Characters / Dregg Moriss

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The Grump

Dregg Moriss

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A cynical, hateful, sarcastic, and depressed man with a hatred for the post office. Despite this, he's amazing at his job.

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• Accentuate the Negative: A favorite pasttime of his. He'll find anything to complain about, even if he has to exaggurate the serverity of whatever attracted his ire.
• Accidental Pervert: In the third game, he accidentaly gropes Princess Sarah when rescuing her. Even he apologises.
• The Ace: He's an exceptional detective, even if he's far from an exceptional person.
• Ad Hominem: He likes doing this when describing people, using every negative adjective in the book to describe people he dislikes. He knows lots of words and dislikes lots of people.
• The Alcoholic: He's an incredibly heavy drinker, sometimes even getting drunk on the job.
• Anti-Hero: In early games, he's thoroughly unsympathetic and cold to human emotions. He does his job well and helps catch criminals, though he gives everyone around him a hard time.
• At Least I Admit It: He knows what an unpleasant individual he is, and never tries to deny it, bluntly admitting he has no desire to improve himself or fix his ways.
• Ax-Crazy: Dregg has urges to murder everyone he doesn't like, or convince them to kill themself. Nobody is safe from his hatred.

  Dregg I wonder if I can release the dragon and it will eat the king.

• Badass Boast: He has an amazing one in the second game which he says to Polly.

  Dregg I will show you true depression.

• Badass Normal: He may not have any supernatural powers like Amber but he's a damn good detective and cop who can stand his ground against otherworldly foes and come out on top.
• Bait-and-Switch: He wants to help free The dragon so that he can prove his innocence, then train him to kill all his enemies.
• Being Good Sucks: He's the hero of the series, though part of him really wants to go on a rampage and kill everyone he dislikes. Because of his role as a detective, this is obviously not an option for him.
• Berserk Button: While everything annoys him to an extent, there's a few things that really gets on his nerve.
  • He hates the post office, making it his life's goal to exterminate every single one of them.
  • He hates algebra, merely shuddering at the mention of it.
• Big Damn Heroes: He has his moments.
  • In the second game, he barges into the court to prevent a wrongful conviction from occuring.
  • In the third game, he swoops in on Mr Snuggles and whisks Princess Sarah away from her kidnappers.
• Bigot with a Badge: He Hates Everyone Equally, is extremely misanthropic, yet is tasked with protecting and serving those he despises.
• Big Good: Amazingly, he is this. He does more to help ensure the safety of the people of Rightia than most, being responsible for putting many dangerous criminals behild bars and exposing a myriad of dangerous conspiracies that could very well have destroyed the world.
• Big "WHAT?!": He sometimes does this, which is a given due to his role as a detective investigating shocking and outlandish crimes.
• Black-and-Grey Morality: He has this in spades. He's far from a good person, though the people he locks up are far far worse than he could ever be.
• Black Comedy: A lot of his dialogue falls into this, especially his jokes about suicide.
• Blackmail: In the second game, he steals Polly's locket to force him to allow him to investigate the case.
• Blatant Lies: In the first game, he tries to claim he was held up due to helping an old lady cross the street. Considering the type of person he is, it's obvious that this is a lie.
• Boomerang Bigot: He hates authority in general, having a disdain for the police department and other law enforcent and government officials. These are all pretty hypocritical positions to hold for a police officer heavily connected to government matters.
• Brainy Brunette: He's got light brown hair and is an extremely intelligent man.
• Brutal Honesty: He will say what's on his mind, like it or not.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: He's a fantastic investigator despite being a nihilistic asshole.
• Butt-Monkey: He's the butt of many jokes, subject to many awkward and painful situations, and just an unlucky person in general. It's easier and quicker to list the situations where nothing bad happens than the situations where things go downhill.
• Byronic Hero: He has a hatred of humanity and is generally a jerk to everyone he encounters, yet he still manages to do some good in the world.
• By-the-Book Cop: Amazingly, he happens to be this. Dregg investigates his leads without going off on tangents and collects testimonies and evidence in the standard procedure. While he will fly off the rails outside of his job, he's still a very good police officer.
• Card-Carrying Jerkass: He's well aware of how unpleasant he is, referencing himself as such. He's a deeply flawed person to the core and he's proud of it.
• Catchphrase: You have my permission to die.
• Character Development: As the games go on, he becomes a less unpleasant and more empathetic individual.
• Chicken Joke: Dregg makes a "joke" about a chicken he sees in the third game.

  Dregg Why did the chicken cross the road? Because the king is incompetent.

• Child Hater: In the third game, he's apparently happy that Timmy fell down the well. He also is frequently annoyed by Ina and Mina, exaggurating their negative qualities (though they are pretty awful traits) and treating them as annoyances that his sister has dumped on him. They seem to stick around him because he's an easy target for their shenanigans.
• Cloud Cuckoolander: In spades.
  • In the second game during a flu induced hallucination, he starts envisioning a giant tomato. This causes him to believe God is really a tomato and leads to him being a devout believer of the tomato god.
• Cop Hater: Ironic, seeing as he's a cop himself. It doesn't stop him from despising all the other members of the force and constantly telling them to retire and/or kill themselves.
• Cosmic Plaything: Everyone in the world seems to have it out for him and he constantly finds himself the victim or countless unfortunate circumstances. To him, this just confirms his view that the world sucks.
• Crazy-Prepared: Probably his most impressive skill.
  • In the second game, he has Tride go to court without showering due to The Stoner having the flavor of the cake all over him. He then requests for the cake to be taken, showing that the cake on Tride and the cake itself have changed flavor at some point. This helps entrap Crowal when he incorrectly guesses the cake's texture.
  • In the third game, Dregg makes note of all of Princess Sarah's songs, knowing the kidnapper should be familiar with the one that she was working on before she was kidnapped. This helps expose the kidnapper, due to them falling into the old I Never Said It Was Poison trap. He also requests all the ports and borders be temporarily closed, rightfully guessing that the culprit is already trying to escape. This keeps the boat carrying Sarah stuck in the ocean, helping her be rescued.
• Cruel to Be Kind: He breaks Polly out of his depression by beating the everlasting crap out of him.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Due to being a seasoned detective, he tends to deliever this to people. The first example of this is Polly, who he promptly eviscerates in a debate.
  • Physically, he's on the receiving end of this by Felicia Lionheart, who mistakes him for a criminal.
• The Cynic: He sees no worth in anything, believing life to be utterly pointless. The only thing that drives him is the desire to see people around him become as miserable as him.
• Deadpan Snarker: He is an extremely sardonic man, having a cruel quip prepared for every occasion.
• Death Glare: His default sprite. It takes many, many games for him to show another facial expression.
• Death Seeker: Surprisingly averted. He's so pessimistic he wants to stay alive just to watch the world burn.
• Defective Detective: He has No Social Skills and is a profoundly depressing individual.
• Disney Villain Death: He is pushed off the castle roof by Madam Raven, though he's saved from this fall by Mr Snuggles.
• Disproportionate Retribution: He'll wish the worst on people for the most minor of things. He has a habit of hoping everyone around him dies just because some people happen to get on his nerves.
• Doom Magnet: Whereever he goes, problems seem to follow him. Sometimes, they're not even his fault.
• The Dreaded: Criminals don't like him because he's an extremely good detective and everyone on the right side of justice can't stand being in the same room as him. While he's feared by many, he's equally as respected.
• Drowning My Sorrows: This is his preferred way to deal with his problems in life.
• Dull Eyes of Unhappiness: He has these as his default look.
• The Eeyore: To say he's a bit gloomy is a massive understatement. He may very well be one of the most depressed and miserable characters in any video game in the world. He is so void of positive emotions that his "happiness" solely consists of passive aggression or the desire to watch the world burn.
• Embodiment of Vice: Wrath. While a far less conventional example than most, he's ridiculously aggressive, barely being able to contain his utter disdain for humanity. He's a tiny step from going on a destructive rampage fuelled by his misantropic fury, only prevented from doing so because he doesn't have the means to do such a thing.
• Enraged by Idiocy: He doesn't appreciate stupid witnesses (or stupid people in general,) responding to their outlandish assertions and ideas with annoyance at the very least and utter bewilderment at the most.
• Epic Fail: Some of his wrong answers are so demented or idiotic they have to bee seen to be believed.
• Establishing Character Moment: From his introduction, he's shown as a spiteful and pessimistic individual who hates everyone, even himself. He's snarky, hostile, yet he'll still do his job because he has nothing better to do with his life.
• Everyone Has Standards: Cold hearted bastard he may be, he does have his limits.
  • In the first game, he advises everyone to back off and avoid confronting Eva directly due to how powerful she is. He knows that facing her head on will lead to bloodshed and wants to limit the amount of people hurt.
  • In the third game, even he doesn't want to see Polly kill himself, as much as he hates the man. He's actually the one to break him from his suicidal trance, though not before offering to kill him himself.
  • In the third game, he also apologises after accidentaly touching Princess Sarah in an inappropiate place while trying to rescue her.
  • In the fourth game, he honors Ninja uncle's deal, stating that even he believes in following deals through.
• First-Person Smartass: His notes about characters, evidence, and locations are oozing with snark. Not that he's much more polite when talking to people directly.
• Good Is Not Nice: He may be a skilled detective and police officer, but that doesn't mean he's going to show any kindness or empathy to anyone he comes across.
• Great Detective: He's a phenomonol detective, if not a good person.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: It doesn't take much to set him off over the edge, as everything is a potential Berserk Button for him. You'll know when he loses his cool, as his dialogue oozes with wrath and misanthropy.
• Hates Everyone Equally: He despises anyone with a heartbeat, as well as anyone who doesn't. No exceptions.
• Heel–Face Turn: He slowly becomes a better person, starting to form basic bonds with other while being less hostile in general.
• He Knows Too Much: Happens to him a few times.
  • In the third game, he was almost killed by Madam Raven when he discovered her role in Princess Sarah's kidnapping.
• The Hero: He's this, for want of a better word. He's one of the central characters of the series and he's responsible for an entire police force's worth of impressive feats. Despite all the good things he does, he's a whisker away from being a fully fledged Villain Protagonist.
• Heroic Comedic Sociopath: He constantly tells people to kill themselves, wishes death on people for the pettiest reason, and couldn't care less about helping people unless it benefits him. He's also the main character and hero of the story.
• Hope Crusher: A rare heroic example. He hates the idea of people feeling any sort of happiness and will try to bring everyone he meets down to his level of misery. While he slowly grows out of this in later games, it still pops out every now and then, particuarly when he's feeling moody.
• Insane Troll Logic: Some of his wrong answers fall deeply into this, either being drawn from a fallacious train of thought or pulled out of thin air. He tends to get called out if he does this too much.
• Irony: He can't stand authority yet is a police officer.
• It Amused Me: If he's not having a sudden brainfart, some of Dregg's wrong answers can just involve him being needlessly cruel or confusing for the hell of it. While it's hard to tell how he's feeling, it can be implied he derives some sense of amusement from mentally spinning people in circles.
• It's All About Me: Dregg is deeply selfish, and will only do something if there's some sort of incentive for him at the end. Despite his hatred of everything, he lives for self gain, even if that seems to be watching people in agony.
• I Work Alone: He prefers to go about things by his lonesome, disliking having to look after or assist other people, seeing them as obstacles to the task at hand. This is probably because of how incompetent and obnoxious the people he's forced to work with tend to be.
• Jerkass: In early games, he's certainly this. He's cold to everyone around him, overly snarky, exceedingly blunt about his hatred for everyone and everything, and cynical to an impressive extent. Few people can stand him, even if many respect him.
• Jerkass Has a Point: He's quite frequently correct when stating that there are many discrpencies in what people are stating, though he usually points these out in the most hostile way imaginable.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Deep down, he has a little bit of empathy for others, even if this takes many games to come to light. The earliest example is when he befriends a dragon who he realises is misunderstood like him.
• "Just Joking" Justification: Inverted. He has a habit of saying outlandish things that people brush off while thinking he's being facetious. Most of the time, he's dead serious.
• Karma Houdini: He never seems to get in much trouble for harrassing, insulting, or dismissing people. When he does face some sort of retribution, it's almost always for something completely unrelated.
• Kick the Dog: He'll find any way to bring misery to people, insulting them on a whim, even if they've done nothing wrong to him. While he gets a bit less hostile to strangers over time, this is still one of his favorite hobbies.
• The Killjoy: He hates seeing other people having fun, always ready to use a few choice words to ruin the day of people happier than him. This is yet another reason why most people he encounters cannot stand him.
• Lack of Empathy: He cares about absolutely nobody, not even himself. The strongest reaction he's likely to elicit from seeing death and destruction is an apathetic shrug.
• Limited Wardrobe: He always wears his police uniform, even when out of work.
• Loves the Sound of Screaming: At his funeral, he wishes for the sounds of people screaming in agony to be played.
• Malicious Misnaming: In the second game, he refers to Mila "Mil" Kraven as Nil. She is not happy.
• Meaningful Name: His name is similar to drägg, the Swedish word for scumbag.
• Misanthrope Supreme: He hates police, the government, the royalty, annoying witnesses, stupid people, happy people, the post office, and everyone else. He has a completely pessimistic outlook on the world and all those who live in it, taking no joy in anything apart from things that confirm his miserable worldview.
• Misplaced Retribution: Dregg could find a way to connect all the wrongs of the world to the post office, even if he has to use some Insane Troll Logic to do so.
• Mistaken for Cheating: Princess Aria believes he's cheating on Princess Sarah, despite Dregg not being in a relationship with her, let alone knowing she has a crush on him. He also didn't cheat on anyone.
• Moral Pragmatist: If he could have his way, he'd be bringing about the end of the world or killing each and every post office worker. Instead, he's working for the police to try and grease the wheels so they'll accept his plan to kill all post officers.
• Mr. Vice Guy: He has a subdued but very apparent form of wrath that defines his personality. He hates everything and everyone, is driven solely to see people suffer, he is set off by the tiniest inconvience, and a Misanthrope Supreme who Hates Everyone Equally to boot. While he is the protagonist, he never loses these traits.
• Mundane Made Awesome: During dimensional debates, he can use such amazing tactics as "facts" to defeat his opponents. This is shown with a damage animation to his opponents.
• Murder Is the Best Solution: A strange point of view for a cop to have. His solution to all his problems is fantasising about the death of everyone that annoys him, be it the post office or people in general.
• Nominal Hero: Even post Character Development, he's still deeply selfish, only willingly doing good things for others if they align with his goals. He will sometimes go out of his way to solve difficult cases, though this is usually because he thinks this will help him get closer to destroying the post office.
• No Social Skills: He does not get on well with people in the slightest, and is generally seen as repulsive due to his aura of negativity.
• Not What It Looks Like In the fourth game, he's mistaken for a bisexual nymphomanaic who opens women's chests and breaks the hearts of men and women alike. None of this is true.
• Oblivious to Love: He has no idea princess Sarah is head over heels for him.
• Odd Friendship: Dregg instantly forms a bond with Mr Snuggles, a terrifying dragon. He knows what it's like to be misunderstood, so he feels a large amount of sympathy for it's plight. While it's clear he wants to use it to destroy the post office, he also likes the beast, a rarity for Dregg.
• Perpetual Frowner: Naturally. Since he's always upset or angry, he has a Death Glare permanently on his face.
• Perpetual Poverty: He never seems to have much cash on him, no matter how many almost impossible cases he solves.
• Player Character: He's the main character of the medieval cop series.
• Pragmatic Hero: Especially in early games, the only thing that stops Dregg from being a Villain Protagonist is that he happens to be working for the good guys. His personality and tactics would otherwise be more fitting of a Corrupt Cop or a wannabe Omnicidal Maniac.
• Precision F-Strike: There's a nice one directed at him if his bluffing skill fails in the second game.

  Dregg's internal monologue It wasn't effective. Get your shit together, Dregg.

• Protagonist-Centered Morality: Post officers are nowhere near as evil as Dregg would have people believe, even in the twisted world of Medieval cop.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: He's got red eyes (though he has tiny pupils) and he's bound to ruin someone's day when he's around, be them criminals or just normal people living their lives.
• Refuge in Audacity: Some of his answers are so outrageous that it almost seems that if they were canon, he merely said them just to mess with people. Even in serious situations, he can ruin the mood by either deliberately or unintentionally making an outlandish observation that shocks or confuses everyone within an earshot.
  • He explicitly asks King Frake for permission to murder every post office worker in the kingdom, which the king is too shocked to comprehend. He thinks Dregg is just joking.
• The Resenter: He has it in for most people, mainly because they happen to be happy when he sees nothing to be happy about. The main target of his resentment is the post office, who he has a deep rooted loathing for.
• Sadist: And he's a hero! He wishes to watch the world burn and is completely indifferent to human suffering. In a way, he's got quite a lot in common with his niece and nephew, as all three of them seek to make others as miserable as possible.
• Shame If Something Happened: In the second game, he threatens to tell Polly's wife about how much money he spent on the Princess Sarah locket if he won't let Dregg investigate the crime scene.
• Silly Rabbit, Idealism Is for Kids!: He despises the concept of happiness and looks down upon those that are able to find joy in anything. If given the chance, he'll gladly go off on a tirade about why happiness and optimism are wastes of time.
• Sitcom Arch-Nemesis: The post office are Dregg's sworn enemies, and he won't stop until he's gotten rid of all of them.
• The Snark Knight: Dregg has developed a hatred for everyone around him, seeing them all as either idiots or nuisances not worthy of his time or attention. While he likes to see himself as better than them due to "seeing" how bad the world really is, deep down he knows that he's an obnoxious jerk like the rest of them.
• The Sociopath: He's egotistical, lacks any morality, is needlessly cruel, incapable of forming meaningful bonds with people, though he lacks the charisma and manipulative traits of most sociopaths. He's a more realistic example than most, that while on the side of good, he's deeply mentally disturbed.
• Sociopathic Hero: A very low functioning example on both sides. He has no empathy for most people, is deeply selfish, and seeks to make the world a worse place than it already is. While he is a good detective, his disdain for everyone puts him at odds with most people, who react with a sense of unease around him.
• Stealth-Based Mission: In the fourth game, he is given invisibility powers to sneak past the vigilant guards in the stadium. Being spotted will send him back to where he was before, which is an undesirable option for him at that moment.
• Straw Nihilist: Life has no meaning to him, he wants God to kill himself, and he takes joy in nothing, believing emotion or affection to be a waste of time.

  Dregg I will smile when all the people in the world are dead and God shoots himself in the head for creating us.

• Suddenly Shouting: He does this in the first game when he gets lost in Vil's house while trying to find the crime scene.

  Dregg MY GOD THIS HOUSE IS HUGE!

• Sympathy for the Devil: A few examples.
  • He's happy in the first game that someone killed a lawyer, believing that they were just trying to make the world a better place. Gru has to remind him that murder is still murder, no matter who the Asshole Victim was. This changes when he realises who the killer was.
  • He feels sorry for Crowal Sheperd after the man confesses to murder due to realising he was pushed to the edge by unfair circumstances.
• Tempting Fate: In the fourth game, after Ninja uncle gives him invisibility powers, Dregg remarks how he likes how there isn't any catch. There is, though it's only getting an autograph from Princess Aria.
• There Should Be a Law: He wishes for it to be legal to murder post office employees, trying to petition for the king to allow this. Fortunately counselor Icelot hurries king Frake away before he can be sucked into Dregg's outlandish suggestions.
• Took a Level in Kindness: Ever so slowly, he starts to become a better person, being capable of showing some degree of empathy and being less hostile to those around him. Not that he'll admit it.
• Tranquil Fury: He's even angrier than Tira, yet he shows his anger in a subdued yet extremely blatant way (probably due to his permanent Death Glare.) He'll mention his absolute hatred for everything and everyone without having to yell or even raise his voice.
• Troll: His sense of humor involves messing with people by suggesting ideas so outlandish that it's impossible to tell if he's being sincere due to his deadpan delivery. This tends to confuse and discombobulate the victims of his mental gymastics. Even when he gets nothing from doing so, Dregg will mess with people's heads due to boredom.
• Tsundere: A rare male version. He will sometimes compliment people for their successes and holds a few people in a higher regard than most, but he'll die before he admits to thinking this.
• The Unapologetic: Dregg couldn't give less of a shit if his actions offend anyone, seeing compassion and decency as a waste of his time.
• Unscrupulous Hero: In early games, he's an absolutely unlikable Jerkass, being needlessly cold to those he's meant to serve and protect. Fortunately for him, the people he helps capture are much more morally bankrupt than he is, making him come across as far better by comparison.
• Wants to Be Hated: He revels in people's hatred for him, feeding off this reputation. This is one of the methods he likes to use to try and get people to leave him alone, but all it tends to succeed in is making people hate him even more and treat him worse.
• Witch with a Capital "B": He refers to Madam Raven as a witch. It's quite clear what he wanted to call her.
• Worf Had the Flu: In the second game, he's down with a bad cold. Doesn't stop him from being dragged from his bed and forced to solve another crime.
• Worth It: In the third game, he can present his police badge to Polly in an attempt to snap him out of his funk. Polly thinks Dregg's here to arrest him for failing at life. While it doesn't work, Dregg concedes that this answer was hilarious.