Michael Webster
Portrayed By: John White, Kyle Fairlie, and Zachary Brian McQuaid (TV)
"I fell asleep that night a happy guy. There's nothing like revenge."
The long suffering brother of Tara Webster and protagonist to The Cuckoo Clock of Doom.
- Adaptation Dye-Job: Is stated to be a brunette like his sister in the book, but in the episode, he is blonde.
- Adaptational Hairstyle Change: He makes it clear in the book that his hair is short and thick. The episode shows his hair as a tad bit long and quite loose.
- A Birthday, Not a Break: Tara sees to it that his birthday is as horrible as possible.
- Butt-Monkey: His sister makes his life miserable and his parents do nothing to stop her from doing so.
- Can't Get Away with Nuthin': Any time he retaliates at Tara for pestering him, he gets caught and seen as a troublemaker. Also, when he tries to frame her just this once in order to get her in trouble for real, this incident sends him back in time.
- Cassandra Truth: His parents never believe him about the terrible stuff Tara does to him, nor do they believe him about time going backwards.
- Didn't Think This Through: When reliving preschool, four-year old Mona and Ceecee dare him to climb up a tree. It sounds easy enough at first, but he quickly realizes that it's not nearly as easy for a four-year old to climb a tree as a twelve year old... and that he had broken his arm in preschool..by climbing a tree...YEEEEOOOOWWW!!
- Does Not Like Spam: He notes in the book how he hates peas, and with his mother's no-meat and fat-free diet that's happening, he has to deal with plenty of peas, which he tries to hide in his napkin.
- The Dog Bites Back: Him attempting to get his sister unfairly in trouble with their parents as revenge for all the times she got him unfairly in trouble.
- Dogged Nice Guy: He tried to be nice to Mona, even inviting her two friends, whom he isn't crazy about, to his party just so she can come over. However, Tara ruins it by flat out saying that he is in love with her to her face. Earlier, she comes over to rehearse for a play, and Tara makes her see him in his underwear while he's getting changed.
- Don't Make Me Take My Belt Off!: It's subtly implied this is how his dad deals with him whenever Tara blames him for something.
- Double Standard: Abuse, Female on Male: At one point, Tara stomps on Michael's foot, which their parents don't notice and think it's the other way around. Michael would never get away with stomping on Tara's foot (or just beating her up in general).
- Earn Your Happy Ending: Setting the clock back to the way it should be not only restores Michael's timeline, but also erases Tara from existence due to its flaw (it doesn't have 1988, the year Tara was born, on its year dial). Michael's life becomes extremely more enjoyable, but says he might go back and save her. Maybe.
- Foolish Sibling, Responsible Sibling: The responsible to Tara's foolish. He's a kind and patient Nice Guy while Tara is a sadistic bratty Enfant Terrible.
- Fountain of Youth: Him turning the bird's head backward on the clock results in him going back in time and becoming gradually younger, and eventually regressing to an infant.
- Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: In the TV series, he has dirty-blonde hair and is a Nice Guy (for the most part).
- I Hate Past Me: He is ashamed with some of the stuff that he liked when he was younger, such as when he was seven and he liked cowboys a lot. He even wore a cowboy costume to school.
- Inelegant Blubbering: When he is trying to get out his crib as a baby, he accidentally bumps his head. This causes him to cry, and is embarrassed when he keeps on wailing for a while.
- Like Father, Unlike Son: He doesn't match up well with his father.
- Made Out to Be a Jerkass: Because Tara constantly gets away with awful activities and Michael only occasionally retaliates against her, his parents are quick to take her side. These make him come off as a rude liar who picks on his sister, even though the real case is the exact opposite.
- The Mind Is a Plaything of the Body: While growing younger doesn't seem to have any effect on Michael's intelligence for the most part, at one point, when four-year old Mona pours a bucket of water on his head in nursery school, he mentions he felt a strange urge to burst into tears and run to his teacher for help.
- Nice Guy: He is usually kind, but when it comes to dealing with Tara, who can actually keep up the charade with her?
- Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory: When Tara is Ret-Gone at the end of the story, he's the only person to remember that she existed. He promises to bring her back, but it's obvious that he's in no hurry to do so.
- Set Right What Once Went Wrong: Subverted. When forced to relive the terrible days the clock sends him back to, Michael thinks he is prepared to avoid the terrible things Tara put him through. Unfortunately, since he does not quite remember the details of how they played out, ie, where exactly Tara tripped him on his birthday, or that his dad fixed the lock on his door after his birthday after Tara opened the door on him changing in front of Mona, all of the mishaps happen again just as painfully as before.
- Surrounded by Idiots: He feels this way when he is sent back as a 9-year old and attends third grade again. His classmates are studying for a spelling quiz, and they figure that spelling one of the words that they're studying, "grandmother", would be hard. Michael has to prevent himself from scoffing, as he has had to learn more clever words in seventh-grade such as "chlorophyll".
- Teacher's Pet: When he accidentally goes to his regular middle school class as a nine-year old, he has to be taken to his old third-grade classroom. His teacher doesn't punish him for this, though, as Michael says that he's one of her favourites. Also, he says that he usually gets A and B grades.
- Took a Level in Cheerfulness: In the ending, with Tara out of the way, he finds life much more enjoyable without her constantly making him feel miserable.
- The Un-Favourite: His parents practically worship Tara and treat him like garbage. When she's gone, his parents are no longer abusive.
- Unrequited Love Switcheroo: When he gets back to a timeline where Tara no longer existed, his crush Mona is now attracted to him. But the thing is, it's implied that Michael lost interest in her back when he visited a memory of him and her in nursery school, and she was a Bratty Half-Pint who tortured him.
- Wacky Parent, Serious Child: Downplayed but Michael has proven to be much saner and savvier than his abusive and ignorant parents.
- "Well Done, Son" Guy: It is all but said that he wishes for his father's approval but his dad is disappointed in him, especially when he was a baby and couldn't form full sentences. That is, until the ending, where he treats Michael with more respect.
- White Sheep: Between his Enfante Terrible of a sister and Abusive Parents who consider him The Unfavorite compared to her, he's the only decent member of his family that we know of. Subverted as of the ending when Tara gets Ret Goned and his parents are no longer abusive toward him as a result.
Tara Webster
Portrayed By: Kristen Bone (TV)
"I don't have to wreck [your birthday]. It's bad all by itself—just because it's the day you were born."
Michael's bratty, sadistic little sister.
- Adaptational Nice Guy: Very downplayed. Tara still isn't a good kid at all in the TV episode, but most of her more disturbing sociopathic behavior (getting Michael beat up, tormenting the cat) isn't shown or mentioned, with the worst thing she does humiliating Michael at his party. She comes off more as a standard bratty sibling than an Enfante Terrible, which also might make her erasure from time unintentionally seem much more like Disproportionate Retribution than in the book.
- Annoying Younger Sibling: Good fucking grief. She regularly terrorizes her older brother and her parents don’t believe Michael when he tells them she’s picking on him.
- Asshole Victim: She is erased from existence. Only Michael knows and it's clear he's in no rush to bring her back.
- Bad People Abuse Animals: In addition to her brother, she also loves to torment Bubba, the family cat.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: She's very skilled at making her parents believe she's totally innocent.
- Big Brother Bully: Inverted. She's the little sister who loves to make her big brother's life miserable.
- Blatant Lies: She claims that she put Kevin Flower's cap in Michael's backpack because she thought it was Michael's... yeah right.
- Bratty Half-Pint: Oh, "bratty" doesn't even BEGIN to describe her.
- Creepy Child: The fact that she enjoys tormenting her brother so much, is able to manipulate her parents and doesn't seem to show any remorse qualifies her as this. What's more is that she's even this horrible when she's an even younger child, even as a baby when she pokes Michael in the eye.
- Early Personality Signs: Her asking her brother to kiss her when she was a baby only to poke him in the eye when he tried to do so was an early hint that she was never going to be a good girl at all.
- Enfante Terrible: She's tormented her brother ever since she was a baby. The fact that her terrible behavior started out from the time she was an actual infant shows there is something really wrong with this girl.
- Foolish Sibling, Responsible Sibling: The foolish to Michael's responsible. She's a sadistic, bratty Enfant Terrible while Michael is a kind and friendly Nice Guy.
- For the Evulz: She torments her brother simply because she enjoys making him miserable.
- Hate Sink: There isn't and never was absolutely anything redeemable about this girl.
- Humans Are the Real Monsters: While the cuckoo clock is technically the villain, it's mostly harmless unless someone messes with it, which Michael wouldn't have done if not for what a horrible person his sister is.
- In-Series Nickname: "Tara the Terrible".
- Jerkass: It almost seems redundant to keep going on about her horribleness.
- Lack of Empathy: She never once shows any compassion or empathy towards her brother, or remorse for everything she does to him, nor does she show any empathy towards anyone else, as she only cares about other people if they can help her make Michael's life miserable.
- Manipulative Bitch: Not just towards her parents, but pretty much everyone except Michael and Bubba are borderline incapable of thinking she could do anything wrong and she milks it for all it's worth to make Michael suffer.
- The Millstone: She is, or was, literally everything wrong in Michael's life.
- Parental Favoritism: Their parents obviously favor her, believe her to be completely innocent, and call Michael a liar when he defends himself.
- Ret-Gone: Due to a flaw in the clock, she is erased from existence. Michael decides he will probably find a way to go back and get her sometime... maybe.
- Sadist: She seems to know exactly how miserable she makes Michael and really enjoy it.
- The Sociopath: She never shows any remorse for the horrible things she does to her brother, which include getting him beaten up and ruining his birthday party. She doesn't care at all about other people besides Michael either, not caring about anyone who becomes collateral damage in her attempts to make Michael's life hell, and she's very skilled at manipulating her parents to make them think she's a good girl. The book also shows her torturing the family cat, again from a young age.
- Spoiled Brat: Her parents dote on her and turn a blind eye to her horrendous behavior towards her brother.
- Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: There's something seriously wrong with her that goes way beyond just being annoying. She's a sadist who takes immense pleasure in making her brother suffer and, despite her age, knows how to manipulate the adults around her. It is also mentioned that she has tortured the cat from a young age. One can only imagine what she might have grown up to be if it hadn't been for the clock.
- Tuckerization: According to one of the Collector Caps books, she was named after a fan R.L. Stine met at a book signing, who requested that she be put in a book and her character be bad. She certainly got her wish on that front.
- Villain with Good Publicity: She's basically the Goosebumps version of Meghan Parker and Sarah. Despite being a horrible brat, her parents see her as an innocent little lamb.
Michael's Friends
Michael's classmates and friends from school, who also de-age as time regresses.
- Adaptational Nice Guy: In the books, young Mona is a Bratty Half-Pint who ridicules Michael, bullies him and dares him into climbing a tree, resulting in him breaking his arm. In the TV version, she shows concern for him when he's stressed out about the possibility of being erased from time.
- Bratty Half-Pint: Michael finds that his secret love interest Mona was this in preschool, where she torments him almost as badly as Tara did. Ceecee also seemed to be a bit of one too.
- Demoted to Extra: They were all major supporting characters in the book, but those of them that made into the tv adaptation suffer from this in the TV version due to its 22 minute time frame. They only appear in the sequence with Michael's disastrous twelfth birthday and when Michael is reliving his sixth birthday. Josh and Henry have only a couple of lines, both as twelve and six year olds, and Mona has no lines at all as a twelve-year old and only two as a six-year old. The rest of them, like Ceecee and Kevin Flowers, are Adapted Out.
- Disproportionate Retribution: Tara frames Michael for slipping a jock named Kevin Flower's favorite cap into his backpack. How does Kevin respond? By beating Michael up so bloodily and severely that he claims his chin and eyes switch places and his own mother didn't recognize him when he came home.
- Fountain of Youth: Like Michael, they also grow younger at time goes backwards, but do not retain their twelve-year old memories.
- Jerk Jock: Kevin Flowers, who beats Michael senselessly when Tara frames him for stealing his cap.
- Love Confession: Well, sort of. When Michael is reliving his birthday in the timeline where Tara no longer exists, Ceecee reveals to Michael that Mona actually has a crush on him too, to which Mona shyly blushes.
- No Sympathy: While they seem to genuinely like Michael, they're never behind Michael when Tara is humiliating him and are even willing to mock him for it.
The Cuckoo Clock Of Doom
The titular machine from the book of the same name. It enters the unhappy Webster home and changes things forever.
- Ambiguously Evil: It's never clear how sentient the clock is, but it does seem to single out Michael as its subject. Though this makes at least some sense in that he was the one who messed with the clock in the first place.
- Artifact of Doom: For anyone foolish enough to fiddle with it, anyway.
- Butterfly of Doom: Knocking off one of the years on its calendar is enough to wipe out anyone born at the time.
- The Cameo:
- Chris bumps into it while exploring the eponymous haunted mansion in the TV adaptation of "The House of No Return".
- Similarly, Zach stumbles onto it while wandering though R.L. Stine's basement in the 2015 film.
- It pops up in the bookstore at the beginning of the comic book story Monsters at Midnight, with a sign on it that reads, "Not broken, just taking a break."
- Feathered Fiend: The cuckoo bird, shown prominently on the cover. Turning its head back triggers the clock's powers.
- It Can Think: It forms some kind of psychic link to Michael as he goes backwards in time, and only makes things normal when he turns the bird head around. On the cover, it's outright glaring at you.
- Mental Time Travel: Happens to anyone that twists the bird's head.
- Pet the Dog: If you believe it had any sentience or agency, then wiping Tara out of existence and thus vastly improving Michael's life may count. Of course, it's also possible that it didn't want to make Michael's life better and just wanted to erase someone out of existence.
- Time Machine: Not a very beneficial one, though.
