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Haynes
Rolo Haynes
Portrayed By: Douglas Hodge
- And I Must Scream: Double-dose! Or "double-decker" as Nish told him. First, Nish imprisons his consciousness inside Clayton's virtual brain, leaving him unable to communicate thanks to Clayton's torture-induced catatonia. Then, after executing both, Nish is rewarded with a keychain copy of Rolo's consciousness, trapped forever in a state of constant suffering.
- Asshole Victim: While having your consciousness trapped in an endless state of torture is horrifying, Rolo had been inflicting the same on others for years.
- Author Avatar: A Self-Deprecating one for show creator Charlie Brooker. His stories have simplistic Ludd Was Right morals and he doesn't show a shred of empathy for his characters.
- Big Bad: He's sneakily responsible for all the terrible things that happen in the stories he tells Nish, especially when it comes to Clayton Leigh.
- Cluster F-Bomb: Starts bombarding Nish with expletives after she traps him inside Clayton Leigh's brain; for added fun, Nish can't actually hear a word of it.
- Collector of the Strange: Rolo makes a business of tracking down disturbing examples of crime-related technology and exhibiting them. Along with the items unique to this episode, Rolo has managed to acquire the VR tech from "Playtest," a disabled ADI from "Hated In The Nation," Robert Daly's DNA scanner from "USS Callister," the broken Arkangel tablet from "Arkangel," and the bloodstained bathtub from "Crocodile." Played to a disturbing extent with the three primary exhibits, all of which Rolo seems to regard as trophies.
- Creepy Souvenir: Somehow walked away from St Juniper's with Dawson's headset, and now regards it as a memento as well as an exhibit. The same goes for his other primary displays. Also, he's rigged up Clayton's Leigh's electric chair exhibit to provide customers with a keychain-contained copy of Leigh's mind, suspended in a moment of perpetual agony.
- Furthermore, as part of the cavalcade of poetic justice he receives at the end of the episode, Haynes himself ends up condemned to spend the rest of eternity as a keychain-souvenir dangling from Nish's rear-view mirror.
- Curse Cut Short: He tries to call Nish a cunt before the audio cuts him off.
- Deal with the Devil: Every single deal he made in his career usually ended up with someone getting horribly screwed over. Admittedly, nobody could have predicted that experiencing death would have turned Dr Dawson into a pain junkie, but Rolo certainly had no problem with letting his addiction spiral out of control once it became impossible to ignore.
- Even Evil Has Standards: Morally repugnant though he may be, Rolo still draws the line at letting his creepier guests literally masturbate over the exhibits. Also Pragmatic Villainy, given that the masturbating guest wasn't paying attention to the fact that he'd almost overstepped the time limit on torturing Clayton.
- Evil Is Petty: Takes Nish's offer of a drink as his cue to drain her entire bottle of water, and doesn't even bother to apologize. Comes back to bite him in the ass: the water was poisoned.
- Faux Affably Evil: Puts on a well intentioned, bumbling Nice Guy facade, but it's all an act to hide the callous, manipulative, sociopathic Jerkass he really is.
- Hate Sink: Easily the most disgusting character for the show ever written. Notably, while some audience members expressed feelings of pity for Victoria, Matt and even Robert Daly, absolutely no one minds what happens to Haynes.
- Jerkass: Rolo comes across as chauvinistic, crude, and salty when he first interacts with Nish. He only gets worse as the episode goes on. MUCH worse.
- Lack of Empathy: Rolo takes a remarkably detached attitude to the suffering of others, unless he can profit by it. Already introduced jaywalking to the annoyance of oncoming traffic and covering his face around sick patients, he later goes on to mock the concept of rights for Cookies — right to Carrie's face, clearly not caring that she's still trying to scream. Later, he waxes rhapsodic over the torturous fate of Clayton Leigh and the profits it brought him, all while dismissing any protests as "virtue-signalling bullshit."
- Laser-Guided Karma: Just about everything Rolo does over the course of the episode comes back to bite him in the ass. Having enticed Clayton Leigh into submitting to Brain Uploading - and arguably sealing the deal by ignoring the one opportunity to save him from execution - then driven his recorded consciousness to catatonia through Electric Torture, Rolo is murdered by Clayton's daughter, who then records his consciousness for good measure; having imprisoned Carrie's mind in a form that couldn't move or properly communicate, Rolo ends up trapped in Clayton's virtual brain, unable to speak thanks to the catatonia; finally, after abandoning Dr Dawson to his addiction and using his pain-tech to create the Black Museum's virtual electric chair, the same chair is used to execute him... and for good measure, Rolo's automated souvenir dispenser provides Nish with a copy of his consciousness, sentenced to an eternity trapped, alone and in unending pain.
- Laughably Evil: Rolo is shown to be a shady and amoral salesman during the first two stories, but is likeable enough to maintain an air of comical affability; his commentary on the insanity he helped create is also quite amusing. This gradually evaporates as he tells the third story.
- Museum of the Strange and Unusual: The Black Museum in a nutshell; as if being a gallery for sordid tech-related crimes wasn't weird enough, Haynes makes it clear that the top exhibits are really souvenirs of crimes in which he played a direct role.
- Satanic Archetype: He probably has to the most devilish traits out of anyone in this show. He was originally a representative of a higher authority, who now preys on the desperate and the morally compromised, operates through Faustian bargains in which his clients almost always end up getting screwed over in some fashion, and even owns his own private kingdom in which people are imprisoned and/or tortured for all eternity - one where even Haynes can't stand the hellish heat.
- Slimeball: Oily, ingratiating, smug and more than a little bit creepy at times, he spends most of his time on screen playing the sleazy salesman to clients at St Juniper, and the other half leering at Nish.
- The Snack Is More Interesting: Clearly bored with Jack and Carrie's heartwarming reunion, he takes the opportunity to help himself to the apple that Jack had just taken a bite out of.
- The Sociopath: A pretty clear example. He is both manipulative and callous, the direct cause of all the bad happenings in all three segments and shows absolutely no remorse for his part in any of it. He even takes pleasure out of watching Clayton be electrocuted by all the different visitors to the museum.
- Techno Wizard: Though more of a salesman than a scientist, Rolo demonstrated a particular flair for modifying St Juniper's technology to his own ends once he set up the Black Museum; not only did he manage to make a copy of Clayton Leigh's mind and give him new "life" as a hologram reconstruction, but he repurposed Dawson's pain tech into a VR torture device, complete with an automated copier and souvenir dispenser.
- Unreliable Narrator: Sheepishly admits to lying about the comatose Dr Dawson sporting a massive hard-on; later, flashbacks showed that he was also lying about Clayton Leigh being abandoned by his wife. Finally called out on these tendencies by Nish, who notes just how much Rolo omitted from his narrative.
- Villainous Breakdown: Ending up in the same predicament as Carrie and Clayton immediately destroys every last trace of charm and composure in him, leaving Rolo swearing and begging for mercy at the top of his lungs in a futile attempt to stop Nish from pulling the lever on him.
Nish
Nish
Portrayed By: Letitia Wright
- Audience Surrogate: Being apparently unaware of the morbid history of the Black Museum's exhibits, she gets to learn alongside the audience and develops quite a genre-savvy streak about Rolo's stories. Later, it's revealed that she knew everything about the place already - including the things that Haynes didn't want his audience to know.
- Best Served Cold: It's not clear how long she's been planning on putting her father's cookie out of its misery and trapping a cookie of Haynes in the same predicament, but it was obviously not rushed.
- Destroy the Abusive Home: Burns the Black Museum to the ground in the finale as revenge for her father's torture and the suffering of everyone Rolo exploited over the course of his career.
- Exact Words: On her way in, she remarks that her dad "lives out here." Turns out she didn't mean "in the vicinity," but literally in the building.
- Obfuscating Stupidity: Pretends to be a clueless tourist ignorant of the Museum's exhibits and Rolo's history, when in reality she already knew just about everything about it.
- Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping: In-Universe. Introduced to us as British. She switches to an American accent once her true reason for being there is revealed. In reality, Letitia Wright is a British actress.
- Pet the Dog: The episode ends with her rescuing the Monkey (and by extension, Carrie's mind) from the Museum just before burning it to the ground.
- Sharing a Body: She's actually sharing her body with the consciousness of her mother, allowing her a front row seat to Rolo's well-deserved comeuppance.
- Tampering with Food and Drink: Gives Rolo a poisoned bottled of water to kickstart her revenge.
- Techno Wizard: Knows her way around technology, from hacking digital air conditioning units to brain uploading.
- You Killed My Father: Out for revenge against Haynes for having her father's consciousness exhibited and tortured to the point of electronic brain-death.
Dawson
Dr. Peter Dawson
Portrayed By: Daniel Lapaine
- Addled Addict: Dawson's addiction to pain gradually destroyed his relationships, his career, and eventually his health; close to the end of his segment, he'd been left alone in his apartment, carving bits and pieces off of his own body in a desperate attempt to get high off his own suffering. And that's before the idea of torturing homeless people occurred to him.
- Adaptational Heroism: Dawson is portrayed as a far more sympathetic character than the unnamed doctor of the short story. To elaborate:
- In the short story, the doctor always was addicted to pain, and doesn't share Dawson's excuse of being corrupted by the technology of the headset. Furthermore, this nameless doctor is portrayed has never having good intentions in the first place, the use of headset having been a way to get his fix right from the start while Dawson had at least nobler goals in the beginning.
- While both of the characters were pulled out of their hospital work because their addiction became too revealing, Dawson showed signs of concerns about what he was turning into and resorted mutilating himself to cope with withdrawal, making him fare more sympathetic than his selfish and egotistical counterpart.
- Even ignoring this, Dawson only came to hurting an innocent as a last resort after realizing that he couldn't get his suplly by himself, the doctor of the short story did it without a second thought and even tried to justify himself by invoking the imminent death of his victim.
- What is worse is that, while Dawson tortures a homeless man at the end of the segment, the nameless doctor kills a cancerous child of his hospital, by gouging out his eyes at the end of the story, and goes back to the "old ways" when the technology is taken from him, expressing no remorse for what he has done.
- Their opposition can be reduced to an altruistic doctor who was as much a victim of its technology as his patients and was horrified by what he became, and a self-centered addict who didn't care who he hurt to get high (mirroring common behaviors among addicts).
- Agony of the Feet: Judging by the introductory shot during his attempts to get high off self-inflicted pain, he went so far as to amputate some of his toes.
- Covered in Scars: Makes a thorough mess of his face and body while self-inflicting pain, and even after his wounds have had time to heal during his coma, he's still got plenty of scars to show for it.
- Driven to Suicide: By the end, he's clearly considering it, going so far as to put a straight razor to his throat. It's not known if this was a brief moment of clarity over what he'd been reduced to, or if he was simply despairing over no longer having the fear and pain of his patients to enjoy; whatever the case, he doesn't go through with it, and ultimately resorts to murder.
- Ear Ache: Apparently, his left ear was one of the many casualties of his foray into inflicting pain on himself, especially given that it's been patched by the time he ended up back in hospital.
- Fingore: Begins his brief foray into self-inflicted pain by ramming a shard of broken glass under one of his fingernails.
- The Immodest Orgasm: Featured twice in the same vignette, both due to... unorthodox uses of the headset. The second time, it's actually what gets him caught in mid-murder; according to Rolo, Dawson was "practically coming" when the cops arrived on the scene.
- Interplay of Sex and Violence
- Mad Doctor: By the end of his time at St Juniper's, he was only doing his job so he could get high off the pain of his patients, and was even willing to let an old woman die of a heart attack just so he'd get to enjoy the death sensations again.
- Power Perversion Potential: When not using the headset to perform improbably accurate diagnoses and save the lives of terminally-ill patients, Dawson had his girlfriend wear it while they were having sex, allowing him to experience male and female orgasms at the same time.
- Raging Stiffie: According to Rolo, Dawson is currently comatose and sporting a massive hard-on; subverted when Rolo almost immediately admits that he made up the part about the boner.
- Sanity Slippage: Experiencing death via the headset not only shifted his perceptions from pain to pleasure, but it sent him on a downward spiral of addiction, obsession, violence, self-mutilation, and murder.
- The Tooth Hurts: One of his many attempts to get high off his own pain ended with him ripping out one of his teeth with a pair of pliers.
Jack
Carrie
Carrie Lamasse
Spoiler image
Portrayed By: Alexandra Roach
- And I Must Scream: Being conscious but unable to properly communicate both in her coma and inside the monkey. To make matters worse it is revealed that it is illegal to delete her and she has been left perpetually alone, likely having gone mad some time ago; however, she's at least sane enough to express her approval at being rescued.
- Sharing a Body: Her initial arrangement with Jack; unfortunately, the long-term drawbacks of such a relationship are shown in detail, including the lack of privacy on Jack's side and the lack of agency on Carrie's.
- Throw the Dog a Bone: Carrie had to suffer through coma, the breakdown of her marriage, loss of contact with her child, being trapped in a toy monkey, before finally being abandoned by her own son and left to gather dust at the Black Museum. But at the end of it though, Rolo Haynes finally receives comeuppance for every horrible thing he did to her and his other "exhibits," and Carrie is finally rescued from the Museum.
- Trauma Conga Line: First she got hit by a car, then she fell into a coma and was only able to communicate with her husband in an rudimentary way. Things got worse from there...
- What Measure Is a Non-Human?: Ends up being put on pause, threatened with deletion and ultimately confined to the body of a stuffed toy for the simple fact that as a digitized consciousness, she doesn't actually have any rights. Even Rolo gleefully notes that having her deleted wouldn't legally be murder - though this ends up biting him in the ass when the UN finally provides Cookies and other disembodied consciousnesses with rights, leaving Rolo in the shit.
Emily
Emily
Portrayed By: Yasha Jackson
- Jerkass Has a Point: Emily is antagonistic towards Carrie, and harshly threatens her with deletion, essentially killing her, but this is after Carrie has been consistently antagonistic about Jack's new relationship, as she is left helplessly trapped in his brain. Admittedly, this also goes for Carrie, as well, as Jack and Emily's relationship threatens her time with her son.
- No Sympathy: She doesn't have any qualms whatsoever about deleting Carrie, comparing her to a program that wastes space. Once Carrie ends up in the monkey, she even threatens her with deletion if she doesn't behave.
- Second Love: Jack hooks up with her some months after his wife Carrie legally died. Carrie's consciousness in his head is... less than thrilled about this development.
Leigh
Clayton Leigh
Portrayed By: Babs Olusanmokun
- And I Must Scream: He is forced to constantly relive his painful execution on a regular basis, unable to truly die as his consciousness has been digitalized.
- Ain't Too Proud to Beg: Begs for visitors to spare him any further torture. It doesn't work.
- Creepy Souvenir: As if being continuously electrocuted for the amusement of the public wasn't bad enough, Clayton's mind is routinely copied onto keychain-sized souvenirs and frozen in a moment of perpetual agony - complete with a hologram of his own screaming face - before given out to tourists in order to memorialize the moment they got to flip the switch.
- Empty Shell: Having been exposed to the virtual electric chair for too long, Clayton's hologram self is reduced to a "docile animal," unable to think and barely able to respond to his wife's presence.
- Oh, No... Not Again!: Responds with considerable exasperation at the sight of Rolo's more... persistent customers.You again, you pasty-faced motherfucker?
- Mercy Kill: After spending years on end imprisoned in the Black Museum and being rendered down into a catatonic vegetable by repeated torture, he's finally put out of his misery when Nish destroys his program via the electric chair.
- Miscarriage of Justice: Heavily implied to be innocent of the crime he was convicted and executed for; given that Clayton's "guilt" was the one big stamp of legitimacy for the exhibit, Rolo is very quick to dismiss this as "fake news."
- Virtual Ghost: Resurrected as a hologram outfitted with Clayton's personality and memories.
