Characters / Ben and Ed

Ed

A few months ago, Ed won the “Candy Fun Marathon“ silver medal. Unfortunately he died a few minutes later from a heart attack. For more than four days nobody found his body, rotting in a nearby field. As fate willed and for reasons unknown, Ed became the first undead. For days he aimlessly wandered around, finally being found by a young boy named Ben.

• An Arm and a Leg: Because of his undead state, he can lose any limb and still continue...unless his head gets destroyed.
• The Determinator: He goes through tons of grueling tests to save Ben, or rather to eat him.
• Hollywood Heart Attack: He died of this shortly after winning a medal.
• Human Cannonball: Sometimes Ed will need to shoot himself out of a cannon to advance, and is ultimately the final obstacle in the game and the one that helps Ed finally meet Ben.
• The Many Deaths of You: As par for the course in a Platform Hell game as it gets.
• Odd Friendship: His "friendship" with Ben, though it borders on A Boy and His X due to Ed's questionable intelligence as a zombie. And then wholly subverted by the ending.
• Only a Flesh Wound: Ed can continue doing a course even if he's missing both arms and legs. He can even survive his head being taken off! The only way to die in this game is to have your body destroyed in acid, falling from a great height, or the head itself being completely destroyed.
• Our Zombies Are Different: Unlike most modern zombies, Ed is incredibly agile, able to run as well as jump (possibly even higher than a normal human being).
• Patient Zero: The first zombie.
• Punny Name: UndEd...
• Villain Protagonist: Is the Player Character dead-set on getting to the kidnapped Ben, but hold your applause. Fitting the Crapsack World nature of the game, he's not overly heroic, being a zombie who will kill chickens and other humans on the obstacle course for food or simply to get rid of them.
• Would Hurt a Child: Despite his Odd Friendship with Ben, who is a kid himself. ... And in a pretty shocking example, Ben graphically becomes the victim of this from Ed in the ending. Ed brutally devours Ben after a Deadly Hug during their reunion, and even kills him with a Neck Snap before chowing further into him.

Ben

He is just a normal boy. Well, he never had any good friends, but is fine with this. Ben always liked to roam the ruins and bleak fields around his neighborhood, where he one day discovered something unbelievable. Ed, an undead, walking around the dreary landscape. Ben chummed up with Ed and started to feed his new friend meat and dead animals he found. This went well, until the Showmaster heard of Ed.

• Character Blog: A popular theory about this facebook page that was linked in a easter egg inside the game is that it's a post-Bencalypse mode Ben trying to get people to find him via coordinates hidden in messages, images and videos.
• Eaten Alive: A fate he can fall victim to in this post-apocalyptic zombie-infested world, thanks to Hans. More specifically it's Ben's canon fate if you win and reach the ending — things seemed to be going okay for Ben with how he was handling Ed before, since he was able to keep this fast zombie under control even without any restraints simply by feeding him meat and did it long enough for Hans to hear about them, but Hans' intervention left Ben empty-handed for his grand reunion with Ed. Ed "celebrates" with a grim, drawn-out sequence of eating poor Ben who silently reacts as Ed tears into his neck, pushes him down to chew on his stomach and his head, and breaks his neck to get a better angle at it. He's still eating the body as the camera finally pulls out and the game ends.
• I Just Want to Have Friends: Implied to have been desperately lonely to resort to befriending a zombie. Ben lives in what the game calls a "crappy world", and he never had any friends. His luck seems to turn up after finding a friend in a zombie near some ruins. However, Ben loses his friend soon after due to Hans capturing him to get Ed to compete in a show, and he is made The Bait in order to gain more viewers before discovering that Ed was only chasing after him for a meal. Not having any meat to feed him thanks to how Hans staged things, he is unexpectedly devoured by someone he used to call a friend.
• Odd Friendship: An athletic zombie and a little kid. Who could have guessed? Before it turns out the friendship part was horribly wrong.
• Too Dumb to Live: One of the most painfully literal examples. Who could have foretold befriending A ZOMBIE could have deadly consequences? Even the achievement foreshadows what a monumentally bad decision this was.
• Undead Child: Can be unlocked in "Bencalypse Mode" to become a playable character as well and get in on all the fun, but only as a zombie version of Ben (to be able to go through the Platform Hell levels and put up with the same abuse as Ed). Was transformed after he canonically got gnawed on by Ed. Now Ben is walking around the wasteland in search of a meal.

Hans Showmaster

He is famous, rich, ruthless and the creator of countless successful shows that brought joy and distraction to the poor population of a wasted, hopeless world. When he is informed about an undead runner, he creates a new format and abducts Ben to "persuade" Ed into his twisted new game show.

• Big Bad
• His Name Really Is "Barkeep": His last name is Showmaster and he lives up to it, having created several successful TV shows.
• The Kindnapper: He kidnaps Ben to use him as The Bait for Ed.
• Only in It for the Money: He kidnapped a child for the sake of a zombie TV show!
• Too Dumb to Live: Another painful example. In the final Rundead stage, he decided to participate in a deadly game against a zombie that can regenerate!. Somewhat downplayed, since he DID seem to survive the game...but even then it wasn't necessary for him to compete.
• Villainous Breakdown: He can be seen crying in the credits. It's unknown why exactly, but many people assume it's because his moneymaking zombie has escaped/beat him in the very course he's created.
• Would Hurt a Child: Downplayed. Maybe he wouldn't actually harm him directly, BUT he had little to no trouble kidnapping him and using him as live bait for a zombie, all for his program to be successful.