Characters / Coraline

Beware of unmarked SPOILERS!

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The Real World

Coraline Jones

"I'm Coraline Jones. I've got so much to tell you."

Voiced By: Dakota Fanning

A brave, clever, curious 11-year-old girl with dark blue hair.

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• Accidental Misnaming: Everyone in the real world initially calls her by the more-common "Caroline". The fact that the Other World residents get it right is part of the World's insidious appeal.
• Action Girl: She has a little bit of this as things take a turn for horror, as she survives a few dangerous scenarios with just quick reactions and her wits.
• Adaptational Dumbass: It's very minor, but the moments where Coraline uses her wits to figure out where her parents are hidden and to set a trap for the Beldam's hand are both changed in the film. In the former case, the Cat figures it out and tells her, and in the latter, it's a more dramatic confrontation where she and non-book character Wybie take out the hand in a fight, and Coraline isn't aware of the hand following her to begin with.
• Adaptational Jerkass: In the book, Coraline is stoic, polite, and well-mannered, if exasperated by her parents' absences. In the movie, Coraline is a lot more snarky, abrasive, and rude to her parents, neighbors, and Wybie. This is implied to be because her parents aren't paying attention to her.
• Adaptational Nationality: British in the novel, American in the animated film.
• Adaptation Dye-Job: It's actually dyed in-universe, as we see her with brown hair in an old photograph. In the novel, she doesn't dye her hair at all, and just like the movie, it's brown.
• Affectionate Nickname: "My twitchy-witchy girl" by her father. He even made up a song about it, whose lyrics differ slightly between the book and movie. Coraline singing it to herself on her way to the well with the key shows that she does appreciate it.
  "Oh, my twitchy-witchy girl, I think you are so nice. I give you bowls of porridge and I give you bowls of ice. Cream.
  I give you lots of kisses and I give you lots of hugs, but I never give you sandwiches with bugs. In. (book) / ...with bugs and worms and mung. Beans. (movie)"
  • Also, Wybie, after, like everyone else, calling her "Caroline" at first, calls her "Jonesy". It isn't until the ending that he calls her by her correct name.
• Animal Motifs: Dragonflies. She has a dragonfly hair clip and seems to like them in general.
• Badass Adorable: Taking on the Other Mother, being only 11, and so cute? She's definitely this.
• Badass Normal: She is a little girl with no magical powers or special training facing off against a supernatural being like the Other Mother, and she wins.
• Big Eater: Coraline eats a lot of food in the Other World made by her Other Mother. Justified, as the food there is delicious, and her father's cooking looks (and probably tastes) like slime in the movie, and is too advanced for her palette in the book, so she went to bed on an empty stomach. The Other Mother specifically makes sure to cook good food and lots of it as part of her trap, and at one point leaves Coraline a whole banquet table for herself. While she presumably doesn’t actually eat it all, she leaves with a satisfied belch suggesting she put some good work into it.
• Blonde, Brunette, Redhead: The Brunette to Ms. Forcible's Blonde and Ms. Spink's Redhead whenever she hangs out with them.
• Blue Is Heroic: She has her trademark blue hair in the movie (which is dyed) and she's The Heroine.
• Brainy Brunette: Coraline falls into this a bit more in the book. In the film, her hair is dyed blue and she loses a couple of her cleverer moments.
• Bratty Teenage Daughter: In the movie, she can be snarky and rude to her parents, Wybie, and her adult neighbors, since her parents haven't been paying attention to her ever since they moved to the apartments, though she isn't malicious, just frustrated. By the end, it seems that Coraline has matured. Dealing with someone like The Other Mother can do that.
• Cassandra Truth: She tries to tell Wybie about the Other Mother, but he doesn't believe her, which is understandable, because it's not the most plausible story. But he does believe her after seeing a picture of his grandmother's long-lost sister, which corroborates Coraline's description of her.
• Character Development: She gains a better appreciation of her parents, neighbors, and Wybie, ultimately learning that "a perfect world" doesn't exist, and that being with the real people who care for her is the only thing that matters.
• Character Tics: She tends to cock her hip and slouch when annoyed.
• Color Motifs: In the movie, blue. She dyes her hair blue, and the outfit the Other Mother makes for her is a blue starry sweater.
• Combat Pragmatist: As seen in her final confrontation with the Other Mother (when she throws the Cat at her), she doesn't hesitate to use whatever weapons are available to fight an enemy — including her allies.
• Curtains Match the Windows: Coraline has brown eyes, and her hair (without the dye) is naturally brown.
• Daddy's Girl: She gets along better with her dad, who is merely too busy, than with her mom, who more actively rebuffs her.
• Deadpan Snarker: In frustration, she lets out comments about the irony of her parents' work and makes snide remarks about Wybie's creepy behavior.
• Defrosting Ice Queen: "Ice" is probably not the right word, but she is rather dismissive and hostile towards Wybie in the beginning, which is not helped by his alarmed refusal to believe her apparent ravings about the Other World. They do become closer after Wybie learns the truth and comes to her rescue when the hand attacks.
• Delinquent Hair: Coraline has blue hair in a setting where everyone else has normally-colored hair, perhaps in an attempt to get her parents' attention. In a blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment, there's a shot that features a picture of Coraline with her parents with the same hair color as her father.
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: With her quick wits and the help of a talking cat, she defeats the Other Mother/Beldam, a centuries-old reality-warping supernatural Eldritch Abomination that eats children's souls for breakfast.
• Dye Hard: In-Universe. She dyed her hair blue.
• Easily Forgiven: Twice by the Cat. The second time, he would have far less reason to be so lenient — considering she threw him at the Other Mother as a last-resort-distraction (albeit when the Other Mother was about to forcefully sew buttons over her eyes) — but to be fair, he only forgives her once she directly apologizes to him.
• Establishing Character Moment: When she goes shopping with her mother, she asks for a pair of colorful gloves because "no one else will have these". This establishes her as an independent soul who forges her own path, in contrast to most kids her age who want most of all to fit in, especially if they're the new kid at school.
• Everyone Has Standards: She may be less than happy with her boring family and neighbors, but she gladly prefers them to having buttons sewn over her eyes.
• Guile Heroine: She uses her smarts to find the ghost children's souls and find her parents in the climax.
• The Heroine: The story revolves around Coraline discovering and visiting a seemingly perfect world, only to have to face down the Other Mother, escape her clutches, and defeat her once and for all with her wits and determination once the Other World turns sour.
• Jerkass Has a Point:
  • She's not wrong about feeling neglected by her workaholic parents.
  • When Wybie calls her crazy and runs away, she angrily retorts he's the one who gave her the doll (thus ensuring the Other Mother could spy on her) in the first place. Unfortunately, her rapid-fire approach comes across as mad ravings and he runs away frightened when she gets angry at him for not listening.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: She's quite rude to her parents, her older neighbors, and Wybie. Then, she comes to her parents' rescue, and thanks Wybie for saving her from the Other Mother's hand.
• Kid Hero: She's only 11 years old, and she is the protagonist.
• Laser-Guided Karma: A positive example. Coraline retrieves the eyes of the ghost children, thus freeing their souls from the Beldam's grasp, which in turn enables them to assist Coraline in her own escape by helping her close the door to the Other World when the Beldam tries to reach through.
• Like Mother, Like Daughter: In addition to her mother's looks, Coraline also inherited her mother's sarcasm.
• Little Miss Snarker: She's a little girl, but she's commonly shown backsassing her parents.
• Malicious Misnaming: When she meets Wybie, she deliberately calls him his full name, Wyborne, and then calls him "Why-Were-You-Born."
• Mama Bear: Inverted. Coraline, the daughter, must save her parents from The Beldam.
• Morality Pet: To the Other Father. In the movie, he pulls a Heroic Sacrifice in order to give Coraline one of the eyes of the ghost children, and in the book, he's still an Apologetic Attacker and regrets being pitted against her.
• Muggle in Mage Custody: She almost becomes a foster child of the Other Mother, who turns out to be an evil witch.
• My Nayme Is: Coraline instead of Caroline. All the adults in her building think her name is "Caroline", which frustrates her to no end.
• Nonconformist Dyed Hair: She's a rebellious and honest little girl who's dyed her naturally brunette hair blue.
• Noodle People: She's quite slim.
• Not So Above It All: Despite being initially grumpy, she plays along when Wybie asks her to take pictures of him horsing around with a slug and actually laughs at some of his antics.
• Pet the Dog: Even though she finds her new neighbors either weird or boring, Coraline was actually nice and polite to them.
• Plucky Girl: She does not hesitate or give up when it turns out her parents are in danger and she has to save them, and in the book she barely even so much as whines.
• Protagonist Title: The title of the book and film is her first name.
• Ship Tease: With Wybie, especially since the little punch she gives him in the end is similar to her mother's punch to her father.
• Strong Family Resemblance: She looks very much like her mother, though she has her father's (natural) hair and eye color.
• Tomboy: She has Boyish Short Hair, and is Little Miss Snarker and Badass Adorable.
• Took a Level in Kindness: She becomes more grateful for her parents and neighbors after the whole ordeal of defeating the Beldam. She even seems to become friends with Wybie in the end.
• Trapped in Another World: Eventually, if temporarily. The problem is that once she escapes, she needs to return to save her parents, who have been taken there, too.
• Vague Age: While she's eleven in the movie, her age in the book is hard to pinpoint — the illustrations have her look like a preteen, and her intelligence and the fact that she no longer plays with dolls matches one, the story she writes is nonsensical and misspells a lot of words, making it seem like she's around eight.
• Wise Beyond Their Years: In the book, when the Other crazy old man upstairs tries to tempt her into staying in the Other World with the promise of eternal happiness, Coraline understands that if she was just handed everything she ever wanted, it wouldn't be fun anymore.
  You really don't understand, do you? I don't want whatever I want. Nobody does. Not really. What kind of fun would it be if I just got everything I ever wanted? Just like that, and it didn't mean anything. What then?
• Wrestler in All of Us: When Other Wybie rescues her from the mirror, Coraline instinctively judo throws him over her shoulder. Granted, he was wearing a mask, so she didn't recognize him.
• Youthful Freckles: She's eleven-years-old and has a couple of freckles on both of her cheeks.

The Cat

"I'm not the other anything. I'm me."

Voiced By: Keith David

A sarcastic, mysterious, nameless black cat from Coraline's world who appears and disappears at will and has the ability to speak in the Other World.

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• Adaptational Nice Guy: In the book, the cat is extremely egotistical and aloof, only helping Coraline if he happens to be in the area anyway and if helping her doesn't hinder him any. In the film, he's her Mysterious Protector and Servile Snarker, often going out of his way to watch over her, warn her against, and save her from the Other Mother even when she's very rude to him. He even sends for Wybie at the end so Coraline can be saved from the Other Mother's hand.
• Behind a Stick: He disappears behind a signpost at the end of the film.
• Cassandra Truth: He tries to warn Coraline about the dangers of the Other World. She doesn't listen until it's too late.
• Cats Are Magic: One reason he keeps getting into the Other Realm, despite the Beldam's attempts to keep him out.
• Cats Are Snarkers: He clearly enjoys sarcasm, and his only competition in the snark department is Coraline herself.
• Cats Are Superior: He certainly thinks so. In the book, the cat smugly reveals that the reason he has no Other World counterpart is that the Beldam can't create cats. Dolls of humans are one thing, but cats have a certain quality that eludes her.
• Chekhov's Gunman: What he says to Coraline about the Other World turns out to be completely true.
• Chekhov's Skill:
  • His ability to effortlessly track and kill rats sent by the Other Mother to spy on and make life hard for Coraline comes in handy after one of them nearly makes off with the last ghost child's soul, almost costing her the game and thus her own soul.
  • The first time he talks to Coraline, he brags about cats having far superior senses to humans, able to see and smell things they can't. This turns out not to be empty bragging near the end when he's able to pinpoint the sound of fingers rubbing against the glass, helping her find her parents just in time to rescue them.
• Dark Is Not Evil: He's a black cat, but he comes to the aid of Coraline when she's in trouble. The Cat is also good friends with Wybie.
• Deadpan Snarker: Enjoys grumpily snarking at everyone.
• Defrosting Ice King: He initially acts aloof and downright hostile to Coraline when she first arrives at her new home. As Coraline learns the truth about what the Other World really is like, he becomes warmer and more determined to help her.
• Disapproving Look: He will stare like this at those who disappoint him, especially in the real world where he can't speak.
• Does Not Like Spam: Downplayed. The Cat claims to dislike eating rats, but does so of his own free will on two separate occasions in order to silence an alarm and to help Coraline gain the third eye.
• Furry Reminder:
  • Though he's voiced by Keith David, after mentioning that he heard something "right... over..." he meows like a regular cat and rushes off to find prey.
  • Though intelligent enough to understand human speech (and talk in the Other World), at one point he wakes Coraline by gently patting her nose with his paw, and she wakes to see his face hovering close to hers, staring unblinking at her and purring.◊ Most cat owners will tell you that is very kitty-like behavior.
• Inexplicably Awesome: The Cat is never given an origin story, a name, or even a passing reason for his ability to speak in the Other World and his mysterious ability to travel between both worlds by walking out of sight.
• Mentor Mascot: He's a cat and acts as a mentor to the young Coraline.
• More than Meets the Eye: He has some clear moments of supernatural ability in the film, like when he disappears behind a branch the width of a finger or has half of his body through two portals many feet apart.
• Mysterious Animal Senses: Not only can he see and hear much better than humans can as a cat, but apparently he can easily find little portals between worlds.
• No Need for Names: He believes that cats don't need any. They can tell each other apart without them, something humans never quite mastered. Interestingly enough, he never calls anyone from the real world by their names either.
• Not So Above It All: He acts aloof and feral, but loves getting affection from humans.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: After Coraline launches him at the Other Mother's face at the end, he lets out one last angry yowl before ditching them both.
• Servile Snarker: In the film. No matter how rude Coraline (initially) is to him, or how much danger helping her puts him in, he'll still loyally follow her and help her when she's in danger, even though he sasses her the whole way.
  Cat: You know, you're walking right into her trap.
  Coraline: I have to go back. They are my parents.
  Cat: (thinks) Challenge her then. She may not play fair but she won't refuse. She's got a thing for games.
• Silent Snarker: He may not be able to speak in the real world, but his expressions indicate his demeanor is every bit as sarcastic as it is in the Other World.
• So Proud of You: He gives an adoring look at Coraline and Wybie, who have triumphed over the Other Mother, put their differences aside, and become friends.
• Talking Animal: Only in the Other World, or in the tunnel between them. Otherwise, he's just as quiet as a regular cat.
• The Thing That Would Not Leave: The Cat is apparently this towards the Other Mother, who has tried on many occasions to kick him out of the Other World, only for him to find ways back in. When she sees him right before the climax, she coldly dismisses him as "vermin".
• Undying Loyalty: Toward Coraline. Despite her being horribly outmatched against the Other Mother, he does everything he can to assist her, even capturing and killing rats when necessary. He's also this to Wybie, albeit to a lesser extent.
• What Beautiful Eyes!: He has big, dazzling, blue eyes.

Mel Jones

Voiced By: Teri Hatcher

Coraline's busy mother.

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• Adaptation Dye-Job: Near the end of the book, it is mentioned that she has grey eyes. The movie changes them to brown.
• Adaptational Nice Girl: Mel is definitely a crabby person, but she's still considerably more sympathetic compared to the novel version.
• Adaptational Nationality: British in the novel, American in the animated film.
• Adaptational Jerkass: Even though she's much more sympathetic in the film, she's also much more actively neglectful of Coraline in the movie than in the books, where she simply doesn't pay much attention to her daughter rather than repeatedly rebuffing her.
• Adults Are Useless: Justified and later Subverted. Having an imaginative child like Coraline can make a parent not really believe the stories they tell, even when they are true. She later becomes concerned about her daughter's stories, so she locks the little door and keeps the key out of reach just in case there's anything to them.
• Deadpan Snarker: Like mother, like daughter, it seems. She's just as prone to making snide remarks as her daughter is.
  Mel: "We — made — a deal! Zip it!"
• Hartman Hips: She has rather curvy hips.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Although very busy with her work as a gardening catalogue editor, Mel loves Coraline very much, despite the lack of time and attention she gives her daughter. She comes off most of the time as crabby and even snappish toward her daughter — a trait noticeably more pronounced than with Charlie — but it's clear it's born mostly of work stress, and she tries to make it up to her by telling Coraline that she can pick something she likes at the grocery store, but Coraline refuses to go, and she's clearly saddened by the failure to reach out. She even buys Coraline the gloves she liked as a gift after denying her them earlier.
• Laser-Guided Amnesia: In the end, she and Charlie seem to have their memories of being kidnapped by the Other Mother erased.
• Noodle Incident: The exact circumstances of how she got the neck brace. Her dialogue with Coraline implies it was the result of a car accident.
  Mel: But then we had the accident. (points to neck brace)
  Coraline: It wasn't my fault you hit that truck!
  Mel: I never said it was.
• Parental Neglect: Not on purpose, but she does need to work.
• Parental Obliviousness: Justified, given that Coraline is a child and from Mel's POV is just imagining things.
• Parents as People: Mel only works a lot because she needs to support her family.
• Parents in Distress: She and Charlie are kidnapped by the Other Mother, and their daughter has to return to the Other World one last time and challenge the Other Mother in order to save them.
• Perpetual Frowner: She only gives one or two genuine smiles in the film.
• Pet the Dog: She buys Coraline the gloves she wanted after she refused to earlier.
• Raven Hair, Ivory Skin: She was black hair and pale skin.
• Strong Family Resemblance: She quite resembles her daughter, especially with their similar hair colors and face shapes.
• Took a Level in Cheerfulness: She's in a crabby mood for most of the film, but once Coraline saves her from the Other Mother, she becomes happier and more relaxed. This is implicitly due to finally publishing the articles she and Charlie were working on, freeing them both of their biggest source of stress and giving them more time for their daughter.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Unlocking the small door to the Other World kicks off the main danger of the film adaptation.
• When You Coming Home, Dad?: Zigzagged. Upset with a lack of attention from her workaholic parents, Coraline is ensnared into the seductive world of the Other Mother where she gets everything she wants and her parents exist only to please her. It's later revealed to be a honey trap, as the Other Mother is actually a creature that feeds on children's souls. It is implied that her parents at the start of the movie are close to an important deadline and are not workaholics. They also just moved into a new house, which partly explains Coraline's resentment — she was also upset that her parents had her leave behind her old friends and home.
• Workaholic: Subverted in that she isn't so much a workaholic as it is that she and Charlie are very close to an important deadline in their articles for a gardening catalogue, which is the main reason she doesn't pay much attention to Coraline.

Charlie Jones

Voiced By: John Hodgman

Coraline's equally busy father.

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• Adaptational Nationality: British in the novel, American in the animated film.
• Adults Are Useless: He is a parent in a Kid Hero story.
• Amazingly Embarrassing Parents: In the film. In Gaiman's own words, he's one of those dads who thinks that by embarrassing his kid in public, he's somehow being cool.
• Big "NO!": All he can do is yell, "NO!" when his computer unexpectedly shuts down due to the Pink Palace's faulty wiring.
• Bumbling Dad: While friendlier than Coraline's mother, he's not quite as competent as she is.
• Butt-Monkey: His voice actor describes him as someone who "would walk around a banana peel only to fall into a manhole." Examples through the film include a power outage deleting his writing, getting "writer's rash" on some unmentionable area, and the others making fun of the slop he makes for dinner.
• Curtains Match the Windows: He has both brown eyes and brown hair.
• Exhausted Eye Bags: His eyelids are perpetually darkened from an implied lack of sleep over his work. The photo of the family from before the move shows he didn't have them at the time.
• Laser-Guided Amnesia: In the end, he and Mel seem to have their memories of being kidnapped by the Other Mother erased.
• Lethal Chef: His food looks like slime, according to Coraline, and in the book, "recipe" refers exclusively to his cooking and is like a curse word to her. However, in the book, he's more of an inventive chef who enjoys trying unusual culinary techniques, and Coraline considers his food poison because it's too weird for her.
• Nice Guy: He's a total sweetheart in both the book and the movie, though in different ways. He's a bonafide Papa Bear in the book, and while he loses that quality in the movie (at least as pertains to his normal self) he's still playful and loving toward Coraline even despite the stress of his workload.
• Not Now, Kiddo: Like Coraline's mother, he's busy typing articles for the gardening catalogue.
• Papa Wolf: In the book, Coraline tells the Cat a story of how she and her father stumbled into a wasp nest near her old house. Her father told Coraline to run, while he stayed behind to be the one getting the majority of the wasp stings. When asked by Coraline about bravery, he said the bravest thing he did was go back for his glasses despite knowing the wasps were still there, not staying behind. Charlie believed he was doing what any parent should do in a situation like that, and so it wasn't brave in any way, just instinctual.
• Parental Neglect: Not that he wants to neglect Coraline, but he's too busy to spend time with her.
• Parental Obliviousness: Part of what makes Coraline want to leave the real world behind.
• Parents as People: Charlie is just trying to do his job so his family can be supported which leaves him constantly tired and overworked. While not rude to Coraline at any point, he also can't afford to give her the attention she needs, which creates friction between them.
• Parents in Distress: He and Mel are kidnapped by the Other Mother, and their daughter has to return to the Other World one last time and challenge the Other Mother in order to save them.
• Perma-Stubble: He has a nine o'clock shadow.
• Smart People Wear Glasses: He wears brown-rimmed glasses and writes for garden catalogues.
• Wants a Prize for Basic Decency: Defied and discussed. In the book, Coraline tells the Cat a story of how she and her father disturbed a wasp nest while they were out together. Her father told Coraline to run while he stayed behind to endure the wasp stings to buy her time. He only returned to the wasps' nest because he realised that he lost his glasses during the attack and needed to get them back. Charlie used this experience to teach Coraline a lesson on bravery, and it suggests that he saw what he did as a basic form of parenthood.
  "And he said it wasn't brave of him... just standing there and being stung. It wasn't brave because he wasn't scared: It was the only thing he could do. But going back again to get his glasses, when he knew the wasps were there, when he was really scared. That was brave. ...When you're scared, but still do it anyway, that's brave."
• When You Coming Home, Dad?: Zigzagged. Upset with a lack of attention from her workaholic parents, Coraline is ensnared into the seductive world of the Other Mother, where she gets everything she wants and her parents exist only to please her. It's later revealed to be a honey trap, as the Other Mother is actually a creature that feeds on children's souls. It is implied that her parents are so busy because they're close to an important deadline and aren't usually workaholics. They've also just moved into a new house, which partly explains Coraline's resentment — she's also upset that her parents had her leave behind her old friends and home.
• Workaholic: Subverted in that he isn't so much a workaholic as it is that he and Mel are very close to an important deadline in their work for a gardening catalog, which is the main reason he doesn't pay much attention to Coraline.

Wyborne "Wybie" Lovat

"Hm. It's not real scientific, but I heard an ordinary name like Caroline can lead people to have ordinary expectations about a person."

Voiced By: Robert Bailey Jr.

The geeky, nervous 11-year-old grandson of Coraline's landlady.

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• Animal Lover: Implied. Wybie gets along well with the Cat.
• Badass Biker: Going with the above trope, Wybie has a motorcycle, though he doesn't quite fit the "badass" demeanor.
• Big Damn Heroes: In the climax, he shows up amidst the roaring of his motorcycle's engine to rescue Coraline when the Other Mother's severed right hand is kidnapping her and nearly choking her.
• Black and Nerdy: Wybie is a young Black boy (though his pale skin makes it less obvious and suggests he's biracial, his grandmother is more clearly Black, and his voice actor is Black too). He's also quite a nerd — for two examples, he loves to collect banana slugs, and has personally adapted his bike to suit him better.
• Brainy Brunette: Implied. If you look closely at Wybie's bike, you can see that it seems to be engineered uniquely by him. He proves to be quite intelligent for his age.
• Canon Foreigner: Wybie never appears in the novel, and was created for the film adaptation so that Coraline wouldn't have to talk to herself.
• Character Tics: Tilting his head to one side.
• Cloud Cuckoo Lander: He has a liking to things others would consider odd or strange, such as the cat bringing him "little dead things" and having Coraline take pictures of him horsing around with a banana slug — putting it on his upper lip like a mustache, pretending he sneezed it out, and so on.
• Cool Mask: It's a skull mask with three magnification lenses like those on a microscope.
• Dark Is Not Evil: He wears a black coat and a sinister-looking mask, but he's a sweet guy.
• Dirty Coward: He runs away from Coraline after calling her crazy.
• Embarrassing First Name: "Short for Wyborne. Not my idea, of course..."
• Fire-Forged Friends: With Coraline when he saves her from the Other Mother's hand.
• Friendless Background: He doesn't seem to have any other friends until he meets Coraline.
• Friend to Bugs: Likes to play with banana slugs.
• Goth: Implied. Wybie does wear a lot of black and has skull-like gloves and mask.
• Handicapped Badass: He appears to have kyphosis, but it doesn't stop him from saving Coraline at the end.
• In-Series Nickname: Coraline, when she's upset with him, calls him "Why-were-you-born". Justified, since his full name, "Wyborne", is pronounced so it sounds like "why born".
• Kid Hero: Wybie is 11, and he officially cements this trope after coming to Coraline's rescue in the climactic scene
• Loners Are Freaks: This is what Coraline thinks he is, and his love of slugs and skull-themed attire doesn't really help.
• Lovable Nerd: Coraline starts to warm up to him during the slug scene.
• Malicious Misnaming: Coraline turns his full first name, Wyborne, into "Why-were-you-born".
• Messy Hair: There are some twigs mixed in with his hair.
• Motor Mouth: He is a fast talker, which Coraline finds annoying. In fact, it annoys her so much that the Other Mother makes Other Wybie permanently mute.
• My God, What Have I Done?: After calling her crazy and running away, later, he helped Coraline stop the Other Mother. He apologized for being an idiot and not listening to her.
• Nervous Wreck: He's a pretty awkward, anxious, and nervous loner that's always afraid of getting in trouble with his grandmother.
• Nice Guy: He never gets mad or insults Coraline for deliberately misnaming him, tells her about the poison oak she's unwittingly holding, gives her the "mini" doll of herself, and valiantly comes to her rescue.
• Only Friend: Wybie is the only person at the Pink Palace Apartments around Coraline's age, and she eventually befriends him, if slowly.
• Quirky Curls: He's a very eccentric preteen with brown curls.
• Red Is Heroic: Wybie owns a red bike, and he is a genuinely Nice Guy who saves Coraline from the Other Mother's hand.
• Ship Tease: With Coraline, especially since the little punch she gives him in the end is similar to Coraline's mother's punch to her father.
• Socially Awkward Hero: Heavily implied. He is rather bold with his words and only reacts to what he says after he says them, as shown when he rudely judges Coraline's name based on some study he read, and when he calls her crazy when she tells him about his grandmother's missing twin sister, something she shouldn't know about and which may be worth listening to.
• Spanner in the Works: If Wybie hadn't showed up in the nick of time as he did, the Other Mother probably would've won.
• Speech Impediment: He has a tendency to stutter a lot.
• Stalker without a Crush: To Coraline. He claims it was the cat's idea, but it could be Stalker with a Crush, depending on your interpretation. After he saves Coraline, she tells him "I'm glad you decided to stalk me."
• Unfortunate Name: His full name is Wyborne Lovat, and his first name is pronounced so it sounds like "why born". Coraline picks up on that fact quickly.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: By giving Coraline the doll, he essentially makes it possible for the Other Mother to spy on her and lure her into the other world. He makes up for it later by rescuing her.
• The Watson: Wybie was added to the film so that Coraline could express her thoughts out loud in a natural way, as it would be very awkward to convey them through narration as in the book.

Miss April Spink

"Never wear green in your dressing-room."

Voiced By: Jennifer Saunders

A retired burlesque actress who lives with Miss Forcible.

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• Adults Are Useless: Averted. She immediately believes Coraline's panic when the girl says her parents are missing, and offers what help she can by giving her an adder stone for protection. That stone turns out to be the only thing capable of tracking down the ghost children's eyes.
• Ambiguously Bi: According to Gaiman, she and Miss Forcible are a couple, but she is also seen ogling the removal men at the beginning. In the book, she also talks to Coraline about how men came to see her when she was a young actress.
• Blonde, Brunette, Redhead: The Redhead to Ms. Forcible's Blonde and Coraline's Brunette.
• Crazy Cat Lady: A dog variant. She really likes dogs, to the point she stuffs her dead ones and puts them on the shelf. In the Other World, there are 248 Scottie dogs in the audience with Coraline and Wybie watching their stage performance.
• Deadpan Snarker: She gets plenty of snarky lines, particularly to Miriam.
• Dirty Old Woman: Her Establishing Character Moment has her ogling the young and buff male movers.
• Duck Season, Rabbit Season: She and Miriam frequently get into arguments by contradicting each other: for example, they debate whether or not the adder stone is for "bad" or "lost" things, and are still going at it when Corale leaves their apartment.
• Formerly Fit: She and her stage-partner Miriam were stunning in their youth, something the Other Mother is quick to replicate. Whereas in the present Ms. Spink is fat and squat.
• Granny Classic: Though she doesn't have any grandchildren of her own, she still fits the bill: short, round, sweet, and fond of tea, card games, and telling stories. She even has an ancient candy bowl.
• It May Help You on Your Quest: After Coraline reveals that her parents are missing, April immediately has Miss Forcible fetch a rare adder stone from their collection and give it to her. The adder stone later provides some protection against the Other Mother's powers, and gives Coraline the power to see through the Other World's illusions.
• Ink-Suit Actor: Played with. Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders have been a comedy duo since The '80s, and Spink and Forcible do look a lot like French and Saunders, with Miss Spink being modelled after Dawn French. However, it's Jennifer Saunders who voices her.
• I Was Quite a Looker: Posters in their flat reveal that Miss Spink and Miss Forcible were burlesque actresses in their youth.
• Lipstick Lesbian: According to word of Gaiman, she and Miss Forcible are a couple, and she wears makeup and frilly dresses.
• Mummies at the Dinner Table: She and Miriam stuff their dead dogs and put them on shelves.
• Psychic Powers: She's mildly clairvoyant, as she's able to correctly interpret Coraline's tea leaves to warn her of danger, and perceives an ominous hand among them; the hand belongs to the Other Mother. When Coraline plans to go back to the Other World to rescue her missing parents, Miss Spink senses that she'll need help, and gives her an adder stone, which has the power to see through illusions and find lost objects.
• Redhead In Green: Her hair is turning pinkish, and she wears a green robe.
• Taxidermy Is Creepy: She "couldn't bear to part with" her dogs, so she had them stuffed.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: Argues a lot with Miriam despite seeming like her close friend, although going by Gaiman's account they're more Like an Old Married Couple.

Miss Miriam Forcible

"Well, not to worry, child: It's good news. There's a tall, handsome beast in your future."

Voiced By: Dawn French

A retired burlesque actress who lives with Miss Spink.

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• Adults Are Useless: Averted. While she isn't able to fight Coraline's battles for her, she does provide some moral and physical support by giving her a rare and precious adder stone, which turns out to be instrumental in tracking down the ghost children's eyes.
• Baldness Angst: Downplayed. In the film, her hair turns out to be a large wig to disguise her balding head. However, she freely takes the wig off in front of Coraline, so she's not completely in denial about it — the wigs are more of an accessory than anything else.
• Blonde, Brunette, Redhead: The Blonde to Coraline's Brunette and Ms Spink's Redhead.
• Blind Without 'Em: She uses a pair of fancy lorgnette spectacles, and it's implied that she absolutely needs them — her eyes are designed to look cloudy (suggesting vision impairment), and a few POV shots show everything not in the lenses as hopelessly blurry.
• British Stuffiness: She has a thick British accent and is the more obnoxious of the two Misses.
• Crazy Cat Lady: A dog variant. When they die, the dogs are stuffed and kept in their apartment.
• Divergent Character Evolution: In the book, both Miss Spink and Miss Forcible are described as being "very round," but in the film, only April fits that description. Miriam, by contrast, is a tall and top-heavy woman with slender legs.
• Duck Season, Rabbit Season: She and April constantly get into these arguments, with each insisting that they know best.
• Formerly Fit: She and her stage-partner Miss Spink were once very attractive in their prime.
• Irony: With those massive boobs of hers, you'd expect her to be the one needing a walker. Instead, it's her partner.
• Ink-Suit Actor: Played with. Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders have been a comedy duo since The '80s, and Spink and Forcible do look a lot like French and Saunders, with Miss Forcible being modelled after Jennifer Saunders. However, it's Dawn French who voices her.
• I Was Quite a Looker: Posters in her and Miss Spink's flat reveal that the two were burlesque dancers when they were younger.
• Lipstick Lesbian: According to word of Gaiman, she and Miss Spink are a couple, and she wears makeup, pink, and fancy wigs.
• Mummies at the Dinner Table: Their dogs get stuffed and put on a shelf when they die.
• Pink Means Feminine: She's often seen in a pink dressing robe.
• Psychic Powers: Like Miss Spink, she is a bit of a seer, though her powers are weaker than April's. She reads Coraline's tea leaves as a giraffe, which corresponds to one of the toys in her Other bedroom. Later, when Coraline has to return to the Other Pink Palace to save her parents, Miriam immediately heads to a cupboard and produces a taffy bowl that hides the adder stone the women know that she'll need later — April doesn't even have to ask her to get it.
• Skewed Priorities: When Coraline comes to tell them her parents are missing in the movie, Miss Forcible is horrified because that means she and Miss Spink have lost their ride to the theatre.
• Taxidermy Is Creepy: Her and Miss Spink's stuffed Scotties, made from their deceased pets.
• Top-Heavy Guy: A rare female example. Miss Forcible's enormous boobs contrast strongly with her relatively skinny legs.
• Victoria's Secret Compartment: Where she stores her lorgnette spectacles is in her bra.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: Argues a lot with April despite seeming like her friend, although going by Gaiman's account they're more Like an Old Married Couple.

Mr. Bobo/Sergei Alexander Bobinsky

"I am the Amazing Bobinsky! But you — call me Mr. B. Because, amazing, I already know that I am."

Voiced By: Ian McShane

A retired circus performer living in the flat above Coraline's; he is commonly referred to as the Crazy Old Man Upstairs.

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• Acrofatic: An experienced acrobat, and chubby too.
• Adaptational Comic Relief: The movie makes him far more of a Funny Foreigner than he was in the book.
• Adaptation Name Change: In the book, his name is Mr. Bobo, a fact which is only revealed in the last pages of the book.
• Amazing Technicolor Population: Has blue skin. According to Selick, it's because he eats lots of beets, which apparently turn your skin blue if you eat enough of them the same way eating tons of carrots eventually turns your skin orange.
• Ambiguous Situation: It's never confirmed if his mouse circus is real and he can communicate with them, real but they're regular mice and he only thinks they talk, or they aren't real and he just made them up and/or imagines them. In the film, the promise of a real mouse circus is delivered in the Other World, but in the book, they're not an organized production, fitting the "creepy guy with rodents" vibe implied in the real world.
• Character Exaggeration: In the book, Mr Bobo simply happens to be vaguely Slavic (Russia isn't even mentioned, actually); it's not even implied that he has an accent until Misses Spink and Forcible happen to talk about him near the end of the book. However, the movie makes Bobinsky extremely weird and extremely Russian.
• Character Tics: He's constantly practicing his acrobatics when speaking to others, even looping around the bottom of his apartment's railing while mid-conversation with Coraline.
• Cloud Cuckoo Lander: Well, he does talk to mice. In the movie, this is turned up to 11 with his habit of performing acrobatic routines while he talks to Coraline.
• Crazy Cat Lady: A mouse variant. He's supposedly the owner of who-knows-how-many mice are in his part of the apartment.
• Creepy Good: His appearance and mannerisms are always off-putting in some way, but he proves to be one of the nicest characters and is quite cordial to Coraline overall.
• Funny Foreigner: He is the most eccentric character in the film, and he's Russian.
• Gentle Giant: He is big and tall, but has a good heart, and is a good guy in the end.
• Hidden Depths: The medal that he is always seen wearing, that's the medal that was awarded to the first responders in the Chernobyl disaster...
• Husky Russkie: He's a rather fat man with a very thick Russian accent.
• Poirot Speak: He throws a few Russian words into his dialogue now and then, much to the confusion of Coraline.
• Speaks Fluent Animal: It is hinted he actually can communicate with his mice, if they exist at all. At one point, he comments on how the mice keep calling his new neighbor Coraline, where Bobinsky fully believes her name is actually Caroline, and knows about the Other World.
• Trademark Favorite Food: Mr. Bobo seems to really like beets. He even tries to offer Coraline one, and at the end is seen tearing up some of the newly planted tulips and replacing them with beets.

Mrs. Lovat

"Wyborne! I know where I'm going. I grew up here!"

Voiced By: Carolyn Crawford

Wybie's grandmother and landlady of the Pink Palace apartments.

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• Canon Foreigner: Like Wybie, she was created for the film adaptation, although the book briefly mentions a "Mr Lovat", which is probably where their last name comes from.
• Cool Old Lady: She's singlehandedly tried to keep children out of the Pink Palace for decades for their own safety. Judging by the implied history of the house and the past victims, she's kept them away long enough for the Other Mother to begin starving and weakening.
• The Cuckoolander Was Right: Wybie never believed her sister was "stolen" by an evil force, yet when Coraline describes her appearance and imprisonment precisely, he realizes that both his Gramma and Coraline were right.
• Failed a Spot Check: She's a nemesis of the Other Mother, but alas, an old nemesis, and she forgot to check if the Jones family had any children or not, leading up to the events of the film.
• The Ghost: She's always being referenced by Wybie, and we get to hear her voice call out to him several times, but we never see her in the flesh until the very end of the film.
• Hero of Another Story: She's spent most of her life searching for her missing twin sister and fighting to keep children away from the Pink Palace.
• Last-Name Basis: We don't ever learn her first name.
• My Beloved Smother: She never lets her grandson out of her sight for long, and absolutely forbids him to enter the Pink Palace for fear the Other Mother will take him too.
• Never Mess with Granny: Distraught after her sister was spirited away by the Other Mother, she divided up the Pink Palace into apartments and bricked up the little door to disrupt the Other Mother as much as possible, and began refusing to rent to people with kids to starve her out.

The Other World

The Other Mother/The Beldam

"They say even the proudest spirit can be broken... with love."

^{Click here to see her second form.}

^{Click here to see her true form.}

Voiced By: Teri Hatcher

The main antagonist of both the novel and film, this mysterious creature created much of the Other World to lure children into her domain, reshaping it and its inhabitants, including herself, into what they would desire most... in exchange for a terrible price.

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• Abusive Parents: She's not a parent to anyone, and her end goal is to collect/consume (in the movie) children's souls, but she poses as a parent, and through her M.O. of operating with complete control, her behavior ends up evoking parental abuse, mainly emotional.
  • She showers children with toys, games, gifts, and fun activities, but never offers substantial attention and emotional connection, trying to win their trust and obedience through the shallowest means with no real love to give them.
  • She provides an idealized, carefree world with no consequences or problems, but when she is resisted, she goes harshly in the other direction, and everything becomes hostile.
  • She has no sense of personal space for children, offering unwanted "motherly" contact even when the child is clearly uncomfortable.
  • When challenged, she shifts the blame onto the child for her anger, trying to guilt Coraline for failing to meet ridiculous expectations ("You may come out when you've learned to be a loving daughter"). She also physically manhandles Coraline, taking her roughly down the hall by the nose and tossing her into the room behind the hallway mirror.
  • At the end, she uses abusive language ("You horrible, cheating girl!"), outright insulting and belittling Coraline when she has lost all control.
  • It's shown in the novel that the Other Mother actually tries to have someone to mother by "collecting" children, whom she loves possessively to the point that she steals their souls. Shortly after they become part of her collection by having her sew buttons into their eyes, she grows bored or frustrated with them, the children eventually pass away, and she casts aside their souls behind the hallway mirror before she seeks the next child to "collect".
  • Another abuse tactic is that when children wise up to the parent's methods and begin to distance themselves (i.e. leave), the parent will have a sort of meltdown to make them stay, which is precisely what the Other Mother does when Coraline is escaping.
• Adaptational Badass: This applies to her severed right hand, at least. In the book, her right hand falls for Coraline's trap, hook, line, and sinker, and tumbles straight into the well. The movie has it put up more of a fight; it tries to drag Coraline back into the Other World just as she's about to drop the black button key into the well, tries to knock Wybie into the well when he interferes with the hand, and doesn't stop trying to go after Coraline and the key until it's smashed by a large and heavy rock thrown by Wybie. It even manages to climb back up when it falls into the well along with Wybie in the movie, whereas in the book, it doesn't make an effort to do so once it grabs the key.
• Adaptational Intelligence: Overlapping with Adaptational Villainy. In the book, the Other Mother seems to start out intending to care for the children she collects, only to grow hungry and bored with them. In the film, she's more clearly intending to kill and eat Coraline from the start, and has framed silhouettes of her previous victims hanging on the wall like trophies. Her creations in the book are described as intriguing at best and totally unconvincing at worst, while the film version makes the Other World far more enticing and dazzling in every way. The changes move her from a dangerous but simpleminded predator to a cunning serial murderer.
• Adaptational Villainy: In the novel, the Other Mother collects children and lures them into her twisted copy of the Pink Palace so she can care for them just like any parent would, only sewing buttons in their eyes to ensure they stay with her forever, though seeing them as nothing more than collectables or a "tolerated pet". In the film, the Other Mother is implied to be a child-eating predator who lures the children, sews buttons in their eyes, and eats them all for her own survival.
  Other Mother (in the film): DON'T LEAVE ME! DON'T LEAVE ME! I'LL DIE WITHOUT YOU!
• Adaptational Ugliness: In the book, the Other Mother's final form is simply thin, tall, and pale. That form does show up in the movie when she starts revealing her true nature, but her true form is a gaunt and twisted skeleton-spider hybrid with a cracked porcelain face and hands made of sewing needles.
• Alien Blood: In the book, her blood is black in color and tar-like, as described when the cat scratches her across the face. This is vaguely alluded to by her design at that point in the film, where her cracked porcelain skin resembles black scarring.
• All Take and No Give: The Other Mother is the giver, and the previous ghost children (and Coraline, for a bit) are the takers. But then again, the relationship could be seen as the opposite, with the Other Mother as the taker, needing love and the souls from the children, who give it to her unknowingly or against their will.
• Animal Motifs: Spiders, especially in the movie. She creates a trap for children, she eats bugs, she has black and red clothing, and her final spectacle of wonder is to fill the Other living room with insectoid furniture. The room then collapses into a web at the very end, making the broken pieces of furniture the insects caught up in it.
• Ax-Crazy: She's a murderous and vicious psychopath who's not above kidnapping a child's parents if it means the child will come back to her just so she can steal the child's soul.
• Bad Liar: She tries to tell Coraline her real mother and father are absent because they probably grew bored of her and ran off to France. This makes her a horribly bad liar, considering she has been watching the family's movements for days and would know full well a more convincing story would have something to do with their garden catalog. Of course, she could've been doing so on purpose, since she's completely aware of why Coraline came back to the Other World after she had just escaped a few moments ago.
• Bad People Abuse Animals: While on the loose, the Other Mother's severed hand injures Hamish, one of Miss Spink and Forcible's Scottie dogs, and leaves a deep cut in his side.
• Big Bad: The Other Mother plays this role to Coraline because she wants to keep Coraline in the Other World no matter what, even if it means playing dirty.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: She looks and acts like the perfect mom. She's also an Ax-Crazy psychopath who collects and manipulates children, keeping up the perfect mom facade until she gets them to have buttons sewn into their eyes, eventually gets bored or frustrated with them, and eats their bodies just to relieve her annoyance.
• Black Eyes of Evil: The trait she shares with all Other World inhabitants. It's the first indicator that the Other Mother, and her world for that matter, aren't all they seem.
• Blonde, Brunette, Redhead: The Brunette to the Other Miss Forcible's Blonde and the Other Miss Spink's Redhead.
• Bond Villain Stupidity: She agrees to Coraline's terms of finding her parents and the ghost souls instead of keeping her by force, and spends time gloating at Coraline's bluff, giving Coraline enough time to escape through her trick.
• Character Tics: When the prospect of a game comes up, the Other Mother's eyes flash and she drums her fingers in anticipation.
• Cheaters Never Prosper: During the search for the three ghost eyes/souls, the Other Mother does everything in her power to keep Coraline from winning, whether it's sending a strong gust of wind to slow her down (in the book), or literally deconstructing the Other World and its inhabitants to keep the ghost eyes away from her (in the film). Either way, she loses in the end, even though she planned to go back on her word if Coraline won.
  Sweet Ghost Girl (to Coraline): Be clever, miss. Even if you win, she'll never let you go.
• Child Eater: In the film, the Other Mother lures children to the Other World so she can sustain herself by eating their flesh before trapping their souls.
• Creating Life: She can make people out of things.
• Creative Sterility: She can't actually create anything, but can only copy, twist, and change what already exists (in other words, what she already has on hand), hence why there's nothing beyond the garden in her world. It becomes a plot point in the novel when Coraline notices a snow globe on the mantle, which isn't there in the real world. It's where her parents are being held. In the film, this is used to a disturbing Cinderella-like effect where all of her creations devolve into that from that which they were made, including rats and pumpkins.
• Cycle of Revenge: She pulls off a very subtle one. In the film, Coraline burns the doll, which acts as her spy in the real world. So she returns the favor by burning the magic stone, which aids Coraline in the Other World.
• Deal with the Devil: Her method for taking children plays out very much like this, with the sacrifice being eyes for buttons and a promised happy life, which is, of course, all a lie. The movie plays this up by making the act of losing your eyes very much like selling your soul, as Coraline is not collecting the victim's souls like in the book, but their eyes.
• Deliberately Monochrome: Her final form is almost entirely colorless, with her dress only having slight brown tones as if having aged.
• Determinator: She absolutely will NOT stop in her goal to sew buttons into Coraline's eyes and keep her in the Other World. She would give the Terminator a run for its money. Even when her vile presence in Coraline's world is nothing more than a severed hand, she will NEVER EVER STOP. She'll drag the girl, screaming, kicking, and choking, all the way back to her world.
• Dies Differently in Adaptation: In both versions, the Other Mother sends out her severed right hand into the real world as a last-ditch attempt to get the key back from Coraline. In the book, Coraline sets a trap for the hand that ends with it falling into the well, while in the movie, Coraline and Wybie smash it to bits with a heavy rock and then chuck the pieces into the well.
• Dimension Lord: She rules the Other World, which she either created or found.
• Disney Villain Death: In the book, Coraline gets rid of the Other Mother's hand, which is the last remaining part of her, by tricking it into falling into a very deep well.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: Her behavior has all the symbolic hallmarks of a Psychopathic Manchild.
  • She creates fantastical worlds filled with living beings, talking animals, and magical toys. Young children often have wild imaginations and create elaborate fantasies to escape from the real world (or just for entertainment).
  • She invites children into her dimension with games and treats, then discards them and locks their spirits in a closet after sucking out their souls — just like a child who carelessly discards their toys when they get bored of playing with them or puts away toys they've grown out of, only her "toys" are living children.
  • She likes to play games, and strikes a deal with Coraline where the Other Mother will let her sew buttons into her eyes if she loses, but has a complete Villainous Breakdown when Coraline is able to trick her and escape the Other World, like a child who throws a tantrum when they don't get what they want.
  • The fact that she views Coraline as nothing more than a toy or a pet and becomes enraged with her whenever she shows even the slightest hint of defiance is similar to the parenting of an abusive narcissistic mother.
  • Her begging for Coraline not to leave, claiming that she will die without her, is a common tactic used by abusers to guilt trip their victims into staying with them. Although in the case of the Other Mother, the plea might be genuine since children seem to be her source of sustenance.
• Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette: In the novel, she's shown to have paper-white skin which stands against her black hair... that moves by itself. In the film, her true form has cracked, porcelain skin, which stands out even more against her black hair.
• Eldritch Abomination: She's a creature of vaguely defined origins whose true nature is not entirely clear and which has its own Pocket Dimension wherein it has Reality Warper powers. This comes full circle once her true form is revealed — in the movie, a skeletal spider-like monstrosity with cracked porcelain bones and hands made of sewing needles.
• Evil Counterpart: Of Coraline's mother. Or any child's mother (depending on who she's targeting at the moment). Let the horror sink in for a moment.
• Evil Genius: She's very intelligent, using children's innocence to lure them into her world while she creates for them things she knows will impress them so much, they'll want to stay with her... forever.
• Evil Is Petty: She REALLY doesn't take rejection well.
• Evil Is Sterile: She cannot create anything new, and can only twist, copy, and distort things that already exist.
• Evil Matriarch: She takes the form of the mother of the children she lures in to earn their trust and then sews buttons into their eyes and makes them stay with her until she throws them away.
• Expy: Her film equivalent's spider-like true form, her shapeshifting powers, and her modus operandi of luring children in with their hearts' desire only to devour them are reminiscent of Pennywise from Stephen King's It and is likely based off the Stringy-Haired Ghost Girl genre.
• Extreme Omnivore: Eats kids and bugs.
• Eye Scream: During the final confrontation, she ends up getting her button eyes clawed off by the cat, blinding her.
• Facial Horror: In the movie, her final form has a porcelain face covered with cracks. And that's before the cat claws her button eyes off.
• The Fair Folk: In the book, the Other Mother is implied to be some sort of fairy. Her other name, "Beldam", is also used to refer to creatures of fairy. Horrifyingly, the book implies that even other fairies aren't immune to her charms, as one of her past victims was a fairy.
• Fair-Weather Friend: She only loves the children she lures into her world for so long, seeing them as nothing more than collectibles or possessions, imprisoning their souls when she grows bored of them.
• Fatal Flaw:
  • Her love for games. She actually lets Coraline collect the ghost eyes just to have some fun.
  • Her need to gloat over her victory when Coraline bluffs that her parents are behind the door between worlds at The Climax is what leads to her opening the door for Coraline, in essence engineering her escape.
• Fattening the Victim: She possibly partakes in this towards Coraline, if all the delicious and fattening foods the Beldam cooks for her and the fact that the Beldam eats kids' bodies when she tires of them are taken into account. There's also a moment after the Beldam reveals her true arachnoid form that she squeezes Coraline's face and then releases it with a mildly disgusted look, most likely out of frustration and disappointment that Coraline isn't plump enough. Not that she would have much of a preference by the time Coraline drops in.
• Faux Affably Evil: In the film, she seems like the perfect loving mother, until she tricks children into letting her sew buttons into their eyes, and then proceeds to eat their lives. In the book, she tries to be this, but the facade is immediately obvious to Coraline.
• Femme Fatalons: She's stated to have extremely long, twitchy fingers with long dark red nails in the novel. Her gradual Glamour Failure during the second half of the film includes long, sharp, blood-red nails. They eventually turn into sewing needles when she hits One-Winged Angel.
• Final Boss: The Other Mother is the final foe Coraline must face before she and her parents are able to leave the Other World. Her severed hand serves as a Post-Final Boss for Coraline and Wybie in the real world.
• Foreshadowing: One of the first hints at her true nature is when she suggests to Coraline they play a game after dinner and the camera pans to her (seemingly excitedly at first) drumming her fingers, implying she's slowly growing bored of putting on the kind mother act and wants to get on with her real plans.
• Game Face: She starts off greatly resembling Coraline's mother (albeit with button eyes), but as she shows her true colors she starts to look quite terrifying.
• Giant Spider: The Other Mother's "true" form ends up evoking this in the film. The final form of the Other World is even a giant web that she crouches in like a real spider.
• Glamour Failure: As her powers fade, she slowly loses the ability to maintain her human guise. By the time Coraline is on the verge of winning their game, her strength is so little that she can no longer maintain the rest of the Other World and is reduced to her true, spider-like form.
• Hartman Hips: She is a near-identical copy of Coraline's mother (albeit an idealized version), so it's a given.
• Helping Hands: Her severed hand spider-crawls its way towards retrieving the key to the Other World, and would have taken it from Coraline if not for Wybie showing up to save her in the movie or Coraline's own ingenious trap in the book.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Several of her own efforts to trap Coraline end up allowing her to escape in the end. She created the Other Father and Other Wybie too well, their love for Coraline making them turn traitor, and the Other Father hands one of the ghost eyes over to Coraline. Coraline also wouldn't have known the usefulness of the stone she was given had the Other Mother's minions not attempted to steal it. The Other Mother's intense love for games also allows Coraline a fighting chance when she very likely could have kept her by force at that point.
• Hot Witch: Her human form resembles an idealized version of Coraline's mother, who is already quite pretty, and the Other Mother wears more glamorous outfits. This is later averted once she stops trying to hold up the enticing facade and transforms into her Giant Spider form.
• Hungry Menace: She's made into one in the film adaptation, with the intent of feeding on her victims' flesh.
• Hypocrite: She claims she loves children and wants them to be happy, but it's clear that she just loves them as possessions. To say nothing of her Moral Myopia in the movie when her prey fights back.
• I Lied: Coraline eventually realizes (and the ghost children warn her) that even if she wins the game, the Beldam would never let her go. Thankfully, Coraline figures out a way to use the game to escape before the Other Mother can say this.
• Karmic Death: Implied to be her ultimate fate after Coraline escapes her clutches and disposes of the key so that she'll be permanently trapped in the Other World. The movie drops multiple hints that the Beldam is already close to dying of starvation, including but not limited to her screaming during her Villainous Breakdown's crescendo that she'll die without Coraline. Trapped in the very same fake dimension where she entrapped her child victims in life and death, it's safe to presume that without her next meal, the Beldam will starve to death (a fitting fate for a monster who literally ate children); alone and in misery just like the ghost children were for decades.
• Laser-Guided Karma: The Cat claws her button eyes out — fitting, considering that she sewed buttons into the eyes of children before devouring their lives and trapping their souls.
• Lean and Mean: In the film, once her enticing behavior toward Coraline switches to forceful antagonism, she lets her disguise slip and becomes a grotesquely spindly caricature of a woman. Later still, she becomes mostly skeletal, but then, she's hunched over and less vertically imposing.
• Living Doll Collector: She keeps children she's lured into her Other World as living dolls, sewing buttons onto their eyes. As they pass away she takes all of their happiness and joy, leaving them as nothing but ghosts. Creepy.
• Looks Like Cesare: She starts off looking like Coraline's real mother (except for the lack of a neck brace and having black buttons for eyes). Over the course of the film, however, she switches from her real-world counterpart's sweater and pants to darker colors. When Coraline starts to defy her, the Other Mother shifts to a less human form, becoming taller and more skeletal and exaggerated with sunken eyes, and in the film's climax, her true form is shown with a mechanical/spider-like appearance with white, cracked-porcelain skin and hands made of sewing needles.
• Loophole Abuse: Done very subtly, but she leaves Coraline before the two can shake on the bargain to release her parents. Given her implied fae nature, this implies that had she sealed the deal with a handshake, she would have been bound to follow it, and thus she left to allow herself to break the promise.
• Manipulative Bitch: She uses children's deepest wishes and desires to get them to do what she wants.
• Meaningful Name: Her title as "the Beldam" invokes John Keats's poem La Belle Dame sans Merci (The Beautiful Woman Without Mercy), which is also about a cruel fairy woman who carries people away.
• Minor Insult Meltdown: Becoming increasingly overbearing towards Coraline, she starts to address herself as the girl's "mother" and the Other Father as "your better father". When Coraline comes to her senses, denouncing her as not being her real mother, boy does she flip out.
• Moral Myopia: Twofold, as shown when her Villainous Breakdown is one octave away from its zenith. She screams that Coraline is a "cheating girl" for bending and defying the rules of the game to achieve her goal, even though the Other Mother herself refused to play fair and would have outright gone back on the deal the game was founded on if Coraline had won fairly. She also calls Coraline a "selfish brat" for acting out of self-preservation to fatally harm the Other Mother, which is exactly what the Other Mother was trying to do to Coraline first — not to mention that the Other Mother is completely self-serving throughout, unlike Coraline who is driven to save her parents just as much as herself, making the word "selfish" apply much more aptly to the Beldam.
• My Beloved Smother: She lures children into her world by pretending to be the perfect mother, in order to then trick them into letting her sew buttons onto their eyes so they can essentially become her toys until she grows bored of them and throws them away (in the book at least — in the film, she's implied to be a predator who intends to devour the children's lives from the get-go to sustain herself).
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: She makes the Other Father and the Other Wybie too well. They love Coraline, just as they're meant to, and don't want to see any harm come to her, regardless if she instructs them to. They actively resist their creator even at the cost of their own lives. The Other Mother's love of games also leads her to indulge Coraline's claim that her parents are hidden behind the door to the Passage Between Worlds by unlocking said door; this not only allows Coraline to escape with her parents and the ghost eyes, but she also grabs the key and locks both doors leading to the passage, causing the Other Mother to eventually starve to death in the Other World after her severed hand fails to retrieve the key from Coraline in the real world.
• Normal Fish in a Tiny Pond: Disturbingly, the book and, to a lesser extent, film imply that the Other Mother is not particularly remarkable in terms of her magic or malice: the Cat can weave his way around her realm as a sort of game. The Passage Between Worlds slowly reveals itself to be something far older, stronger, and hungrier than her. It's doesn't help that, by the time Coraline enters her web, the Other Mother has become so weak that she has to entrap Coraline or risk death by starvation. Ultimately, her own fragility may be precisely why she targets the weakest prey in gullible, lonely children.
• Nothing Is Scarier: While her final form in the film is implied to be her truest, it's not completely clear if she's still reflecting Mel to some degree, making her true, unaffected appearance vague. The only thing we know is really part of her natural appearance are her hands.
• Offscreen Teleportation: She does this a few times, most noticeably when she vanishes after she and Coraline establish the conditions of their game.
• One Bad Mother: She's known as the Other Mother, and it's made creepier when the Other Father refers to her as "mother" too.
• One-Winged Angel: Over the course of the movie, the Other Mother progressively gets more monstrous. She starts as a copy of Coraline's real mother, then gets thinner, spindlier, and overall wicked-looking. By the end of the movie, she reveals her true form: a giant, spindly spider-human hybrid with cracked porcelain skin and hands with claws made of sewing needles. In the novel, the Other Mother is stated to be huge to the point where her head barely brushes the living room ceiling, with her skin as pale as "a spider’s belly", her hair writhing and twining all over her head like snakes, and her teeth being sharp as knives.
• Parental Substitute: Subverted. She sets herself up to the children she targets as a better, more indulgent and idyllic version of their real mothers in order to lure them into her world... and once she has them firmly in her claws, she feasts on their souls and disposes of what's left.
• Please, Don't Leave Me: Played for horror. She screams this at Coraline when she escapes the Other World for the last time, howling that "I'LL DIE WITHOUT YOU!".
• Powered by a Forsaken Child: Implied. When Coraline retrieves the ghost children's eyes, the creations in the Other World surrounding them begin to rapidly deteriorate, as if the eyes themselves were some sort of magic source holding them together.
• Psychopathic Womanchild: While she's crafty and cunning, ultimately she's just a Spoiled Brat who can't accept it when she doesn't get what she wants.
• Red and Black and Evil All Over: From Coraline's second visit through the agreement on the game, the Other Mother wears black outfits with red accents, like a black widow spider.
• Satanic Archetype: A charming, powerful, and completely evil being who rules over her own world, enjoys making deals with mortals, uses temptations to lead souls astray to eternal entrapment within her realm, and is creatively sterile; able only to copy and mock what already exists rather than creating something truly original. Yep, she fits.
• Self-Made Orphan: Semi-subverted in the book, where she claims to have sent her own mother to the grave, "And when I caught her trying to crawl out, I put her back in". Her mother perhaps isn't exactly dead, but she might as well be.
• Serial Killer: The Beldam's modus operandi involves manipulating the appearance of the Other World in order to lure children in and convince them to stay forever by sewing buttons into their eyes. Once she succeeds, she proceeds to devour said children, reducing them to ghosts trapped in her domain. She ate at least three children before Coraline and would've done the same thing to her had the Other Mother's previous victims not aided Coraline in her escape.
• Stringy-Haired Ghost Girl: Her true form, while not a ghost, is certainly a disturbing Eldritch Abomination of some sort, and has stringy black hair.
• The Sociopath: She pretends to be a loving mother when she actually wishes to suck the life out of children and sew buttons in their eyes so she can devour their lives.
• Sore Loser: In the book, after Coraline finds the first soul, she summons a strong wind — indoors — to slow her down. In the movie, she pulls every trick in the book to prevent Coraline from acquiring the ghost eyes, and has a meltdown when she's losing. She also has no intention of letting Coraline go, whether she wins or not.
• Spell My Name with a "The": Both her monikers have a "the" in them.
• Stepford Smiler: One evil, twisted mind hides behind that motherly smile.
• Shout-Out: The egg she makes Coraline before she starts her final battle is in the shape of another famous stop-motion character, one from The Nightmare Before Christmas. The scene where Coraline climbs up her spiderweb and is chased by her is highly reminiscent of a scene from The Ring Two where the Final Girl (Rachel) climbs up the well to escape Samara, who is coincidentally similar with the Beldam in some ways, as they are both connected with being in wells (the Beldam is never seen coming out of a well, but part of her does fall into one at the end).
• Supreme Chef: The food she cooks tastes a lot better than anything Coraline's parents make. Given her true intentions, she may be doing this for the purpose of Fattening the Victim.
• Villainous Breakdown: From the time Coraline angers her and incurs her Glamour Failure, she begins to slip into this. By the end, she's gone from an idealized version of Coraline's real mother (albeit with a paper-thin mask) to either a monster that resembles a spider made of porcelain and sewing needles in the movie, or a giant, haggardly, old witch with pale skin, snake-like hair, and knife-sharp teeth, barely able to conceal her anger in the book.
• Walking Spoiler: Yeah, it's really impossible to discuss her without giving away the fact that she is extremely evil, something that is not immediately obvious when she is first encountered.
• Wanting Is Better Than Having: The whole driving force behind the Other Mother's actions. When she finally gets her collection of children to stay with her forever, she quickly gets bored or frustrated and casts their souls aside into the room behind the hallway mirror before seeking out the next child.
• Wicked Witch: "Beldam" is an archaic word for "witch" (or, according to some legends, refers to a supernatural creature created by God to guard the forests) and she certainly has the witch-like powers to back it up. She's also incredibly evil. Coraline even calls her "evil witch" at one point. Finally, her modus operandi is almost identical to that of the archetypal witch from Hansel and Gretel: lure children starved for something (affection, in lieu of food) into a location that calls to their desires (a more welcoming replica of their home, in lieu of the traditional Gingerbread House) and shower them with false love, whilst in reality preparing them to be devoured.
• Would Hurt a Child: She eats children alive, after she's sewed buttons over their eye sockets. In the real world, her severed hand also attempts to make Wybie fall down the well when he comes to Coraline's rescue, and would've attacked Coraline herself if Wybie didn't smash it to bits with a rock.
• Your Soul Is Mine!: The souls of the long-dead children she previously devoured remain trapped in the Other World, in a dank room behind a hallway mirror after she's done with them. It's heavily implied that the function of buttons being sewn into the children's eyes is giving the Other Mother a full stake on their soul.

The Other Father

"All will be swell, soon as Mother's refreshed. Her strength is our strength."

Voiced By: John Hodgman (speaking), John Linnell (singing)

A creation of the Other Mother, the Other Father is used to help trick Coraline into staying in the Other Mother's world. Well, at first...

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• Adaptation Species Change: In the book, he turns out to have been a worm that the Other Mother turned into a human. In the movie, he's a garden pumpkin brought to life.
• Anti-Villain: In truth, he is actually one of the Other Mother's copies of real-world people, and really doesn't want to attack Coraline.
• Body Horror: He turns out to be made from a pumpkin in the garden, and as the Other Mother's powers begin to wane, he begins changing back into one.
• The Dragon: To the Other Mother, as he is her largest and strongest henchman. He is later revealed to be a Dragon with an Agenda; he was created by the Other Mother/the Beldam as part of her plan to lure Coraline into becoming another doll in her collection, but this backfires once it becomes clear that the Other Father has been a double agent all along, trying to hint at the true nature of the Other World right from the get-go.
• Domestic Abuse: Somewhat. While he's the Beldam's husband in name only (given that she created him), the fact that he's a stand-in for Coraline's father and that his "wife" tends to take out her frustration on him makes his situation this trope.
• Double Agent: While the Other Father is a creation of the Other Mother, in the movie he is on Coraline's side throughout most of her time in the Other World, as he implies in his song to Coraline: She's a pal of mine... This is because his sole purpose is to love Coraline. The Other Father even tries to warn Coraline to leave the Other World and never return through his song, lest she winds up like the three ghost children before her.
• Dying Moment of Awesome: His Heroic Sacrifice, particularly since, of all of the Other World residents, he seems to be the most visibly terrified of the Beldam.
• Extreme Doormat: As much as he would like to help Coraline, he can't stand up against the Other Mother.
• Gone Horribly Right: A heroic example, as he was made to love Coraline in order to tempt her into staying. That love turns into a need to protect Coraline from the Other Mother, and he attempts to do this by warning her through his song. In the end, he is forced to attack Coraline, but (in the movie, anyway) he rebels in any way he can through the whole thing, and he gives her the first ghost eye before drowning in the pond.
• The Grotesque: His face and voice become horribly distorted as the Other Mother's power fades. "He pulled a looong face, and Mother didn't like it." This is before he starts turning back into a pumpkin.
• Henpecked Husband: He's a creation of the Other Mother, and is really nothing but a literal slave to his "wife". In the film, at least, he even rides around on a giant mechanical praying mantis to ramp up the symbolism^note recall what female mantises are known to do to their mates once they're done with them....
• I'm Dying, Please Take My MacGuffin: A ghost eye powers the garden and him, so to remove it is to kill both. He gives it to Coraline anyway.
• Minion with an F in Evil: What happens when you create someone solely to love someone else: they'll love that person too much to let something horrible happen to them, even at their own expense.
• Noble Top Enforcer: For the Other Mother, as he was made to love Coraline and is entirely affable. This ends up biting her in the ass when the "Top Enforcer" part of the trope starts being softened, as his love is so deep that he acts as a genuine ally to Coraline as much as he can, but the Top Enforcer is entirely toppled by the point Coraline chooses to fight the Beldam, as he's only the first obstacle in Coraline's way, and he himself states that the Other Mother is making him attack her.
• Punch-Clock Villain: He does care about Coraline, and he only acts as an antagonist when the Other Mother forces him to.
• Saying Too Much: He drops increasingly obvious hints that something is wrong with the Other World throughout the movie while everything in it tries to shut him up. In the end, he's reduced to barely intelligible moaning as punishment for his efforts.
• Slaying Mantis: Double subverted. In the film, he rides a tractor made to look like a giant clockwork mantis around the garden, which is played up as something super whimsical. Later, the Other Mother straps him to the thing and forces him to attack Coraline with it.
• Stealth Mentor: In both the book and film, he drops multiple hints to Coraline that the Other World isn't all that it seems.
  Other Father: (singing) Making up a song about Coraline / She's a peach, she's a doll, she's a pal of mine...
  Other Father: (when Coraline is refusing to have buttons sewn into her eyes) So sharp, you won't feel a thing...
• Stealth Pun: "Pumpkin" is a common pet name, and what he turns into at the end of the movie.
• Stepford Smiler: A scene in the film implies that he's one of these, as Coraline discovers him in a forlorn and distraught state when he's not "on duty" as her father.
• Tragic Monster: He doesn't want to hurt Coraline, but the Other Mother is more powerful than him. As her power fades, he slowly melts into more of a giant worm (book) or pumpkin (film) thing, and is forced to attack Coraline against his will.

The Other Wybie

Voiced By: N/A

In the Other World, the Other Wybie is mute, but undyingly loyal to Coraline.

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• Big Damn Hero: During Coraline's third trip to the Other World, the Other Wybie rescues her from the mirror room she was thrown into and helps her get through the passage to the real world. On Coraline's fourth trip, he is already dead.
• Canon Foreigner: Like the real Wybie, Other Wybie only exists in the film version.
• Creepy Child: The fact that he can't speak makes him rather creepy. His unchanging smile makes it even worse.
• Cute Mute: The Other Mother took away his ability to speak, since Coraline disliked the Motor Mouth on the real Wybie.
• Dead Guy on Display: Or rather, Dead Guy's Clothes On Display, since the Other Mother (presumably) destroys his body. As Coraline is looking for the ghost children's souls, she finds that the Other Mother hung his clothes up like a flag in order to demoralize her.
• Death of a Child: Played with — the Other Mother kills him, but he's not actually a child; he's just an artificial creature.
• Glasgow Grin: Played with. The Other Mother forces him to smile all the time to keep up the facade, and when she sees him sullen about his role, she forcibly stitches his mouth into a grin with some crude lacing.
• Heroic Sacrifice: He rescues Coraline from the room behind the mirror, despite knowing that the Other Mother will kill him for it.
• Killed Offscreen: He rescues Coraline and helps her escape from the Other Mother. When Coraline returns, he is already dead.
• Minion with an F in Evil: What happens when you create someone solely to love someone else? They'll love that person too much to let something horrible happen to them, even at their own expense.
• Non-Human Sidekick: He acts as a sidekick and playmate to Coraline when she comes to play in the Other World. Since he's a creation of the Other Mother, he qualifies as this.
• Punch-Clock Villain: Like most other characters in the Other World, he is a slave to the Other Mother, but otherwise he tries to help Coraline as much as he can.
• Ship Tease: He gets a lot of this with Coraline, as he tosses a rose to her during the Other Miss Spink and Other Miss Forcible's trapeze act show, and is protective of her when threatened by the Other Mother and sacrifices himself so that Coraline could live and escape.
• The Speechless: The Other Mother took away his voice so that Coraline would like him better.
• Stepford Smiler: He's of the Depressed type, played as straight as possible. He never smiles and is always frowning. He eventually gets a smile sewed onto his face when the Other Mother catches him being sullen about his role.
• Token Good Teammate: Whereas the Other Father is somewhat conflicted, the Other Wybie has always been on Coraline's side.
• Tragic Monster: Like the Other Father, he doesn't want to see harm come to Coraline, but he can't openly defy the Other Mother; she's his creator. He helps Coraline escape anyway, and the Other Mother kills him for his trouble.

The Other Miss Spink

Voiced By: Jennifer Saunders

The Other World version of Miss Spink. In the Other World (along with Miss Forcible), she is young, pretty, and performs continuously in front of many different dogs, who, in the Other World, are anthropomorphic.

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• Bawdy Song: "Sirens of the Sea", a song full of jokes about her stealing people's hearts away and having large breasts, which she sings in the film with the Other Miss Forcible when Coraline first meets her.
• Blonde, Brunette, Redhead: The Redhead to the Other Miss Forcible's Blonde and the Other Mother's Brunette.
• Body Horror: Once Coraline goes to get the ghost children's eyes, she and the Other Miss Forcible appear as a conjoined taffy monstrosity. This is a less fleshy elaboration on the book, where their bodies melt together inside a cocoon; here, they become braided candy hanging in a giant sweet wrapper.
• Color-Coded for Your Convenience: She shares the green color association with the real April Spink's outfits, and eventually plays this trope as straight as possible when she and the Other Forcible become identical taffy monsters twisted together.
• Evil Redhead: She retains her real-world counterpart's red hair, but is working for the Other Mother.
• Fan Disservice: An overweight old lady does not make for a very alluring mermaid -- I mean siren.
• Fanservice: Her younger Other self is quite attractive and a trapeze artist.
• Hartman Hips: The young Other Miss Spink has bigger hips than breasts, while the Young Miss Forcible has slightly larger breasts than hips.
• Impossible Hourglass Figure: As a young trapeze artist, though not to the extent of Miss Forcible.
• Redhead In Green: Just like her real-world counterpart, she has red hair and always dresses in green.
• Sirens Are Mermaids: During the show she and the Other Miss Forcible put on for Coraline, the Other Miss Spink dresses as a mermaid during on stage, but calls herself "the siren of all seven seas."
• Vitriolic Best Buds: With the Other Miss Forcible — both argue like their normal-world counterparts, but they're always seen together.

The Other Miss Forcible

Voiced By: Dawn French

The Other World version of Miss Forcible. In the Other World (along with Miss Spink), she is young, pretty, and performs continuously in front of many different dogs, who, in the Other World, are anthropomorphic.

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• Art Imitates Art: She dresses as the Birth of Venus for the show she and the Other Miss Spink put on for Coraline i the movie.
• Bawdy Song: "Sirens of the Sea", which she sings with the Other Miss Spink when Coraline first meets her. Her verse has jokes about her being "big-bottomed" and berating Miss Spink for being "too large in the chest".
• Blonde, Brunette, Redhead: The Blonde to the Other Mother's Brunette and the Other Miss Spink's Redhead.
• Body Horror: Once they begin turning back into taffy, she and the Other Miss Spink degenerate into a conjoined, twisted-together monstrosity. In the book, their bodies melt together into a horrible spidery abomination.
• The Burlesque of Venus: Her half of "Sirens of the Sea" sees her posed as Venus. Her being old and out of shape lands this firmly in Fan Disservice.
• Buxom Beauty Standard: Seems to believe in this trope, seeing as her part in "Sirens of the Sea" is basically about being on the "boobs" side of the "butts vs. boobs" debate.
• Color-Coded for Your Convenience: Pink, per the real Forcible's apparel, and like her partner, this is what makes her identifiable in her final form.
• Fan Disservice: Let's just say an old lady with giant boobs doesn't make for the best Birth of Venus model.
• Fanservice: Her younger Other self is quite an attractive young woman and a trapeze artist.
• Impossible Hourglass Figure: As a young trapeze artist.
• Pink Means Feminine: Like her real-world counterpart, she's often shown wearing pink.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: With the Other Miss Spink — just like in reality, they argue a lot but are always seen together.

The Other Mr. Bobo/Bobinsky

Voiced By: Ian McShane

The Other World version of Mr. Bobo/Bobinsky; in the Other World, he trains rats as part of a rat circus and is in fact made of rats.

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• Ambiguous Situation: His withered and unwholesome appearance during the Other Mother's game. When Coraline accuses him of being merely a copy of Mr. Bobinsky, The Worm That Walks responds, "Not even that, anymore," before collapsing into a pile of shrieking rats, suggesting a change in his very existence of some kind. Was Mr. Bobo ever a discrete individual, or was he just a pretense of the rats the whole time? If he was a discrete individual, did the rats Kill and Replace him with an inferior copy, or was he undergoing the same withering that caused the Other Father to revert back to pumpkin form?
• The Brute: He's the largest of the Other Mother's servants, and the most physically strong.
• Devoured by the Horde: It's widely speculated, but unconfirmed, that his rat circus ate him and assumed his body on the Beldam's orders. Assuming he wasn't a horde of rats in a human-shaped suit all along, of course.
• Dying Vocal Change: His voice begins to break down into multiple voices as he loses his grip on a human shape, the Bobinsky identity apparently collapsing along with his body.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: Sort of. In the end, he still tries to convince Coraline to stay, even though there's pretty much no chance of her accepting, and outright says he can't understand why she would want to leave.
• Five-Second Foreshadowing: Right before The Reveal that he's been reduced to a swarm of rats, the Other Mr. B briefly poses himself in a manner resembling that of a rodent, complete with his coat forming a "tail".
• Minion with an F in Evil: Much like the other creations of the Beldam, he exists only to entertain Coraline and knows of no other purpose beyond that.
• Punch-Clock Villain: He's not maliciously trying to lure Coraline to her doom, he's just doing what he was created to do: put on a show to entertain her.
• Tragic Monster:
  Coraline: You're just a copy she made of the real Mr B.
  Other Bobinsky: Not even that anymore.
• Voice of the Legion: Implied to be a result of being composed of many rats. It's the first clue that there is something very wrong with Other Bobinsky.
• The Worm That Walks: In the movie, at the end of his performance, all of the mice (rats in disguise) hop into his costume. The second time around, Other Bobinsky is revealed to be only made of rats. It's unclear whether he was all rats the whole time, or whether he was eaten by the rats and they assumed his body and identity.

The Ghost Children

Voiced By: Aankha Neal (Sweet Ghost Girl), George Selick (Ghost Boy), Hannah Kaiser (Tall Ghost Girl)

A trio of children who were previous victims of the Other Mother: two girls and one boy.

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• Adaptation Species Change: In the book, one of the girls is a fairy. In the movie, they are all normal children that the Other Mother stole away.
• Ambiguous Gender: In the book, one of the ghosts has been dead so long they can't remember their gender, complicated by the fact they were born back when little boys wore dresses and had long hair until a certain age.
• Bizarre Taste in Food: In the book, the fairy ghost girl eats flowers instead of regular food.
• Creepy Child: Mostly due to dying in torment and having buttons for eyes, as they're pretty sweet otherwise.
• Creepy Good: They just want to move on, not hurt anyone, despite their somewhat freaky appearances.
• Died Happily Ever After: Thanks to Coraline retrieving their eyes or souls and taking them to the real world, they can pass on to the afterlife.
• Don't Celebrate Just Yet: After the three pass on, they warn Coraline she's still in danger. The Beldam lives and means to take her life, and so long as the key to the door between worlds can be found, the Beldam will find it. Thanks to them, Coraline realizes she must get rid of it somewhere the Other Mother can never recover it from. The Cat gives a meaningful look over to the disused well.
• Extreme Omnivore: In the book, the winged girl eats flowers.
• Flower Motif: In the book, the ghost boy's clearest memory is of the red, orange, and yellow tulips in the garden that he used to play in when he was alive. His soul marble is a bright, fiery reddish-orange, like the tulips or perhaps an ember in a nursery fireplace.
• Fate Worse than Death: They each accepted the Beldam's offer to stay with her. They aren't even able to die properly.
• Ghost Amnesia: They don't remember their names anymore.
• Jacob Marley Warning: They exist to warn Coraline of the fate she will suffer if she lets the Other Mother sew buttons into her eyes just like they did.
• Monochrome Apparition: In the film, they appear as pale blue-green ghosts, and later as bronze-colored angels.
• Mysterious Past: They don't remember their names or the names of their loved ones, and have difficulty recalling memories from their past lives. The ghost boy may have come from a well-to-do family, since he had a governess.
• Our Fairies Are Different: The picnic scene in the book reveals that one of the girls was a fairy in her past life, as she only eats flowers and has wings.
• Related in the Adaptation: In the movie, one of the ghosts, the "sweet ghost girl" (who was possibly the last victim before Coraline) was revealed to be the missing twin sister of Mrs Lovat, Wybie's grandmother and the landlady of the Pink Palace.
• Soul Power: After buttons were sewn into their eyes, the Other Mother ate up their lives and bound their spirits to her domain. Their eyes are now hidden in plain sight and serve as power sources to amplify her realm and make it even more enticing. When Coraline recovers them, the Other World starts to crumble.
  "Her web is unwinding!"
• Supernatural Floating Hair: In the film, all three have this to a degree, and it's clearest with the tall ghost girl.
• Trademark Favorite Food: In the book, each of them enjoys different food at the picnic in Coraline's dream. The boy tucks into boiled potatoes and cooked trout, the girl eats slices of bread spread with jam, and the fairy girl enjoys a plate piled high with flowers.
• Trapped in Another World: Since they let the Other Mother sew buttons onto their eyes, they can't leave the Other World even after death.
• Undead Child: They're ghost children.
• Verbal Tic: The tall ghost girl pictured to the left often calls Coraline "girl." The little boy ghost calls her "miss".
  "Hurry on, girl!"
  "You're in terrible danger, girl!"
  • In the film, the boy ghost calls Coraline "mistress", while the sweet ghost girl^note Gramma Lovat's missing sister calls her "miss".
• Winged Humanoid: The fairy ghost girl has wings in the book.

The Passage Between Worlds

The mysterious passage between worlds which Coraline uses to travel between the real world and the Other World. In the book, it's shown to be alive in some form; the movie doesn't lean into this as much, but it's still somewhat implied.

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• Adaptational Abomination: Inverted in the film, where the passage isn't its own entity, but rather an extension of the Other World. It's still implied to be alive, though.
• Alien Geometries: Its length varies wildly on different visits, seemingly depending on Coraline's emotional state. When she enters the Other World willingly, the passage is short and not very problematic. When she's attempting to escape, it becomes much longer and slants uphill as if trying to stop her from leaving. In the movie, the Other Mother's pounding on the door to the Other World shortens the passage with each blow.
• Arc Words: The book consistently refers to the passage as something "deep and slow", even as it becomes increasingly strange as the story progresses.
• Cobweb of Disuse: In the film, the Passage goes from glowing blue and purple to Gloomy Gray and covered in cobwebs as the Other World's true nature is revealed.
• Eldritch Abomination: In the book, at least. The passage is a mysterious, "deep and slow" entity of some sort which is even older than the Beldam. Not only can it alter its length and even texture seemingly at will, but it knows when Coraline is travelling inside it. The last time she goes through it, it has downy fur. There are subtle implications of it being alive in the movie, but it's not given as much focus.
• Empathic Environment: In both the book and the movie, the passage's length, appearance, and texture change depending on the situation. This is most notable in the film, where it's bright and inviting at first but quickly deteriorates into a dusty, cobweb-riddled corridor reminiscent of a disused basement crawlspace.
• Genius Loci: The last time Coraline travels through the passage in the book, the narration notes that it knows Coraline is there somehow.
• Greater-Scope Villain: It's far older and vaster than the Other Mother. And though she uses the tunnel to travel between worlds, there's no indication that even she knows what this thing is.
• Time Abyss: Assuming the Other Mother has been wreaking havoc in the Pink Palace for at least 150 years in the movie, and likely more in the book, the passage must be this as it's "older by far".

The Rats

Mr. Bobo/Bobinsky's rats, that work for the Other Mother.

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• No Name Given: The individual rats aren't named.
• Talking Animal: While they don't talk in the movie, in the book, they sing a creepy rhyme.
• Unpleasant Animal Counterpart: They're rats, but when they're pretending to be good, they take the form of mice.
• You Dirty Rat!: Rats that work as the Other Mother's messengers.

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