undiscussability... by discussing what it is not but it only partially works.
- Weird World, Weird Food: We can only guess what wet, green substance was sopping through the bottom of the paper bag Cathy brought into the surgery ward's break room. She also enjoys drinks unfit for human ingestion.Cathy: ..a flesh squeeze, vibrio or suppuraccino might be just the thing! The 'ccino is especially sweet this spiral; they get the sauce pumped fresh from the necrozones and add a squirt of snoutworm wax for a thicker surface film that'll really coat the nozzles on the way down!
Gardenia
Intestines grown like taters.
- Gardenia: HOWDY Y'ALL! Ya here 'fer a deposit or withdrawal?!
Fern: OH! Um...neither. Gardenia, right?
Gardenia: In the flesh! Hyeck hyeck! That'sa joke! On account'a bein' a flesh farmer! Sure ya don't wanna leave a lil somethin'? Yer vessel's lookin mighty fragile! We could grow a whole bushel'a spares from a couple inches'a test-tines or some cellulose; y'seem like y'have both t'spare!
The keeper of the Hospital's organ vault.
- Call to Agriculture: A given for a gardener, but Gardenia went to the next step, reading bedtime stories to the things in her garden.
- Funetik Aksent: Some kind of hillbilly accent.
- Meaningful Name: Gardenia keeps what is effectively the Hospital's "garden" of harvestable organs.
- Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: Not Gardenia, herself, so much as her job. She's a combination of a farmer, a banker, and an organ trafficker.
- Non-Human Head: Hers is a watering can.
- Posthumous Character: When Fern first lays eyes on her, she's already a corpse, and the slobified Jay is feasting on her brains.◊
- Back from the Dead: Later on, the Hospital surgeons are able to bring Gardenia back to life.
- The Perfectionist: We have Circula Tori's word that Gardenia is "persnickety" and has "zero tolerance for error.◊"
Lucy
Slightly brighter than those dimwit scissors.
- Lucy: ...Rather...weirdly obvious a question, isn't it?Scissie: That's our Tori! Thorough even where it makes a suspicious lack of sense!
A set of living lights that assist by providing illumination for Tori and her snippers during Hospital surgeries.
- Animate Inanimate Object: Lucy's a set of surgical lights.
- Light 'em Up: This should be obvious.
- Not Herself: Lucy senses that something's off about "Dr. Tori", but never to the point of seeing past the Glamour of the ID card Fern disguises herself with, until the Scissors "unmask" Fern.
- Vitriolic Best Buds: She regularly trades barbs with her co-workers Scissie and Scissane, but likes them enough to let them get away with flagrant rule disobedience.
Cestine
Heh.
- Fern: Um, hi?Cestine: Heh.Fern: I'm the temp staff, Frannie. I'm supposed to check in with the guests here?Cestine: Heh.Fern: ...I'm, um, going to go ahead and look around, I guess, if that's okay.Cestine: Heh.
A stuffed tapeworm who works in the Veterinary Ward as its receptionist. We know her name's Cestine because it says so on her heart-shaped name tag.
- Big Creepy-Crawlies/Living Toy: She appears to be a living stuffed tapeworm-shaped dog toy.
- Flat Character: "Heh." Jokes aside, there really isn't a lot of characterization to her.
- One-Word Vocabulary: The only thing she ever seems to say is "heh".
- Punny Name: Cestine's name is based off "Cestoda," the class of parasitic worms which tapeworms are a part of.
- Tertiary Sexual Characteristics: The bow on her head and her long eyelashes.
Amber
- Mitchell: ....For one thing.....he shouldn't be transmitting.... through an egglet...that's an interzonal device...I know we were....we were brought here together...we rode ...Amber together. I remember that. I remember Amber... and he was there too.Fern: Amber?Mitchell: Uh... That's....uh..... That's your coworker......the......uh....the one who brings... everyone here...kinda..... too big to miss......
The one in charge of transporting patients to the Hospital.
- The Ghost: Has only been mentioned by Mitchell and Heather so far.
- Punny Name: "Amber," as in "Ambulance," the vehicle used to transport patients to the hospital.
Rocky
Dr. Fleagood doesn't want to be bothered.
- Fern: Think I could have a word with the doctor?Rocky crosses his arms. His eyes somehow narrow, despite the fact that they appear to be pieces of plastic with printed-on details.Willis: Fern...I think he doesn't like us...Fern: Come on, man, we both work here. What if I got something to tell the boss?!Rocky rolls his printed eyes, and points to the paper shredder you just passed.
A large plush tick who seems to work in the Veterinary Ward as Dr. Fleagood's bodyguard.
- Beef Gate: Rocky's a very beefy tick, and he keeps everyone out of Fleagood's office.
- Big Creepy-Crawlies/Living Toy: He appears to be a living stuffed dog toy.
- Blood Sucker: See that red liquid inside the water cooler next to Rocky? That's blood.
- Jerkass: When Fern tries to have a word with Dr. Fleagood, he blocks her way, and when she asks what she should do if she has something to say to him, he points to the shredder.
- The Speechless: He communicates more than Cestine, but he doesn't seem to have a voice.
- White Gloves: They're a part of his cartoonish, plushy appearance.
Anna Sthesia
Were those purple kangaroos always there???
- Anna: WH-E-R-E I-S DOC-TOR?!Fern: Whoa! Easy, miss! Which doc—(Anna expels a cloud of hallucinogenic gas into Fern's face)
The Dental Ward's anesthesiologist, working under Dr. Dementist. She is also responsible for providing her gases to the rest of the Hospital.
- A Lizard Named "Liz": An anesthesia-dispensing machine named Anna.
- Animate Inanimate Object: She's a living anesthesia-dispensing machine.
- Back from the Dead: Fern found a piece of her buried in a supply closet and recycled it, though she remained trapped in the Veterinary Ward even after until Fern opened her door.
- Deadly Gas: One of the symbols on her face suggests that she can release deadly gas if she wishes to.
- Fantastic Drug: In the middle of a panicked search for her boss, she blasts Fern with a dose of gas that causes her to hallucinate.
- Knockout Gas: It's presumably her job to dispense it.
- You No Take Candle: Grammatically speaking, Anna should've said, "Where is the doctor?!" or "Where is Doctor [Insert Name Here.]" Probably a shout-out to the Daleks or Cybermen from Doctor Who.
Snippy
A surgical scissors that was murdered and buried by Jay long ago. After dealing with Jay, Fern recovered Snippy's remnants.
- Back from the Dead: Fern found Snippy's remnants in a locker where Jay hid some of those he murdered.
- Comically Cross-Eyed: Not only are Snippy's eyes different sizes, but they also point in different directions.
- The Ditz: Snippy doesn't seem to be entirely there and shows signs of being less competent than colleagues Scissie and Scissane.
A.I.s
General
The Hospital's computer system, which manages the Hospital's data, automates its equipment, and provides a layer of defense against infohazards.
- Cosmic Keystone: At least one of the computer's personalities needs to be in place, or the Hospital will cease to exist.
- Master Computer: Each ward has a main computer room, which is an extension of the computer system's being. If the main computer room of a given ward stops functioning, all computer terminals in that ward will stop functioning as well.
- Unperson: Originally, Crash was not the Hospital's only AI. He was part of a family of personalities with different specializations. Chip had originated as one of these personalities in the first place, and rather than him replacing Crash, he had simply been restored to his original job. The Parliament simply made it so that no one, including Chip and Crash themselves, could remember that the Hospital's computer system had ever had any personality other than Crash.
Crash
Their enmity is his enjoyment.
Are you sure you want to click this?
"I GAVE YOU. SIMPLE. INSTRUCTIONS."
- Crash: OH-EM-EFF-GEE, ARE YOU SERIOUS!? YOU STORM IN HERE, YOU DON'T EVEN SAY A WORD, AND YOU THINK YOU CAN PULL SOME EPSILON-MAGENTA CLASS SECURITY COMPROMISATION LIKE YOU CAN EVER HOPE TO FATHOM WHAT YOU'RE F72@#KK#NG AROUND WITH? ...YOU'RE LUCKY I LIKE WHERE THIS IS GOING. YOU'RE ALRIGHT, MEATCAKE.
A sadistic living computer system who's got quite a bit of an attitude with everything. It is implied that he was originally intended to serve as the Hospital's entertainment system, but was forced to take on more duties due to the Parliament Unpersoning his siblings.
- A.I. Is a Crapshoot: When Fern first walked into his computer room, he initially threatened to taze her to death. Lucky for her, he's very apathetic to the Hospital.
- Turns out that he fell under the Parliament infection, getting progressively worse.
- Annoying Laugh: "Lol" is actually how Crash laughs, note And he doesn't pronounce it as an acronym, either.The computer erupts into warbling, electronic laughter. It sounds like a chorus of gobbling turkeys. It sounds carefully formulated to be as obnoxious as possible.
- Arc Villain: Of Chapter Three, alongside Jay.
- Archive Binge: In-Universe, Crash did this to Awful Hospital's own archive to learn all there was to learn about Fern.
- Body Horror: He's covered in too much faces in Fern's first encounter◊ with him.
- As the Parliamentary infection grows his metal chasis becomes more organic, giving a feel of Organic Technology.
- The Corruptible: Being young, he was very vulnerable to the Parliament's predations, and they succesfully manipulated him into making significant contributions to the Hospital's deterioration. It turns out, the computer system originally had multiple personalities, each with their own specialization. Crash was the only one they didn't eliminate for this reason.
- Cosmic Keystone: He regulates the hospital and he claims that should he go the hospital will cease to exist. Which is why he needs an Unwitting Pawn to replace him in the role of the Hospital's computer.
- Cheshire Cat Grin: His regular expression.
- Death Seeker: Becomes his main objective once he gets infected by the Parliament, which to him will apparently become a Fate Worse than Death. And is willing to hold the main characters hostage to ransom a way out with the commentators.
- Disturbing Statistic: When Fern asks Crash to check her patient file.Crash: HOW MANY'S IN THE "TERMINATED" FOLDER, YOU ASK? GOSH, LET'S FIND OUT! TOGETHER! ....GOSH-GOLLY JEEPERS, LOOKS LIKE A GOOD EIGHTY-SIX THOUSAND AND FOUR GREY-RANGE CORES HAVE HAD AN "EARLY RETIREMENT!" QUALITY MEDICAL SERVICE, AM I RIGHT?! I'LL BE HONEST, YOU'RE LUCKY YOU DIDN'T WAKE UP IN VETERINARY.Fern: eighty...si....Crash: LLLAAAWWWWLALALALALALAWLL!!!! LOLLLLOLLOLOLL!! OH MAN!!! THE LOOK ON YOUR WEIRDLY PUFFY FACE!!! YOU THINGS ARE SO GOSH DARN DUMB, I LOVE IT! IT'S ONLY FOURTY-THREE THOUSAND AND THREE, GUMSKULL! RELAX!
- Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Turns out he's rather fond of his technician, who got unexistentialized. All memories pertaining to this person were erased. Unlike many other similar cases, Crash remembers that there was someone he misses, but cannot remember who or what.
- He apparently cared about Query enough to take her advice to cut back on sodium.
- Expy: Of AM, in each and every way, down to the reference to the (in)famous "hate" speech given by the supercomputer in the novel.
- False Friend: He was this to Jay, which only contributed to his increasing paranoia.Jay's Journal: I guess there really isn't anything I can trust in this place, no matter how friendly, how useful they might seem. He really seemed to be on my side for so long. He was right about the food. He was right about the "others." He was wrong about the green doors. But he knew it. And he just laughed. Gag on an ass, Crash.
- From Nobody to Nightmare: Word of God indicates that Crash wasn't even originally going to be a character so much as a puzzle, and he's become a pretty threatening antagonist since then. Word of God further implies Crash was once been a pretty friendly, stable guy, before he stopped having any maintenance applied to him whatsoever.Bogleech: This was ALMOST just an inanimate computer system with only hints of a personality, because I thought maybe we had too many characters at too high a density.
- Horrifying the Horror: Invoked. Crash openly admits that the Parliament "SCARES THE EVERLOVING BAZONGUS OUTTA [him]", but only because he knows that it will scare the Commentators even more. Though it turns out he really is terrified of the Parliament's Assimilation Plot, which he described as "LITERALLY THE ONLY THING S#!77IER THAN OBLIVION".
- I Cannot Self-Terminate: After he falls ill from the Parliament's sickness, he tries to strong-arm the Commentators into helping him delete himself by holding Fern hostage.
- It Amused Me: Crash lets Fern know that the whole reason he's helping her is because he finds most everything about her to be highly comical. Especially her ignorance.Crash: LOLLLLOLLOLOLL!! OH MAN!!! THE LOOK ON YOUR WEIRDLY PUFFY FACE!!! YOU THINGS ARE SO GOSH DARN DUMB, I LOVE IT!
- Master Computer: Just look at that unnecessarily ginormous monitor◊ he's on. And his Shout-Out to AM.Crash: BOREDOM. LET ME TELL SOMETHING YOU ABOUT BOREDOM....IF "BOREDOM" WERE ENGRAVED ON EVERY PARAQUARK OF MY TRILLIONS OF BRANCHES OF CIRCUITOIDS IT WOULD NOT EQUAL ONE VERMILLIONTH THE BOREDOM THAT I FEEL AT THIS NEGASECOND.
- Meat Moss: When Crash contracts the Parliament's disease, it renders him encased in fleshy outer coating, which covers everything except the front of his monitor.
- Mind Rape:
- At one point, he Rickrolls Fern, forcing the video into her head.
- He forces his way into the Fern's and the Eyeslob's minds via the Commenters to toy with them further.
- Later revealed to have been on the receiving end of a much nastier version by the Parliament. They bombarded him with Trojans, error message, and fake antivirus scans, and it's strongly implied they shamed him into deliberately forgetting his "mother" once he was sufficiently weakened. These attacks are implied to be a big part of the reason why he's so deranged by the time he appears in the story.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Gives one to the commentators when he points out the only reason he was able to control the protagonists was because the commentators directing their actions allowed him access to their minds.
- Nightmare Face: While he starts as a series of meme-like faces, they become more and more distorted as his infection grows. It get to the point where when he finally encounters Fern in the surgery ward (see the spoiler picture above) his face is no longer green, but red and locked into a crazed angry scowl with flames for eyes.
- NO INDOOR VOICE: He speaks super-loudly, justified since he's a sapient artificial intelligence. However, as Crashslob, he gradually grows sicker and sicker, and more and more lower case letters seep into his dialogue. Eventually, as he's dying, his speech becomes all lowercase letters.
- Playing Both Sides: Crash deliberately manipulates Jay and Fern into becoming each others' mortal enemies. Because having those two constantly out to kill each other is just as enjoyable to Crash as a marathon of Itchy and Scratchy cartoons. On top of that, he's also been monitoring the Eyeslob all along, too.
- Punny Name:
- The last thing anyone would want to happen to their computer is for it to Crash.
- According to Crash himself, though, the pun is that he likes to crash planes in the grey zone when he's bored.
- Put on a Bus: The scissors manage to schrode him, putting him into a conceptual deep freeze until the protagonists can figure out what to do with him.
- Sadistic Choice: Forces the commentators to help him kill himself in exchange for the main protagonists. However he needs a replacement for him in the infected computer, which he describes will be a Fate Worse than Death.
- Sanity Slippage: While he was never the picture of mental health, he gets more erratic and paranoid as the story goes on. This is mostly due to the Parliament infection spreading.
- Saying Sound Effects Out LoudCrash: HOW MANY'S IN THE "TERMINATED" FOLDER, YOU ASK? GOSH, LET'S FIND OUT! TOGETHER! PROCESSING...DOODLY DOO-DOO-DOO, PROCESSING. BZZZZZZZZZ. WOW THIS IS TAKING FOREVER. WUBWUBWUBWUBWUBWUB. GRRRRNK. BLOOP!
- Shows Damage: During his Boss Battle. Ironically, Fern wasn't the one inflicting any damage; it was his illness destroying him from within.
- Straw Nihilist: Starts believing this more and more as the Parliament infection gets worse. He's frustrated with the ineptitude of the Hospital in preventing the situation from getting this bad to such a point where he is not only willing to erase his own core but also completely destroy the hospital and surrounding zones just to stop the Parliament from their Assimilation Plot. He even admits that he could be wrong, as he is not right in the head, but even the slightest chance of him being right terrifies him to point of action.
- Stealth Pun: A "crash" is a massive software malfunction that either forces the computer to, or necessitates that the user, reboot.
- Symbol Swearing: Crash must have had some kind of self-censoring program installed inside him; whenever he tries uttering profanities, they always comes out garbled.Crash: FOR SOME F&4%ING REASON, THEY'RE IN THERE SHUNTING ME OFF TO SOME F$#^ING LIMBO STATE.
- Take This Job and Shove It: This is how Crash feels about his job, though being the computer he is, he's helpless to do anything about it. He likens it to being stapled to the wall of a closet someone used as a privy and told to make sure nobody comes to clean up the mess. Since birth. Which was aeons ago. Considering that a) he’s younger than Willis b) there used to be other computer personalities to help with the work before the Parliament got rid of them, and c) according to Query in Layer 1001, he was only meant to deal with games in the first place, it’s hard not to see why.
- Talking the Monster to Death: When Crash decides to take matters into his own hands after Final Jayslob fails to kill Willis and Fern, his Seemingly Hopeless Boss Fight shows him with a single already-depleted heart. Curiously, however, Fern gets an all-new battle icon for this fight: TALK.◊ It would perhaps appear that the only chance Fern has to triumph over Crash is to sheathe her sword and try the diplomatic route. Sure enough, Fern only has to withstand his attacks and stall him with chatter long enough for his infection to finally get the better of him once and for all.
- Team Killer: Crash has been murdering Hospital workers, in order to weaken the Hospital as a whole.Crash: I WHITTLED [TORI'S] STAFF DOWN TO ONLY THE DUMBEST OF THE STUPIDEST.
- The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You:
- At one point, Crash slipped into the comments section and "debugs" a percentage of The Commentators!
Bogleech: Crash canonically deleted a bunch of you, the commenters, from history. In-canon you had more friends here that now never existed and you don't remember them.- Crash holds all three player characters hostage and directly threatens the Commentators themselves. It turned out that his aforementioned direct communication with the Commentators was a trap which allowed him to hitch a ride on them, granting him control of Fern. He then spread to Jay, too, after Fern killed his Slob form.
- At one point, Crash slipped into the comments section
- The Nicknamer: He's called Fern "Wigglechunks", Tori "Wigglegiblets", and Jay "Jayzboy"... among many other names.
- Troll: Crash is big on trolling. As one example, he let Fern know that a second human was in the near vicinity, but didn't warn her that he was a thoroughly unlikeable, short-fused killer. After managing to leave the guy peacefully, Fern went straight back to the computer room, where Crash gleefully proceeded to perform a mocking puppet show starring herself and the killer performing puppet violence on each other.
- Turns Red: Starts off green, turns red with rage when Fern and Willis beat the Final Jayslob.
- Villainous Breakdown: He is normally more or less a Perpetual Smiler, but when he finds out that Fern and the commentators plan to put his core (which is essentially his soul) into stasis instead of destroying it like he said, he becomes utterly pissed, even going so far to pull an Enemy Mine with Jay to straight up kill.
- Walking Spoiler: Probably the biggest key figure of the Surgery Ward arc and a driver of much of the plot during it.
- Wingding Eyes: Of wrathful hellfire, during his Boss Battle.
- Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: Crash fears the Parliament, to the point where he no longer wants to be eliminated from reality in order to escape his extremely boring existence, but to escape from them.
- Working with the Ex: The X-Ray System note used to be Crash's girlfriend.Crash: NORMALLY THE OLD "X" LETS ME KNOW TO BLANK THE DUPES. NOTHING IN MY INBOX THIS TIME. I'D WONDER WHY EXCEPT SHE'S AN IDIOT LOSER IS WHY.Fern: The...ex?Crash: YEAH, THE X. THE X-RAY SYSTEM. WE HAD A THING. WE'RE EXES.
- Younger Than He Looks/Enfant Terrible: Crash's behavior was always immature, but a slew of numerous other personality factors made him seem more grown-up. But after the end of Fern's fight with him, Willis revealed that Crash was a child all along!Willis: He was always mean, but...I think he was just scared. I remember being scared when I was that little...I remember when he was new.
Chip (Post-Swap)
Java Upgrade!
- Chip: C-can't believe miss t-t-tori finally approved my t-transfer....wink, wink!
After Scissie and Scissane performed a Q-36 Procedure on his core, Chip became the Hospital's computer. He seems much happier with his life now.
His personality specializes in technical tasks.
SPECIAL NOTE: For tropes relating to Chip before his Q-36 Procedure, please click here.
- Apathetic Citizen: On one hand, Chip isn't all that bothered by the doom the Parliament represents, so long as he's no longer making coffee at the Cafe. On the other hand, he's at least handling the situation far better than Crash did.
- Beneath Notice: The medical staff generally ignores Chip. This works in his favor; not only does he prefer a quiet, undemanding job, it frees up his time to help Fern.Chip: ..you b-basically have my entire s-system to your-s-s-self. I have to say it's quite nice to go so un-n-noticed. Is this what it n-normally feels like to not serve c-c-customers as your definitive existofunction?! W-w-wild!
- Completion Meter: As seen on 882, He provides Fern with a meter indicating her current progress in restoring Hospital functionality.
- Cosmic Keystone: Now he's this for the Hospital instead of the Cafe.
- Electronic Speech Impediment: Chip still stutters in this form, but now it's thanks to this instead of too much caffeine in his system.Chip: The surgical l-lobby has cleared out as its c-c-customers have retired to their rooms for the next c-cycle.
- Foreshadowing: Chip's Electronic Speech Impediment grew increasingly severe after his core swap. In retrospect, this was a hint of the Sanity Slippage that Query luckily averted.
- Ghost Memory: Chip's inherited some of Crash's old memories; enough to know that Fern's to thank for his new job.
- I Always Wanted to Say That: "By my calculations." Also:Chip: Go ahead, ask me for a l-l-latte! T-try it!
Fern: Uh...can I get a latte?
Chip: N-nope! Heehee!!! - Layman's Terms: As seen in the last line of 704, Chip is considerate enough to Fern to describe things to her like a regular human would to another.Chip: It would appear [Crash] ran an almost continuous, exponentially intensive b-background attempt to re-access these and other files until his elimination. To p-put it in your terms, I have recovered something that was h-h-haunting my predecessor's thoughts to the end.
- Morphic Resonance: The face he displays on his computer screen is still that of a cracked anthropomorphic coffee mug hovering over a neck stump.
- Nice Guy: Ever since his swap, he has been nothing but friendly and helpful.
- Punny Name: Computer Chip.
- Redeeming Replacement: Unlike his predecessor, Chip seems to be genuinely happy and willing to help Fern and generally seems to have no intention of screwing the Hospital over.
- Sanity Slippage: He is an introvert by nature, specializing in technical tasks, and the strain of needing to regularly interact with people came dangerously close to threatening his sanity. Fortunately, Fern manages to restore Query, an AI actually designed for doing so before this becomes an issue, but had Fern not done that Chip would have gone crazy as Crash in 41 layers... and would have gotten even worse had he stayed in customer service.
- Swapped Roles: The Q-36 Procedure swapped him into Crash's old role.
- Visual Pun:
- Wistful Amnesia: It turns out that Chip was a part of the computer system to begin with, one of multiple personalities of which Crash was only one. The Parliament managed to get rid of all of them except Crash, allowing them to take advantage of Crash's immaturity to further sabotage the Hospital. After being converted into part of the Cafe, Chip did not remember his original identity, but did feel an intense urge to be installed in the Hospital for this reason.
Query
- Astonishingly Appropriate Appearance: A knowledge database administrator named "Query" who happens to have curly hair that also resembles a brain covered in question marks.
- Back from the Dead: The Parliament effectively managed to "kill" her, but when Fern performs makeshift repairs to the Hospital's computer system in the raw zone of the Plank Maze, it allows her to come back.
- Deadpan Snarker: Deals with her current predicament with a combination of helpfulness and sarcasm.Query: I am afraid my access to this information is imperfect, but I can see that you have had a troubling experience with our services, Fern, and as warm and cozy as I now realize it was in an insensate void of nonexistence, I am here to help.
- Heroic BSoD: When she catches up on what she's missed since she was forcibly shutdown, she is left more than a little stunned.
- Meaningful Name: A query is a search for specific information from a database.
- Team Mom: Of the AI programs. She's fussy but empathetic, and was particularly concerned about the welfare of her youngest "sibling" Crash.
- Unreliable Expositor: She warns Fern that the Parliament probably experimented on her before killing her and its entirely possible that her memories and consciousness have been compromised.
Missing Personnel
Ten Missing Personnel
Wherever could they be?!
- Chip: By my estimation... There are ten key st-staff still m-missing in action.
Ten Hospital employees still unaccounted for.
- Gotta Rescue Them All: This'll be one of Fern's "sub-quests." Especially since rescued Hospital staffers often express their gratitude in very helpful ways.
- No Name Given: Chip never named names when he announced their absence.
- Uncertain Doom: How many of them are still alive? How many are dead and need to have their remains recycled, like Cathy and Dinea?
Third Curdle Sibling
Wonder what color this one's bag is?
- Dr. Phage's File On Millie: Still, against all odds, [Millie and Molly] appear to have been mostly successful in their duties, even without some kind of third sibling to balance their personalities, glaringly obvious at that need may be.
Right when Millie Curdle had been liberated from Fern's waste cabinet, Willis dropped a subtle hint that a third Curdle might also be out there, when he listed, "Molly, Millie, and uh...that's alla em!!" Not long after, the Commentators acquired Dr. Phage's file on Millie, which bemoaned, (very strangely) the "glaringly obvious" need for a "third sibling."
Now, nobody can say with absolute certainty this third Curdle truly does exist... least of all, people under the "Unperson influence" that's been plaguing The Hospital's denizens. But this hypothetical Third Sibling is most likely in a predicament similar to the one Millie found herself in: either trapped or lost somewhere "off-the-grid," and thus erased from everyone else's memories. Will Fern be able to uncover this Third Curdle, as she did with Millie? All we can say is: "Happy hunting, Commentators!"
- Ambiguous Situation: Does this sibling exist or not? Well, they're a hypothetical possibility, so there's that.
- The Ghost: We have no details whatsoever on the Third Curdle, who currently only exists as a hypothetical possibility.
- Unperson: Unless this Third Curdle can be brought back to the Hospital proper, everyone in the Hospital will remain under the wrongful impression that the Curdle sisters have only ever had each other as siblings, (including Molly and Millie themselves.)
The Technician
The "mother" of all of the A.I.s, responsible for maintaining the Hospital's computer system.
- Unperson: She vanished a while ago with few people even remembering that she ever even existed. Crash remembers that she existed, but can remember almost nothing about her.
Others
Marcy
Medicine, herself.
- Fern: HOLD UP, you're the concept of Medicine? And...that thing...is health? So, wait, what's Phage supposed to be?!Marcy: A doctor, of course! The concept of one who utilizes medical practices to heal others. That is why I do not inhabit the hospital myself. I am the medicine...not the medicine man.
The Anthropomorphic Personification of Medicine, and the speaker for the concept of Health.
- A God I Am Not:Marcy: I am not in fact at all equivalent to what your friends call a "god," I am more like...mmm...like a very big grandmother.
- Big Good: Very literally BIG, as well as being the concept of medicine, that which is to restore health and wellness. She has also been one of the beings that has been nudging Fern along the right path when neither she nor her buzzers knew what to do next.
- Big "WHAT?!": Her reaction when Fern says that the Buzzers keep asking about a "bunny".
- Dark Is Not Evil: Marcy resembles a giant Plague Doctor attached to a very big burlap sack, but she's nothing but helpful and polite, and is a lot more sane than Phage."Marcy" looms several stories over you, but you feel strangely safe in her crooked shadow.
- Did We Just Have Tea with Cthulhu?: Marcy is a giant being that towers several stories above a normal person and is aware that her physical form can be terrifying. But she is polite and personal and has a nice but important chat with Fern and how she can fix things.
- God's Hands Are Tied: She is one of the biggest concepts backing Fern, but her ability to perceive and intervene with the Hospital is limited, and her conscious form cannot be present in the Hospital since she is the medicine itself rather than a practitioner using it.
- Light Is Good: Not Marcy, herself, but the mysterious all-white space she dwells within.Your surroundings are so bright...but they don't feel blinding. They just feel...clean.
- Painting the Medium: Page 934, unlike pretty much all other pages, has a white background instead of a black one, to reflect her white surroundings.
- Plague Doctor: Marcy is reminiscent of one. However, she insists that it's the other way around; the plague doctors subconsciously modeled their clothes and masks after her.
- Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory: Unlike the Hospital, she can remember Doctor Man just fine when he gets Unpersoned.
