Due to the fact that previously appearing characters talk about their past, expect spoilers for The Crooked Man, The Sandman (2014), and The Boogie Man.
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Will and his Friends
William Morton
The protagonist of the game. He headed off into a snowy town on his own, without letting his mother know what he was planning. The only thing to hint at his goal is a note in his backpack with an address and phone number on it, belonging to David Hoover.
When Pop runs off inside the Deep Woods Hospital, Will is determined to not leave until he finds him. But he keeps feeling uneasy, often seeing strange shadows passing by or following him.
- All of the Other Reindeer: Will has always been ostracized by other kids because he kept talking about and to things that they couldn't see.
- The Atoner: He believes it's his fault for destroying David's family and went to visit him to apologize.
- Beware the Quiet Ones: He's overall a sweet boy, albeit being sensitive about his only real friend being a rat. However, he is not above attacking or threatening someone, like when he's up against Ed.
- Broken Pedestal: For his father; Will used to love his father deeply, but he lost all respect for his father when he learned what his father did to David's family.
- Cowardly Lion: He considers himself to be utterly helpless and incapable of doing anything on his own, insisting that he can really only manage to pull himself together when Pop is around. Even after he has spent hours traversing the dark, scary building and appeased some of its spirits.
- Dark Secret: He carries one with him. He blames himself for destroying David's family when his father ended up getting Will's mother pregnant and chose to abandon them in favor of him. Although Pop says that it's not his fault.
- Despair Event Horizon: Crosses it in the Deep In The Woods ending when he believes he can't do anything and is implied to live the rest of his life in fear of Ed and Robert.
- Disappeared Dad: Will's father died from heart problems when he was a child.
- The Faceless: His face is not shown for the first third of the game.
- Fingore: Out Of The Window has the damaged gun backfire and blow up several of his fingers. His hands need to be amputated after.
- Heroic BSoD: Falls into a brief one, before attacking Robert when he believes Robert just killed Pop.
- Hikkikomori: It's implied he has become one in Out Of The Window.
- I See Dead People: He keeps seeing, and can talk to, spirits of humans and animals.
- Jumping Off the Slippery Slope: In A Cornered Rat, Will kills Ed in a fit of uncontrollable rage and anger. After declaring that Ed deserves it, Will takes on a kill-or-be-killed mindset and chooses to use the gun whenever he feels cornered by anyone.
- Long-Lost Relative: He is initally thought to be David Hoover's cousin. Actually, they are half-brothers.
- My God, What Have I Done?: In a few Bad Endings, Will's actions (or inactions) led to someone dying. For example, if you go after Sophie after Will yells at her, she will promise to come back for Will. What this leads into is either her dying or being strangled into unconsciousness. Will blames himself for not going to save her when he had the chance.
- Only Known by Their Nickname: He generally goes by Will, with his full name rarely mentioned.
- Strong Family Resemblance: Sophie thought she had seen Will before when they first met, because Will looks a lot like David.
- Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: He found a hung corpse when he was a child and proceeded to have a rather calm, albeit dark conversation with it.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Will confessing his Dark Secret in the confession booth of the asylum's chapel caused Ed to see him as a perfect target for his plan to recreate a Happy Murder, to forgive himself for having killed his father in a fit of rage.
- The Voiceless: He doesn't talk for the first third of the game.
- Through the Eyes of Madness: Maybe. He's the only one who can see the spirits, and complains about how no one else notices them, which can cause the player to doubt his sanity, but it's not confirmed either way.
Pop
Will's talking pet mouse who travels with him.
- Talking Animal: He can speak with Will and helps him in his travels. However, it is ambiguous if he truly is capable of speech or if Will is just imagining it in his head. It’s unknown if he really could talk or if Will imagined it all.
- Voice for the Voiceless: He plays this role initially, being the one speaking for the silent Will even though only Will can hear him. But when he runs away, this is subverted as Will begins talking and does so for the rest of the story.
Returning Characters
David Hoover
David took Will in after he got into trouble at a fishing supply store. He got worried when Will disappeared suddenly and Sophie promised him to go looking for the kid.
- Anger Born of Worry: In Escape, David gives Will a good slap and yells at him for sneaking out of the house in the middle of the night, making David worry horribly about him.
- Beware the Nice Ones: Like always, David is rather kind. He gives Will as much support as he can during the few interactions we see between them. In the Good End, he gives Will a little Dope Slap and rightfully chews him out for running away.
- Big Brother Instinct: He forms this for Will. He bails him out when he gets in trouble, lets him stay at his place, and is concerned about him when he learns that Will ran away. It's later revealed that he's Will's older half-brother and he wanted to be a part of Will's life.
- Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: David is blond and is still as kind as ever. In the True End, you learn that he never hated or blamed Will for the destruction of his family and even forgave his father.
- Out of Focus: Contrary to having rather big roles in the previous games, David only appears in the introduction section and the Good Ending for this game.
- Sins of Our Fathers: Will believes that David feels this way because of a post card he wrote. It's actually a subversion; the card was for their father telling him that he had forgiven him. David never once thought it was Will's fault.
- Uncertain Doom: The ending A Cornered Rat ends with an insane Will calling David to pick him up after vowing to use Keith’s gun on anyone that tries to corner him, with strong implications that Will intends on killing David for supposedly holding what their father did against him.
Keith Baring
Keith is a police detective that came to the snowy town because of a recent death and is currently investigating Deep Woods Hospital. He finds Will and tells him to leave, but grudgingly lets him look for his rat after it runs away.
- Agent Scully: When Will and Sophie cling to him, babbling on about them having seen shadows of ghosts all over the place, Keith calms them down by simply saying that ghosts don't exist.
- Big "SHUT UP!": When Sophie and Will run to him panicking, he tells them to shut up and calmly explain what has them wound up.
- Deadpan Snarker: Same as before, he's pretty blunt with words and not above using this.
- Hard Head: Keith spends the climax of the game suffering from a head injury obtained from getting crushed by rubble. He does struggle a couple times, but he ultimately focuses on protecting Will from Ed.
- Intergenerational Friendship: He’s a man in his late thirties who befriends fourteen-year-old Will. He’s also friends with Sophie, who’s eighteen years old.
- The Stoic: He's more open about his emotions than previously, but is still rather stoic.
- Sudden Sequel Death Syndrome: Keith can be killed off in A Cornered Rat and Deep In The Woods.
- Taking the Bullet: In two of the endings, he notices the ceiling crumbling and safely gets Will out of the way while Keith gets crushed by rubble.
- Tragic Keepsake: A misshapen golden ring he wears above his wedding ring. It's a ring that he made with his son for Mother's Day, before Tod was killed in a traffic accident.
Sophie Grundler
Sophie headed to the abandoned asylum looking for Will, after hearing a man mention a boy going there. She promised David that she'd help in looking for Will and was intent on taking him back to David's, but agreed to help Will look for Pop.
- Character Development: She started off as a meek Stepford Smiler in The Sandman (2014), but grew a spine and was abrasive in The Boogie Man; she seems to have mellowed out a lot in this game.
- Demoted to Extra: She has a smaller role here than the previous two games. She appears in the opening where she meets Will for the first time and can potentially hang around the sanitarium for a brief period of time. That is, unless you go after her and indirectly are responsible for her being attacked or killed by Robert.
- Fiery Redhead: Averted. She has bright red hair and is a little softer than she was in The Boogie Man.
- Kill the Cutie: She gets killed in Deep Woods and Out Of The Window.
- Not Quite Dead: Will thought Sophie was killed by Robert in Out Of The Window, but she was actually just unconscious.
- Not Quite the Right Thing: When Will yells at her for scaring away Pop, he can choose to go after her and apologize. Seems like the right thing to do, right? Wrong. By doing that, Will agrees to her coming back to help him look for Pop if he doesn’t come back in a certain time period. This can result in her getting attacked or killed because she was still in the building. By choosing not to go after her, you’re actually keeping her safe.
New Characters (spoilers)
Edward Hayes
A homeless man that took shelter in the abandoned Deep Woods hospital and remembers going there for a while, when it was still in use as a privately-funded homeless shelter. He's looking for a small, black notebook.
- Affably Evil: A genuinely nice and soft guy despite being a killer. Even when he's about to murder Will and Keith, he never loses his demeanor, even saying how grateful he is for having met Will. The effect is actually rather chilling.
- The Atoner: He wants to atone for killing his father, which he will do by going to the police… after he kills Will, to 'make himself happy again' by following George's method.
- Berserk Button: Yelling bad words in his presence causes him to get a headache. And to start attacking, in Robert's case.
- Beware the Nice Ones: Ed comes across as a very gentle, nice person that's wandering around the asylum for a notebook. And he's quite interested in meeting Will's talking rat. He also beat his father to death in a fit of rage, almost killed his brother the same way, and was planning to kill Will as his Happy Murder victim.
- Big Bad: He's the killer haunting the hospital that Keith is looking for, and is plotting to kill both him and Will.
- Crazy Homeless People: A homeless man who also happens to be a member of a cult that kills and hangs people to become happy. He is genuinely nice to his intended victims, but is still planning on killing them.
- Disproportionate Retribution: In some endings, he winds up brutally beating his own brother, Robert, to death, because he swore (swear words are Ed's Berserk Button) and was aggressive in trying to get Ed out before the police came.
- Dissonant Serenity: Ed talks rather calmly when he ties up Will and prepares to hang him.
- Even Evil Has Standards: Even though he was willing to kill Will as part of the Happy Murder ritual, he’s greatly disturbed by his older brother strangling Sophie into unconsciousness and stuffing her in a locker in one ending. In another, he’s shocked that Robert kills Keith and Sophie and makes Will hide the bodies. He also begs his brother to spare Will in this ending.
- Evil Counterpart: For Will. They are both kind-hearted people that have a complex relationship with their brother due to their father, love animals — rats especially, and live in their own little world. But Ed is an unstable murderer and the Big Bad who represents what Will can become if he doesn't leave his own world and finally grow up.
- Final Boss: Escaping him in a last chase is needed to get the good ending.
- Freudian Excuse: He had an abusive father growing up, even in his adulthood, and had no one to save him from his torment. His older brother didn't even step in to take care of him or get him help until it was too late. As a result of everything mentioned, Ed retreated into his own little world, and wound up in an asylum where he was indoctrinated by a murderous cult who kill people to become happy, and even believed that completing the "Happy Murder" ritual would make him happy.
- Hobos: Pop initially labels him as one, which he is.
- My God, What Have I Done?: He expresses horror in the endings where he attacks and possibly kills his older brother.
- Only Known by Their Nickname: His full name is only mentioned by Keith.
- Sibling Murder: He kills Robert for swearing and being aggressive to him in some endings.
- Stutter Stop: Ed tends to s-stutter when talking, w-which is said to have come from years of parental abuse. He does speak without a stop when he threatens Will.
- Walking Spoiler: His role turns out to be much more sinister than first expected.
- "Well Done, Son" Guy: In the Good Ending and Bad Ending 1, Ed reveals that everything he did prior to the game was to make his dad proud. Because he was fired from his job, his dad started hitting and yelling at him, which escalated to Ed beating his dad to death in a blind rage.
Robert Hayes
A mysterious man who walks around the asylum and claims to do so for nostalgic purposes, having lived there for a while when it was still a homeless shelter. He's a witness to a murder that occurred a week ago and is a great person of interest to Keith.
- Blatant Lies: His claim of being at the asylum out of nostalgia. Will points out that it's clearly not the case because Robert kept muttering to himself 'Where are you' and similar, making it clear that he's there to look for someone.
- Disappeared Dad: To his family in some of the endings, where he runs away with Ed or gets killed.
- Everyone Has Standards: Robert is disturbed to hear Ed taking the Happy Murder ritual more seriously than he should.
- Evil Counterpart: For David. They are both big brothers that have complex relationships with their brother and father and was able to make a stable life. The difference comes in their basic personalities; David is a nice guy that simply wants to be there for Will, while Robert is so consumed by his guilt that he's willing to do anything, even murder, to protect Ed.
- Freudian Excuse: Robert and Ed grew up with an abusive father. His overprotective nature stems from a desire to protect his brother, who suffered the most from their father. He was desperate to get away from the pain that he left his brother behind.
- Knight Templar Big Brother: In the Bad Ends, he will become this. He will be determined to do whatever it takes to keep his brother safe, even if he has to kill people to do it. In Deep in the Woods, he was even willing to threaten Will and his family if he told anyone about where he and Ed were going.
- My Greatest Failure: Robert blames himself for abandoning Ed and not taking him along when he left his abusive home.
- Walking Spoiler: He is just as difficult to talk about as Ed, including the fact that they are brothers.
- Would Hurt a Child: He almost kills Sophie in one ending, and succeeds in another, and took Will as a hostage when Keith confronted him about Ed.
- You Are Worth Hell: Robert tells Ed in several bad endings that he will not abandon him any more and, if Ed is going to go to hell for killing his father, then Robert will go along with him.
The Hayes Father
The abusive father of Edward and Robert Hayes.
- Abusive Parents: He was an abusive drunk, who regularly beat Ed, abused him verbally, and stole his money. Both Edward and Robert became as screwed up as they are because of what he did to them, which culminated in Edward killing him.
- Asshole Victim: He was an abusive drunk to both of his sons, but when Robert ran away from home, he became much harsher to the remaining Edward. Robert even says that their father tormented Ed for years. This eventually drove Ed to beat him to death.
- The Ghost: Due to him being already dead, we never see him but hear of his abuse towards his two sons.
- Greater-Scope Villain: Like George, his abuse is what turned Edward into the Big Bad.
George Schmid
The leader of the cult behind the Happy Murders.
- The Ghost: We never actually see him — he is only described.
- Greater-Scope Villain: He and his cult indoctrinated Edward into becoming the Big Bad who seeks to kill others to attain happiness.
- Small Role, Big Impact: George Schmid is mentioned twice, being the one to have written a quote on a polaroid, and being the owner of a black notebook. George claimed society was made happy by sacrificing the people they shunned and locking them away into the asylum-turned-homeless-shelter because those people were bad. He came up with the idea that doing the same amongst themselves — killing 'bad' inmates — would cause the murderers to 'become happy again', and wrote that into his notebook. This resulted in the Happy Murders; the shelter being shut down and abandoned for good; Ed searching for the notebook to find his method of becoming happy again; and his planning to kill Will, and Keith in certain endings, so he could become happy again, before atoning for killing his father.
- Totalitarian Utilitarian: He believes that in order for society to improve, bad people need to be violently murdered, and doing so would make the good people happy.
