Humans
open/close all folders
Introduced in Preludes and Nocturnes
Roderick Burgess
Played By: Charles Dance (Netflix series)
A black magician who sought to capture Death herself, but instead caught Dream. He keeps Dream imprisoned until he dies, and his son Alex keeps him imprisoned afterwards.
- Abusive Parents: At best he's neglectful and demanding towards his son, at worst he's outright emotionally and verbally abusive. He doesn't even let the boy call him father. Instead, it's "magus".
- Bald of Evil: There's not a hair on his head, and he's the first villain in the series.
- Big Bad Wannabe: He wants to capture Death and become an immortal god, but he's playing way out of his league.
- Blood Magic: Both spells we see him casting involve this.
- Crystal Ball: He can scry through one.
- Determinator: He keeps Dream imprisoned for decades, refusing to release him until he gives away the secret to immortality.
- Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: Or rather, did you just imprison the Dream King in your basement? He did, and it was a terrible, terrible idea.
- Evil Sorcerer: While he's mostly just a charismatic charlatan, he does demonstrate a degree of genuine magical knowledge.
- Expy Coexistence: While it's very clear that he's supposed to be a take on the infamous occultist Aleister Crowley, he has an offhand comment mentioning a rival named Aleister, and later it would be firmly established that Crowley exists in the Sandman universe.
- Fate Worse than Death: Had he succeeded in capturing Death, this would have been in store for the entire universe.
- Harmful to Minors: He involves Alex in his drug-, blood-, and sex-fueled rituals. It's a wonder the kid grew up anything like sane.
- Inelegant Blubbering: He dies doing this in front of Dream, lamenting how he had to get old.
- It's All About Me: The real purpose of his entire order seems to be to give himself money, prestige, respect, and ultimately immortality.
- Karma Houdini: A partial example. He never gets the immortality that he demanded as the price of Dream's freedom because Dream simply waits him out until he dies old, depleted, and bitter... but his son is the one who gets the Disproportionate Retribution simply by virtue of having inherited Dream's basement and being its owner at the time Dream to escape.
- Ludicrous Gibs: He has a spell that can explode people he's scrying on.
- No Historical Figures Were Harmed: Of real-life mystic Aleister Crowley (who is mentioned in-universe as Burgess's rival).
- Small Role, Big Impact: Dream's character development is kickstarted by his imprisonment by Burgess, which has effects on the story all the way until Dream dies and Daniel takes his place as the new Dream. That's quite the impact for a character only seen a handful of times in the first trade paperback who is seldom mentioned otherwise.
- Smug Snake: He tries to threaten and cajole Dream, but to Dream he's barely even worth considering as a threat.
- Starter Villain: His thoughtless actions set off the first volume, and after that he's forgotten quite quickly.
- Summon Magic:
- The Sandman is kicked off by his failed attempt to summon Death; he got Dream instead, thanks to Dream being extremely exhausted at the time.
- In Sandman Midnight Theatre, he summons a thing that completely destroys a traitor's sanity.
- Ruthven Sykes, a pupil of his, can summon and speak to demons, presumably having learned it from him.
- Visionary Villain: He wanted to imprison Death to ensure that no one would ever die again. When he captures Dream instead (maybe his aim was off), Dream says that Burgess cannot comprehend how lucky he is that he didn't succeed in his original goal.
- Voodoo Doll: He kills Ruthven Sykes by linking his life force to a cat and then killing the cat. Given the blood and sex rituals his cult practices, he probably had the, uh, materials for Sympathetic Magic saved up.
Alex Burgess
Roderick Burgess's son. He offered Morpheus the same deal as his father, which again Morpheus turned down.
- Age-Gap Romance: He was fortyish when the much younger (probably late teens) Paul McGuire seduced him.
- Bald of Evil: Like his dad, eventually.
- Daddy Issues: The entity in the basement isn't the only problem Roderick left him with, having made him a part of his rituals (which included violence, drugs and sex) when he was still a child.
- Disproportionate Retribution: Although it wasn't his decision to summon or capture Dream, it was his choice to keep him imprisoned after Roderick's death in fear of this. Ironically he just made things much worse for himself; thanks to him Dream's captivity lasted more than twice as long as it otherwise might have, and Dream was all the more angry when he finally escaped.
- Evil Sorcerer: Not as bad as his father, but he did keep running the cult to fleece gullible people of their money and perpetuated Dream's imprisonment.
- Fate Worse than Death: As punishment for keeping Morpheus imprisoned, he is forced to sleep forever, "waking" into worse and worse nightmares. Until Morpheus dies, that is.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: His deciding to keep Dream imprisoned for fear of what he would do if he were released just makes Dream all the more furious with him when he finally does escape, whereas if he'd released Dream as soon as Roderick died, Dream might have been more lenient (and Neil Gaiman has confirmed that if Alex had done this, Dream would have been merciful). And during a visit to demand immortality from Dream, his wheelchair scratches out part of the magic circle keeping his prisoner captive.
- Inept Mage: Although he demonstrates a bit of magic to keep cult members hooked, he didn't inherit his father's great talents.
- Jerkass Has a Point: He doesn't continue to keep Dream imprisoned out of spite (at least initially), but because he's terrified of what Dream would do to him if he were freed. The readers later get to see various examples of just how petty and vindictive Dream could be before his imprisonment, so Alex's fears are rather valid...although he doesn't help his case by keeping Dream captive even longer than his father did.
- Lighter and Softer: His version of the cult has the fangs taken out of it, and is mostly for fleecing suckers.
- Mind Prison: His fate, to be trapped forever in nightmares, is his punishment for continuing his father's imprisonment of Morpheus.
- '70s Hair: He develops a sweet set of sideburns in the 30s, which he keeps until he goes totally bald in the 80s.
- Sins of Our Fathers: His father already having died, he pays the price for Dream's captivity. Still, as someone who had every opportunity for more than forty years to release Dream but always refused, it's not entirely undeserved.
- Straight Gay: If he didn't have a boyfriend, you wouldn't know it.
John Dee / Doctor Destiny
Played By: William Atherton (Justice League), Alfred Molina (Justice League Dark), Jeremy Davies (Elseworlds (2018)), William Hope (Audible Audiobook), David Thewlis (Netflix series)
Once upon a time, a bog-standard Mad Scientist came up with a bog-standard plan to defeat the Justice League of America: use a wonderful little doohickey of his own invention to invade their dreams. And like all such plans, it ended in a bog-standard defeat.
Well, except for the part where they made him unable to dream. Forever. Oh, and did we mention that doohickey was powered by the (then-imprisoned) Dream King's ruby?
Years after his defeat, his mind and body a twisted husk of their former selves, the good Doctor Dee finally escapes the welcoming walls of Arkham Asylum, just in time to serve as the series' first Arc Villain. Owing to the latter's weakened state, he's one of the few villains in the series who poses a genuine physical threat to Morpheus, though it doesn't last for long.
For more about his portrayals in the greater DCU, see here.
- Arc Villain: The series' very first.
- Ax-Crazy: To an immense degree. Everything he does is done solely to amuse him, and he doesn't care one bit about any of his puppets.
- Bait the Dog: His conversation with Rosemary paints him as a pitiful Tragic Monster, until he shoots her in the head.
- Bald of Evil: Except for some long, stringy hair around the sides of his scalp.
- Body Horror: His current appearance is not the most pleasant thing to behold.
- Card-Carrying Villain: When he was originally introduced into DC-canon, Doctor Destiny was just a generic supervillain with no real backstory or motivation for his actions. When introduced in The Sandman, this aspect is Played for Horror. He kills everyone he comes across and uses the ruby to drive humanity insane, the microcosm of this being shown in the Diner, where he drives the inhabitants to rape, torture and kill each other, only to give them a brief Moment of Lucidity just to watch them gawk at the horrors he made them commit. When they demand a reason for all of this...John Dee: Why? Because I can.
- Depending on the Artist: While the series, like Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth later on, chose to depict a rather a sickly Destiny over his traditional Skeletor-esque appearance, he gets subjected to this within this series. Sam Kieth, the original artist, depicted Destiny as completely bald and with horribly rotting, seemingly dripping skin. When Mike Dringenberg replaced Kieth, Doctor Destiny acquired side hair and lost the rotting skin.
- For the Evulz: He himself says the only reason he does what he does is because he can.
- Full-Frontal Assault: Arkham denies him even the privilege of clothes so that he doesn't hang himself. As such, the most he wears throughout his rampage is a fur coat Rosemary gives him. Needless to say, it's
Squick to the extreme. - Godhood Seeker: When he tries to take over the dream-world. He actually fails, inadvertently restoring Morpheus to his full strength.
- I Was Quite a Looker: He used to be a fairly handsome man, as seen in his original appearances and in a photograph seen in this series. His inability to dream has reduced him to a horrific shell that looks more like a corpse then a living person.
- Karma Houdini: Sure, he went back to Arkham, which is what Batman would have done, but he still caused worldwide mayhem, and mentally enslaved and tortured an entire diner full of innocent people because he could.
- The Mad Hatter: Arguably an extremely dark take on this. His instability means he has zero moral compunctions about any of what he does.
- Mind Rape: Big time, to the entire world.
- He gives people back their sanity for an hour during his 24 hours of torture, just so they'd know what's happening, and what's coming.
- My Beloved Smother: Not him personally, but his mother is really hinted to be one.
- One-Steve Limit: Averted. The first arc of Sandman also features John Constantine, though the two never interact.
- Psychopathic Manchild: His mind has been reduced to a childlike state by being deprived of his dreams for decades.
- Sanity Slippage: Underwent this by the time he appeared in Sandman's first arc, having become a Psychopathic Manchild who tortured a diner full of people For the Evulz.
- Took a Level in Badass: Zig-zagged. With the Dreamstone, he's definitely more powerful than in his days as a bog-standard JLA villain, but it also unravels his sanity and leaves him quite pathetic and childlike mentally.
- Took a Level in Jerkass: This, however, is much less subject to debate. Silver Age Dee was no saint, but he certainly wasn't the type who'd spend twenty-four hours slowly torturing a bunch of civilians to death.
- Unusually Uninteresting Sight: None of the other diner patrons take much notice of him, even though he looks like a withered ghoul and is dressed in only a fur coat. This might be deliberate on his behalf through the powers of the Dreamstone.
- Villainous Lineage: He's confirmed to be the illegitimate son of Roderick Burgess in the Audible version and in The Dreaming when his granddaughter explains why she intends to be the last of the bloodline, and appears to have inherited all of the "Demon King's" evil that didn't go to his half-brother, and then some.
- Weaker in the Real World: In the Dreaming, provided he's using the Ruby, Dee might as well be a god. He can warp or tear apart the entire Dreaming however he wants to, creating chaos and madness all over the world. Not even Dream can directly defeat him, as Dream's attempts to overcome Dee focus on indirect methods that attack Dee's psychological weaknesses. Outside of the dream world and without the Ruby, however, Dee is just a withered, somewhat ghoulish old man with no special powers or abilities.
- With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: When he regains the Ruby, at first he wants to hold the world to ransom, spreading madness as a show of his power so that he would receive whatever he wanted... and then he decides driving everyone insane is funnier. Dream explicitly states that having and using the Ruby — one of the most powerful tools of one of the Endless — must have caused considerable damage to Dee's mind. It's probably one of the reasons that he shows such mercy after all the atrocities Dee committed.
Nada
Voiced by: Amaka Okafor (Audible Audiobook)
An ancient African queen. Dream (whom she calls Kai'ckul) was enthralled by her and offered to make her his bride, but she refused him. As punishment, he damned her to Hell, where she has resided for millennia.
- Driven to Suicide: She killed herself after her relationship with Dream destroyed her city. That wasn't enough of a rejection for him, since he came for her in Death's realm.
- History Repeats: As an Endless, the event of Dream sending her to Hell inadvertently altered the fabric of fate in a manner that caused a pattern of black women burning to death after coming into even tangential contact with Dream. Fortunately, this ended after Dream died.
- Reincarnation: After she is freed from Hell and reconciled with Dream, he offers another shot at their relationship. She declines and is reincarnated.
Hob Gadling
Voiced By: Matthew Horne (Audible Audiobook), Ferdinand Kingsley (Netflix series)
A man from the Middle Ages — a contemporary of Geoffrey Chaucer — who had the uncanny luck to be overheard ranting about the subject of immortality by two of the Endless, Death and Dream. Amused, Dream approached Hob and, with Death's permission, offered to give him immortality if he would only come back to that very inn once a century. Hob accepted, believing it was all a joke. One hundred years later, he realized his error.
- Armor-Piercing Response: He completely stuns and angers Dream when he suggests that Dream keeps meeting him because he simply wants to speak with a friend.
- Character Development: He mentions that all that he cared about for the first couple hundred years was eating and fighting and sex, but he's had plenty of time to change (or at least get bored). Though, funnily enough, he's not convinced that even immortals ever really change.
- Complete Immortality: He can die if he chooses to and under no other circumstance. He's been offered the choice but refused it time after time, even when suffering horribly.
- Flying Dutchman: At least thematically. His meetings with Dream actually give rise to a legend that the Devil and the Wandering Jew meet in that tavern once a century, which he thinks is rather amusing.Dream: I am no devil.
Hob: And I'm not Jewish. - Immortal Apathy: Averted — he enjoys the highs and suffers through the lows of his infinitely long life in the same way that every other mortal does, only that he's a little bit more used to coping with loss and a little bit more optimistic about things, as there will always be a silver lining for him no matter how bad it gets. The only thing he's really apathetic about is the thought of his own death — as in his words, "death is a mug's game, and he's not playing it" — but he's thought that way since he was just another mortal soldier in 14th century England.
- Immortality Hurts: He's had some real low points in his life. At one point, he mentions to Dream how unbelievably painful it is to starve to death and survive. That said, he's never thought of ending his life. After all, when you literally live forever, there's always time to fix things.
- Immortality Promiscuity: As it's much more likely for him to outlive his partners than for the opposite to happen, he's naturally a bit of a womanizer. The majority of his appearances since his debut in "Men of Good Fortune" show him either with his current partner or with the woman who would eventually become his partner such as Margaret, better known as Jim. He also admits to having slept around quite a bit in the time between the 14th and 16th centuries. Notably though he does state that after the first couple of centuries he did get bored of casual sex and now does require an emotional connection.Hob: (referring to his recently-born son) My first son born in over 200 years on this Earth. Well, that I have known of, anyway.
- Inconspicuous Immortal: Though he spent most of his early centuries as a mercenary, a wealthy merchant, and at one point even a slave trader, he prefers to live a comparatively unassuming life in the modern era — still enjoying the simple pleasures of a drink at the pub and a day out with his current girlfriend. The last time he got any serious attention was during the 19th century, during which an occultist mistook him for the Wandering Jew; since then, Gadling has flown completely under the radar.
- Living Forever Is Awesome: No matter how bad things get for him over the centuries — and they get very bad, along the lines of starving to death but being unable to die — Hob has never accepted or requested death. Even when Dream, the closest thing he has to a permanent friend, dies and Death gently offers to close off the deal, he refuses.
- Mayfly–December Romance: The man can't seem to go a decade without meeting a new woman and making them her new partner. With him being immortal and all, he ends up outliving every single one of them, but that doesn't stop him from finding someone new each time that it happens.
- My Grandson, Myself: Hob masters this trick after becoming more than a wandering mercenary and bandit. He later notes the problems caused by the invention of photography, but usually keeps a working cover story going.
- My Greatest Failure: He made a fortune in the slave trade. When he realized what exactly that involved, it became the single greatest regret he's ever had, and it particularly haunts him when he dates Gwen, who's African-American.
- Nostalgia Filter: Hob's been shown to be very critical of this, mocking an old man in the 1480s criticizing the invention of the chimney by pointing out that people were constantly coughing and having to wipe their streaming eyes without them, or would even die due to asphyxiation. During the last volume, he even mocks the idea of a Renaissance Faire.
- Odd Friendship: He's more or less an ordinary human who happens to live forever, and he becomes friends with one of the seven Endless. At first, it appears that Dream visits solely to see what immortality would be like for a human. Over time, though, Hob realizes that they are really friends. Dream is appalled by the suggestion at first, but after being confined he not only accepts but breaks their tradition and visits Hob more often.
- Old Friend, New Gender: It's kind of an odd case, but in the 1910s, Hob meets a young cabin boy named Jim who's actually a girl by the name of Margaret, nicknamed Peg by her mother. Later, in the 90s, as he stands by his latest wife's grave, he mentions marrying a woman he calls Peg or Peggy who died in the Blitz, and Neil Gaiman confirmed that they're the same person.
It may well be that they met again after she became too old to masquerade as a boy and started living as a woman. - Outliving One's Offspring: He's done this several times over. It got to him badly at least once, but he's adapted.
- Politically Correct History: Averted; he was involved in the slave trade, and while he feels deeply guilty about it later on, he was perfectly okay with it at the time. He later lampshades the trope left and right in one of the wrap-up issues of The Wake when his (Black) girlfriend convinces him to go with her to a Renaissance Faire. His dialogue from that issue currently provides page quotes for The Renaissance and The Dung Ages.
- Also, during his time in the Middle Ages, he was a mercenary and would occasionally become a bandit. He once killed a man for white bread.
- Really 700 Years Old: His body has seemingly frozen in time after he accepted Dream and Death's little game. This causes him to look no older than his late 20s, despite already being several hundred times older than that in any of the time periods we see him in afterward. It doesn't help him much, as he has to constantly make new identities and hide any proof of his immortality with each generation so that people won't get suspicious, lest he gets drowned as a witch like what happened to him between 1589-1689.
- Seen It All: After three or four centuries, Hob is a rather world-weary character — but never too weary.
- Slavery Is a Special Kind of Evil: He was involved in the Slave Trade and considers it one of his major regrets even centuries later.
- Spider-Sense: After so long alive, he's developed something of a sense for people who are fated to die soon.
- Supernatural Repellent: Vampires ("nightwalkers") don't care to nosh on him, apparently, though this doesn't save anyone else with him. Most likely this was a [[little bonus to his immortality so he didn't get chained up as an eternal blood pack somewhere and thus mess up Dream and Death's game.
- They Would Cut You Up: One reason he doesn't talk about his immortality.
William Shakespeare
Voiced By: Arthur Darvill (Audible Audiobook)
The Bard himself.
- Always Someone Better: How he feels about Christopher Marlowe, a natural writing talent and prodigy, as opposed to Shakespeare whose first plays were not so good and had to develop his skill a little bit.
- Author Avatar: A multi-layered variant that's a little mind-boggling. Shakespeare obviously writes his own experiences into his plays, and he acts in them when travelling with the King's Men. The plots Morpheus gives him (especially The Tempest) are also inadvertently biographical for Morpheus and Shakespeare. On top of that, the progression of Shakespeare's life can be read a little as mirroring that of Morpheus, particularly towards the end of both. And finally, in the last volume of Sandman, Gaiman has Shakespeare write Prospero's final speech, which is a Leaning on the Fourth Wall farewell to the audience of the play — and also, in context, can be read as Shakespeare bidding goodbye to the world of theatre and stories, Morpheus bidding goodbye to his duties and role (both in-universe and as the protagonist of a comic), Gaiman bidding goodbye to the reader, and the reader bidding goodbye to the story.
- Be Careful What You Wish For: The Endless might overhear you, and "the price of getting what you want is getting what once you wanted."
- Deal with the Devil: Somewhat more benign that most examples, since his deal is with Dream. In return for inspiration and unlocking the true potential of his literary gift, Shakespeare writes two commissioned plays for the Dream King with plots specified (A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Tempest, if you're curious). Shakespeare muses towards the end of his life that the price he paid may not have been what Dream requested, but what Shakespeare himself received.
- Happily Married: Subverted. He and Anne Hathaway (no, not that one) had a shotgun wedding, and Shakespeare spent most of his time in London (he admits to Ben Jonson that he cheated on her), leaving her to raise the kids. However, in his retirement, Shakespeare and Anne form a bond and become affectionate toward one another.
- It's All About Me: Shakespeare cares more about being a great artist and writer than being a good father or husband. He's highly neglectful of his young son Hamnet, and it's implied that the boy ends up being abducted by Titania in some fashion, leaving a dead body behind. In his retirement at Stratford-upon-Avon, Shakespeare feels very guilty for not doing enough for his children and about Hamnet's fate.
- It Will Never Catch On:
- He has a brushing encounter with Hob Gadling, who doesn't think much of his literary efforts at the time.
- His own opinion of Guy Fawkes Day. He and a friend (actually Ben Jonson, a writer of near-equal stature) sarcastically coin the "Remember, remember, the fifth of November" rhyme for the day, joking that it might endure for a century.
- Married to the Job: Hamnet believes his father cares more about his plays than his family. Many years later, he finally admits to himself that this was true. Even when as he grieved Hamnet's death, a part of him was glad to know the loss of a child firsthand, so he could write it more accurately into his future plays.
- Parental Neglect: He's not a good father at all. In his retirement, he feels guilty about this.
- Shakespeare in Fiction: One of the more notable recent examples, and many consider it to be one of the most plausible psychological looks into the great writer.
- Was It Really Worth It?: He wonders in his retirement if the sacrifices he made for being a great writer justify his bad marriage and the poor futures of his children, especially when the society he lived in was repressive of his fellow artists like Marlowe and Ben Jonson. Morpheus, who is aware of this trope, reassures Shakespeare that his contributions will make a difference, while lamenting that he himself will never have that certainty.
Introduced in The Doll's House
Rose Walker
Played By: Kyo Ra (Netflix series)
Unity Kinkaid's granddaughter. She's introduced looking for her missing brother in the second volume of the series.
- Apocalypse Maiden: Due to Desire impregnating her grandmother, Unity, Rose inherited the Dream Vortex, a power that collapses all the walls of the Dreaming and then the Dreaming itself if it's allowed to be fully expressed, shattering entire universes. Morpheus informs her (quite politely) that he has to kill her to prevent this. Fortunately, Unity herself takes the power from Rose and dies instead — just as she was meant to before Desire got involved.
- Big Sister Instinct: Towards Jed. She's very protective of him, though (usually through no fault of her own) she often isn't there when he actually needs her.
- Broken Bird: At the best of times, she's aloof and extremely unwilling to let others get close to her.
- Dramatically Missing the Point: She has a tendency to draw the wrong conclusions and learn the wrong lessons from her experiences.
- Dream Walker: She can enter other people's dreams, and breaks down the walls between them just by being there. This also makes her name a Stealth Pun.
- Dude Magnet: Rose appears to be supernaturally attractive without realizing it. At one point, a pedophile becomes attracted to her (seeing her as much, much younger). She also seduces a gay man (without realizing he was gay), briefly attracts (or at least flusters) another gay guy, and possibly also had Gilbert falling for her (he mentions falling in love, and that he treasured her kiss on his cheek). This is probably due to being Desire's granddaughter.
- Good Bad Girl: Rose is sweet, down-to-earth, and easily one of the most unambiguously benevolent characters in the series (though her journal entries and inner monologues can be rather nasty and judgemental, she never treats anyone badly and will go out of her way to do good things for people). She is also not shy about sex and doesn't hesitate to initiate a hook-up with a cute guy, or share her sexual desires and experiences with her friends or diary.
- Horrible Judge of Character: Rose judges people she meets instantly and aggressively. Her first impressions of pretty much anyone she meets usually turns out to be wrong. She can even be spectacularly wrong about people she's known for a while.
- Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places: She thinks some of the serial killers at the convention are kind of cute, and hooks up with a guy she barely knew. Who turned out to be gay, with a partner.
Word of God says she also hooked up at some point with Hal from the boarding house, who seems to have a case of this himself. - Sleepyhead: It's downplayed compared to many other examples in media, but Rose sleeps a lot and has a tendency to fall asleep at crucial moments. It's probably tied to her nature as an (ex-)Dream Vortex.
- Older Than They Look: Again, due to her parentage. People are constantly mistaking her for being younger than she really is. It's not as noticeable in the original series, but when she turns up again in the pages of The Dreaming, she has a daughter in her twenties and doesn't look a day older than her.
- Took a Level in Kindness: Twenty years after the events of "The Kindly Ones" she's working as a hospice nurse.
- We Used to Be Friends: With Hal during "The Kindly Ones", having had some unspecified but vicious falling-out in between that arc and The Doll's House. They eventually reconcile.
Jed Walker
Rose Walker's missing brother.
- Abusive Parents: Foster parents, actually. They kept him locked in a filthy basement for years, only letting him out to brutally beat him into submission so he wouldn't let anyone know there's something amiss.
- Earn Your Happy Ending: After Rose and Gilbert rescue him, he's reunited with his family and finally gets a normal life. Seven years later, he's able to talk about what happened.
- Hope Spot: He escapes the basement he was locked in thanks to Dream and runs into a helpful, kindly man...who turns out to be the Corinthian on his way to the "Cereal Convention".
- Out of Focus: After his original arc where he's saved, future arcs with the Walker family focus exclusively on his older sister, and he'll only occasionally get a mention or cameo.
- Parental Abandonment: He was given up for adoption.
- Trauma Conga Line: He's abused (by his foster parents, who only took him in for the money they'd get), used (by Brute and Glob), freed and caught again (by the Corinthian, who locks the poor kid in the trunk of his car "for later"), and finally found by Rose and Gilbert, by which point he's dehydrated, malnourished, exhausted and on the brink of death. Fortunately, he survives the night in hospital, and things get much better for him from then on.
- Weirdness Magnet: A minor case. His imagination was apparently sufficient to support a dead human soul, a living human soul, and an unborn child in a bizarre "dream kingdom", and he manages to run into all four of the rogue dreams completely accidentally in very quick succession. Like his sister, it may be a side-effect of his heritage — grandson of Desire of the Endless and Unity Kinkaid the Dream Vortex.
Barbie
Voiced By: Laurence Bouvard (Audible audiobook)
A character introduced in The Doll's House as one of Rose Walker's housemates, at that point in time dating a man named Ken. She returns, having now separated from Ken and living in New York, as the focus of the arc A Game of You, which sheds more light on her character and her remarkably rich, fairytale-like dreams.
- Creepy Child: The Cuckoo, the child version of Barbie who has become the evil ruler of her dream land and suffers severely from Not Growing Up Sucks.
- Did You Just Flip Off Cthulhu?: She tells Thessaly, a murderous immortal woman, to shut up. Then she tells the Cuckoo to Get Out! after securing its freedom.
- Genre Savvy: She eventually becomes this. Instead of using her boon to kill the Cuckoo or restore the land, she says she's taking "the Dorothy option" — Wizard of Oz — and that she wants herself and her friends returned to the waking world, safely. Dream has a So Proud of You smile after he agrees.
- Good Girls Avoid Abortion: Averted. She's unquestionably the hero of A Game of You, and is a generally nice person who does her best by her friends, even sacrificing the Land so that she and her friends can escape safely. She also mentions getting pregnant as a teenager and terminating it. It's simply a fact, judged neither as right or wrong.
- Heroic BSoD: After Rose accidentally exposed her dreams to Ken's, Barbie moves out of their shared rental from Florida to New York. She mopes around her friends and expresses that she doesn't dream.
- Hidden Depths: When she's with Ken, her dreams reveal that she has an active imagination and is dissatisfied with her "Stepford Yuppie" life. By contrast, his dreams are interchangeable with his surface personality. Disturbingly so.
- Magical Girl: In her dreams, she's the princess of a magical land (called simply the Land) who is friends with all manner of mystical talking creatures and possesses a powerful gem called the Porpentine.
- Meaningful Name: She's a beautiful blonde woman who, at first, seems to be living the perfect life, whose name is Barbie. And her (ex)-husband is called Ken. Taking it further, we're told Ken left her for a girl called Sindy, this being the name of the bestselling British fashion doll.
- No Ending: After she attends Wanda's funeral, she admits she's not sure what she will do. But she decides to get up and go out, to make something real in this world to move on from the dream one she lost.
- Real Dreams are Weirder: The fact that her dreams (when she had them) were all the same proves to be a significant plot point later in the series.
- Stepford Smiler: As Rose finds out, Barbie was pretending that her superficial life with Ken was what she wanted, but her dreams reveal otherwise. When the persona falls away, she's actually depressed on how life doesn't offer what her fantasies promise.
- Wrong Genre Savvy: She assumes she's the princess of a magical world where she is The Chosen One who will save her friends from an evil being, like in a Changeling Fantasy. It's something even the Cuckoo lampshades when they confront each other. It turns out she's in a decaying dream world that originally belonged to someone else, and she has to fail so that the Land can properly die, and she can grow up.
- Yank the Dog's Chain: Martin Tenbones dies to give her the means to return to the Land, and to save it from the Cuckoo. In the wake of his death, Barbie returns to the Land, determined to help her friends and be the princess she always wanted to be. She fails because the Cuckoo absorbed an aspect of her childhood and became her Bratty Half-Pint self. What's worse, Dream mentions that it ought to have happened a while ago, but Rose messing with her dreams delayed it.
Chantal and Zelda
Two women who live in the same house as Rose in The Doll's House. Nobody in Hal's house is sure if they're lovers, close friends, or relatives, but what is clear is their devotion to each other and their fascination with stuffed spiders.
- Bury Your Gays: Both die from complications related to AIDS. Chantal dies off-panel, while Zelda is featured as a secondary character in The Kindly Ones, showing what the disease has done to her, and she dies off-panel as well while Rose is in England. They contracted the disease due to a fluke error. Chantal had a kidney replacement some years ago, but the donor was HIV-positive and Chantal got infected. As a result of their closeness, so did Zelda. Rose muses it probably wouldn't have happened these days.
- The Bus Came Back: Zelda appears in The Kindly Ones. And dies.
- Bus Crash: Chantal died some time before Zelda reappears in The Kindly Ones.
- Call-Back: In The Doll's House. Chantal mentions that Zelda had a story about God and two sets of footprints in the sand. She offers to tell it to Rose to help her feel better, but Rose thanks the two and says she'll hear it later. In The Kindly Ones, Rose says she has heard it. Zelda told her after Chantal died.
- Collector of the Strange: They own the largest collection of stuffed spiders on the East Coast.
- Creepy Child: Zelda appears to have been like this when she was younger, although it's also possible this is how she fully perceived herself back then. Her parents ignored her and treated her like crap because of her speech impediment, and Zelda apparently liked to collect bones from animals, although it doesn't seem she killed any of them.
- Creepy Good: They're strange, but they're also nice, polite, and offered Rose some words of wisdom when she was dealing with her brother Jed's hospitalization.
- Dark and Troubled Past: Zelda, which may explain why she clings to Chantal, who is the more vocal of the two.
- Department of Redundancy Department: Chantal's dreams, described as intricate loops trying to describe nothing of herself to herself.
- Dying Alone: Zelda dies off-panel while Rose is in England. Rose doesn't find out until her next visit to the hospice. The woman at the front desk said they tried calling her, but it's against their policy to leave phone messages. The worst thing about this is that Rose wouldn't have been in England if not for Zelda. Zelda received a message from Rose's grandmother, saying she'd give Rose back "her heart." It turns out this was Desire.
- Hidden Depths: They appear to just be a couple of kooky and dramatic ladies with strange hobbies, but their dreams reveal that Chantal is stuck in a loop trying to figure out things about herself, and Zelda is a tormented woman who had a bad childhood and relies on Chantal to get her through life.
- Nightmare Fetishist: Both of them have very morbid interests, and Zelda at least appears to have been that way her whole life.
- Put on a Bus: They disappear after The Doll's House.
- The Quiet One: Zelda. Chantal does all her speaking for her. This is because Zelda stutters and she's very ashamed of it. One time Rose made the mistake of finishing a sentence for her, and Zelda broke down crying and refused to talk for the rest of the day.
- Stay with Me Until I Die: Rose was basically doing this for Zelda during the last stages of her illness. She called it a vigil. Unfortunately...
- The Stoic: Chantal carries this air around other people.
- Straight Gay: They're so secluded and act so eccentrically that Rose has no idea what their deal is for quite a while.
- Together in Death: After Chantal was infected with AIDS, it's implied that Zelda either infected herself or let herself be infected so they could be together (since it's very difficult to pass HIV through lesbian sex). In either case, they're both gone by the end of The Kindly Ones.
- Wight in a Wedding Dress: A variation. Both of them were Nightmare Fetishists who used to dress in long white wedding gowns with heavy veils, sometimes decorated with spiders.
Hippolyta "Lyta" Hall/The Fury
Played By: Laurel Lefkow (Audible audiobook), Razane Jammal (Netflix series)
An ex-superheroine from Infinity, Inc. and wife of Hector Hall, "the Sandman of the Dream Dimension."
- Action Girl: When she was a superheroine.
- Adaptational Backstory Change: The original Lyta was the daughter of Wonder Woman and Steve Trevor, who raised her and supported her in her superhero career. Post-Crisis on Infinite Earths, however, she was reimagined as the biological daughter of Helena Kosmatos (the first Fury) who was raised by Joan Trevor (Miss America), which is the interpretation Sandman goes with (as it's quasi-canon to the DCU).
- Ambiguously Human: Late in her career (after learning quite a bit about herself in her Vertigo adventures), Lyta starts describing herself as not human but a Fury, something she hadn't done before. There's also the matter of her unidentified father, who is implied in The Sandman Presents: The Furies to be one Greek deity or another.
- The Atoner: When Hector is resurrected for real and they resume their hero work, she tries to make up for what she did in the Dreaming.
- Be Careful What You Wish For: In a misguided attempt to invoke the Furies as revenge on Dream for Daniel's kidnapping, she ends up bound to their will to kill Dream for an unrelated crime, and inadvertently essentially wipes Daniel from existence to make him a template for the new Dream.
- Belated Happy Ending: Eventually, Hector is resurrected for real, and Daniel offers them eternal refuge in the Dreaming after they die.
- Berserk Button:
- Anything that might even conceivably be a threat to Daniel sets her off.
- Sandman Presents: The Furies opens three years after the events of Sandman with Lyta seeking therapy after she hospitalized a one-night stand for making a crack about Freud saying a baby was just a penis substitute and telling her to think of his member as her son.
- Beware the Nice Ones: Even in her Infinity Inc. days, when she was much nicer and more outgoing, her temper was a thing to be feared.
- Brainwashed: While she was in Brute and Glob's Dream Dimension, both she and Hector were brainwashed into complying with their scheme. In her case, she was put into a listless state, as if she were drugged.
- Broad Strokes: Events very similar if not 100% exactly like those in Sandman are revealed to have happened to her in the DCU canon. Right down to Daniel becoming Dream.
- Connected All Along: Unbeknownst to her, she's the daughter of Helena Kosmatos, the Golden Age Fury, who was a living avatar of Tisiphone. This kinship to the Furies is probably why her quest to find them is successful and why they make her their avatar, in spite of her completely screwing up her initial encounter with them.
- Detect Evil: On one occasion Lyta received a vision of how the person she was talking to had given a Mercy Kill to her ailing father with his pills at his behest. The Furies spoke through her of how the woman would be scourged and know nothing but suffering and misery and death and nothing could shelter her from retribution, etc. Awkward. Fortunately, Lyta manages to both patch things up with the lady and keep the triune deities of hellish vengeance from destroying her.
- Divine Parentage: Besides her mother's connection to Tisiphone, there are a number of implications in Sandman and The Sandman Presents: The Furies that Lyta's unknown father may be a Greek deity of some sort.
- Evil Counterpart: Basically? At one point during The Sandman Presents: The Furies, the main villain Cronus creates monsters from Lyta's blood which she can't kill without invoking the wrath of the Furies upon herself, planning to have the Furies destroy themselves via their connection so he can have a crack at becoming the god of vengeance. Basically they're twisted clones she can't kill.
- Freak Out: She has a spectacular one that drives her to seek the Furies when Daniel is kidnapped.
- Genre Blind: She somehow does not pick up on the significance of really life-like statues located in the same place as a couple of ladies with snakes in their hair.
- Heel Realization: She finally has one one when Dream-Daniel calls her out for what she did, especially when he says she was worse than the murderer of the first Despair.
- Heroic BSoD: After the events of Sandman Lyta spends three years drifting through life, occasionally picking up random one-night stands and very occasionally losing her shit and assaulting people. The events of The Sandman Presents: The Furies help start her on the road to recovery.
- Hero Insurance: As of Sandman Presents: The Furies Lyta has a number of citations for threatening behavior and got fired from a job after an unknown incident which has assault charges pending. She also just badly injured a potential one-night stand for making a crude comment. However, the officer in charge of her case notes that superheroes (and ex-superheroes) have a LSDL notice on their files—Let Sleeping Dogs Lie. Since there's no real way to tell what's psychologically "normal" for a superhero, versus a regular person, the police prefer to write off minor issues rather than have to deal with an enraged superhuman. Besides, the guy whose face she broke dropped the charges because he didn't want his wife to find out the true circumstances behind his injuries. That said, the officer all but pleads with her to get some therapy.
- Ignored Epiphany: In her last step before meeting the Furies, Lyta sits in front of a mirror and argues with several different versions of herself: her as a young girl, as a superheroine, and lastly, her as she appears at that moment. (Homeless, filthy, and half mad.) Several of these mirror selves argue with her choices, and what she has done/is doing with her life, especially her choice to sic the Furies on Dream. The last one essentially says, "There's still time to stop this. You can get up, go home, put your life back together and move on." Lyta refuses to do so and shatters the mirror, which finally allows her to reach the Furies.
- In a Single Bound: This was one of her powers as a superheroine.
- Karma Houdini: After what she helps put the Dreaming through, she essentially suffers no punishment for her crimes in the original series. However, the new Dream suggests The Punishment Is the Crime; she pays for what she has done by never getting her baby back. This would be averted, however, if not for Daniel-Dream's mark of protection; Thessaly outright states that she wants to kill her for what she's done, as do many others.
- Karma Houdini Warranty: Her punishment is initially exile from the Dreaming, and her own son says that she is worse than the murderer of the first Despair. Lyta also has every supernatural being hating her guts for her killing Morpheus. The Furies keep her as a vessel because the only take-backsies would kill her, and as a result, she's not happy with her choices for many reasons, because it means she's trapped reliving her guilt over how her attempt to save Daniel ended up losing him instead. It's revealed in the spinoff series Sandman Presents that if she spills the blood of her kin, she can no longer serve as a vessel to the Furies, and their wrath will turn on her. That sounds similar to what she did to Dream. Daniel is able to revoke her exile when she and Hector die doing superhero work.
- Legacy Character:
- She thought she was taking up the legacy of her adoptive mother (who used to be Miss America) by becoming a hero, but (much to the shock of her adoptive parents) she took the moniker of her birth mother without being aware of it.
- And again in "The Kindly Ones". Since she'd only married and became impregnated by dreams, she remained a maiden; after birthing Daniel, she's obviously a mother; after having Dream take both her husband and child from her, her descent into madness leaves her prematurely a crone. She's a fitting avatar for the Three.
- Lightning Bruiser: Lyta's mother (the original Fury) is supposed to have had roughly the same abilities as the Pre-Crisis Golden Age Wonder Woman, having been created IRL to fill that position due to Golden Age Wondy being wiped out by the Crisis. Uh, the 1985 one. When her mother was still Wonder Woman, Lyta (as a young adult) was stated to be around half her level of power. This can probably be assumed to be true of post-Crisis, pre-Sandman Lyta, who retains some degree of superhuman strength (at least), during Sandman, even after not being active for years. In her post-Sandman appearances when she becomes an active hero again, her actual level of power isn't clear, but she is definitely one of these.
- Loophole Abuse: Lyta is protected from people that would want her dead for killing Dream. She is not protected from those who want the Furies dead.
- Mama Bear: Also a Deconstruction, as her actions ensure Daniel will never be "Daniel" again.
- My Beloved Smother: Obsessed with keeping Daniel safe, her life revolves entirely around him.
- Never Speak Ill of the Dead: Averted. At Morpheus's wake, she states that they're mourning "a monster".
- Parents Know Their Children: She recognizes Daniel, even after he's become Dream.
- Poor Communication Kills: Thanks to Dream's brusque, imperious manner and lack of explanations, she becomes convinced that he's a cold-blooded Humanoid Abomination who's laid claim to her child and randomly shows up in her life solely for the purpose of staring at Daniel creepily and reminding her of this fact. This belief is not wholly inaccurate, which doesn't help.
- Protective Charm: Thessaly puts her under one of these so Dream can't kill her and stop the Furies. Later Daniel-Dream puts one on her so that the many, many people who mourn Morpheus won't punish her in retaliation for killing Dream.
- Rage Breaking Point: In Sandman Presents: The Furies, Lyta describes how, after a number of annoyances which had been going on for a long time, the tape Lyta was watching got stuck in her VCR. She proceeded to throw her TV out the window, destroy almost everything in her apartment with her bare hands, and nearly killed a one-night stand she had a few hours later.
- Really Gets Around: During her "lost years" after Sandman, Lyta would often head to bars to get picked up for one-night stands as she was mostly numb and sex still felt a little like something.
- Sanity Slippage: When Daniel is taken, but she shows some signs of this beforehand.
- Superior Successor: She's not as powerful as the original Fury, but the original Fury also needed to go into Super Mode to use her powers and Lyta's super 24/7. She doesn't have a primordial force of vengeance living rent-free in her head and whispering sweet nothings into her brain-ear, which is also nice. The primordial forces of vengeance just visit occasionally.
- Super-Strength: The only one of her powers she actually uses in The Sandman, breaking a guy's arm when he gets a bit handsy.
- Super-Speed: One of her powers as a superheroome.
- Thousand-Yard Stare: She gets a really creepy one when Daniel disappears. And a very sad one after she loses him forever, as seen above.
- Trauma Conga Line: Pretty much her entire life toward the end of Infinity, Inc. and throughout Sandman. She finds true love with Hector Hall, who, thanks to a curse on his parents, doesn't have a soul and eventually becomes evil. But she's pregnant with his child, which reawakens his inner goodness...and leads to his death. But he's not really dead, he's the new Sandman, and she can live with him in the Dream Dome forever! Oh, except that was actually a trick by Brute and Glob, who brainwash her into a state of perpetual languor, but at least it's peaceful and she's with Hector, right? Not for very long...
- Unwitting Pawn: It's implied Dream manipulated her into instigating the attack perpetrated by the Kindly Ones by being the one who actually orchestrated Daniel's kidnapping as part of his suicide gambit and attempt to set up Daniel as his successor. Or perhaps it was Desire who orchestrated the kidnapping, in order to get back at their rival sibling. Or maybe it was someone else entirely. Whoever did it, Lyta is just a pawn for their will.
- Willing Channeler:
- In order to find Daniel she makes a deal with the Furies to allow them to use her as their avatar, but quickly discovers that the Furies have their own agenda which has nothing to do with her son.
- In The Sandman Presents: The Furies, she's described as an "imago" (in this context describing someone easily manipulated by otherworldly entities) whom the Furies wear as a mask in the mortal world. At one point they manifest themselves from her body and at the climax Lyta willingly works in concert with the Furies inside her, becoming one herself in body, to punish Cronus. Since she never did this before and never did it again, it might be something she can only do when in Greece and/or when she's performing the function of the Furies (she was doing both at the time).
- Wrong Genre Savvy: After Daniel is kidnapped, she thinks she's in a story about going on a quest to gather allies, gain power, and rescue her son. As such, she gravely misinterprets the true purpose of the Furies, and gets in way over her head.
Lady Johanna Constantine
Voiced By: Joanna Lumley (Audible Audiobook)
An 18th-century English noblewoman and an acquaintance of Dream. She's a relative of John Constantine.
- Been There, Shaped History: Briefly got herself embroiled in the Reign of Terror in France while taking on a job for Dream. Along the way, she slept with Saint-Just, talked down Maximillian Robespierre, and caused their downfall (thereby ending the Terror) by exposing them to Orpheus's song — which she did just to distract them long enough that she could escape France. A brief passage also mentions that she studied espionage under none other than the Chevalier d'Eon!
- Dark and Troubled Past: She briefly alludes to unpleasant things happening to young girls on the streets of London, which is why she disguises Mouse as a boy.
- Due to the Dead: In exchange for the favor she did for Dream, he arranged for her to be buried on Naxos where an order of priests tends to her grave.
- Heroic Lineage: For a given value of 'heroic', the Constantine line of Laughing Magicians is well known and renowned for both the beings they outsmart and the human debris of their friends and loved ones left behind.
- Manipulative Bastard: Another apparently hereditary trait in the Constantine family is a knack for this, including playing the Swamp Thing of the time like a harp.
- Odd Friendship: She and Orpheus (the ancient severed head of Dream's son) get along quite well.
- Outliving One's Offspring: In a twist typical of the Constantine family, she spends her quest trying to protect Mouse, her little sister (disguised as her little brother, actually her daughter), with the heavy implication that she's taking such risks to ensure a better life for her... and then Mouse ends up trapped in Pandora's Box with all the demons.
- Practically Different Generations: She's notably older than her sister, Mouse, which is unsurprising since she's really her mother.
- Rags to Riches: She lived in poverty after she lost her title, but regained it (as well as an estate) after currying favor with the king over the matter of Pandora's Box.
- Riches to Rags: She was the daughter of an earl, but her parents were hanged for treason and she was stripped of her title, forcing her to scrap a living together as an occultist.
- Took a Level in Cynic: In her chronologically earliest appearance, she's a swashbuckling adventuress and con-woman. Losing her daughter did a great deal to darken her outlook.
Introduced in Dream Country
Richard Madoc
A writer who buys Calliope for inspiration.
- Author Avatar: To the extent that he represents Neil Gaiman's own fears of Writer's Block, and not the utterly despicable way he goes about conquering it.
- Be Careful What You Wish For: He wanted ideas, so Dream gives him an endless, unrelenting torrent of ideas. And then he wants them to stop, and loses all of his ideas. Forever. Well, okay, only until Morpheus dies, but still, that easily could have been the rest of his life.
- Character Development: Possibly. He encounters Calliope again during Dream's wake, and she appears to be deliberately ignoring him, while his body language seems to indicate shame and regret.
- Mugging the Monster:
- Richard doesn't bother to try understanding Calliope as anything but a tool to force ideas out of, so he never fully comprehends that he's messing with dangerous forces far beyond his ken by keeping her captive, even if she's not the one to take revenge.
- His reaction to seeing Dream, who's manifestly not human, knows what he's done, and is clearly furious and disgusted, is to threaten him and refuse to comply with his polite request to let Calliope go. And then he tries to bribe him, which just makes things worse.
- Fingore: When Dream curses him with endless ideas, he's compelled to write them on the walls with his fingers, wearing them down to the bone and leaving them permanently damaged.
- Genre Blind: He thinks that because Calliope isn't human, he's not subject to human justice regarding keeping her captive and constantly raping her. And he might be right...but he didn't take into account justice at the hands of her fellow non-humans.
- Godzilla Threshold: Keeping a lady as a sex slave and constantly raping her because you're desperate for ideas certainly counts as ludicrous and abhorrent, though Richard doesn't see how dangerous it might be until it's too late.
- Irony:
- He claims to be a feminist writer while chatting with a lady at a party. Calliope would disagree.
- Upon seeing Dream in his house uninvited, he threatens to call the police, saying there are laws against people like him. There are also laws against people who imprison women in their houses to rape them...
- Laser-Guided Karma: He wanted ideas, and he got them. All of 'em.
- The Madness Place: Dream induces one of these upon him as a punishment.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Briefly. His main concern about potentially having raped a human girl is that it might get him in trouble with the law. Realizing that she really is a muse (and thus not human) wipes even that petty concern away.
- One-Hit Wonder: In-universe. Richard was in danger of becoming one, due to being unable to follow up his first (incredibly successful) book.
- Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil: Erasmus Fry, the author he obtains Calliope from, tells him that he feels force is the most effective method of getting ideas from her, something Richard takes to heart without trying anything else first.
- Renaissance Man: He becomes one of these for the purpose of creating media after obtaining Calliope.
- Took a Level in Jerkass: He wasn't a particularly nice person to start with, but as his star rises, so do his condescension and selfishness.
- Villainous Breakdown: Caused by Dream's punishment. He ends up in a nursing home.
- Villain Protagonist: "Calliope" is told from his perspective, and well, just look at the other tropes.
- What Measure Is a Non-Human?: He justifies keeping the muse Calliope as a Sex Slave by rationalizing that she's not a human being. As mentioned above, he also figures that as she's not subject to human laws, there's no way to get in legal trouble for keeping her captive. If only he had...
- Writer's Block: He has a severe case of this at the start of the story. His...unconventional...solution ends up making and breaking him.
Introduced in A Game of You
Foxglove and Hazel McNamara
Voiced By: Julie Rogers (Foxglove) and Anna Demetriou (Hazel) (Audible audiobook)
A young couple introduced in A Game of You living in the same building as Barbie. Their whereabouts after the arc they're introduced are briefly seen in Death: The High Cost of Living, and expanded upon in Death: The Time of Your Life, which has them as main characters.
- Babies Ever After: They have one son, Alvie.
- Butch Lesbian: Hazel has the look, but not the stereotypical personality. By Death: The Time of Your Life, she's changed her look.
- Celebrity Is Overrated: Foxglove hits it big as a musician, but finds the personal compromises and temptation to cheat on Hazel out of loneliness aren't worth it.
- Character Development: In Hazel's first appearance in A Game of You, she comes off as a scaredy-cat who doesn't know much about the world. In The High Cost of Living, she still looks a bit naive, but more grounded than before. By the time of The Time of Your Life, Hazel is significantly more mature and self-assured.
- Domestic Abuse: Foxglove used to be in a relationship with Judy (Rose Walker's close friend, and also the girl who gouged her eyes out in 24 Hours), who would occasionally beat her.
- Family Versus Career: Foxglove's main conflict in Death: The Time of Your Life, in which her singing career has recently taken off. She comes to choose the former and abandons her life as a star to live a quieter life with Hazel and their son.
- Foreshadowing: At the end of A Game of You, Dream says that future has strange journeys in store for Foxglove and Hazel, and advises them to choose their traveling companions with more care next time. He wasn't kidding about the first topic. Indeed, in Death: The Time of Your Life, having a traveling companion who was willing to die so that their child Alvie wouldn't proves to be vital to the story's resolution.
- Hot Witch: Foxglove is an attractive young lady who used to be into witchcraft and seems to still worship a goddess of some sort. The one spell we see her trying works, too, although it probably had a little helping hand from Death.
- Innocently Insensitive: They definitely didn't mean anything hurtful, but maybe they could've chosen a better way to honor Wanda's memory than naming their son after Wanda's deadname "Alvin."
- Miss Conception: A Type II. Hazel thought having sex standing up would keep her from getting pregnant. Nope. She also thought that the pregnancy test might involve killing a rabbit, an old wives' tale she heard in school.
- Not Listening to Me, Are You?: "Our child died and I made a deal with Death to bring him back!" was probably pillow talk Foxglove should've taken a skosh more seriously.
- Shirtless Scene: A female example, as Foxglove doesn't wear much to bed.
- Someone To Remember Her By: It's more than likely that their son Alvie was named after their friend Wanda (a trans woman whose deadname was Alvin).
Wanda
Voiced By: Reece Lyons (Audible audiobook)
A trans woman who is one of the tenants of Barbie's apartment building.
- The Big Gal: Thanks to her past, she's taller, stronger, and more well-built than the other women in "Game of You".
- Bittersweet Ending: After Wanda's death, her parents have her buried under her deadname, Alvin. But, Barbie sees Wanda one last time in a dream with the most gorgeous and cisgender female body, Death standing with her and clearly offering the definitive and ultimate opinion on Wanda's gender. Death and Wanda wave goodbye to Barbie before she wakes up.
- Blithe Spirit: She acts like one of these, but turns out to be more complicated than she looks.
- Character Death: Wanda dies along with Maisie Hill when Hurricane Lisa destroys the apartment building.
- Deadpan Snarker: This is part of the Blithe Spirit attitude she affects.Wanda: [Your joke] differs from the usual kind of joke only in the vast gulf between it and any kind of a sense of humor.
- Due to the Dead: Her parents have her hair cut and her body made up as a man for her funeral, burying her under her deadname. Her mom even implies that she may have deserved to die, though she still mourns. In the end, Barbie buries Wanda with a Weirdzo comic and crosses out the birth name on her tombstone to write "Wanda" in her favorite lipstick color.
- Fiery Redhead: She's got auburn hair, and her personality is very forceful and energetic. She also has a bit of a temper, but usually stays positive.
- Genki Girl: We're introduced to Wanda as an archetypical Genki Girl; Barbie's cheerful and energetic and talkative friend who acts like a Blithe Spirit and is full of energy in the mornings when Barbie is sleepy. She calms down somewhat in later chapters.
- Hidden Depths: The storyline she features in is pretty much all about how everyone has Hidden Depths, but Wanda stands out. Behind the Blithe Spirit Genki Girl facade is a far more complicated person who has her own demons to struggle with.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Wanda isn't always the nicest person. She keeps people at arm's length, she can be rude and self-centered, and when forced to interact with people she doesn't like she can be acidic. But she's also supremely loyal and helpful, she's friendly and accepting overall, and it says a lot about her that when she dreams about the boys who bullied her at school being jealous of her for being able to wear such pretty dresses, her dream-self immediately forgives them and gives them pretty dresses to wear too.
- Supernaturally-Validated Trans Person: In a dream, Barbie is visited by Death and the deceased Wanda, who is described as now looking like a conventionally beautiful woman. Death and the afterlife recognized Wanda as a woman, even if the waking world sometimes didn't.
- Took a Level in Kindness: She first tells Maisie Hill to "bug off and die" when she's panhandling on the subway...and later risks her own life to save her in the hurricane.
- Trans Tribulations: She's deathly afraid of gender-affirming surgery, but she's taking hormones and has had electrolysis. Her family is deeply transphobic, even her aunt, who is the most accepting of her among her family by far, her friends casually misgender her on occasion, and she's barred from taking the Moon's Path because she's not a cis woman.
- Why Couldn't You Be Different?: Wanda's parents and other family are quite ashamed of her for her "sinful ways".
Thessaly (later known as Larissa)
Voiced By: Emma Corrin (Audible audiobook)
A long-lived witch. She was one of Morpheus's lovers.
- Ambiguously Human: While she looks and acts like a human, people refer to her and her "kind" as though she is all what remains of a Mage Species. Whether this is the case or if she's just the last surviving member of a human coven who achieved immortality is never really elaborated.
- The Archmage: In spinoff material, she is shown to have a deep enough understanding of most forms of magic that she can skip most of the ritualistic aspects of her craft and get equal results.
- Belated Love Epiphany: Just before Dream dies, Thessaly has a dream of Morpheus that leaves her longing for him, something she tries to shrug off. However, when she helps Lyta out and even provides her with a shower, a meal, and a warning about the numerous people who are going to want Lyta dead, Thessaly adds that she herself is one of them. Additionally, she's barely hiding her weeping at Morpheus' funeral.
- Cannot Tell a Joke: A rare example of someone who is fully aware that they can't and so doesn't even try. It's something of a Running Gag with her that her Dissonant Serenity when talking about something horrible/impossible causes people to think she's joking, and she explains/reminds them that she "never got the hang" of telling jokes.
- Defrosting Ice Queen: When Morpheus dies, it's clear even as she voices her denials that she loved him.
- Dissonant Serenity: She's really very matter-of-fact about cutting a guy's face off and pulling his tongue out with her teeth, before nailing the lot to the wall. He was a bad guy (and she'd already killed him) but... yeek.
- Four Eyes, Zero Soul: Thessaly may smile on occasion, but it never reaches her eyes.
- Hypocrite: She informs Lyta Hall that a lot of people are going to want to hurt or kill her for causing the death of Morpheus, and includes herself in that number. This despite the fact that Thessaly working with the Three to protect Lyta meant that Morpheus couldn't kill Lyta to protect himself and the Dreaming, which led to his death. Somewhat mitigated by the fact her deal with the Three appears to have been a sort of blank check, rather than specifically about this..
- Inconspicuous Immortal: She has spent most of her millennia of existence hiding out in various forms of academia; in modern times, her usual guise is that of a transfer student. Justified in that, as the last of the Thessalian witches, she has a lot of people who want her dead, and thus she has to keep a low profile.
- It's All About Me: She's not actively malicious towards anyone (unless they try to harm her first), but neither does she care about anyone else. This is first shown during her quest to track down the Cuckoo; she is momentarily taken aback when her companions mention that they came to save Barbie, and makes it clear that she places a higher priority on the Cuckoo's destruction.
- Jerkass: Because her actions are all about protecting herself and putting her safety first without batting an eye, she can be perceived as this. Note that Thessaly is not evil, and always calmly explains the logical reasons for what she does, it's just that she does what's necessary for her well-being without showing any care for people who might get harmed for her actions, even if they were people she once cared about (such as Morpheus).
- Not So Stoic: She weeps at Dream's funeral.
- Nothing Personal: Her contract with the Three to aid them in killing Morpheus has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that the target is her less-than-amicable ex. It's just a way for her to get the Three off of her back after the whole "calling down the moon" business.
- Pet the Dog: A weird example. After Lyta Hall allows the Furies to take Morpheus's life, Thessaly frees her, gives her a shower and some food, and politely informs her that she ought to start running, because a lot of people are now going to want her dead. Including Thessaly herself. She later weeps at Morpheus's funeral, proving she cared for him despite their messy break-up.
- She was also apparently quite kind to Nuala back when she was staying in the Dreaming, even going so far as to give the poor girl a necklace, which might possibly be one of the few things that Nuala truly owns
- Revenge Before Reason: She's willing to convince Barbie to use Morpheus's boon to kill the Cuckoo, even if it would leave her, Barbie, Hazel, and Foxglove stranded on a small patch of land in an empty void in the Dreaming. While Thessaly states she'll "think of something" to get them out, it goes to show how far she's willing to inconvenience and endanger anyone if it means settling her bloodlust.
- Temporary Love Interest: For Dream.
- The Unfettered: Thessaly doesn't care one whit about the cost of ensuring her personal survival, and deals briskly and brutally with anyone or anything that poses a threat to her. She's not evil, but Gaiman describes her actions as teaching everyone who knows her, in these exact words, the lesson "Don't fuck with Thessaly."
- Vague Age: She was apparently born "in the day of greatest darkness in the year the bear totem was shattered". This makes her probably the same age range as someone like Vandal Savage.
- Wizards Live Longer: When she gives her birth date, it sounds Neolithic, but she's still truckin' and plans to go on for as long as she can.
- Woman Scorned: Subverted; when Morpheus discovers that she is preventing him from killing Lyta Hall's physical body and thus preventing her Kindly Ones incarnation from destroying the Dreaming, he assumes she's trying to hurt him after they broke up. It's actually because the Three have agreed to let her live another millennium or two if she ensures Dream cannot stop them. That he's an ex-lover is irrelevant; it's simply another case of her prioritizing her own survival above anything.
Maisie Hill
Voiced By: Lachelle Carl (Audible audiobook)
A homeless woman who lives near Barbie's apartment.
- Bring Me My Brown Pants: Maisie's terrified of dogs, and when she sees Martin Tenbones in the waking world the poor woman pisses herself and then slips on the puddle.
- Butt-Monkey: The woman has it almost as bad as Wanda in A Game of You. Maisie's shown pissing herself out of pure fear when she sees Martin Tenbones, and then slips in the puddle while trying to run. Later that night when Hurricane Lisa arrives in the city, she gets covered in garbage and injures her leg. Maisie's later killed while shielding Barbie's body as the hurricane destroys the apartment building, and the last we see of her is a shot of Maisie's eyeless, broken body in the wreckage the morning after. Wanda is at least given the dignity of being shown in a body bag. To cap it off, the only two people to attend Maisie's funeral are Barbie and Maisie's daughter.
- Crazy Homeless Person: A subversion. Whatever craziness she shows is a result of her phobia of dogs.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Barbie only survived the destruction of the apartment building because Maisie shielded her body.
- Never Got to Say Goodbye: She had a grandson who was possibly transgender or otherwise genderqueer (she refers to him as male, but mentions he loved dresses) and, somewhat unexpectedly, explains to Wanda that both his mom and herself adored him and encouraged him to express himself. Unfortunately, when he reached adulthood he ran away, and was found beaten to death, his killer never identified. Word of God is that he may well have been one of the Connoisseur's eight victims.
- Open-Minded Parent: Maisie and her daughter were both encouraging of her grandchild's Billie's desire to wear dresses, referring to Billie as "sweet as anything."
- Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: She doesn't like dogs. When pressed into why, she replies "...I just don't."
Introduced in Distant Mirrors
Joshua Norton
Voiced By: John Lithgow (Audible audiobook)
The real Joshua Norton, whose delusions of being Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico draw the attentions of the Endless.
- Becoming the Mask: His lunacy gives him the delusion of being the Emperor of America, which he tries to live up to in both rights and responsibilities. He refuses the King of Pain's offers of women, wealth, and influence with no strings attached other than that he wants them enough to ask, all things that a "sane" Norton would want desperately, simply because it would be beneath the dignitas of an Emperor to accept.
- Crazy Sane: The dream that Morpheus gave him allowed him to evade Desire, Despair, and Delirium right up until he passed to Death.Despair: His madness... his madness keeps him sane.
Dream: And do you think he is the only one, sister? - The Determinator: He clings to his delusion so fiercely that he becomes a local celebrity.Despair: It would seem I've failed, Joshua. You're a crazy Tom o'Bedlam, dying in the gutter in the rain. But you never despaired.
- Historical Domain Character: He is a version of Joshua Norton, 1819-1880: Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico.
- "Leave Your Quest" Test: Desire sends an agent to tempt the Emperor with worldly pleasures in order to win the bet it has with Dream. He refuses, as such a temptation is beneath an Emperor's dignity.
- Nice Guy: Norton doesn't have a mean bone in his body. He somewhat acknowledges that his authority is that he's only humored by people around him, but he's a truly kind man who wants the best for those around him. True to real life, where the real Norton was a very pleasant man and in one famous incident, put himself at risk to defend the Chinese community from an angry mob.
- Reality Is Unrealistic: Yes, boys and girls, the United States did have an emperor...and he was pure awesome. Only the supernatural elements are added. The rest is roughly historically accurate, including the massive turnout for his funeral.
Introduced in Brief Lives
Bernie Capax
An immortal lawyer.
- Inconspicuous Immortal: He was over 15,000 years old, but chose to live as an ordinary lawyer. His family had no idea of his true age and dealings.
- Sacrificial Lamb: He initially seems like a One-Shot Character for a story featuring Death, but later Dream realizes that his death was the first of a pattern, and begins to doubt their quest.
- Secretly Wealthy: He had amassed riches throughout his immortal dealings, including hundreds of krugerrands and several valuable paintings, but not even his family knew of it.
Ruby DeLonge
A woman tasked with transporting Dream and Delirium around the waking world.
- Doomed Protagonist: We learn quite a bit about her before the pattern that started when Dream condemned Nada claims her and she burns to death.
- The Driver: She is supposed to and drive Dream and Delirium around wherever they go. Dream sees her as only a driver, and being needless himself, objects when she tries to stop for the night and sleep.
- Omniglot: According to the narration, she's fluent in eleven languages. It's an Informed Attribute since she is killed shortly after her introduction.
Introduced in Worlds' End
Brant Tucker
Voiced By: Wil Wheaton (Audible audiobook)
The viewpoint character of World's End, who finds himself at the titular inn after crashing his car in a snowstorm.
- Celebrity Paradox: Thanks to the casting of Wil Wheaton as Brant, Charlene comment about reality storms sounding like "something from Star Trek" is this, as Wheaton's best known as Wesley Crusher from Star Trek: The Next Generation.
- Audience Surrogate: He acts as a human reader would to their difficult situation and to the fantastical tales he hears.
Prez Rickard
Voiced By: KJ Apa (Audible audiobook)
Prez, the first teenage President of the United States. For more, see Prez (1973).
- The '60s: He mimics a lot of the counterculture fashion and behaviors from the late 1960s, although the series itself was printed during The '70s.
- Canon Immigrant: He originates from a short-lived DC title that supposed an 18-year-old would get elected President. Prez cameoed in an issue of Supergirl, which established him as a character proper in the DCU.
- Deal with the Devil: Defied. Boss Smiley continues to tempt him with the presidency, and resurrecting his fiancée if Prez works for him. Prez refuses every time.
- Dimensional Traveller: He decides to spend his afterlife travelling The Multiverse to see how different versions of America turned out.
- For Want Of A Nail: In his America, he inspired John Belushi to get clean.
- Incorruptible Pure Pureness: When the love of his life is shot dead by a would-be assassin, his first concern is the safety of her killer.
- The Lost Lenore: Was never the same after the death of his fiancee.
- Universally Beloved Leader: America quickly grows to adore its 20-something president because of all his accomplishments. As he nears the end of his second term there are efforts to give him a third one (or keep ruling in perpetuity), and the next election's voter turnout tanks because people don't want to vote for someone who isn't Prez. After Prez retires and rejects all attempts to return to the spotlight, there is a general melancholic sense that America's golden age has passed.
