All trope names are unmarked below. As the game is focused on discovering each character's personality and the mystery of what happened to them, beware of inherent spoilers to follow.
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The Finch family in general
The Finch family
- Big, Screwed-Up Family: The Finches are a varied lot, but they all seem to be prone to artistic temperaments, vivid and slightly morbid imaginations, a tendency towards flighty, impulsive and impetuous behaviour, and an acceptance of their own mortality that borders uncomfortably on relishing it. Their relationships with each other have often been fraught as a result.
- Dead to Begin With: Edith's entire family by the time she revisits the house, as well as Edith herself by the time she's actually narrating.
- Death of a Child: Quite a few of the Finches die in horrible incidents as children. The most notable ones are the 11-year old Calvin accidentally flinging himself off a cliff, the 10-year old Molly dying of either food poisoning or being eaten in her sleep and the 1-year old Gregory drowning in his bath when his mother steps away to argue with Sam on the phone.
- Outliving One's Offspring: Several of the Finches see their children die before them. Odin outlives his infant son Johann. Edie outlives all five of her children, and Sven manages to outlive three of them (Sam and Walter are still alive by the time he dies). Sam and Kay outlive both of their sons, leaving only Dawn, who outlives her elder son and is alive when her younger son runs away, but dies before her daughter. The only two people in the family with children to not outlive any of them are Edith (who dies while giving birth to her son), and Milton (who is still alive and whose son is still alive...maybe). Edie also outlives all but one of her grandchildren, as well as one of her great-grandchildren.
- Posthumous Character: Everyone in the Finch family except Edith. The point of the game is to explore the house to find out how they died. And then Edith dies in childbirth, leaving her son (the one reading the story in the first place) as the Sole Survivor.
- Single Line of Descent: A dark example. Edith is the only surviving descendant of Odin Finch, even though each of the intervening generations held multiple siblings - because only one member of each lived long enough to have children, while the rest died in freak accidents as children or teenagers.
- Too Dumb to Live: Many of the Finches pursue their passions first and consider basic caution second if at all. Such acts of recklessness include building a swing set on top of a cliff, flying one's kite in the middle of a violent storm, and exploring a tall, dilapidated, old house by their lonesome while in an advanced stage of pregnancy. This raises the question if the family is really cursed, or have a bad habit of making fatal mistakes.
- Unreliable Narrator: Everyone. There is not a single moment in this game when you are 100 percent certain that what you are seeing represents the actual events as they occurred. For starters, many of the scenes feature the deaths of family members from their individual perspectives but are narrated by others who have their own takes on what happened, and in many cases, weren't even there. In several cases it isn't made clear how the family member died, or even if he or she died at all. Even Edith herself doubts her own perspective on numerous occasions, and since that is the perspective from which the entire game is told, you doubt every event she recounts.
Dawn's Branch
Christopher Finch
Christopher Finch
The son of Edith Finch, who is the audience for her narration. He is, technically, the Player Character, since all the others are generated in his imagination.
- Aesop Amnesia: Not his fault, since he never knew any of his family, but the fact that his arm is in a cast suggests he has inherited their reckless, impulsive adventurousness.
- Disappeared Dad: His father is less "disappeared" than "never was". It's entirely possible (even likely, given the Finches' penchant for self-centered flightiness) he never even knew of his son's conception.
- Generation Xerox: The game leaves open-ended whether or not the final Finch, now that he has been "infected" with the family stories, is now doomed to re-enact the family curse.
- Last of His Kind: He is the last of the Finch family, and indeed never knew any other Finches. The journal is likely the only contact he has ever had with any of his relatives. He might be related to Monroe via Milton, but that's still on the wall.
- No Name Given: We never learn his name within the context of the game. Creative Director Ian Dallas did reveal it in an interview, however.
- Player Character: Nothing too remarkable about him on his own.
- A True Story in My Universe: In his imagination, Edith reads her story to him, while recounting the tales of her family in their voices.
- Vague Age: It's unknown how old he is, though he looks around the same age as Calvin and Milton when they died, which could put him around 10-13 years old.
- Walking Spoiler: Almost literally, as we never see his face.
Edith Finch
Edith Finch
Voiced by: Valerie Rose Lohman
"If we lived forever, maybe we'd have time to understand things. But as it is, I think the best we can do is try to open our eyes. And appreciate how strange and brief all of this is."
Dawn's last child, the Sole Survivor of the Finch family and the protagonist of the game. After inheriting her ancestral home following her mother's passing, she returns to fill in her family tree and find out what happened to her ancestors while dealing with her own memories of the past.
- Allegorical Character: She represents the uncertainty inherent to the narrative, often doubting the stories she encounters and even her own viewpoint and attempting to find a middle ground between being obsessed with the curse and being in denial.
- The Anti-Nihilist: At the end of the game and the last lines of her journal written before she died, she espouses the philosophy that life is strange and poignantly pointless, and we should all be appreciative of however little time we have, because We All Die Someday.
- Agent Scully: Downplayed. When confronted with a story expressing Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane events, she monologues that while the event in question almost certainly didn't play out as written, the person writing it probably believed it, and that's what matters.
- The Comically Serious: The game juxtaposes Edith's wistful, portentous meditations on the inevitability of mortality with her doing dangerous things like holding her arm out of a moving car window or climbing trees while 22 weeks pregnant.
- Dead Guy Junior: She mentions that her mom told her if she had been a boy, she would have been named Gus (after Dawn's younger brother). Instead, she was named after her great-grandmother Edith Sr. (also known as Edie).
- Death by Childbirth: Dies giving birth to her son.
- Foreshadowing: If the player moves the camera downward far enough, they'll notice Edith's belly sticking out. There can only be two reasons for this: either she is overweight, or she is pregnant. During the roof climbing part in the game, the player finds out from Edith that it's the latter.
- Pregnant Badass: While she doesn't have to fight anything, she can climb, crawl and jump surprisingly well given her condition.
- Sole Survivor: She is the last member of the Finch family left alive. After she dies in labor, she passes on the title to her son.
- Teen Pregnancy: She is 17 years old and 22 weeks along at the time of the story.
- Trauma Conga Line: Every one of her family members she ever knew died before she even reached adulthood. And unless she had a birthday between finishing her journal and giving birth, she never did turn 18 anyway.
- Walking Spoiler: Due to information revealed about her over the course of the game.
- Wise Beyond Their Years: Many full-grown adults have a harder time understanding and accepting death than a seventeen-year-old pregnant girl burdened with the knowledge that she may not live to see her own son.
Milton Finch
Milton Finch (1992-2003?)
Voiced by: Terry Gilliam, as "The King" in The Unfinished Swan
"Mom spent months searching for my brother. Then she sealed the doors."
The younger of Edith's brothers, and Dawn's second child. He's got quite a sense of imagination.
- Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence: There are hints he left reality and turned into a character in another game by the same creators.
- Canon Character All Along: Possibly. It is heavily implied that Milton is the same character as the King from The Unfinished Swan, and that his disappearance is a result of him painting himself a door into the world depicted in that game.
- Child Prodigy: His paintings are phenomenal for his age, and the flipbook teasing his fate is exceptionally well-drawn.
- Early-Bird Cameo: "Missing" posters for him can be found strewn all over the front doorstep, and his paintings can be seen on the walls throughout the house's crawlspaces. His disappearance is also frequently mentioned as the inciting incident for Dawn sealing up all of the doors in the house. However, Milton's room isn't accessed until near the very end of the game.
- Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: His disappearance. Did he disappear into his own painted world, or simply run away from home for reasons unknown?
- Musical Nod: His theme is based on the main track of The Unfinished Swan, leaning towards the idea that he's the King from that game.
- Mr. Imagination: Frequently painted all over the house. May or may not have vanished into his own painted world.
- Never Found the Body: He went missing without a trace shortly after his tenth birthday. By the end, his fate is still uncertain.
- Non-Standard Character Design: His portrait in Edith's journal looks very different from the others, as she based it on his (heavily stylized) drawings of himself.
- The Runaway: A possible fate of him. We only know that he disappeared and was not found even years later, but his art book hints at him running away.
Lewis Finch
Lewis Finch (1988-2010)
"As I see it, the trouble began in January, shortly after we convinced your son to seek treatment for substance abuse."
The older of Edith's brothers, and Dawn's first child. Something of a slacker.
- Awesome Moment of Crowning: He gets one of these in his fantasy world. In the real world, he's bending down to position his neck beneath the fish chopper.
- Big Brother Mentor: To Edith, especially since he is the only family member she can remember who wasn't their parents, as Milton disappeared when Edith was 4 and she never knew about Walter.
- Driven to Suicide: After coming to terms with the fact that the Lewis he wants to be is only attainable in his head. Though given his complete detachment from reality, it's possible he wasn't even aware that his head was in the chopper.
- Escapism: His imaginary kingdom starts out as this, also serving as a Meta commentary on video games themselves. It's not long before he's Jumping Off the Slippery Slope, though.
- Foil: The way his death is portrayed paints him as one to Walter. Both were people who escaped the world around them, but for Walter this was physically escaping after the trauma he went through. Meanwhile, Lewis retreated into a mental world after the mundane life he had caught up to him. How they both die is even an example, as Walter died escaping his world, while Lewis died by embracing his world.
- Gay Option: The player gets to decide whether his imaginary quest was for a "beautiful prince" or a "handsome queen."
- I Hate Past Me: Far from being an imaginary friend or some kind of spiritual aid, Lewis' fantasy self comes to despise his real-life counterpart "with a royal contempt."
- It's All My Fault: Edith says he blamed himself for the disappearance of Milton.
- Mr. Imagination: He was dreaming up a fantasy world to help him get through his mundane life, which eventually blurred into the real one and led him to kill himself.
- Off with His Head!: Stuck his head in the fish chopper at the height of his mental spiral.
- Plot-Triggering Death: His death was, as Edith put it, "the beginning of the end", as it drove his mother to take Edith and get as far away from the family home as possible, with Edie dying soon after, leaving the Finch home abandoned for years.
- Sanity Slippage: The Trauma Conga Line of his family's death Curse combined with the mundanity and worthlessness of his existence causes him to start retreating into a fantasy kingdom at work, which slowly becomes more and more elaborate and fleshed-out as he adds more details of what he wishes his life was like. It ultimately gets so bad that he starts resenting his real body, forgetting to go home when his shift is over, and losing the ability to perceive the real world over his fantasy. Eventually, he snaps completely and kills himself while dreaming that he's being crowned the supreme king of his land.
- The Stoner: His room is decorated with "LEGALIZE MARIJUANA" posters, and a large hookah is positioned prominently in the middle of it. Edith casually mentions that it smells familiar. It gets less funny when the psychiatrist's letter reveals that he was using drugs to cope with the tragedies in his life, and when he ran out, he started retreating into his fantasies.
Dawn Finch
Dawn Finch (1968-2016)
Voiced by: Nikki Kendall, Haley Kloess (young)
"This will be obvious later, but my mom never told me any of these stories. Edie would have, but Mom didn't like bringing up the past."
Edith's mother, and the daughter of Sam Finch. On her deathbed, she leaves Edith the key that prompts her journey home.
- Allegorical Character: Represents the mundane interpretation of the game; there is no death curse, and the Finches are trapped in a spiral of reckless behavior by their belief that they're cursed and Edie's refusal to let the idea of a curse go. Because of this, Dawn tries to seal away the past under the belief that dwelling on previous family members' deaths was just causing more death, but not only does this prevent Edith from reconnecting with her family, it also leads to a very shallow understanding of the curse (after all, if it were tied to the Finch house it wouldn't have survived Odin's shipwreck, and running away to get away from the curse is still a reaction to it, so Dawn isn't truly escaping the Finches' death curse mindset like she wanted), supernatural or not, that prevents any Finch from being able to come to their own terms with it, and Edith is only able to do so after returning to the house Dawn left and reading the accounts of her family.
- Calling the Old Man Out: Towards the end of the game, we see her having a furious argument with Edie where she implicitly accuses her grandmother of enabling the family curse with her preoccupation with the past.
- Cosmic Plaything: She feels she's this after watching her father die, losing two of her children, and undergoing gradual Sanity Slippage.
- Curse: Comes to believe that the curse on her family is real, and that Edie keeping the stories of their ancestors is making things worse. Following Milton's disappearance and presumed death, she tries to stop the curse from getting to anyone else by sealing all of the rooms; after Lewis's death shortly thereafter, she gives up and forces Edith to leave with her.
- Died in Your Arms Tonight: Passes away holding Edith's hand.
- Friend to All Living Things: Downplayed, but in Sam's flashback, she's clearly uncomfortable about going on a hunting trip with her dad. When she actually does shoot a deer (at Sam's encouragement), the next shot is of her weeping over its body. Right before she realizes, too late, that it's Not Quite Dead.
- Generation Xerox: Like her father, she watched her siblings die and had her sons die before her, before finally dying in front of her daughter.
- Hope Spot: After she and Edith have left the home, she develops cancer, but it goes into remission in a seeming subversion of the Curse... only to return in full force later and kill her.
- Incurable Cough of Death: The first sign of her falling ill is her coughing.
- Peaceful in Death: Peacefully succumbs to cancer with Edith by her side, no longer having to worry about the supposed Curse on her family.
- Sanity Slippage: Not quite as severe as other members of her family, but still obvious in her behavior, especially permanently sealing all of the bedrooms in the house to lock away the memories.
- Turn to Religion: She turned to religion to cope with the loss of her sons.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: Her rash actions like sealing the rooms and surprising Edie with the news that she and Edith will leave the house come from her grief and desperation to somehow stop the Curse on her family.
Sanjay Kumar
Sanjay Kumar (1966-2002)
Dawn's husband from India and the father of Edith and her brothers.
- Disappeared Dad: He is dead at the start of the story. A few clippings suggest that he died in an earthquake in India.
- The Ghost: Dies a year before Milton's disappearance and is hardly brought up again.
- Satellite Character: He is almost never mentioned, bar a photograph, and he is not shown to be part of the curse.
Sam's Branch
Sam Finch
Sam Finch (1950-1983)
Voiced by: Kevin Ivie, Alex Jebb-Quine (young)
"Dawn, I promise, you'll never forget this weekend."
One of Edie's twin sons, Dawn's father, and Edith's grandfather. Has always been somewhat stern.
- Absurdly Youthful Father: Downplayed, but he wasn't older than 18 when his first child Dawn was born.
- Angsty Surviving Twin: Downplayed. He outlived his twin brother by several decades and briefly passed the Despair Event Horizon over it, but he was eventually able to move on and live a healthy life.
- Awkward Father-Daughter Bonding Activity: Takes Dawn on a camping and hunting trip to grow closer to her after his harsh parenting caused them to drift apart, and despite an awkward and begrudging start, she actually does start to have fun. It's the last time she sees her father alive.
- Camera Fiend: Loves taking photos with his antique camera. The last picture it takes captures the moment of his death.
- Dad the Veteran: Enlisted in the military as soon as he was of age, and was presumably retired by the time of his flashback.
- Disney Villain Death / Death by Irony: He died in the exact same manner as his twin brother: falling off a cliff. In this case, however, it was right in front of Dawn, and there's no way of saying that he died happy. For added Irony, he was thrown over the edge by the Not Quite Dead buck he encouraged Dawn to shoot, which reduced her to tears. Further, Sam doesn't like getting his picture taken despite being a camera fiend. When he tries to take a picture of himself—which he wouldn't have done had he not loved Dawn so much and wanted to commemorate the moment with her—he dies.
- Gun Nut: A collector of guns, a military veteran, and a big fan of hunting.
- Never My Fault: Inverted: He went out of his way to reassure and insist to his wife Kay that Gregory's death was not her fault, when it absolutely was. He even blames himself for making the phone call that she neglected Gregory to take.
- Parting-Words Regret: During his narration of Calvin’s level, he mentions that one of the last things he said to his brother was that there was no way he’d be able to swing all the way around the tree branch the swing was tied on, which implies that he partly blames himself for his death."I told him going around was impossible. Maybe if I hadn’t said that… or maybe if the wind hadn’t picked up… then maybe he’d still be here, but I doubt it."
- Second Love: He found another love after divorcing Kay, though we never learn her name and she isn't seen or mentioned in the story of his death. Though since Sam's second son Gus died on their wedding day, it's likely that they divorced or annulled the marriage immediately after.
- Surprisingly Sudden Death: He's bucked off the cliff in the time it takes for his camera to flash.
- Trauma Conga Line: Lost his twin brother and other siblings, then went to join the military at a young age. When he came back to start a family, he wound up losing both of his sons and getting divorced, before finally finding peace with his new wife and Dawn.
- Younger Than They Look: His bright blond hair almost looks old-age gray, especially in Edie's painting, yet he died at the relatively young age of 33.
Gus Finch
Gus Finch (1969-1982)
"I wish that I could truly say I thought about you on that day/Out there on the beach alone, just you the wind the sea and foam/But I didn't. Until we found you."
Sam's first son, who was generally unhappy with his father's divorce.
- Emo Teen: Not usually, but he briefly became one when his father divorced Kay and remarried another woman, getting so depressed, isolated, and angry that he acted out at the wedding and refused to come into the tent even when a storm picked up. Which led him to be killed by debris in the wind, mere feet away from his father and the partygoers.
- Empathic Environment: As he stays outside of the wedding, the weather shifts to match his mood: Dramatic Wind kicks up, and the sky darkens as a storm approaches. The wind ends up getting so strong that it blows his father's tent off the ground and smashes it into him, instantly killing him.
- Flat Character: The only thing that's known about him is that he had a rebellious streak, angrily disapproved of his father remarrying, and he liked to fly kites.
- Flipping the Bird: Does this to his father out of anger at the second wedding.
- Forgotten Fallen Friend: Not In-Universe, but in-game, nobody gives him so much as a cursory mention before or after the flashback showing his death.
- We Hardly Knew Ye: He only shows up in his own, very brief story, never shows much personality beyond being rebellious against his father, and goes unmentioned for the entire rest of the game.
Gregory Finch
Gregory Finch (1976-1977)
"He reminded me so much of Calvin. Lost in his imagination."
Sam's second son, who died as an infant.
- Baths Are Fun: Gregory, being a baby, has a lot of fun in the bath playing with his toys and imagining colorful seascapes. He drowned when his tub overfilled, but Sam chooses to believe he died happily, and the last Fantasy Sequence in his dying moments certainly paints this picture.
- Living Toys: Not really, but he certainly believed so, as most of his flashback is spent playing as his favorite frog toy rather than him directly. In his eyes, the frog hopping on the faucet is what causes the tub to start filling back up, and they're all waiting for him in his Dying Dream.
- Mr. Imagination: Being a year old, he happily imagined his toys being alive while he was in the bathtub, even as he drowned. Sam speculates about what he saw in his final letter to Kay.
- Parental Neglect: A brief lapse in his mother's attention due to Sam's phone call resulted in his death.
- Small Role, Big Impact: His death was the catalyst for Kay divorcing Sam, which would lead to his father remarrying and Gus' death.
Kay Carlyle
Kay Carlyle
Voiced by: Ella Schaefer
"I'm sure he's happy. And he'd want you to be happy too."
Sam's first wife, who divorced him after Gregory's death. Her influence is only noticeable in the vibrantly pink bathroom.
- Ambiguous Situation: Since the curse doesn't spare spouses, we'd guess she died at some point. However, Edith's family tree has her leaf attached, while Ingeborg and Sanjay's leaves aren't, so maybe she was spared?
- Calling Parents by Their Name: Edith refers to her as "grandpa Sam's first wife Kay", despite Kay being Edith's grandmother as well. Might be a form of repudiation given her role in Gregory's death.
- Curse Escape Clause: As proven by Ingeborg, Sven, and Sanjay, the Finch curse does not spare spouses, yet nothing is said about Kay's later life (or death). It's possible that divorcing Sam has freed her from the family's unfortunate fate.
- Pink Is Feminine: Edith notes that the pink bathroom was her idea.
- Parental Neglect: Stepped away from her one-year-old son Gregory in the bath to have a phone conversation with Sam. What happened next handily demonstrated why one should never do that, ever — Gregory accidentally turned the faucet on and drowned while she was distracted. Contrary to Sam's reassurance to her, Gregory's death was entirely her fault.
- Small Role, Big Impact: Is Dawn's mother and Edith's grandmother, but barely gets any mention besides being Sam's first wife (although she is on the Finch family tree). Considering her ''other'' impact, there's probably a reason she's the only non-Finch parent in the family whose status at the time of the game isn't stated. Edith jokingly lampshades this by mentioning the pink carpet in the bathroom that Kay put in the bathroom being the only thing left from her.
Edie's Branch
Edie Finch
Edith "Edie" Finch (1917-2010)
Voiced by: Blanche Larsen
Edith's great-grandmother and namesake, daughter of original family patriarch Odin Finch.
- Allegorical Character: Edie represents the magical interpretation of the game; the Finches are affected by a death curse, Molly did turn into a sea monster, Barbara was eaten by monsters, and Milton escaped into a painted world. Edie wants the Finches to accept their cursed heritage and at least leave a good story that can memorialize them- much like a player interested in reading supernatural elements into the story to create a tragic saga of a family doomed to have whatever they truly wanted end badly. Unfortunately, this interpretation cuts out the Finches' own responsibility for their deaths and so prevents them from confronting the 'curse' (real or not) just as much as Dawn's denial and desire to escape, leading to her own complicity in the various deaths.
- Ambiguously Evil: One interpretation of her is that she was a twisted old woman subtly poisoning the lives of three generations of her descendants by encouraging their tendency towards brooding self-destruction, or at the very least, encouraging her family to believe in a curse so as to justify their mistakes and losses. Adding to the interpretation, Edie herself has been responsible for many of the situations where the people died, such as Molly and Walter, and her reaction to Dawn wanting to leave with Edith is extremely hostile. It's hinted that Dawn came to believe in this trope, which sparked her desire to leave the house.
- Cassandra Truth: A lot of her stories, while heavily sensationalized, were based on the truth; her husband Sven was killed by a dragon(-shaped slide), and as Edith eventually finds out, the "mole man" living under their house was actually Walter, who hid in the basement for most of his life out of fear of the curse getting to him. Edie knew about him and smuggled him food, but nobody else in the family did.
- Cool Old Lady: Was very close to Edith and had a fondness for telling people stories. Of course, whether she really is an example of this is up for debate when you consider what happened to her family.
- The Fatalist: She doesn't think the death curse can be avoided and instead seems to focus on preserving the stories of her dead family members.
- Flanderization: One possible interpretation of Edie, tying into the Ambiguously Evil entry, is that Edie, In-Universe, became consumed by her idea of a family curse, to the point that it became all that was important to her. Things like the rooms being perfectly maintained, the wood carvings, and her fictional recount of her husband's death by a dragon, paint Edie as someone who became obsessed with the idea of a family curse, and adjusted her life around it.
- Irony: For all of her obsession with the family curse, Edie by far lived the longest at nearly a century. Similarly, she can arguably be responsible for the deaths of some of the Finches, like Molly and Walter.
- The Heavy: An indirect example. Edie (probably) isn't malicious, but as the matriarch of the Finch clan, most of what they do (and the horrible consequences thereof) can ultimately be traced back to her in some way. She also believes most strongly in the death curse, and it's quite possible that her penchant for dramatizing the "curse" in her stories prompted most of the self-destructive things the Finches did to avoid said curse.
- Not Afraid to Die: She has accepted her family's Curse, and conflicts with Dawn over her belief that sealing the rooms or fleeing in the night will avert anything.
- The Storyteller: She had a passion for telling stories to everyone, whether that meant regaling her grandchildren and great-grandchildren with tales from her youth or telling the media about a supposed mole man beneath her land. This seems to stem from her own coping mechanism for the curse; by embracing the supernatural nature of the curse and telling it as a story, she can at least preserve something of the family she had to watch die.
- Trauma Conga Line: She outlives every single one of her descendants with the exceptions of Dawn and Edith, but somehow manages to keep going. Then Dawn springs on her that she and Edith will be leaving the house and putting her in a nursing home, and she finally crosses the Despair Event Horizon.
- Uncertain Doom: It's not clear exactly how she dies, as Edith only says that she's "gone". Though just before the big argument that drives Dawn and Edith from the house, it's made clear that she's mixing her pills with alcohol, implying that she killed herself after Dawn and Edith left.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Her sending Molly to bed without supper is the reason Molly's hungry enough in her flashback to eat gerbil food, toothpaste, and holly berries. If you believe the mundane explanation of Molly's story, this caused her death by food poisoning. On a more general level, she is responsible for almost all the deaths in her family, directly or indirectly.
Walter Finch
Walter Finch (1952-2005)
Voiced by: Dan Hollingsworth
Edie's last child, the little brother of Molly, Barbara, Sam, and Calvin.
- Death by Irony: He was making model trains all his life. He died getting hit by a train.
- Despair Event Horizon: Passed it after Barbara's death.
- Face Death with Dignity: He busts out of his bunker when he grows tired of waiting in fear for the Curse to get him, and leaves a letter about being unafraid of the idea that he could die any day, as long as he can experience one new day. Tragically, he breaks through the wall onto some railroad tracks.
- "Groundhog Day" Loop: He enforces one, living out every day in the bunker in the same routine as he's terrorized by a mysterious shaking, which he fears is the dark entity that killed his siblings. It's actually the rumblings of the train tunnel right next to the bunker, which he ends up breaking into.
- Madwoman in the Attic: Edie kept feeding him in secret as he lived in isolation and delusion beneath the house, never telling anyone that he was down there.
- Sanity Slippage: Barbara's death permanently traumatized him, eventually causing him to retreat into a bunker beneath the house in fear of the Curse for thirty years.
- Sole Survivor: He outlived all of his siblings by a huge margin, living to be an old man. Not that he's proud of this in any way.
- Tragic Keepsake: Keeps the crutch Barbara used in her story in his bunker, right above his "window".
- Trauma Conga Line: He lost all of his siblings in rather quick succession, Barbara even dying a few rooms over from him while he hid under the bed, which caused his Sanity Slippage and retreat from the surface world.
Calvin Finch
Calvin Finch (1950-1961)
"He reminded me so much of Calvin. Lost in his imagination."
One of Edie's sons, and Sam's twin brother with whom he shared a room.
- Call of the Wild Blue Yonder: Died when he tried to loop his swing all the way around and the branch snapped, sending him over the cliff. Sam comforts himself by telling himself that Calvin finally got to fly like he always wanted. And in a sad twist of Irony, Sam himself would end up dying in much the same way decades later.
- Polar Opposite Twins: Sam was focused on the military and ended up enlisting when he turned 18 (partly to get away from the house where his brother died), while Calvin wanted to be an astronaut. Their room is literally divided down the middle by their interests.
Barbara Finch
Barbara Finch (1944-1960)
Voiced by: Maria Benson
Edie's second daughter, a child star of the 40s and 50s horror movies.
- Ambiguous Situation: Due to how sensationalized the comic book presenting her story is, it's not quite clear exactly what details about the night of her death are true. Was she attacked while home alone with Walter, or was there a freak accident? Was she the one who fell through the staircase, or someone else? If she was attacked, was it her boyfriend Rick? A Serial Killer on the loose? More than one person?
- Dangerous 16th Birthday: A pretty bad time on Halloween, the day of her sixteenth birthday: after mistakenly hitting her boyfriend who pretended to be a monster in the basement, and fighting off a serial killer, she gets a (deadly) birthday surprise when she gets killed by her so-called "masked" fans... at least in the comic book.
- Devoured by the Horde: What the story posits her fate was, at the hands of masked fans who turned out to be real monsters. However, it's easily inferred that she was really just murdered by either her boyfriend or a Serial Killer.
- Died on Their Birthday: Born on October 31, 1944 and died on her 16th birthday — October 31, 1960 — after she gets killed by her own "fans." Maybe.
- Due to the Dead: In a way, subverted. Not only does the comic book describe Barbara as "a wash-up,", but the comic containing the story (which definitely contains details added for entertainment purposes) was released in 1961; only a year after Barbara's death.
- Finger in the Mail: The comic book claims that the only trace of Barbara found after she disappeared was her severed ear, which was stuffed in her music box. However, in the present day, the music box doesn't contain any visible blood or anything indicating something else was in there. Either the music box was cleaned, or this detail actually didn't happen.
- Former Child Star: She used to be a starlet in old monster movies, but as she aged, her career dried up.
- Improvised Weapon: Uses her boyfriend's crutch as a weapon in her story.
- Irony: Despite being one of the more famous Finches (and having multiple accounts written about her story), the comic book presenting her story in the game clearly takes numerous creative liberties, making it unclear which details are factual and which are sensationalized.
- Never Found the Body: All the police supposedly ever found of her was her ear, stuffed inside the music box Sven made for her. Unlike with Milton's disappearance, though, it's pretty clear that she died.
- The Scream: Her claim to fame as a little girl was her iconic scream. Going through puberty put a damper on that, leading to the end of her career. At the start of her story, her boyfriend is trying to help her recapture it so that she can perform it at a fan convention, but she only succeeds at the moment of her death.
- Significant Birth Date: She was born on Halloween, and she was a horror film star. It's also a significant death date.
- Small Role, Big Impact: Her death indirectly caused all three of her brothers' deaths.
- Calvin died falling off of a cliff, after he decided to loop around the tree branch on the swing and accidentally fell off. This, occurring only a year after Barbara's death, came as a result of Calvin and Sam swearing to never be afraid again at her funeral.
- Sam, as a result of both the agreement he made with Calvin at Barbara's funeral, and Calvin's death, decided to be prepared for anything, dedicating himself to learning survival skills, which he tried to pass on to his children. On his hunting trip with Dawn where he was attempting to teach her, he ended up being killed by a deer in a moment of carelessness.
- Walter was the most directly affected by Barbara's death, becoming afraid of the world locking himself up in a bunker underneath the house for almost 50 years as a result. Eventually, he decided to leave the bunker, breaking down a wall to the outside, only for it to be in the direct path of a train.
Molly Finch
Molly Finch (1937-1947)
Voiced by: Maddie Fitz
Edie's first daughter, who survived the sinking of the old house along with Edie and Sven.
- Ambiguous Situation: The circumstances of her death are unclear by the end. Was she telling the truth about having an out-of-body experience, and did she really get Swallowed Whole by a Sea Monster at the end? Or was the story simply her hallucinations as she slowly died from eating things she shouldn't have?
- Animal Motif: Cats. Molly's portrait in Edith's journal as well as a painting in her room and the statue on her tombstone depict her with cat ears. One of the Finch's pets was a calico cat they named Molly.
- One-Track-Minded Hunger: Due to being sent up to her room without any supper. She eats a gerbil's carrot, a tube of toothpaste, and some holly berries. This may have been what killed her — food poisoning causing her to hallucinate and die. In her experience becoming various animals, she eats a bird (as a cat), two rabbits (as an owl), a seal (as a shark), and the passengers and crew of a ship (as a sea monster). She may have been killed by her sea monster self, as she writes that it is waiting under her bed for her to go to sleep, but won't wait much longer.
- Posthumous Sibling: Out of her younger siblings, the only one who had been born before her death was Barbara. Her brothers wouldn't be born for another few years after she died.
- Sea Monster: The last thing she apparently turns into, and what might have eaten her in the end.
- Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: Presented throughout her flashback. She seems not to have any remorse for the animals she kills and eats, and only vaguely wants to stop when she becomes a squid monster and starts killing people. When she suspects the same monster is hiding under her bed, her last words are that she knows she will be delicious. Whether this is representative of her real personality, or just the rambling of a child dying from food poisoning, is left up to interpretation, though it's notable that, before her transformations even begin, she considers eating her pet goldfish.
Sven Finch
Sven Finch (1915-1964)
Edith's great-grandfather, and Edie's late husband. He built the Big Fancy House the game takes place in.
- Dropped a Bridge on Him: Almost literally — he was suddenly crushed to death by the dragon-shaped slide he was building in front of the house. Edie liked to tell people that he was actually killed by a dragon.
- Fingore: Shortly before Barbara's death, he slipped into a table saw and grievously injured his hand, having to be rushed to the emergency room. This left Barbara alone in the house that night with only her little brother Walter.
- The Ghost: One of the only members of the family we never see a flashback of. The only glimpse we get of him is a blurry one through a window in Molly's flashback, and we later see caricatures of him in a pop-up book and Barbara's death comic.
- The Klutz: Although apparently responsible for building most of the house, the two main things we know about Sven are that he died building a dragon slide and accidentally cut his hand on a table saw the night Barbara died. Taken together, he appears to get himself hurt a lot.
- Small Role, Big Impact: He's a minor character in the scheme of things, and his death is never visited firsthand. However, he's the one who built the entire Finch home and all of its secret passages by hand.
Odin Finch
Odin Finch (1880-1937)
Edie's father, and the oldest member of the Finch family tree in Edith's journal. Former owner of the first house that sank into the sea.
- Curse: A strong believer in his family's death curse, prompted by having to bury his wife and infant son.
- Despair Event Horizon: The loss of his wife and child to an apparent Curse drove him to put his house on floats and try to sail it across the sea (from Norway to United States) to escape his past. Unfortunately, this just led to him and his house being lost to the waves.
- The Ghost: Though we see images of him in a viewfinder, he never makes an appearance, even in flashbacks. If Edie's story isn't just symbolic, he may have even become this literally, his spirit still residing in the old house's ruins.
- Satellite Character: His wife, Ingeborg and his son, Johann; who both died in Norway (Ingeborg died birthing Johann, who was stillborn).
Non-family
Rick
Rick
Voiced by: Ian Dallas
Barbara's boyfriend who is constantly trying to get her scream back.
- Ambiguous Situation: Again, due to the sensationalized nature of the comic book containing Barbara's story, there's no telling if the way he's presented is true to life. Was he genuinely a loving boyfriend to Barbara, or was he a Glory Hound leeching off her fame, as the comic insinuates? Did the sequence of him scaring Barbara, resulting in her kicking him out of her house, really happen? Did he actually have something to do with Barbara's death? Did he really disappear without a trace?
- Ambiguously Evil: He disappeared after Barbara's apparent murder, the implications being that he was either killed by the Serial Killer, fled out of fear, or killed her himself.
- Enforced Method Acting: He tried to get a genuine scream out of Barbara by scaring her good.
- Genre Savvy: Might be of the wrong type, as he invokes horror tropes in an attempt to get a genuine scream out of Barbara. He also comments on what a "great scream" Sven made when he cut himself with the table saw, and Barbara's comment on the strange noise coming from the basement.
- Glory Hound: Implied to be leeching off of Barbara's former fame.
Dr. Emily Nuth
Dr. Emily Nuth
Voiced by: Julia Farino
Lewis Finch's regretful psychiatrist.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Downplayed, but it's clear that she harbors serious regrets over not being able to see the warning signs of Lewis's suicidal urges until it was too late.
- The Stoic: As expected of a professional, she's very monotone and detached while describing Lewis's Sanity Slippage and eventual suicide, despite her clear sympathies.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Turns out that her allowing and encouraging Lewis to sink into his fantasy world was what led to him killing himself at work.
Old Jack
Old Jack
Voiced by: Jackie Donal
The intimidating narrator of Barbara's story.
- Expy: Of the Crypt Keeper.
- Hurricane of Puns: Befitting who he's an Expy of.
- Jerkass: He doesn't exactly show sympathy toward Barbara for being brutally murdered or Walter for witnessing the event and being sent into lifelong despair. Then again, he's a fictional character In-Universe, so this more applies to the author of his comic.
- Pumpkin Person: Basically one with a body.
