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Main Characters
Clancy Gilroy
Voiced by: Duncan Trussel
A 44-year-old man who interviews the inhabitants of simulated planets for his podcast, The Midnight Gospel.
- Amazing Technicolor Population: Has bright pink skin.
- Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!: Clancy is very easily distracted when outside the simulator, to the point that his computer's increasingly desperate attempts to get him to check the FAQ are derailed when Clancy notices an advertisement for Pie Messiah — sending him on a pointless mission to deliver one to his neighbours.
- Author Avatar: Voiced by co-creator Duncan Trussell, and on the simulations he fulfills the exact same role he has on his IRL podcast, The Duncan Trussell Family Hour (which The Midnight Gospel is a peculiar animated version of). Some of the characters even call him ''Duncan''. Don't worry, they lampshade it.Clancy: Duncan? Who's Duncan?
- Collector of the Strange: Has a habit of collecting a pair of shoes from every world he visits, not always deliberately. His collection is lost in his escape into the simulator at the end of the season, but on the upside, he earns a new pair of spoon-shaped shoes he can wear on the Afterlife Express.
- Contemplate Our Navels: His interviews delve into lofty topics such as mindfulness, meditation, psychedelics, religion, death, and the nature of the self.
- Foolish Sibling, Responsible Sibling: The Foolish to Sarah's Responsible.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Clancy does have flaws that he tries to work on: being short tempered, unhelpfully avoiding reality, and causing strains between him and his sister. However, his heart's usually shown to be in the right place.
- Mama's Boy: Has a close relationship with his mother, which is all the more tragic considering she's dying from cancer and he's been trying to avoid facing it.
- Manchild: He's immature and irresponsible, and his journeys to simulated planets are as much about escapism as they are about spiritual discovery.
- Mike Nelson, Destroyer of Worlds: Several of the simulated worlds that Clancy visits are suffering apocalyptic circumstances due to "operator error." As it later becomes clear, Clancy isn't bothering with basic simulator maintenance and actively ignoring the simulator's attempts to warn him about it until it's on the verge of suffering "Wobble."
- Morphic Resonance: His eyes remain the same in all of his forms.
- Moving Beyond Bereavement: Clancy's mother is dying of cancer, and he copes by avoiding reality and panicking whenever the rest of his family reach out to him. However, in their final episode, Clancy meets his mom in the simulator, confronting all the issues he didn't want to face until she is drawn into a black hole, facing death serenely as she bids her son farewell; Clancy is emotionally overwhelmed, but he is ultimately able to continue his adventures with a clear heart.
- Never My Fault: Doesn't seem to understand the concept of "operator error," given that he blames his computer for the fact that so many of the worlds inside are suffering apocalypses.
- Older Than They Look: Clancy's in his fourties but his design, lack of facial hair and big eyes make him look at least half his actual age.
- Sophisticated as Hell: Half of his dialog is contemplative and thoughtful, and the other half is Clancy being Clancy.Clancy: There are beautiful, wondrous worlds inside these old simulators, full of intelligent beings with stories to tell, and I'm gonna interview them, and put my interviews online, and make a bunch of money and pay you back, so suck my dick.
- Walking Shirtless Scene: When in his true form on the Ribbon, he's bare-chested. Less for fanservice and more to denote his status as a stoner and cloudcuckoolander (though it could be fanservice depending on your tastes).
Charlotte
- Adorable Abomination: She's a cute little dog who is hiding a parallel dimension in her fur and who can vacuum objects and living beings into that dimension.
- Hammerspace: In "Taste of the King", Glasses Man stashes billiard balls and weapons in her fur.
- Leaking Can of Evil: Vacuums up one of the clown babies at the end of "Officers And Wolves." Unfortunately, early in "Hunters Without A Home," she also vacuums up a small bird — allowing the clown parasite to escape via the bird while Charlotte's asleep later in the episode, paving the way for it attacking Captain Bryce in "Vulture With Honour."
- Taking the Bullet: In the last episode of the first season, she absorbs a bullet meant for Clancy in midair.
Computer
An AI who operates Clancy's simulation device.
- A.I. Is a Crapshoot: When functioning properly, the computer is friendly and helpful. When it malfunctions due to lack of maintenance in "Vultures with Honor", it asks deranged questions about eyes, spews purple smoke, and generates pie monsters.
- The Cassandra: The computer repeatedly reminds Clancy to read the simulator FAQs and pay attention to its warning messages. Clancy refuses to do so, and the result is a catastrophic simulator malfunction in "Vultures with Honor".
- Electronic Speech Impediment: Is beginning to demonstrate a mechanical stutter by the end of "Annihilation Of Joy"; by the next episode, it can barely hold a sentence together.
- Magitek: It generates an entire universe full of weird planets and sapient beings, many of which pass through the simulator interface into the real world, and Bryce explicitly describes this process as magic.
- Only Sane Man: One of the few entities trying to keep sanity on an even keel in this part of the Ribbon, to the point that it eventually has to address Clancy's manchild tendencies.
- Reality Is Out to Lunch: Simulators that don't receive regular maintenance eventually explode into different shades of reality-warping Wobble, though Clancy is able to fix his before it completely breaks down — but only just. In the finale, it begins crapping out again and the raid by the police only makes things worse, resulting in the whole thing erupting into a field of Wobble that consumes anyone in the immediate area.
- Sanity Slippage: Begins to demonstrate a growing number of eccentricities as lack of maintenance takes its toll, until it devolves into outright insanity and has to be repaired.
- Uncertain Doom: Clancy's trailer is last seen being consumed by Wobble, and though Clancy and Charlotte apparently manage to escape into another reality — or possibly the afterlife — the Computer's fate remains unknown.
Interview Subjects
In General
- As Himself: Most of the dialogue of each interviewee is from clips taken from actual interviews on The Duncan Trussell Family Hour podcast, so the characters are more or less stand-ins for the actual people lending them their voices.
- Casual Danger Dialog: They calmly and mindfully answer Clancy's questions and talk at length about their insights while surrounded by carnage, war and chaos (or partaking in it themselves, like Glasses Man casually killing zombies).
- Ink-Suit Actor: Averted. Most of them are talking animals or odd creatures and thus don't look like their voice lenders at all. Even those that are (or at least seem human) don't really look like their real counterparts, either. For example, Drew Pinsky indeed wears glasses, but his avatar, Glasses Man, is so simplistic that he could be ANY guy with glasses.
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall: A given. Due to the nature of the dialogues, the characters often do things like calling Clancy "Duncan" (addressing co-creator Duncan Trussel, who voices Clancy) or casually reference real life places and people on alien worlds were said people and places are either long gone or never existed in to begin with (probably).
Glasses Man
Voiced by: Drew Pinsky
Appears in: S1:E1 — Taste of the King
A short guy who wears glasses. He also happens to be the President of the United States of America in a particular timeline where the world is being overrun by zombies. Surprisingly competent in combat.
Voiced by Dr. Drew of Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew fame, among other things. Naturally, his interview is mostly about drugs.
- Action Politician: He's pretty good with his guns.
- Crazy-Prepared: Due to his Earth's Zombie Apocalypse, he has a massive arsenal of guns in the White House.
- Casual Danger Dialogue: He continues his interview with Clancy while there's a horde of zombies sieging the White House.
- Our Presidents Are Different: A mix of President Badass (as he actively fights through an ongoing zombie apocalypse) and President Personable (he has a rather pleasant demeanor and is totally down to have a conversation for the spacecast despite the ongoing situation and being the president).
Annie and Raghu
Annie and Raghu are deer-hippopotamus beings that live in the same planet as a species of clown-like beings. The kill young clowns when possible, but they are trapped by the clowns and taken to be slaughtered. Clancy is captured along with them, having been accidentally stabbed by Annie's horns. Since they are all trapped in the same car leading to death anyway Clancy decides to interview Annie. Raghu, being carried off in a nearby car, chimes in eventually.
Annie is the author of several books dealing with topics such as grief, death and Christianity. Raghu likewise shows to be knowledgeable around Buddhism and other religions.
Annie is the author of several books dealing with topics such as grief, death and Christianity. Raghu likewise shows to be knowledgeable around Buddhism and other religions.
- Casual Danger Dialogue: The whole episode is this. It even becomes casual death dialogue, with Clancy and the beasts all being slaughtered and turned into meat slurry while lackadaisically continuing their conversation.
- Gentle Giant: Both are capable of tearing apart smaller creatures, but will gladly medidate on the nature of Christ and accepting death.
- What Measure Is a Non-Human?: No attempt is made to adapt the actress being an author to her being in this universe a deer-hippopotamus, so we are left with the implication that despite looking like grazing animals this species has a thriving editorial industry. To say nothing of Raghu who, despite being an animal living on an alien planet, is apparently Jewish and traveled to India where he met Ram Dass. So, a thriving editorial industry and access to casual interstellar/dimensional travel?
Darryl
Voiced by: Damien Echols
Appears in: S1:E3 — Hunters Without a Home
Darryl is a sentient fish in a bowl who captains a ship of cats and practices ceremonial magic.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: For all his lofty spiritual statements, Darryl is ultimately just after power for himself and is fully willing to screw over other beings in his world to get it.
- Magick: His conversation with Clancy centers on discussing the principles and practices of Aleister Crowley's religion of Thelema.
- Odd Friendship: Darryl is a fish commanding a ship of cats with no apparent issue despite the usual tendency of cats to try to eat fish.
- Reformed Criminal: Darryl talks a bit of his time in prison to Clancy and how it led him to his spiritual practice. Somewhat Truth in Television for his voice actor, although Echols was released due to new evidence casting doubt on his actual guilt, whereas Darryl turns out to be less reformed than he seems.
Trudy the Love Barbarian
Voiced by: Trudy Goodman
Appears in: S1:E4 — Blinded By My End
Trudy is an adventurer who seeks to avenge the death of her boyfriend, Gerald at the hands of Prince Jam Roll, a powerful demon-possessed Evil Prince.
- Cool Horse: Cassiopeia, her steed, is a green, ghostly horse, who can stretch her tail.
- Cool Sword: Her sword looks like a thorny vine, glows pink and splits in two at the tip.
- Healing Herb: She carries a magical rose that can heal any injury when she cuts herself with its thorns. Clancy saves her with it after she nearly dies to Jam Roll. When the world inevitably collapses, Clancy keeps the rose and plants it. Trudy and her rose are reunited in the Afterlife Express.
- Shoulders of Doom: They also serve as blood-powered rocket launchers.
Bob and Jason
Bob is an inmate in Computer's Soul Prison, and Jason is his "Soul Bird" (self described as a sort of psychopomp). Bob is caught in a loop of constantly dying and reviving in an eternal struggle to escape his captivity, and Jason tags along every time, tethered to his soul by a string (same string that Clancy becomes entangled in, so he tags along too). Jason serves as Clancy's interviewee in Bob's stead, since the latter bit his tongue off years ago and is thus unable to speak.
- Body Horror: Bob is so angry that his heart has darkened and sprouted eyes and a toothy jaw.
- Broken Tears: After several resurrections, Bob is reduced to sobbing helplessly as the trauma stacks up.
- Character Development: Over the course of repeated deaths, Bob learns to control his rage, until he finally abandons violence altogether in favour of helping other inmates escape.
- Cozy Voice for Catastrophes: Jason possesses a very mellow, soothing tone of voice that only makes the brutal violence Bob suffers over the course of the episode more jarring.
- Judgement of the Dead: Whenever Bob dies, he is brought before the gods of the Soul Prison to be judged, with his heart being weighed on the Scales of Justice against one of Jason's feathers; if it's heavier than the feather, Bob has to start all over again.
- The Many Deaths of You: Due to how the Soul Prison works, dying sends him back to the moment Clancy crashed into his cell, after his heart is judged. And he dies in countless, horrific ways.
- Psychopomp: Jason explicitly describes himself as this, comparing himself to a Whippoorwill; his job is to take Bob to be judged by the gods of the Soul Prison whenever he dies and — if he's found wanting — to bring him back to the start of the Bardo Loop.
- Resurrection/Death Loop: Bob is trapped in the Bardo Loop, the existential trap of the Soul Prison, forcing him to continuously die and restart his life from the moment of Clancy's arrival.
- Suddenly Voiced: When Bob is freed from the Soul Prison, he recovers his tongue, and, with it, his ability to sing.
- Tongue Trauma: Bob chewed off his own tongue years ago.
- The Unintelligible: Thanks to the aforementioned lack of tongue, Bob can only bark gibberish.
- Unstoppable Rage: Bob is in a constant state of it. Even his heart is angry. As such, part of his Character Development features him learning to control his anger.
- Vocal Dissonance: Bob's actual voice when his tongue grows back is female.
David
Voiced by: David Nichtern
A meditation teacher living in a peaceful planet. Clancy is sent to talk to him during a particulary low point. Clancy takes the oportunity to interview him, regarding topics surrounding meditation itself.His voice actor is David Nichtern, meditation teacher in real life and a close friend IRL to Duncan Trussel.
Death
Voiced by: Caitlin Doughty
Appears in: S1:E7 — Turtles of the Eclipse
Death itself, whom Clancy encounters inside his bag while looking for a hose, and then proceeds to interview.
Her voice actress is a funeral director in Real Life, and hosts the Youtube channel Ask A Mortician.
- A Form You Are Comfortable With: A variation. She appears to have no form of her own and she instead asks Clancy to describe her as he imagines death to look like. The first description is way too complex to work out practically, so Clancy settles for the stereotypical portrayal of a robed skeleton with a sickle...
and a single big silly eye with a party hat on top. - Don't Fear the Reaper: Very patient and nice with Clancy, and more than eager to discuss the human perception of death with anyone who will listen.
- Seers: She can predict how a being will die. She tells the Fool that they will die after slipping on a ping pong ball, and tells Clancy that he will die in a rolly chair.
- Tarot Motifs: One of many in the episode. She stands for, obviously enough, XIII: Death.
Clancy's Mom
Voiced by: Deneen Fendig
Clancy and Sarah's mother. She's dying of metastatic breast cancer, and meets her son in the simulator.
She's voiced by Deneen Fendig, the mother of Duncan Trussel, the voice of Clancy.
- Family Eye Resemblance: Clancy got his green eyes from her.
Other Characters
Chuck Charles
- Catchphrase: "Get in!" spoken in various intonations. It's even part of his theme music.
- Cool Car: He drives a tricked-out monster truck.
- Epic Fail: His big attempt to save the day resulted in him ruining the defences at the mall and getting himself killed right on the tail-end of his awesome intro.
Peggy
- Battle Couple: Goes into battle alongside her boyfriend — before he's swarmed by zombies and decapitated.
- Guys Smash, Girls Shoot: Her boyfriend is a knife expert, while Peggy prefers to shoot.
- Pregnant Badass: Is almost full-term, and yet has no trouble gunning down hordes of zombies and acrobatically leaping into the monster truck.
The Clown Parasites
- Clown Species: They look like clown babies in their juvenile form and giant spiders with clown heads in their adult form.
- Puppeteer Parasite: In their adult form, the clown parasites resemble spiders with clown heads that attach themselves to humans and take over their bodies.
Darryl's Cats
- Cats Are Mean: Averted Trope. They are rather cooperative, albeit incapable of communicating beyond meowing.
- Furry Confusion: They are physically cats and communicate solely in meows, yet seem to be sentient and don't attempt to eat any of their world's sentient fish at any point.
- Sole Survivor: They are the only residents of a world that undergoes an apocalyptic event to survive, in their case by taking their ship offworld.
- Undying Loyalty: They seem to follow Darryl's commands without much question.
Daniel Hoops
- Abusive Parents: Daniel's father beats him for eating ice cream and later forbids him from listening to The Midnight Gospel.
- Meaningful Name: His room has a basketball poster, suggesting that he likes basketball, so "Hoops" is an appropriate name for him.
- Trademark Favorite Food: Ice cream. Unfortunately, Daniel is in the middle of an ice cream drought.
Jam Roll
Voiced by: Pauly Shore
Appears in: S1:E4 — Blinded By My End
- Ambiguous Gender: Jam Roll is voiced by Pauly Shore and has the masculine title of Prince, but has a feminine gender presentation. Underneath their robe, Jam Roll has no sex organs.
- Beware the Silly Ones: He might be weird, but that doesn't stop him from being extremely dangerous in the slightest. He brutally killed and decapitated Gerald and nearly killed Trudy by running her through with one of his swords.
- Black Eyes of Crazy: His schlerae and optic nerves are black, and he uses them to move.
- Demonic Possession: Jam Roll's rear end houses a demon that demands to be fed.
- Eyes Always Shut: He doesn't open his eyes onscreen until he removes his face.
- Game Face: When he starts fighting Trudy, he rips out his own face, exposing his muscles, teeth and eyes.
- Sissy Villain. Jam Roll is effeminate, cruel, and formidable in battle.
- Vagina Dentata: A variation of this trope. Jam Roll doesn't have a vagina, but their rear end transforms into a giant toothy mouth that demands to be fed.
Captain Bryce
- And I Must Scream: At the end of "Vultures with Honor", he's trapped in the Wobble. Unlike most examples, he can still talk.
- Body Horror: Captain Bryce is engulfed in a yellow patch of the Wobble, reducing him to a mass of flaming bones and sinews.
- Mercy Kill: He pushes the looter into a gray patch of the Wobble, where the looter regresses into an egg. The looter's mind had been "pickled" from prolonged entrapment in the Wobble, and Captain Bryce concluded that it was the most humane thing to do.
Blithrreyus, Stephreyus and Shanerreyus
Voiced by: Stephen Root, Savannah Judy and Dante Pereira-Olson
Clancy's neighbours, a family of three fellow simulation-farmers.
- All There in the Manual: The name of the family patriarch is never actually mentioned in the episode.
- The Dog Bites Back: Stephreyus is not above taking passive-aggressive revenge against her father's abuse, in one case allowing the unicorn to escape while Blithrreyus is distracted by Clancy, and in another, allowing Clancy to make off with stolen green oil.
- Evil Cripple: Blithrreyus appears to be missing his right leg, which has been replaced by a small creature holding his stump upright.
- Foil: Both Clancy and Blithrreyus are simulation farmers and both wear pointy hats... but while Clancy uses his simulator for adventures and spiritual pursuits, Blithrreyus uses his for pure profit. Clancy treats the simulated beings he meets with respect and friendliness, while Blithrreyus exploits simulated beings for his own gain. For all his evil deeds, Blithrreyus is intelligent and organized in his use of the simulators, while Clancy is free-wheeling and nearly totals his own simulator out of negligence.
- Industrialized Evil: In sharp contrast to Clancy's lowly start-up, Blithrreyus runs his territory like a factory farm, with dozens of simulators providing access to profitable artefacts and numerous cows being automatically milked for green oil just to keep the business running smoothly. Profits are to be used to grow the business further, with Blithrreyus openly fantasizing about all the new simulators he'll be able to buy with his latest find.
- Jerkass: Blithrreyus is an extremely unpleasant man, treating his children like slaves, torturing simulated entities for the sake of profit, and responding to Clancy's arrival with immediate aggression and disgust.
- Oh, Crap!: Blithrreyus is immediately concerned to notice that the police are sniffing around the area. Once he sees that a Wobble is consuming the area, he takes this as he cue to abandon ship.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: On seeing that Clancy's simulator has finally Wobbled, Blithrreyus grabs his children and dives headlong into one of the simulators.
- Shrine to Self: Blithrreyus has decorated his house with self-aggrandizing portraits, even adorning the gates of his farm with a relief of his own face. For good measure, he seems prone to encouraging his children to regard him as a god.
- Slave Galley: The farm maintains a space galley in one of their simulators, ready to search for rare artefacts at a moment's notice; for good measure, the conductor suffers electric shocks from the computer for slacking off.
- Sleepyhead: Shanerreyus is prone to nodding off, usually earning him scorn from his father in the process.
- Surrounded by Idiots: Faced by the misdeeds of his rebellious daughter, narcoleptic son and freewheeling neighbours, Blithrreyus openly voices the opinion that he's alone in the presence of morons.
- Sycophantic Servant: Unlike Clancy's Servile Snarker home AI, the computer running Blithrreyus' farm is openly worshipful of its master, calling him "beautiful" and torturing simulated entities that don't follow his orders.
