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The BFG
The title character: a 24-foot giant with enhanced hearing and whose job is to give people dreams. The initials stand for Big Friendly Giant.
- Adaptational Attractiveness: In the 2016 film, though still massive, the BFG's ears are not as large and more proportional than in Quentin Blake's illustrations, where they were almost as large as his head.
- Big Eater: He's four times as tall as an average human, with an appetite to match.
- Book Dumb: Until the end of the book, where he becomes educated, he's very uneducated, speaking in primitive grammar and being barely literate. That said, he is a far from a fool in his own right.
- Bookworm: When he becomes educated at the end, he's said to take up reading as a hobby.
- Cool Old Guy: He's been around for an infinite number of years, and has the power to catch dreams and deliver them to children.
- Department of Redundancy Department: Has both "Big" and "Giant" in his name.
- Does Not Like Spam: Hates coffee, and when he tries some, he spits it out.
- Dream Weaver: In this universe, dreams are physical things made out of a substance called zozimus, so the BFG can mix them together to create a different dream. He can also choose who dreams what, and prevent people from having nightmares by blowing them up.
- Fantastic Racism: Up until Sophie and the Queen taught him otherwise, he believed humans to be dumb and universally unkind. For instance, he gives Sophie a lecture on how humans are apparently the only species to kill its own kind...which in fact is false, by the way. For instance, lions are notorious for killing cubs.
- Gasshole: Invoked. He drinks frobscottle, a soda where the bubbles go down, to deliberately make himself fart (or "whizzpop" as he calls it) because his farts send him up into the air, which he finds fun.
- Gentle Giant: It's in the name. He's a 24 foot tall giant and can easily squash any human but hates violence and hurting anyone and has a soft spot for kids.
- Hypocrite: He claims humans are no worse than the evil giants for eating pigs, but then later eats bacon himself.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: In the first part of the book, he spends a lot of time insulting Sophie, telling her things like "[her] head is full of squashed flies", and expresses much contempt for human knowledge and intelligence. Nevertheless, he's still a noble giant who cares about humans.
- My Species Doth Protest Too Much: Is the only benevolent giant, the only one to have an actual home, the only one to wear more than a loincloth, and the shortest one.
- Narrator All Along: At the end, it's revealed that he's the one who "wrote" the book.
- Our Giants Are Bigger: He's a 24-foot giant, whose job it is to give people dreams.
- Parental Substitute: Of sorts to Sophie. He quickly becomes very caring and protective towards her, and by the end, the little girl has come to love him "as she would a father."
- The Sleepless: Downplayed. He, like most giants, still needs to sleep but does it very rarely compared to humans.
- Spell My Name with a "The": The Big Friendly Giant.
- Time Abyss: He's so ancient he can't even remember how old he is, but speculates that he's been around about as long as the Earth itself.
- Token Heroic Orc: As noted, he’s the only one of the giants who isn’t out to eat any humans for dinner, and is instead a very kind fellow.
- Super-Senses: Due to his big ears, he can hear very well. He can even hear sounds from outer space!
- Vegetarian Carnivore: Giants as a species eat humans, but the BFG only eats snozzcumbers, which are a type of vegetable. Later, he begins eating meat, but not humans.
- You No Take Candle: Speaks in primitive grammar, such as "is" for "are".
Sophie
The little girl who the BFG takes from the orphanage.
- Adaptation Dye-Job: Sophie is a blonde in the original book, is a redhead in the animated film, and is a brunette in the 2016 film.
- Adaptational Attractiveness: Downplayed in the 2016 film. In the book, she wore her glasses all the time out of necessity. In the film, she typically wears them just for reading.
- Age Lift: Is eight in the book, but ten in the live-action movie.
- Bespectacled Cutie: She's a little girl who wears glasses.
- Boyish Short Hair: Has short hair in both films.
- Kid Hero: She's a kid, and she's the one who comes up with the plan to give the Queen a nightmare and save the world's population.
- Missing Mom: Sophie's mother is dead.
- Nice Girl: She is a kind-hearted, well-mannered little girl with a strong moral compass.
- Orphanage of Fear: The orphanage she lived at was run by mean staff who'd lock the orphans in the basement.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Despite being a Proper Lady who objects to flatulence as being "extremely rude", she cannot help but laugh at the BFG's momentous "whizzpopping", and then seemingly has no qualms about farting herself after she drinks the Frobscottle.
- Parental Abandonment: Both her mum and her dad are dead.
- Pyjama-Clad Hero: Due to being taken at night, she spends most of the book in her nightgown.
- Straight Man: She's often the one who behaves normally while the BFG is goofy.
Evil Giants
- Adaptational Attractiveness: While still ugly by human standards, the evil giants are much less hideous and more human-like in the 2016 film. They also switched out of sack clothing and into Norse/Celtic checkered capes.
- Alliterative Name: There's the Maidmasher, Bloodbottler, Childchewer, Gizzardgulper, and Butcher Boy.
- Amazing Technicolor Population: In the animated movie, their skin is blue. In all other works, it's brown, except for their lips, which are purple.
- Ape Shall Never Kill Ape: According to the BFG, giants don't kill other giants, hence why they haven't killed him despite the fact that they easily could and that they detest him. When the BFG tells Fleshlumpeater he'd rather be like a human than the other giants, the latter decides that's enough reason for him to kill the former.
- Big Bad: Collectively they serve as the antagonists. The Fleshlumpeater is the closest thing they have to a leader, with both film adaptations giving him a larger role and a more personal emnity with the BFG. In the book, the Fleshlumpeater also is the only giant who causes problems when the army goes to capture them- the other eight are so fast asleep that not even his attempts to fight back wake them up.
- Book Dumb: Like the BFG, they're uneducated. It's unknown if they can even read.
- Dumb Muscle: They're all very strong and completely stupid.
- Even Evil Has Standards: Played for Laughs: as filthy and disgusting as they are, according to the BFG all giants consider burping to be rude and unpleasant. They also have a straight example in that for all their evil and openly hating and bullying the BFG and fighting one another, they have a strict code against killing other giants.
- Evil Is Bigger: Naturally, they're this to humans but they also serve as this for the BFG, being much bigger and stronger than him.
- Fat Bastard: They're evil people-eaters, and they're described as having "bulging" stomachs.
- Fat Idiot: They're every bit as stupid as their stomachs are fat.
- Hey, You!: They all hate the BFG for being smaller than they are, and refer to him as a “runt”.
- Names to Run Away from Really Fast: With the exception of the Manhugger, all of them have names that hint at their eating people.
- Non-Indicative Name:
- The Manhugger never actually hugs anyone, male or otherwise. Although it's possible he squeezes them to death.
- The Butcher Boy appears to be fully grown despite being called a boy.
- Odd Name Out: The Butcher Boy is the only one whose name isn't a variation on "[noun][verb]er" (or, in the Fleshlumpeater's case, "[noun][noun][verb]er".
- One-Gender Race: They're exclusively male. They don't reproduce, they just sort of come into being, and sometimes stop existing. This makes them something of a counterpart to the exclusively female child-killing monsters in Dahl's other work The Witches."My mother!" cried the BFG. "Giants don't have mothers! Surely you is knowing that." "I did not know that," Sophie said. "Whoever heard of a woman giant!" shouted the BFG, waving the snozzcumber around his head like a lasso. "There never was a woman giant! And there never will be one. Giants is always men!"
- Our Giants Are Bigger: Humongous, bloodthirsty giants.
- Picky People Eater: They never eat Greek people due to thinking they taste greasy, and sometimes get cravings for, or tire of, a particular age or nationality of humans.
- Pungeon Master: Commonly make puns about their human-eating, such as "going to Baghdad to bag Dad" or "going to Mississippi to eat Mrs. Sippi."
- Sickening "Crunch!": It's said several times that bones can be heard cracking when they eat people.
- The Sleepless: Downplayed. Being giants, they still need to sleep and take a nap every afternoon, but they sleep far less than humans.
- Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: Being a giant, the Fleshlumpeater is afraid of Jack and the Beanstalk.
- Wolverine Claws: Mild example. The Fleshlumpeater's design in the animated version sports a long, sharp index nail on either hand. He uses them to pluck sleeping children out of their beds, rather like a gigantic aye aye.
- Would Hit a Girl: They eat as many women as they do men.
- Would Hurt a Child: None of them have any reservations about eating kids. Exaggerated for the Childchewer, who prefers to eat children.
The Queen
The Queen of England, who our protagonists send a nightmare to in order to save humanity.
- Age Lift: As the story is set in The '80s, the Queen has brown hair in the animated film. In the 2016 film, she is visibly older with grey hair, matching her look in The '90s, which just adds to the Anachronism Stew.
- Anonymous Ringer: Only referred to as the Queen, but all appearances of her in the adaptations depict her as Queen Elizabeth II.
- The High Queen: Is the prime example of a benevolent human Sophie can think of, and she's very accommodating. She also helps save the world.
- Reasonable Authority Figure: In part thanks to the dream she was given, she fully supports Sophie and the BFG and is kind to them the entire time.
Mary
The Queen's maid.
- Adaptational Attractiveness: She is played by the pretty Rebecca Hall in the 2016 film, and looks quite younger than in the animated film.
The Military
Several military men who drive the helicopters.
- Consummate Professional: They treat the remarkably strange mission to infiltrate another dimension to capture man-eating giants like any other military operation.
