Characters / The Sandman (1989) - The Endless

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The Endless

The Endless in general

The Endless are a rather dysfunctional family of seven siblings who are each Anthropomorphic Personifications of one of seven concepts. They are the children of Night and Time, and are implied to be the concepts they represent. In order of oldest to youngest, they are Destiny, Death, Dream, Destruction, Desire, Despair, and Delirium. Each of the Endless has a realm in which they are completely omnipotent, and their realms can even shape the concept that is opposite to their own. They are generally uncomfortable in each other's realms, and only travel to them when it is unavoidably necessary.

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• Above the Gods: They aren't gods, since gods are still mortal and limited compared to them. The Endless are endless except for some extreme circumstances, and the only beings to definitively surpass them are their parents, Archangels, and the Presence Himself.
  • One of the main differences between the Endless and "mere gods" is that gods need worshippers and eventually die out when they're forgotten. Gods also are born in the Dreaming when enough beings believe in them. The Endless do not need or care whether mortals believe in them, and are manifestations of basic functions of the universe and life.
• Appearance Is in the Eye of the Beholder: If they have an "original" form, we never see it. Aside from a few recurring details, their appearance, the language they speak, their clothes, and even the form their realms take all depend on the person who encounters them. To the reader, Dream looks like a tall, unearthly pale white man. To Nada, he is an African prince. To a cat mourning the loss of her kittens, he is a tuxedo cat.
• Anthropomorphic Personification: Of the concepts which their names represent.
• Arc Symbol: Each of them has a sigil that represents their office. Each of their unique domains has a copy of the others' sigils, and holding that copy while stating the owner's name serves as a summoning call (Destiny has a variation of this; he has portraits of his siblings, and summons them by stating their names in front of the portrait). Destiny's symbol is his Book; Death's is an Egyptian ankh; Dream's is a dream-helm made from a dead god's skull; Destruction's is a sword; Desire's is a heart-shaped glass; Despair's is a hooked ring (the original's was a ring with a crown); and Delirium's is a blob of rainbow colors (as Delight, it was a flower).
• Big, Screwed-Up Family: They're the most powerful group of individuals in the DC Multiverse, but they're also pretty dang messed up, even if they all do care for each other. Destiny is aloof and detached, Death has to live with the fact that she will eventually claim all of her siblings and will eventually become the last thing to exist when the universe ends, Dream is overly-dramatic and self-centered, Destruction has severed all ties to the rest of them (causing shared mutual guilt), Desire is vindictive, Despair is masochistic and is just a replacement for their actual murdered sister, Delirium (the baby of the family) is suffering from some horrifying trauma that changed her very nature that not even Destiny (who is supposed to be The Omniscient) is aware of and requires constant supervision, and their parents (Time and Night) are separated and aloof to their children. Put them all in a room and watch their dysfunction unravel each other, and by extension the world around them.
  Matthew the Raven: From what I know about your family, the awkward silences will be the good bits.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: All of them, even kind, personable Death, have this to one degree or another, largely based on their perceptions of that which they personify varying drastically from that of mortals.
• Cast of Personifications: Each one of the Endless is a personification.
• Commuting on a Bus: Enforced, as due to writers needing Neil Gaiman's permission to use the Endless (and other Sandman characters) in future stories, they have only made sparse appearances since the conclusion of the initial Sandman's run.
• Cosmic Entity: Their individual power is so great that they are considered to be beyond even Physical Gods.
• Domain Holder: They're powerful enough normally, but on their home turf they make the rules, full stop. This is emphasized with Dream, whose many responsibilities include Sacred Hospitality, and he is able to use this responsibility to outwit a demon who tries to refuse his hospitality.
• The Friends Who Never Hang: Death and Despair only get a handful of interactions with each other, compared to the other siblings. They are only seen together in family gatherings, but still don't receive much screen time with one another.
• A Form You Are Comfortable With: They can change their perceived forms to fit the expectations of others.
• Geas: Despite being more powerful than most gods and older than most stars in the universe, the Endless are not invincible, and adhere to ancient rules that they are reluctant to break, the result of breaking the rules often being some form of cosmic karma.
  • The Endless cannot end a mortal's life (not counting Death's duties) unless they become a direct threat to their realm.
  • Any mortal that is loved by them will suffer a grim fate as a result. When Dream and Nada fell for each other and consummated their love, Nada's kingdom was destroyed by the Sun for this infraction. Nada committed suicide to prevent further destruction and suffering, then rejected Dream's offer to be his Queen, and for his pride she was sent to Hell.
  • Spilling family blood undoes whatever protections their status grants them against other cosmic entities. When Dream fulfills his promise to his son Orpheus and ends his cursed existence, this gives the Kindly Ones free rein to wreak havoc and drive him to his death when Hippolyta Hall summons them, and nothing can stop them, even when Lyta wants them to stop (though a warning from Death will give them pause).
  • They may self-impose oaths upon themselves via swearing by things which seem to hold great significance in the universe (such as the first circle) and appear to be bound by these oaths.
• Gender-Equal Ensemble: Three of the Endless are female-presenting, three are male-presenting and one is non-binary.
• Humanoid Abomination: Whenever humans and other such humanoids see them, their forms are at least vaguely human-like. Of course, this isn't necessarily their default form.
• Liminal Being: While they are the concepts they're named after, they also represent the opposite of it. This is less illustrated with the younger siblings than the older. Specifically, Destiny also defines Freedom, Death defines Life, Dream defines Reality, Destruction defines Creation, and, as stated by Destruction, Desire defines Hate, Despair defines Hope, and Delirium's isn't explicitly stated, but it seems to be Clarity.
• Long Bus Trip: Even with this, the younger Endless (Desire, Despair, Delirium) have never appeared on their own within other DC comics.
• Masculine, Feminine, Androgyne Trio: A seven-person variant. Dream, Destiny, and Destruction are portrayed as men; Death, Despair, and Delirium are portrayed as women; and Desire, being the personification of lust/love, is Otherworldly and Sexually Ambiguous.
• Not Quite the Almighty: They're not gods (they're far more powerful than most any god and don't share gods' major weakness of needing belief), but the principle is the same, as they are still lesser beings to their parents Night and Time, along with DC Comics' God in the Presence. Lucifer is more of a gray area, but he's at least comparable to them in power.
• The Nth Doctor: When one dies, a different aspect of their essence is reborn to take on their role. The new incarnation possesses all of its predecessor's memories and is, for all intents and purposes, the same being, but possesses a very different point of view, personality, and priorities for how it fulfills its duties. So far, this has only happened to two of them: Despair at some long ago point in the past, and Dream at the end of the main series.
• The Omnipresent: Destruction states that he is, at least in a sense, virtually everywhere destruction occurs and is its controlling aspect. Death is a more straightforward example, since she personally manifests physically to people when they are born or die, meaning she has to appear in more than one place at once at all times. Death: The High Cost of Living features Death becoming mortal for a day, only to die and end up being collected by herself and holding a conversation with the other "Death" while in her mortal body, despite the two being the same being.
• Physical God: When they're at full strength, they're seven of the most powerful entities in the multiverse, seemingly only rivaled or surpassed by the Furies, their parents, The Presence, Lucifer Morningstar, and Michael Demiurgos. Even demon lords of Hell cower in their presence, especially if they're caught in the Endless' domains. Although, whether they are "physical" is an interesting question.
• Place of Power: They each have realms where their power is supreme over all others (just ask Azazel), and traveling to another's realm all but leaves them at the proprietary sibling's mercy. The Furies wouldn't have been able to touch Dream, or do any damage he couldn't repair, if he hadn't been summoned out of his realm and into Faerie.
• Reality Warper: All of them are powerful enough to do this. Some do so more frequently than others.
• Rule of Seven: There are seven Endless.
• The Shadow Knows: All of the Endless except for Death (the most humane) and Destruction (who has retired) possess a strange shadow, often hinting at their nature.
• Superman Stays Out of Gotham: The Endless tend to stay out of each other's affairs unless absolutely necessary, though this seems to be more of a professional courtesy than a rule.
• Theme Initials: D, obviously. They also have many different names in different mythologies that don't fit this pattern, but only Dream is ever seen using any of them.

Dream

Dream of the Endless. The Sandman. The Lord Shaper. Dream Weaver. Oneiros (a few of many names he's acquired). The personification of dreams and creativity, and his realm helps shape its opposite — reality. Like all Endless, he can change his appearance. While he is always male, people may see him differently, usually as a member of their own ethnic group, their own race (in the case of faeries), or their own species, (e.g. cats). Note that this is not always a physical change: different characters observing him at once may perceive different forms (Martian Manhunter and Scott Free for example), implying that he primarily exists as part of the mind. The thirdborn of the Endless.

"Morpheus" / Dream I

Played By: James McAvoy (Audible Audiobook), Jason Forbes (Audible audiobook, African form), Tom Sturridge (Netflix series)

Dubbed By: Raúl Anaya (Latin American Spanish/Audible Audiobook), Yoshimasa Hosoya (Japanese/Netflix series)

"It has always been the prerogative of children and half-wits to point out that the emperor has no clothes. But the half-wit remains a half-wit, and the emperor remains an emperor."

The main protagonist of the series — thin and pale-skinned with black hair and black eyes that mirror eternity, he's gloomy and melodramatic, but puts great stock in duty and rules. He's the all-powerful ruler in his domain of dreams, but less powerful outside. He's had love affairs with several women (including a witch, a goddess, and the queen of the realm of Faerie) over the eons, but all except the most brief affairs ended badly. He fathered a son, Orpheus, with the Muse Calliope. When she bruised his pride, he sentenced his lover Nada to an eternity of imprisonment in Hell, and finally forgave her only after 10,000 years. Although his official name is Dream of the Endless, he is often referred to as "Morpheus", and thus that's what this page calls him in order to separate him from his second incarnation.

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• '80s Hair: In the early run, he looks like Goth Mick Jagger, with voluminous dark hair. He changes to more of a timeless look later on.
• Abusive Parents: All we ever really see of his relations with his son Orpheus is an aloof indifference. He refuses to help him regain Eurydice from the Underworld when he asks for his help, something Dream is perfectly capable of due to being more powerful than Hades and Persephone, and he shows no sympathy when this ends with Orpheus rendered immortal without a body. That's not to say that he doesn't care about his son, having sent Johanna Constantine to return his head to his temple and ending his life at his request when they reunite in the 20th century, Dream being devastated when he does so. Interestingly, this doesn't seem to have been the case during Orpheus's childhood, when Calliope reminisces about Dream doting on Orpheus, playing with him, listening to his songs and making him musical instruments during her speech at Morpheus' wake.
• Aloof Big Brother: Dream is surly and aloof by nature, making him distant to his younger siblings Delirium, Desire, and Despair. He most prominently has this dynamic with his youngest and most delicate sister Delirium, who mentions that she is always a bit scared of him and thinks he disapproves of her.
• Anti-Hero: He's immensely powerful and a force necessary for life, yet a very flawed being by human standards.
• Appearance Is in the Eye of the Beholder: Morpheus is perceived differently by everyone who sees him, appearing as whatever they would be most comfortable with.^note He appears to Scott Free as a tall pale man in black robes, while at the same time appearing to the Martian Manhunter (who is standing right next to Free) as the Martian god L'Zoril, a black Martian skull wreathed in flames.
• The Atoner: When he realizes he has done Nada a disservice (to say the least) by dooming her to Hell, he immediately takes steps to rectify it. After finally giving his son Orpheus the death he wished for, he is implied to be unable to move on, which is why he allows the Furies to kill him.
• Badass Boast: When Desire almost tricks him into shedding family blood, he straight up warns them that if they try something like that again, he will forget that they are family, and that Destiny and Death will have his back. Desire listens.
• Badass Longrobe: How he dresses in the Dreaming. When he manifests on Earth, he's usually either Hell-Bent for Leather or a Sharp-Dressed Man.
• Barrier Maiden: He's captured and imprisoned several monstrous beings who would ordinarily prey upon dreamers, binding them with his power. The Furies (who imply that several of these monsters were created by his own madness) set many of them loose in their assault on his realm.
• Been There, Shaped History: He was involved in the careers of William Shakespeare, Augustus, Haroun Al-Raschid, Marco Polo, Robespierre and Joshua Norton, among others.
• Beware the Nice Ones: He is unfailingly polite, and increasingly after his imprisonment, he can even be kind. However, as Azazel finds out the hard way, this should never, ever, be mistaken for weakness.
• Big Good: He's usually this when he isn't the main protagonist of an arc, like in A Game of You.
• Black Eyes of Evil: Morpheus' eyes depend a bit on the artist, but the overall consensus is that they're completely black and have a red glimmer in them like a ruby. Sometimes he doesn't even have eyes, and there's just complete black where the eyes are supposed to be. Subverted in that he's not at all evil. Well, mostly not.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: He defines his morality entirely by his duties to the Dreaming and a number of old 'rules' the reader can only guess at by inference. For instance, he takes an extremely dim view of slavery and displays extreme reluctance to kill, but condemns Nada to Hell without remorse. He is capable of empathy and following human moral standards, but he only starts to show it after his imprisonment. Overture suggests it was the events of that story which started nudging him in this direction.
• Break the Haughty: It starts with his imprisonment by Roderick Burgess's cult and subsequent loss of power, and continues through the rest of the series.
• Brutal Honesty: While always formal and polite, Dream never minces words when giving his opinion on something. This is a big reason why he has few actual friends.
• Byronic Hero: Destruction describes both him and Orpheus as self-pitying romantic fools who nonetheless have "a certain amount of personal charm".
• Cain and Abel: He and Desire absolutely hate each other, though the aggression comes more from Desire's end. He does subtly threaten to kill or at least seriously injure Desire during the meeting of the Endless in Season of Mists, but only when seriously provoked.
• Call on Me: Rose is told to call his name if she finds herself in dire straits. When Funland tries to rape her, she uses it. Dream shows up, knocks Funland unconscious, and tells her to run. (Which she does.)
• Captain Ersatz: Dream has many similarities to Doctor Strange's foe Nightmare (who came first), except Dream is more neutral than evil. Marvel even tried to reinvent Nightmare (in a miniseries) to resemble Dream after the latter became a hit, though it didn't really take. They are seen walking together in Top 10.
• The Chains of Commanding: While Dream takes his job very seriously and will not have his authority challenged, various hints are dropped that his responsibilities have taken their toll on him and he would be more than happy to resign if he had any real choice in the matter. His position has left him with very few friends (to the point where he gets defensive when Hob calls him lonely), and the earlier years of his reign when he was young and inexperienced (ancient gods trying to take his kingdom, being forced to kill a mortal to stop a Dream Vortex, Desire messing with his love life) wore him down into the aloof Drama Queen that he is. When Lucifer gives him ownership of Hell, Dream is only horrified by the added troubles it will bring him, and he is more than glad to be rid of it. He even makes William Shakespeare a household name in exchange for two plays, one of which is about a King that "leaves his island" (The Tempest), as a form of escapism for himself.
• Character Development: The entire series can be said to be this for him, concluding in literal character-changing. Gaiman says that his imprisonment was the catalyst for this, as seventy-two years stuck in a bottle gave him time to look over the actions he'd taken over the course of his life and realize he didn't like what he saw.
• The Chessmaster: Almost from page one, Morpheus sows the seeds of his own destruction by giving away ammunition that could be turned against him at a critical juncture and preparing Daniel to be the vessel for his replacement. By the time the Furies come knocking, all the Chekhov's Guns fire off one by one.
• Comic-Book Fantasy Casting: Depending on the artist, he frequently ends up looking like either Neil Gaiman, Peter Murphy, or Robert Smith.
• The Comically Serious: While Morpheus is capable of pointed observations, his sense of humour is very nearly non-existent. This is something Gaiman milks for all its worth in moments of levity, usually by putting him in silly situations, making him interact with Delirium, or having another character make fun of him for being overly dramatic. Standing alone in the endless rain is a nice pose for a love-lorn sulk, but when Dream does it the entire Dreaming and all its inhabitants get wet. And have their dwellings flooded. And complain. And the rain's only there because he wants it to be.
• Composite Character: While one of the more common names he goes by is "Morpheus" (after the classical god of sleep and dreams), to the Ancient Greeks he was called "Oneiros". Oneiros is a blanket term for an entire breed of gods associated with dreams and nightmares, Morpheus merely being one of them according to The Metamorphoses.
• Cool Crown: Dream's helm looks like a gas mask with filter tube, and it's made from the skull and spinal cord of a dead god. Awesome.
• Creepy Good: For a certain value of "good". Dream is a pretty ominous, dour fellow, but he has a strong sense of justice, and he punishes many evil people throughout the series. However, he operates on Blue-and-Orange Morality, and is responsible for some pretty heinous things himself. Just ask Nada.
• Dark Is Not Evil: To a lesser extent than his older sister, but still there. He's not always good but he's far less sinister than his shadowy nature may suggest, and he does some noble things throughout the series.
• Deus ex Machina: He ends up fulfilling this role in the classical sense at the end of A Game of You, intervening to stop the Cuckoo from killing Barbie and her friends.
• Death Seeker: Possibly. He tries to stop the Furies once, but eventually admits to Death that he cannot move on.
• Disproportionate Retribution: The guy gives out a lot of Fates Worse Than Death. When he tries to give a What the Hell, Hero? to Delirium for dooming an innocent man to spend the rest of his life tormented by invisible bugs, she replies that he's done far worse repeatedly.
• Drama Queen: Despite putting on airs of being the serious and dutiful king, Dream tends to let his compulsive whims drag him into melodramatic fits which often leave everyone worse off. Considering all stories flow from him and half of all stories can count as "tragedies", perhaps this is inevitable.
  Merv Pumpkinhead: He spends a coupla months hanging out with a new broad. Then one day the magic's worn off, and he goes back to work, and she takes a hike. Phhht. Now, guys like me, ordinary Joes, we just shrug our shoulders, say, hey, that's life, flick it if you can't take a joke. Not him. Oh no. He's gotta be the tragic figure standing out in the rain, mourning the loss of his beloved. So down comes the rain, right on cue. In the meantime everybody gets dreams fulla existential angst and wakes up feeling like hell. And we all get wet.
• Dream Weaver: He's the former page image for the trope, and sometimes is referred to as "Dream-Weaver", though usually derisively.
• Driven to Suicide: While not outwardly stated, it's implied that ever since his return from imprisonment, he's become painfully aware of his need to either change or die (which is just a more radical form of change for the Endless). He's unable to overcome all his issues, and having to kill his son finally pushes him to enact a master plan to kill himself and have Daniel replace him.
• Everyone Has Standards: While beyond mortal concerns outside of his duties, sometimes there are are certain ethical practices even he can't ignore.
  • While not above inflicting a Fate Worse than Death to those who slight him, he is extremely reluctant to actually end a life. In his youth, he refused to kill his first Vortex, resulting in an entire planet being driven to extinction.
  • When he barges in on a convention of Serial Killers to get to the Corinthian, Dream is so disgusted by all of their Delusions of Grandeur that he "wakes them up" to the reality that they are not as important as they thought.
  • When he meets up with Hob, who by then has become rich after investing in the slave-trade, Dream voices his disapproval of the practice. Centuries later, Hob admits that he had a point and would take it back if he could.
• Fatal Attractor: The series introduces quite a few of Dream's ex-lovers — ultimately always to emphasize the "ex" part of that description. He's not a womanizer, and it's not even that his lovers are horribly flawed (most of the time) — it's just a combination of his spectacularly ill-advised moments of pride and that he's Married to the Job. Whether this is the cause or the result of his feud with Desire is left as an exercise for the reader. That said, anybody could have told him that dating Thessaly wouldn't work out.
• Fatal Flaw: His sense of duty and tradition (which also makes him come off as rather self-centered) and resistance to change. As Neil Gaiman summarized the series, "The Lord of Dreams learns that one must change or die, and makes his decision."
• The Fettered: He's utterly devoted to his responsibilities to the Dreaming.
  Death: Destruction simply left. Took down his sigil, said he wasn't responsible for the realm of destruction any more, that it was no longer his affair, and took off into the forever. You could have done that.
  Dream: No. I could not.
  Death: No, you couldn't, could you?
• Fisher King: Since the Dreaming is nothing more than an extension of his being, Dream's health and mental state often affects the world itself and by extension the dreamers that subsist off of it. When Dream is imprisoned and cut off from the Dreaming for a full human lifetime, the Dreaming is left as nothing more than a withered husk of its former self, with many of its dreams and nightmares scattered to the winds and an entire generation of dreamers suffering mild psychological damage from it. Whenever he suffers a bad breakup, the entire Dreaming is made moody and "fulla existential angst" and the dreamers "[wake] up feeling like hell."
• Forced Sleep: One of his abilities, notably used on two guards when he escapes his imprisonment and on Johanna Constantine's bodyguards.
• Friend to All Children: Dream often has pleasant and respectful conversations with young kids. Considering that he is the personification of imagination and ideas, this is unsurprising.
• Good Is Not Nice: Dream takes his responsibilities very seriously — and rightly so, since he routinely prevents the world's collapse and does much more besides — but they include some necessary cruelties. He creates nightmares right alongside pleasant dreams (the Corinthian, for example, is definitely supposed to be terrifying and murderous, just not in the way he chose to be), and said collapse-prevention involved taking the life of an otherwise pleasant person who had no inkling of the danger they posed (though he is genuinely apologetic and does offer the person in question a chance to move into the Dreaming, which is the best he can do under the circumstances). And these are the necessary cruelties — he's also stunningly vindictive and aloof, and holds long, long grudges while not quite comprehending how his actions might hurt anyone else.
• Healing Hands: He heals Nada's self-inflicted wound to her "maidenhead" with a touch of his hand.
• The Hero Dies: More specifically, this incarnation of the Hero Dies. The absolute embodiment of dreams continues to exist after his death in a different form.
• Humble Hero: He spells it out for Desire: for all their great power, the Endless only exist to serve mortal beings, and they hold the greatest importance in the universe.
• Hypocrite Has a Point: He's not wrong when telling Orpheus that it's better to move on after grieving for the ones you love, and to live. He sets in motion the plot to let the Furies kill him after he kills Orpheus, succumbing to grief just as Orpheus did, though it seems like he planned for his own death for longer... Orpheus' death was just the trigger.
• Ice Queen: He spends most of his existence as an indifferent ice king. Being imprisoned starts to defrost him a bit.
• I Have Many Names: Even by the Endless's standards, he has a lot of names: Morpheus, Lord Shaper, and Oneiros, among others. His bio says that he collects names "like others make friends; but he permits himself few friends".
• I Have No Son!: He did this to Orpheus before abandoning him:
  Morpheus: Father? Did you not say that you were not my son?
• Immortal Immaturity: He's not above creating endless downpours just so he can stand in the rain like a lovesick teenager after the end of an affair — and that's when he's being nice.
• Jedi Mind Trick: He's prone to using this on uncooperative mortals when on Earth.
• Jerkass: He gets better after escaping imprisonment, but he's still not the most pleasant Endless to be around.
  • Not only does he callously dispell Hector in front of Lyta, he tells her he will take her son from her.
  • He also makes no effort to release the people trapped in the Soft Places, except for Marco Polo.
  • Moreover, he usually retaliates any attack or defiance against himself very harshly.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: As stated above, he improves significantly after being imprisoned and tries to make amends for past faults. Even before his imprisonment and with all his faults, he condemns slavery, and in the 18th century suggests to Hob Gadling that he pursue another business; he's seen enough to know that some things are just wrong.
• Keeping the Handicap: The Kindly Ones ransack the Dreaming to torment him, having been given free reign to do so when he took his own son's life as a mercy kill. When Dream objects to their threats, they respond by whipping him with their whip of scorpions, leaving a scar on his cheek. When asked why he keeps the scar by Lucien — Dream being a polymorphic Anthropomorphic Personification who could easily get rid of it — he remarks that it was foretold that he would receive a scar on his cheek as ironic karma.
• Kind Hearted Cat Lover: Well... "Kindhearted" depends heavily on who you ask, but he does have a strong affinity for cats.
• Lack of Empathy: While he doesn't have a lack of morals, he often either doesn't notice or doesn't care about the hurt he causes to other people until someone actively calls him out on it. Once he is called out, he'll do his best to rectify the error with all due haste, no matter the personal cost (which is one of his redeeming features), but it may take a long time for the penny to drop — especially since he's immortal.
• Lonely at the Top: Implied. Dream's cold, aloof nature means that he has few friends, even in the Dreaming. Death and Matthew are about the only characters he can confide in. There's also Hob, who Dream eventually warms up to over the course of around seven hundred years. By the time he's freed of his imprisonment, Dream outright calls Hob his friend, and even breaks tradition to talk to him outside their normal once-in-a-century meeting to warn Hob that they might not get the chance to meet again.
• Looks Like Cesare: He's tall, pale, has messy hair, and his eyes are completely black.
• Messy Hair: Resembling the sleep-tousled variety.
• Painting the Medium: His word balloons are black with white lettering, and use mixed-case letters.
• Pet the Dog:
  • He can, every now and then, be kind. For instance, he both removes John Constantine's nightmares and gives Constantine's ex an easy, peaceful death when he could very easily have let her die painfully (though, admittedly, he only did that last bit after Constantine called him out).
  • He apologizes to Rose Walker-Kinkaid when it turns out that she's the Dream Vortex and that as a consequence, he'll have to kill her to protect the rest of humanity, and offers her the chance to live on in the Dreaming after dying.
  • He is utterly horrified by what Doctor Destiny does with his ruby, and is willing to sacrifice himself in order to try and stop it happening. After the ruby is destroyed, he just takes his foe home and gives him a night of sleep.
  • After finding and rescuing Nada from Azazel, having set out to extract her from Hell (which he condemned her to in the first place), he discusses her future with her and ultimately arranges for her to be reincarnated.
• Pride: Morpheus is a very proud being, and his pride being wounded is the cause of several millennia-old grudges.
• Power Stereotype Flip: The incarnation of Dreams, Fantasy and Imagination is a cold, stoic entity with an unwavering commitment to order and ultimately suicidal hatred of change.
• Raven Hair, Ivory Skin: He's pale as the moon and has stark black hair to match. In this way, he looks a lot like his sister, Death.
• The Sandman: One of the most well-known and influential recent depictions. He even provides the page image.
• The Shadow Knows: He has a "normal" shadow... as long as he remembers to cast it. Fittingly, he does possess some humanity, but not as much as Destruction or Death.
• Sibling Yin-Yang: Whenever protagonist Dream meets one of his siblings, they will be foils for him. He is self-important, dutibound, and formal, while the others contrast wih these characteristics in various ways: Death and Destruction are warm and upbeat, Desire is snarky, malicious, and manipulative, and Delirium is flighty and hyper-emotional. Despite this, all of them get along with Dream, except for Arch-Enemy Desire. Dream's remaining two siblings don't fit as neatly into this dynamic. Despair mostly has a The Siblings Who Never Hang non-dynamic with Dream, and Destiny is an exaggerated version of Dream to the point of having little personality outside of his role.
• Silk Hiding Steel: A male example. Dream is always stoic, formal, and thoroughly polite, but this by no means makes him any less powerful than any of his siblings, and his punishments when he's angered can be horrendously brutal.
• Slavery Is a Special Kind of Evil: Even before his imprisonment at the beginning of the series, Dream takes a very clear stance against slavery, warning Hob Gadling to get out of the trade by the 18th century.
• The Stoic: Most of the time.
• Tranquil Fury: He rarely gets seriously angry, but when he does he doesn't even need to raise his voice to scare the shit out of whoever's unfortunate enough to be around. This includes Desire, who's only ever otherwise fazed by Death.
• Tsundere:
  • Funnily enough, he gets shades of Type A in Overture, when Destiny rescues him.
  • This also appears in his interactions with Hob Gadling. Dream is outraged when Hob suggests that he had Death make Hob immortal because he wanted a friend. A hundred years later, Dream has cleared his head and says that it's rude to keep friends waiting with a small, genuine smile.
• Weaker in the Real World: Dream is immensely powerful in the real world, especially with his various tools, but in the Dreaming he's a nearly untouchable and omnipotent Reality Warper. Only a small handful of beings in all of existence can plausibly be a threat for him in the Dreaming. Azazel, a former co-ruler of Hell, found this out when it challenged Dream only to be effortlessly crushed and then imprisoned.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: Issue #6 of Overture suggests he wants his parents' approval.
• What the Hell, Hero?: He gets called out a lot for his behaviour, including by his own servants.

Daniel Hall / Dream II

"Sometimes I suspect that we build our traps ourselves, then we back into them, pretending amazement all the while."

The second incarnation of Dream, created from transfigured pieces of Daniel Hall's soul. He is clothed all in white, with white hair and more boyish features than Morpheus. While still obsessed with rules and duty, Daniel is a lot less gloomy than his predecessor, and has a weak spot for his mortal parents, who he eventually gives permanent positions in the Dreaming. He is the series' strongest connection to the main DCU, as his parents are Hector and Lyta Hall, formerly Dr. Fate and Fury of the Justice Society of America and Infinity, Inc.. He also has a notable guest role in a Justice League of America story during Grant Morrison's JLA run, as well as a supporting appearance in the event comic Dark Nights: Metal. Like Morpheus, he never actually refers to himself by any name (and rejects the name Daniel), but in the short time he appears in the comic he has no other names.

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• Beware the Nice Ones: Redeeming Replacement he may be, but he's still Dream, and he will not hesitate to display his powers if need be.
• Born-Again Immortality: A subversion. It's the role of Dream that will never die. It's just that different people assume the job when someone dies, and the new guy has all of the memories and knowledge of the old guy(s).
• Character Development: He is the trope in its most literal form, being an entirely new character/point of view for Dream of the Endless to take. He seems to intentionally set out to avoid the pitfalls Morpheus stepped into.
• Good Wears White: He dresses in white, and is much nicer than Morpheus.
• Light Is Good: He has white clothes and white hair, and is the Redeeming Replacement for Morpheus.
• Messy Hair: One thing he shares with his predecessor. His is much shorter however. It's also no longer messy.◊
• Mystical White Hair: To contrast with Morpheus' black hair.
• Naïve Newcomer:
  • He acts like this despite being a Time Abyss, since while he shares all of Morpheus' memories and knowledge, he's essentially a different character, who has never had the job of ruling the Dreaming before. While he knows all of what his predecessor knew in order to be able to take care of things, it's not like he has actually done any of it before.
  • The Dreaming's inhabitants in particular see him as this, which is understandable since they are the ones who interacted with Morpheus the most and immediately take notice of the differences between their old boss and Daniel. It also doesn't help that most of the residents who appear often, such as Matthew, Cain, and Lucien, actually met him as a human baby. In the first run of The Dreaming spin-off, they actually refer to him as "the kid" or "the young master", which they of course never did with Morpheus. Matthew, in fact, decides to stay by his side in most part due to believing that Daniel will need some advice, being now inexperienced of sorts.
• Nice Guy: By contrast to the first Dream. From what little we get to see of him, he's still rather formal, but less self-centered and doesn't hold grudges.
• Painting the Medium: His speech bubbles are the inverse of Morpheus', with the same font but black-on-white instead of white-on-black.
• Past-Life Memories: Daniel states that while he is not Morpheus, he has all of the memories and knowledge that Morpheus possessed.
• Pet the Dog: One of his first actions after assuming the mantle of Dream is to stroke the mane of his guardian pegasus, something his previous incarnation would never do.
• Power Crystal: An emerald, contrasting with Morpheus' ruby.
• The Punishment Is the Crime: He gives Lyta his protection after she destroys Morpheus, reasoning that she has already suffered greatly and doesn't deserve to spend the rest of her existence running from the various beings who might want to avenge Dream.
• Redeeming Replacement: He is quickly established as being much more forgiving and approachable than Morpheus.
• The Stoic: Some things do not change.
• That Man Is Dead: He is Dream of the Endless, but instructs others not to call him Morpheus or Daniel — he is a new entity with the office of the former, transcended from parts of the essence of the latter, and has no right to either name.

Destiny

Voiced By: Jeffrey Wright (Audible audiobook)

Destiny continues to walk... he is holding a book. Inside the book is the universe.

He knows all, and only does what destiny says. A Deus ex Machina for the series, he intervenes only when his Book of Destiny says he should. Usually, this involves shaking up his family. Of the Endless, he is the eldest, in that he has existed since the beginning of existence itself; he is fated to die when the universe ends.

Destiny is the only one of the Endless not created by Neil Gaiman (he hosted the horror anthology Secrets Of Haunted House from the '70s to '80s).

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• All-Powerful Bystander: He knows everything that happens, but intervenes only when it's ordained that he do so.
• Because Destiny Says So: An especially ironic trope to apply to him, but it still applies nonetheless. Destiny is the Anthropomorphic Personification of predestination, so he never really acts of his own free will so much as do what his book instructs him to do. Even as he is giving his thoughts at Dream's wake, he isn't really saying it as he is reading the words in his book out loud.
• Blind Seer: Perhaps. He definitely looks blind... but there are those who say that far from being sightless, Destiny's eyes can see everything all at once, in every time and place. He just doesn't limit his vision the way mortals do.
• Depending on the Artist: Destiny's robe is usually painted in a mousy brown, but it has been grey, other shades of brown, and even purple.
• Deus ex Machina: Sort of. He dislikes getting involved in people's troubles, but will do so if it's in his book.
• The Fettered: He's literally fettered to his book, representing the fact that he is incapable of doing anything that isn't in the book. He sometimes seems to have no free will at all.
• The Hermit: Destiny mostly spends his time in his realm, rarely leaving it except for major events.
• In the Hood: He's always wearing a hooded cloak.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: Him being the eldest sibling among the Endless is fitting, since he also predates the other Endless in Real Life, having been created as a Horror Host for a comic from the '70s.
• Non-Linear Character: On occasion, he'll mention in advance that he's going to say something "in error" several minutes before he proceeds to do so, and then act like he didn't mean to say it. Don't think about that too hard, it'll make your head explode.
• Not So Omniscient After All: While he is meant to be the embodiment of the predestined fate of everyone in the universe, there are certain things that are beyond even his knowledge, one of which is the catalyst of Delight's transformation into Delirium.
• The Omniscient: He knows about everything that is, was, and could possibly be.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business:
  • Yes, Destiny of all beings gets this at one point, losing his temper during Overture because something happened that was not in his book.
  • When the messengers come to inform the Endless of Morpheus' death, Destiny can be seen in one of Despair's mirror-windows, which look upon those who are, well, despairing.
• Painting the Medium: Destiny's words are always italicized.
• Parental Favoritism: Time and Night have rather rocky relationships with their children, but both have expressed more affection for Destiny than the others. Time because Destiny never asks him for anything, and Night because he's the only one who visits her.
• Prophet Eyes: He's blind with Milky White Eyes.
• The Shadow Knows: Inverted. He doesn't leave a shadow, or footprints, or anything else.
• Unwanted Healing: When Killala of the Glow offers to use her power to restore sight to his eyes, he declines with gratitude.
• The Watcher: He observes everything that happens through the pages of his book.
• You Can't Fight Fate: He believes this. Considering who he is, it's kind of a given, but it even applies to him — it should be noted that the text almost always refers to Destiny being chained to his book, and not the other way round (even if it is mentioned, as in Endless Nights, it's as an alternative, along the lines of "he is chained to the book, or it is chained to him").

Death

Played By: Jamie Chung (DC Showcase: Death), Kat Dennings (Audible Audiobook), Kirby Howell-Baptiste (Netflix series)

"It always ends. That's what gives it value."

Death, The Grim Reaper and a Perky Goth, is the second-oldest of the Endless and the sibling closest to Dream. She's a generally kind and upbeat woman, though not always — billions of years ago she was rather coldly pragmatic. Everyone meets her twice: at birth she gives the breath of life, and everyone, from stars to gods, will see her once more in her more obvious function. At the end of time, when the universe dies, she'll put up the chairs, turn off the lights, and lock the doors behind her when she leaves.

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• '80s Hair: Like her brother, she must have used a gallon of hair spray in her early appearances.
• All-Loving Hero: She loves everyone, with the kind of deep and abiding compassion that comes only from knowing them very well. During one story, the person she's there to see tries and fails to play on her sympathy. He assumes that it doesn't work on her, but her response is that it actually always works, it just doesn't make any difference in what she has to do.
• And I Must Scream: It's been stated repeatedly that she is the only one of the Endless who will survive the destruction of the universe and/or time itself. Based on what we've seen of this (particularly in The Books of Magic), this would leave her to spend eternity in a void of nothingness, totally alone forever. She doesn't seem to dwell much on it.
• Animal Motifs: Birds. She's first introduced visiting Dream while he's feeding pigeons in a public park, she frequently wears an Eye of Horus makeup design over her right eye (Horus being an Egyptian god with the head of a falcon), and her arrival is often accompanied by the sound of flapping birds' wings.
• Armor-Piercing Question: Death was on the receiving end of one of these at some point. When she was still cold and aloof, one of the billions of creatures she came to collect snapped "How would you like it?" This sparked a Heel Realization in her, as she'd never taken the time to consider what it was like to actually die. That was when she decided to spend one day each century as a mortal, which helped her learn compassion for the souls she gathered and led to her taking a level in kindness.
• Armor-Piercing Response: When Dream is fuming over Desire needling him about Nada, and Death tells him she agrees with their sibling, Dream mutters that he would have made Nada a goddess. Death shoots back that maybe Nada didn't want to be a goddess, and Dream sending her to hell just because she turned him down was a dreadful thing to do.
• Berserk Button: Just about the only way to get the incessantly cheerful Death to lose her cool is by messing with her little brother.
• Beware the Nice Ones: It never explicitly comes up in the series, but it's hinted more than once that pissing off Death is not a good idea. Desire backs down when rebuked by Death. The slightest sign that she's losing her temper is enough to make the Kindly Ones respectful and defensive.
  The Kindly Ones (very subdued): We are only performing our function, Lady.
• Breakout Character: Death is by far the most beloved of the Endless and as such has appeared in a variety of different comics, such as The Books of Magic. Not to mention the fact that she received her own short film.
• Character Development: She recounts her personal development in "A Winter's Tale" (most easily available in Sandman Book Two or the Deluxe Edition Death): her job was fine at the beginning, when life and death were new and people were enthusiastic about them in the way they always are with new things, then it got harder, with most people just wishing she'd go away, which deeply saddened her and led to her quitting, refusing to take life for a while, until she saw the consequences and came back. Some time later, it started to get to her, people's hurt and upset reactions to dying, making her cold and hard and brittle inside until an Armor-Piercing Question led her to decide to live one day in every hundred years to see what it was like, and the first day she did it she told her other self where she could shove her attitude. After that, she settled into her current self, the Nice Girl who's a friend to everyone, who'll see you to the sunless lands when your time comes, because after all, most everyone's happy to have a friend on that last long hard trip.
• Complete Immortality: An aspect of herself becomes mortal for one day each century to keep her in touch with the lives she collects. According to Delirium, she is the only one of the Endless that will outlive the current form of the universe.
• Cool Big Sis: The second-oldest of the Endless, Death has a good relationship with all of them, but Dream in particular. She takes offense when he thought that she wouldn't care about him, giving a "The Reason You Suck" Speech for moping around after reclaiming all of his powers when he could have just gone off to do something else or talk to her when he's feeling down.
  Death: [to a moping Dream] You could have called me, you know.
  Dream: I didn't want to worry you.
  Death: I don't believe it. Let me tell you something, Dream. And I'm only going to say this once, so you'd better pay attention. [snatches the bread out of his hands] You are utterly the stupidest, most self-centered, appallingest excuse for an anthropomorphic personification on this or any other plane! An infantile, adolescent, pathetic specimen! [tosses the bread at his head] Feeling sorry for yourself just because your game is over, and you haven't got the— the balls to go and find a new one. I don't believe this, Dream. You're as bad as, as— as Desire! Or worse! Didn't it occur to you that I'd be worried silly about you?
  Dream: I didn't think—
  Death: That's exactly it! You didn't think!
• Dark Is Not Evil: She's a Perky Goth who shuffles those who die off this mortal coil. Anger her at your own peril, but that aside, she's actually quite nice.
• Death Is Cheap: She freely admits to this. She confesses that she's very busy, and sometimes people slip through the cracks. She doesn't begrudge them the extra time, because they'll all meet her eventually. Her only comment on the Blackest Night is that it looked like they were having a lot of fun, so she just let them be.
• Death Takes a Holiday: Told from her perspective. One time, before even her cold and aloof phase in Endless Nights, her job got her so down she quit, in this case meaning she refused to take life any more, rather than Destruction's decision to leave his domain to its own devices. It had exactly the result you'd expect of a universe where nothing died, and a young man was sent to see her. He pleaded with her, and she went and saw what her refusal had done, and then she went back to work, because the alternative was worse.
• Don't Fear the Reaper: Really, she is exactly the sort of person you need to see at a stressful moment such as death; comforting, gentle, and easy to get along with while holding a quiet and firm authority.
• The Dreaded: Being Death, everyone is scared of her and what her appearance entails. This is a fact that she is very disappointed by, observing that despite her best attempts to be as comforting as possible, people are not as willing to visit her realm as they are Dream's, who is far more standoffish than her. (There was a time early on in the universe's existence that it seriously got her down, but she eventually learned how to handle it.) Of course, this does mean that even the most powerful individuals know that if you're starting to make her angry, you should back down now.
• Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette: Her demeanor isn't eerie at all, but she is the incarnation of death. And, like most of the Endless, she has bone-white skin and jet-black hair.
• Establishing Character Moment: We first see her trying to cheer up Dream by quoting Mary Poppins and asking him if he's seen it (calling Dick Van Dyke's cockney accent "beyond belief") before encouraging Dream to open up to her and tell her what's upsetting him. When he tells her, she calls him an idiot for feeling sorry for himself and not coming to her for his problems. This clues us in that this version of Death is not The Grim Reaper you've seen in other works, being a Perky Goth that's also a Cool Big Sis to our angst-riddled protagonist.
• Five Stages of Grief: In Action Comics, she tells Lex Luthor that she finds Bargaining to be the hardest to deal with. Ultimately, neither the living nor dead can offer her anything she'd want.
• Gender Flip: She started out as a more traditional male-looking Grim Reaper in the Pre-Crisis DC Universe, as the narrator of several anthology series. One could argue that that depiction is one of many forms some people see her as, however.
• God of the Dead: She's in charge of bringing the souls of the dead into the afterlife. While the series features other gods of death, as one of the Endless she has seniority.
• Goth Girls Know Magic: She has the goth look down to a T, and, as The Grim Reaper, she has powers over death.
• The Grim Reaper: She was grim once, but got over it. As for the reaper part, she complains to her brother Destiny that "next you'll be wanting me to carry a scythe!" According to Word of Gaiman in response to Captain Atom #41 claiming she's a mere aspect of death, she's actually the Grim Reaper, the one who even the other Grim Reapers in the mainline DCU like the Black Racer, the Black Flash, and Nekron will be collected by when their time ends. This, however, has only appeared in one issue of the comics and was never followed up on after that one issue.
• Horrifying the Horror: Being what she is, Death is often the only thing that can scare straight even the most fearsome and persistent of cosmic forces, being able to shut Desire up with a glare when they cross too many lines with Dream, and is even able to force the Furies (an entity whose power and authority supersede most of her siblings) when she's trying to have a heart-to-heart with Dream. One of the few exceptions to this is Lucifer Morningstar, who seems to be beyond her authority. She does not deny this.
• I Know Your True Name: In Hunter: Age of Magic, there is an arc featuring her facing a necromancer who seeks to bind her by this. She is the only one of the Endless established to have a True Name.
• Implacable Woman: She's not vindictive about it, but trying to bind her or keep her at bay with magic never goes well. She can grant an indefinite suspension from dying, but she won't do it just because you try to bully her.
• Mama Bear: When Desire gloats over upsetting Dream, Death quickly calls Desire to heel.
• Messy Hair: Her hair is generally left unstyled.
• Nice Girl: Invoked, to make her both sympathetic and a little disturbing. She knows everybody — everybody — and she has sympathy even for the worst people.
• Non-Linear Character: This comes with being there whenever someone or something in the universe dies, be it planets, persons, or concepts. She's not omniscient, exactly: she just knows when she's needed.
• The Omnipresent: Death personally appears to someone when they are born or die, meaning she can appear at once in an infinite number of bodies that are all "her." This is best shown in Death: The High Cost of Living when she becomes mortal for a day, only to die and end up meeting herself. The two have a conversation about the value of life, which means she is talking to herself while in two different bodies. It was her first such conversation with herself after taking mortal form for a day that changed her attitude.
  Death: Rainie, in West Africa a small village is being massacred by mercenaries, in the pay of their own government. I'm there. In the farthest reaches of a distant galaxy, a planet is being ripped apart by internal stresses; the planet was the home of crystal intelligences, calm and fine and beautiful. I'm there as well.
• Painting the Medium: Notable in that she is the one Endless who does not have a special style of lettering or speech bubbles, perhaps to emphasize that of all of them, she is the one who is most able to relate to humans.
• Perky Goth: She's pretty much the Trope Codifier in Anglo-American comicry, and massively influential on the trope overall. She always dresses all in dark clothes, evoking a goth look, but is quite cheerful and one of the friendliest characters in the comics.
• Raven Hair, Ivory Skin: Pale-skinned, black-haired, beautiful. Nearly everyone in universe agrees that Death is the most attractive woman in the series.
• The Scottish Trope: Death's siblings never address her by name, or even refer to her by name. In conversation, it's always "Sister"; by reference, it's always "our oldest sister." Dream is the only one to have called her by name, and did so only twice. The first, in the very first issue of Sandman, could be taken as Early-Installment Weirdness, and was probably at least partially done so that Gaiman wouldn't have to have him refer to Death as a "she" — after all, her gender was meant to be a big reveal when she turned up in person. It could also be taken as Foreshadowing, since Dream does die. The second comes when he tells Desire to stop screwing with him at the end of A Doll's House.
• The Shadow Knows: Averted. She's the only one out of the current Endless who still possesses a normal shadow.
• Took a Level in Kindness: In her earliest chronological appearance, Death was more like one would expect from the Grim Reaper — aloof and indifferent to mortals — though she hadn't always been like that.
• Top God: According to Neil Gaiman, despite what Captain Atom #41 says, she's the top god to the other Gods of the Dead in DC, being there to collect them when their existence ends. Not that this appears in most comics, of course.
• Unkempt Beauty: Especially her modern incarnations. If anything, her dress sense and messy hair make her more beautiful.
• Unwanted False Faith: Her attitude to the cult worshiping her in The Girl Who Would be Death.
• When She Smiles: Just look at her smile. Makes you wanna fall in love with her, doesn't it?
• World's Most Beautiful Woman: Meeting her before your time all but guarantees you'll fall in love with her at first sight. Hob initially thinks she is the incarnation of Love.

Destruction

Played By: David Harewood (Audible Audiobook)

Destruction: The Endless? The Endless are merely patterns. The Endless are ideas. The Endless are wave functions. The Endless are repeating motifs. The Endless are echoes of darkness, and nothing more. We have no right to play with their lives, to order their dreams and their desires. And even our existences are brief and bounded. None of us will last longer than this version of the universe.
Delirium: Except our sister.

Destruction prefers to think of himself as the personification of change; he abandoned his realm and is now on the run from his family. A Warrior Poet, he likes to try his hand at creating various forms of art, none of which are very good, and things that he's involved with never seem to work out properly.

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• The Atoner: He's Endless, so he still has to watch as everything he enjoys is destroyed... but he no longer feels personally responsible.
• Awesomeness by Analysis: Thanks to his domain, he can see patterns everywhere.
• Been There, Shaped History: He usually takes anonymous roles. For example, he helped dig the Panama Canal, fought in a few wars, and so on.
• Black Sheep: He abandoned his charge and left it to its own devices. For this, he's estranged from most of the other Endless.
• Boisterous Bruiser: He was the loudest and most outspoken member of the Endless, as well as the literal personification of destruction.
• Cloudcuckoolander's Minder: It's implied that he often does this with Delirium. In his Endless Nights story, he's constantly at her side; when protagonist Rachel comes across Delirium alone, the younger entity remarks that her other siblings have asked Destruction to keep an eye on her while she recovers from her recent imprisonment in her own realm. Even when he can't physically be with her, Destruction sends Barnabas, his talking dog, to watch Delirium in his stead.
• Comic-Book Fantasy Casting: His character design is based on BRIAN BLESSED.
• Cool Big Bro: To Delirium and Despair, both of whom miss him terribly when he's gone.
• Cool Uncle: He was implicitly one to Orpheus, calling Orpheus his favorite nephew and even talking him down from suicide.
• Creative Sterility: Played with. Destruction is capable of creating things, but because creation goes against his very nature, he's just not good at it. He's tried every single form of art there is, and is bad at all of them, except for cooking...which involves destroying ingredients in order to create food.
• Desperately Looking for a Purpose in Life: At some point he became disillusioned with destruction, and set out to find himself.
• Destroyer Deity: His former schtick, until he left the position when he foresaw that humanity would develop nukes, due to not wanting to be responsible for the destruction that they would bring. Unfortunately, his post-Destroyer Deity endeavors haven't been working out.
• Failure Is the Only Option: He may have abandoned his post among the Endless, but he's still the embodiment of destruction and decay. As such, anything he tries to create will be horrible, because creation is the polar opposite of destruction.
• Fiery Redhead: In his backstory, before he laid aside his duties, he's shown to be one. In the present, he's a lot more introspective.
• Foil: He who was once Destruction has done something that Dream cannot bring himself to do. And while Dream reaps many consequences for his devotion to duty, (the former) Destruction seems to have suffered no consequences for his dereliction.
• Giftedly Bad: He's tried every form of art, and been lousy at them all (at least according to his talking dog). Not surprising, considering that he's, well, the Anthropomorphic Personification of Destruction, and art is creation.
• Insistent Terminology: His siblings (barring Delirium) only refer to him as "the Prodigal" or "Our Lost Brother." Since he gave up the mantle of Destruction, they feel it's wrong to refer to him by that name any longer.
• Late-Arrival Spoiler: In the early run of the comic, Destruction's identity and even his name were very much a mystery, since his siblings only ever referred to him as 'the prodigal', and it took several years for him to show up and be officially named in the comic proper. Nowadays, mostly everyone who's familiar with the series knows about him, and even those who haven't read the series will see him in things like the Endless family group shots.
• Living Emotional Crutch: While the Endless weren't really all that stable to begin with, Destruction's absence seems to have left a big gaping hole among them that has not gone unnoticed by any of them (except for Destiny of course, having known that he would leave to begin with).
• Middle Child Syndrome: Inverted. He was the only member of the family that every one of the Endless (except maybe Desire) loved. When he decided to leave anyway, it broke them in two, split between the elders and the youngers. It hit Delirium and Despair the worst, since they seemed the closest with him.
• My Greatest Failure: The other Endless seem to hold letting him leave to be this to varying degrees. Destruction himself regrets abandoning his family, but it was a matter of conscience.
• Nice Guy: Apart from Death, Destruction is the friendliest and most personable of all the Endless. Before he left the family, he was the peacemaker of the group, the one who got along with everyone.
  • He's the only person who has ever kissed his sister Despair.
  • His friendship with Rachel the archaeologist in Endless Nights.
• Painting the Medium: Destruction's speech bubbles have an extra-thick border. Aside from that, though, they look no different from the human characters' speech bubbles, highlighting the fact that he, along with Death, is the most human of the Endless.
• The Scottish Trope: Except for Delirium, his siblings hardly ever refer to him as "Destruction", simply as "the Prodigal" or "our lost brother". This is because the Endless' names describe their domains and functions, which Destruction has abandoned without passing the mantle to another aspect of himself. Ergo, he should no longer be referred to as "Destruction", though he has no other name either. When Delirium continues to use the name, it's because she's hoping he'll return to them.
• Tin Tyrant: He appears this way at Orpheus's wedding.
• Walking the Earth: He has been doing this ever since he left his duties.
• Warrior Poet: He's trying to be none of the former, but he's not very good at the latter.

Desire

Played By: Justin Vivian Bond (Audible Audiobook), Mason Alexander Park (Netflix series)

Rose: Are you going to hurt me? Kill me? Mess me up?
Desire: No more than usually, no, and perhaps a little. But only with Love.

The personification of longing and lust. An androgynous shapeshifter, Desire can be male, female, both, or neither, but is always who the viewer would find the most attractive. Above all, they're selfish and manipulative (naturally), and maintained a long-running rivalry with Morpheus that eventually (in a roundabout way) led to Morpheus' death in the war with the three Fates (the Kindly Ones) and Dream's evolution to Daniel. They're also the grandparent of the recurring human character Rose Walker.

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• Ambiguous Gender: Or Hermaphrodite/intersex, as the mood takes them. Desire, being what they are, has never been satisfied with just one of anything. It makes for a small funny moment when Orpheus introduces Desire to Eurydice at their wedding, and he's not sure whether to call them his uncle or aunt.
• The Beautiful Elite: Desire is the most stunningly beautiful being in the universe, and is wanted by everyone.
• Beauty Equals Goodness: Mercilessly subverted. Desire is absolutely beautiful, and also absolutely cruel. Everyone else is simply a plaything to them, and they toy with others' feelings as they see fit.
• Big Bad: They are the closest the series has to one, as they're the only being (besides Lucifer) to actively antagonize Dream... but are ultimately too much of a coward to follow through.
• Brutal Honesty: Desire can be tactless and cruel, especially when they're right about something.
• The Casanova: Being the personification of lust, Desire woos many women and, as The Vamp, many men.
• Dirty Coward: They're quick to back down if called out on their manipulations by their siblings.
• Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette: The pale skin is standard for the Endless; the eeriness... well, Desire is everything you want, including everything you can't have, and thus mocks everyone.
• Empathic Shapeshifter: Desire will always appear as what the viewer finds most attractive.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: In The Kindly Ones, they appear before Rose, and seem to be attempting to connect with or communicate with her, though Rose is in no state to appreciate it. Rose later comments that she had a dream where she missed out on an opportunity to learn many important things. They do help Rose snap out of it, though, symbolically giving her back the heart she lost in The Doll's House.
• Everybody Wants the Hermaphrodite: They milk this for all it's worth to that end.
• Evil Is Petty: After losing to Dream in the Joshua Norton affair, they decide to make him spill family blood and get the Furies to hound him.
• For the Lulz: Unless It's Personal, everything Desire does is for their own amusement.
• Heel Realization: Desire spends much of the series attempting to trick Dream into spilling family blood, so that he would provoke the Furies' wrath. Although Dream kills Orpheus of his own accord, it is subtly hinted that Desire may be the one behind Loki and Puck's kidnapping of Daniel, which in turn spurs Lyta to bring the Furies down upon Dream; once the dust settles and Dream has passed on, Desire is suddenly afraid of what will be coming next.
• Hypocrite: While Desire is entirely correct that Dream treated Nada appallingly, Death, while agreeing, implies that Desire is responsible for the two of them falling in love in the first place, knowing how disastrous it would be for a mortal and one of the Endless to fall in love.
• It Amused Me: Desire often torments people just because they can.
• It's All About Me: They take the position that mortal beings are their personal playthings, in contrast to Dream's insistence that the Endless only exist to serve them. Even their realm is just one massive effigy of themself.
• "It" Is Dehumanizing: Subverted — in the comics, Desire uses it/its pronouns because it's completely beyond the male/female binary and can easily switch to whatever form it likes. See Pronoun Trouble below for more information.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: While Desire can be petty, and possesses a laughably shallow awareness of the feelings of others (often confusing selfish wants with more genuine intentions), a lot of their Pet the Dog moments show that Desire isn't as heartless as they come across.
• Jerkass: Billions of years ago, Dream and Desire used to be extremely close friends. This lasted until Desire, without shame or any pretense of hiding their involvement, made Dream's then-girlfriend cheat on him, just because it was funny.
• Jerkass Has a Point: They point out that Dream has a nasty habit of treating his lovers poorly, complete with mentioning the Disproportionate Retribution he often inflicts on them. This is in fact acknowledged afterwards, when Death agrees that Dream did a very shitty thing to Nada, and Dream immediately starts making plans to correct his error. They also tell Delirium not to go after Destruction in their usual callous way, a sound piece of advice that would save everyone a lot of grief.
  Destruction: Desire was right. Also untrustworthy, acerbic, dangerous and cruel. But right.
• Karma Houdini: No matter how often Desire uses their influence to hurt others (especially Dream), we never see them receive retribution, their position and job description presumably protecting them from such things.
• Lack of Empathy: In the vast majority of cases. Exceptions are very few and far between, though justified, as Sandman is Dream's story, so Desire comes off as the villain. We, the readers, don't see their softer side too often.
• Lust: Be it for love, for power, or for sex, Desire commands them all.
• Manipulative Bastard: Desire uses their ability to manipulate people's desires to nudge them in whatever direction suits their plans at the moment.
• Not So Stoic:
  • Desire is usually pretty controlled... except for the time Joshua Norton refused their offer. Then they got pissed. They seem to react this way whenever they find someone capable of resisting their temptations. One of the short stories in Book of Dreams centers around a man who thwarts Desire by pointing out that they can be beaten by true love. Desire claims they are the same thing.
  • When rebuked by Death, Desire is visibly terrified.
• Otherworldly and Sexually Ambiguous: Because they are the personification of lust, Desire can be a man, a woman, both, or neither, depending on whom and what the viewer finds the most attractive.
• Painting the Medium: The dialogue in Desire's word balloons is in sharp-edged letters.
• Pet the Dog:
  • Desire does seem to genuinely care about their twin Despair; they're always friendly towards her and treat her with as much affection as they've ever shown.
  • Two during the "Brief Lives" arc:
    • Early on, they rescue Delirium from an embarrassing situation, taking her somewhere safe and offering insensitive but reasonable advice that Delirium admittedly fails to heed.
    • Later on, when a strip club is destroyed by Ishtar's suicide (a result of Morpheus and Delirium ignoring the aforementioned advice), Desire loans Ishtar's friend and the only survivor, Tiffany, their trench coat and a few words of sympathy.
  • In the final chapter, when Despair and Delirium talk about how they'll try to be kind to the new addition to their family, Desire scoffs and says they'll wait to see how Daniel-Dream shapes up first. Look carefully, however, and you'll note that Destiny already mentioned that each and every Endless would be kind, implicitly including Desire.
  • In the story "What I Tasted Of Desire" from The Sandman: Endless Nights, a woman contacts Desire and asks for help in wooing a man she wanted. Desire says no, but teleports her directly to him, saving her several days of travel.
  • An enormous example zigzagged in Overture. Desire essentially engineered Dream's salvation and enabled him to save the entire multiverse by sending him the tools he'd need and the only aspect of himself that he'd ever listen to. Not only that, but they do this three times (the first two attempts failed). However, Desire has as much need for self-preservation as selflessness, and because success means a multicosmic retcon, they forget they'd done it and revert back to their old ways.
  • Overture also reveals that in the long distant past, when Dream was overthrown and imprisoned (by the gods from whom he'd eventually make the gates of his kingdom and his helmet) and begged his siblings to aid him, Desire was the only one who did so. They sent Alianora to free and fight alongside him and even cautioned him to be kind to her, implying that unlike Dream's relationships with Killalla or Nada, Desire wasn't having fun at his expense but was genuinely trying to help.
• The Pornomancer: Being the embodiment of lust and want, mortals that see them instantly desire Desire.
• Pride: Desire's biggest similarity to Dream, and also the biggest reason why the two do not get along at all. What started with Desire 'pranking' Dream and offending him has led to an Escalating War where each subsequent 'humiliation' only makes things between them worse.
• Pronoun Trouble; Gaiman wrote in The '80s, long before the singular they/them pronouns became standard for nonbinary people, and used "it", but later editions changed to using "him/her". Call it Fair for Its Day. The audiobook adaptation does use they/them pronouns for Desire.
• Raven Hair, Ivory Skin: Although they can change appearance as they wish, we usually see Desire as an attractive androgynous person with dark hair and pale skin.
• The Shadow Knows: Desire casts two shadows — one black and sharp, the other translucent and wavering.
• Smoking Is Cool: Desire is very often seen with a cigarette artfully dangling between their fingers as an accessory to their unearthly beauty.
• Supernatural Gold Eyes: Described as "tawny and sharp like yellow wine", Desire's golden eyes are the only thing that remains constant in all their forms.
• This Cannot Be!: When Emperor Norton refuses their overtures due to his sense of dignity, they do not take it well.
• Token Evil Teammate: While applying simple morals to the Endless would miss the point entirely, Desire tends to indulge in their worse side more so than their siblings. While whatever suffering the Endless inflict is usually either done as a necessary evil to their duties or due to a Lack of Empathy, Desire will often use their influence in a way that destroys people either on a whim or just because it amuses them. Being the embodiment of want (including everything one cannot have), they also like to mock everyone every chance they have, often where it hurts most.
• Villainous Incest: For a moment in A Doll's House, when Dream travels to Desire's realm to confront them, they seem to be making a mild, likely mocking pass at Dream. (Talking about Dream visiting their...chambers.) Dream does not react well.
• Wanting Is Better Than Having: As the personification of wanting, Desire claims that this is what they're about, not actual satisfaction. This also feeds into their sadistic habits of stringing others along until they find this out.

Despair

Despair I

Daniel: The person who was responsible for the death of the first Despair will take the rest of eternity to die. Only then will his pain cease... and he had better cause for what he did than you.

Not much is known about her, except that she was murdered by someone whom she afflicted. She was taller than the second Despair, with more color in her skin and red tattoos. She's notable for convincing Rao, the Anthropomorphic Personification of the Kryptonian sun, to create life on an unstable planet, even though it would be doomed to destruction. However, it didn't turn out as she'd planned; she intended for there to be a single survivor, "to remember, to mourn, to despair..." Except, that single survivor grew up to be Superman, who isn't particularly noted for giving in to despair, and definitely not known for inspiring it.

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• Failure Is the Only Option: Despair can never succeed or win — to do so, even momentarily, would be to betray its nature. It even seems that the further Despair over-reaches, the worse the snapback is, as in the image above, where her scheme ultimately results in the creation of Superman.
• Minor Major Character: She's dead long before the events of the series, but her convincing Rao to create Krypton led to the eventual creation of Superman.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Her attempt to create a doomed planet whose sole survivor would despair led to the origin story of Superman.
• Posthumous Character: While Despair lives on, the first Despair is dead.
• Riddle for the Ages: Who killed her and why? The only words ever spoken about her murderer say that they will take the rest of the universe's existence to die, and that they were fully justified in killing her.
• Technician Versus Performer: From what little we see of her, this incarnation might be considered the "technician", with an interest in elaborate, sweeping plans such as destroying worlds.

Despair II

Played By: Miriam Margolyes (Audible Audiobook), Donna Preston (Netflix series)

Despair: Today he's sitting in their family room, realizing that his life is over, wondering if he has the courage to physically end it. He doesn't. Isn't it beautiful?

She's short, fat, ugly, sullen-eyed, and gray-skinned, and goes around naked. She impulsively tears her skin with a hooked ring, the sign of her office. It is stated that one of the Endless formed her from an aspect of themselves. Since she and Desire are 'twins', they seem a likely candidate.

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• Animal Motifs: Rats.
• Big Beautiful Woman: Completely averted. She's obese and flabby, with grayish skin, cellulite, and stretch marks all over and she aims to be as unattractive as possible, see Generic Cuteness below.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: Par for the course for the Endless: when Delirium visits her, she is viewing a pedophile who has been caught by his wife and is pondering whether or not he has the courage to kill himself before the police arrive (he doesn't). Despair finds it beautiful.
• Cannot Spit It Out: Her relationship with the ghost of Edgar Allan Poe. Similarly, her desire to see Destruction again.
• Creepy Loner Girl: She has the same basic appearance as most of her siblings (dark hair, pale skin), but since she wears no clothes, is flabby and unattractive, and is often looking at people's suffering, hanging out with rats, and tearing her own skin with a hook, she's instantly seen as creepy.
• Creepy Shadowed Undereyes: The exaggerated dark circles under her eyes have this effect.
• The Cynic: Being the personification of hopelessness tends to make one a pessimist. Her brother Destruction (one of the few beings in the universe she ever really cared about) excommunicating himself from the family certainly did not help either.
• Dark Is Not Evil:
  • She is the personification of all ennui and hopelessness in the universe, but still displays authentic feelings for her loved ones, misses her older brother, and generally behaves in a quite polite and refined way. When she's not tearing her own skin with her hook, that is.
  • She seems to be related to memory and mourning, two somewhat more "positive" aspects of despair. Her comments on her brother Dream's funeral suggest that she always remembers those gone, and suggests that it is part of the reason for her despair. It's a much more poetic interpretation for her occupation than "watching those that suffer".
• Eye Scream: In "Brief Lives", while feeling the pain of Destruction's absence, she jabs her hooked ring into her eye and rips.
• Failure Is the Only Option: It's not as well illustrated as for the first Despair, but it is still true of her.
• Fangs Are Evil: While she's not evil, she represents Despair nevertheless.
• Full-Frontal Assault: The only thing Despair wears is her ring (and something to tie up her ponytail, presumably, since that's how she wears her hair).
• Generic Cuteness: Inverted and defied.
  • She looks like everything most women in fiction aren't allowed to even come close to. Some of the pictures of her in 14 Portraits of Despair's collage art are pretty nice-looking in a Big Beautiful Woman kinda way, though.
  • She is pretty cute in At Death's Door and the Little Endless Storybooks, but still recognizable.
• Gloomy Gray: Despair is the personification of, well, despair. She's strongly associated with the color gray — her skin is described as clammy and her hair and eyes grayish. The Endless's realms are representative of their domains, and Despair's is gray and colorless, comprising of several mirrors where she can look upon others who are suffering.
• Gonk: She's fat, and has a toad-like face, saggy breasts, and pointed teeth.
• The Hermit: Unlike her twin, she doesn't leave her realm that much, except for gatherings with her family. She does turn up for Orpheus and Eurydice's wedding, though.
• Hidden Depths: In spite of her cynical persona, Despair is capable of compassion and love. She was especially close to her brother Destruction, and was particularly upset when he abdicated from his role. It is also implied that her tendency to injure herself with her hooked ring isn't so much out of boredom or masochism as it is a way to vent her frustrations at being forced into the role of being the embodiment of hopelessness.
• Magic Mirror: Well, they aren't exactly magic, since they're the other sides of all mirrors in the universe (and presumably not all mirrors in the universe are magical).
• The Muse: A subplot in Death: At Death's Door involves Edgar Allan Poe admiring her from afar, since she was his muse in life.
• Painting the Medium: Despair's speech bubbles have ragged, shaky edges.
• Pet the Dog: When Daniel-Dream goes to meet his siblings, she mentions how frightened she was when she became Despair, and says she'll try to treat him kindly.
• The Quiet One: She isn't as talkative as her other siblings, but her first incarnation (from what little we see of her) was a bit more chatty.
• Self-Harm: She has a tendency to dig her hooked ring into the corner of her eye and tear downward. It's as bloody as it sounds.
• The Shadow Knows: Her shadow has the smell of "a snake's skin". She herself doesn't have any odor.
• Sinister Nudity: Always naked, and often appears in a semi-villainous role alongside her sibling Desire; for good measure, she's often depicted as a short, pale, obese, and horribly troll-like figure.
• The Stoic: While looking over plague-torn Europe, she confides to Destruction that she is neither pleased or displeased by the events.
• Surveillance as the Plot Demands: She can see through any mirror in the universe.
• Technician Versus Performer: Between this incarnation and the former, this one might be considered the "performer", with a fine-tuned interest in the misery of individual lives as opposed to the large-scale plans of her predecessor.

Delirium

Voiced By: Kristen Schaal (Audible audiobook)

"Not knowing everything is all that makes it okay, sometimes."

The youngest of the Endless. She used to be Delight, the personification of joy and happiness, but changed to Delirium long before the onset of the story for reasons unclear (possibly to assert freedom from Destiny). Her eyes are two different colors, and her hair continually changes in color and style. She can create anything she imagines and warp reality, including a person's memories. It is implied that her delirium is partly a defensive mechanism from knowing too damn much (more than anyone, including her siblings). It's also implied (in Endless Nights) that there may have been relationship trouble involved.

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• Animal Motifs: Colorful tropical fish and butterflies.
• And I Must Scream: In Endless Nights, something has happened to her that leaves her trapped inside her own head — she only remarks that she "went in too deep" — and she's unable to escape. Barnabas (Destruction's talking dog) and Daniel-Dream are forced to rally various mentally ill individuals around a city to delve into the depths of her realm and pull her out.
• Annoying Younger Sibling: Given her "condition", she often needs supervision to prevent her from getting lost in her own realm or some other unfortunate circumstance. At times, her siblings will either pitch in and look after her (like when Death took her to the movies), while others will try and suffer through her before passing her onto someone else. Eventually, Destruction charges his talking dog Barnabas to look after her for him in his stead.
• Armor-Piercing Response: She points out that the only reason Dream cares that the Universe is dying is that he was responsible for it happening.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: Her sense of right and wrong is bizarre even by the standards of her siblings. Case in point: a little girl once paid her a sincere compliment, and she was so touched that she did something indescribable that made the child happy. Forever. And then there's the incident described in Disproportionate Retribution... it's safe to say that when humans deal with Delirium, they have no idea what the result will be (which is arguably the point).
• Break the Cutie: Delirium was originally Delight, until something caused her to change. Many possible reasons for her transformation are floated throughout the series, but none are ever confirmed.
• Character Development: She was always a little scared of Dream before Brief Lives. After their journey, she comes to care so much about him that she tries desperately to save him in The Kindly Ones.
• Cloudcuckoolander: She's basically the Anthropomorphic Personification of this.
• Comic-Book Fantasy Casting: Gaiman based her look on Tori Amos.
• The Cutie: She used to be the personification of everything joyous, warm, fuzzy, and blissful. Even as Delirium, she still retains some of these qualities, and can occasionally be very sweet.
• Dark and Troubled Past: One that caused her to turn from Delight into Delirium.
• Disproportionate Retribution: After being pulled over, she makes the cop believe that he is covered with invisible bugs. FOREVER. He ends up in an asylum, strapped down day and night.
• Drives Like Crazy: "I'm a good driver!" She has to be told that you're only allowed to drive on one side of the road at a time.
• Fashionable Asymmetry: She's never symmetrical.
• Fate Worse than Death: She's sometimes a rival for Morpheus in this regard. To make it worse, while Morpheus at least usually does this as punishment (even if it's a Disproportionate Retribution), Delirium seemingly does it without noticing.
• Flying Seafood Special: She has the habit of taking her fish for walks. They generally float around her, even in situations and places where it's unknown if there is any sense of space or even logic, like her realm.
• Genki Girl: Delight seems to have been a hyperactive kid with a Motor Mouth.
• Getting Smilies Painted on Your Soul: She has this as a power — a child once paid her a compliment, and Delirium was so touched that she made it so the little girl would be happy. Forever.
• Go Mad from the Revelation: It is insinuated that Delight's transformation into Delirium is because of this. She has repeatedly claimed that she knows things that Destiny (who is supposed to know everything, being the personification of inevitability) does not, and Destiny doesn't know the catalyst for her transformation.
• Humanoid Abomination: While all of the Endless are this technically (they're not human, just aspects of humanity), Delirium betrays her frightening and incomprehensible nature more often than any of her siblings.
• Immortal Immaturity: She's forever the youngest sibling. And also crazy, which doesn't help.
• Involuntary Shapeshifter: Her form always seems to be in a constant state of change, whether it's the shape and color of her hair, her clothes, or even her age (though that might be Depending on the Artist).
• Kaleidoscope Eyes: Her eyes never have a set color, and they change at random.
• Mad God: Delirium is older and more powerful than any living or already dead god. Still, she defines and is the poster girl of this trope. In her case, it's justified, since she is, of course, madness personified.
• Madness Makeover: It happened before the story started, but we can see how Delight looked from flashbacks.
• Mad Oracle: She apparently knows secrets even the other Endless don't know. For example, while Destiny knows everything that was, is, could, or will be, Delirium knows everything else; everything that wasn't, isn't, couldn't, or won't be. It's unwise to ignore what she says — nearly as unwise as listening too closely.
  Delirium: Do you know why I stopped being Delight, my brother? ...I do. There are things not in your book. There are paths outside this garden. You would do well to remember that.
• Messy Hair: It's... very lively.
• Metamorphosis: She was once Delight, the embodiment of joy and happiness before... something happened to her and caused her purpose to unravel into madness and her realm to melt and contort into the chaotic bramble it is now. Not even Destiny knows the reason she changed, and he's supposed to know everything. If Destruction is to be believed, this is destined to happen a second time before the universe ends.
• Mind Rape: Both something she may have been a victim of and one of her powers.
• Mirror Character: To Destiny, her oldest brother. The elder of the Endless has knowledge of everything that exists, the youngest of them has knowledge of everything that doesn't exist.
• Moment of Lucidity: When Dream has an emotional breakdown at the prospect of talking to his estranged son Orpheus in order to find Destruction, Delirium wills herself into a moment of lucidity to tell Destiny off and get Dream to pull himself together. Considering she is the Anthropomorphic Personification of madness, her lucid state "hurts very muchly".
  Destiny: It is... refreshing... to see you so collected.
  Delirium: Stick it. Coins have two sides. Destruction told us that, when he told us he was leaving. But I already knew that.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: Word of God says that she was inspired by Tori Amos.
• Nothing Is Scarier: Some of the stories about her past rely on this, as she's too scattered and unfocused to give full details. And of course there's the entire business of going through something so traumatic and horrific that it completely, utterly destroyed her sense of self as Delight and transformed her into Delirium.
• Obliviously Evil: You make her angry? Horrifying hallucinations will plague you till your death. You say something nice to her? Horrifying hallucinations will plague you till your death (though you might be happy about it). She embodies the absence of sanity, what do you expect?
• Only Sane Man: Only once. When Dream was starting to have a Heroic BSoD, she forced herself to become sane to get him to snap out of it. She says that doing so is incredibly painful to herself.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: If she's very, very annoyed, she can control herself and become stern, logical, and direct: see Only Sane Man. It's extremely unnerving.
• The Ophelia: At first glance, she seems to be a lost and lonely little girl in need of help. If any human stumbles upon her, however, she is likely to inflict some horrifying psychosis onto them by accident. Or on purpose. Or both.
• Painting the Medium: Delirium's speech balloons are oddly-shaped and rainbow-colored, and her lettering is warped and smeared.
• Pre-Insanity Reveal: Delirium was once Delight, the personification of joy and happiness, but changed to Delirium long before the onset of the story for reasons unclear. She's a bit of a Mad God. In a few flashbacks, we get to see her before her Madness Makeover.
• Quirky Curls: When she has curls. She doesn't always. (But she seems to like curlicues.)
• Rainbow Motif: Her hair and pet fish and butterflies are always changing colors.
• Reality Warper: Technically, all of the Endless can presumably do this, but she uses it the most by far. With Delirium, these warps might be mere hallucinations. Or they might not. Or both.
• Riddle for the Ages: Why did she change from Delight to Delirium? Not even Destiny knows. The only one who does is Delirium herself, and she's not talking.
• Rummage Sale Reject: She's not very good at matched clothing, even from one moment to the next. Fishnet stockings are a recurring element, however.
• The Shadow Knows: Not only does her shadow look nothing like her, it's tangible.
• Talkative Loon: She's prone to incoherent rambling, although it's downright straightforward by Talkative Loon standards, i.e. she never dissolves into complete Word Salad.
• These Are Things Man Was Not Meant to Know: Delirium remarks that while Destiny's Great Big Book of Everything lists "all that was, all that is, and all that will be," she knows everything else — what wasn't, what isn't, and what will never happen. She's the embodiment of all of that horrifying knowledge, and not even the other Endless are equipped to understand it. Hell, it's not clear how much of it Delirium does.
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight: Delirium's clothes often expose her nipples, and nobody ever finds this surprising or worthy of comment.
• Vague Age: She looks like she could be anywhere from about ten to fourteen or fifteen, depending on the artist and the outfit. (Or maybe her physical age fluctuates along with her clothing and hairstyle. It's hard to be sure.) The only official statement of her age is "older than gods, older than stars, but forever the youngest of The Endless".
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: According to Dream in Overture, this is how she sees her mother Night.

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