Miley Eva Small, a young girl attending high school and working in a coffee shop, is offered a job by her science teacher—and best friend Will's father. She would be a test subject and get to see everything they were studying up close. She accepts, hoping it's a step towards fulfilling her dream of becoming a scientist.
The lab is eventually purged of all the scientists by their own creations (which may or may not have had something to do with Miley) and is left with two test subjects, Miley and Will. A certain series of events proceeds to takes place.
Many years have passed, and Miley has since discovered that she's immortal (or, something like it) and that she tends to black out and end up in odd situations every so often.
The ongoing story is of Miley dealing with whatever particular video game universe she gets sent to. These video games may or may not exist in her original universe.
Provides examples of:
- Absurd Phobia: For Miley: slugs, being eaten, and dying. She gets over all of these except slugs. She later starts to develop Claustrophobia and a fear/intense hatred of doctors. Justified, since she's had traumatic experience with both, sometimes at the same time.
- Achey Scars: Bullets are mostly ineffective against Miley (although too many will still take her down) but the wound never stops hurting.
- All Animals Are Domesticated: Subverted. Bud is prone to attacking bystanders and even Miley on a few occasions, but is pretty well behaved otherwise.
- All Therapists Are Muggles: One of the many reasons Miley can't get much help for her various issues.
- Alternate Self: Mike comes from an alternate version of Miley's universe, where everyone identifies as close to the opposite gender as possible (e. g., a genderless person identifies as pangender, a demiboy identifies as a demigirl, etc.) and Mike doesn't get Trapped in Video Game Land. Since this was a huge factor in Miley's Heel–Face Turn, Mike continued to be amoral until he turned into an absolute monster.
- Ambiguous Disorder: Averted! Miley is pretty open about being autistic and having various other disorders. "It's a [disorder] thing." is almost her catchphrase.
- An Arm and a Leg: Miley loses her leg during Mass Effect, and she later tears off Mike's arm.
- Artificial Limbs: Some of Miley's fingers, and later her leg.
- Back from the Dead: This happens to Miley at least two times (not counting her Resurrective Immortality) and also Sinclair, by using the Vita-Chambers.
- Bad People Abuse Animals: Miley's first appearance is of her (when she was 14) and Will chasing down a cat. Miley clearly intends to harm it, but is fortunately interrupted before she can. Doesn't apply to Will, since he didn't seem to be aware of Miley's intentions.
- Bait And Switch Sentimemt: Miley does this pretty frequently, usually because she's pretty open about being aromantic and doesn't expect anyone to think she's talking about anything else.
- Beard of Sorrow: May apply to Cáel considering his depression. He's had his beard since his first appearance, however.
- Big "WHAT?!": Miley when Sinclair tells her he helped create the Vita-Chambers.
- Blessed with Suck: Miley considers her immortality to be this.
- Blind Without 'Em: Mostly averted, although it's the reason Miley has such a hard time making anything out on the monitors in Five Nights at Freddy's 3.
- She claims this to be true pretty often, like when she runs into a window during Bioshock 2, or when she can't aim in Mass Effect.
- Born Lucky: Miley is this and she acknowledges it, although she's usually referring to a small fortune during a horrific situation.
- Brain Uploading: Happens pretty often. Miley makes lots of androids this way, using the test subjects in cryostasis.
- Springtrap's haunted parts are melted down to make a new android body for the purple guy.
- Brief Accent Imitation: Miley does this affectionately with Sinclair's Georgian accent.
- Later turns into Got Me Doing It, which is lampshaded. Also justified, since Miley is autistic and echolalia is a common trait.
- Character Development: Miley gets so much of this that it's difficult to describe her personality; it really just depends on where you are in the story.
- Chronic Hero Syndrome: Miley, since she's under the impression that she's a bad person if she doesn't.
- Cluster Bleep-Bomb: Something like this happens/is implied during the Yume Nikki verse. Miley falls asleep in Masada's crashed ship with the cat effect equipped, and when she wakes up she finds that several martians have been drawn into the ship. She jumps up and starts hissing and growling, as it's the only speech the cat effect allows, but when she switches to the knife...Miley: [hissing and growling] [switches to knife effect] --UCKING CHRIST!
- Covered with Scars: Miley, due to frequently testing with turrets and lasers. (And of course, misadventures in video games.)
- Creepy Child: Chara randomly appears in the background for a single shot sometimes, usually while or after Miley uses the battle system.
- Cute Machines: Doll and Baby(Mike's version of Doll) may qualify, with their big pink eyes. Especially Baby.
- Miley also tends to build cute animal-like robots in her spare time.
- Despair Event Horizon: Miley is heavily implied to have crossed this after Joker dies in the doomed timeline, evident through her Resurrective Immortality seeing the only option for Miley's continued existence being before the refusal ending starts.
- Devoted to You: Miley to Joker. She actually states that he's the only thing in the entire Mass Effect universe she actually cares about saving. Although she's vague about it.
- Undying Loyalty: Miley and Joker to each other.
- Dude, Not Funny!: Miley, of all people, calls Joker out on his particularly insensitive jokes pretty often.
- Dye Hard: Vic frequently dyes their naturally black hair different colors.
- Emotion Suppression: Miley can do this at will. It's an instantaneous switch to feeling nothing, but it takes a few days for her to fully start feeling again. She tries not to use it unless someone might die if she can't stay calm.
- Evil Feels Good: Why Mike does what he does. Miley acknowledges that this is part of why she tries to avoid harming others—it's too much fun, and she doesn't want to have a Face–Heel Turn.
- Fake Memories: All she knows is that she needs to report on whatever's going on inside the asylum.
- Fantastically Indifferent: Miley is this later on. Sometimes induced by But for Me, It Was Tuesday, but other times its just general apathy.
- Forgot About His Powers: A lot of trouble with Mike could have been avoided if Miley had realized she could use the battle system outside of the Undertale universe sooner.
- Formerly Fat: Miley was as a teenager.
- Friend to All Children: Miley is surprisingly good with children even before her Face–Heel Turn, evident through her positive relationship with Ariel and Tori.
- Gender Flip: James Vega, to prevent Miley from flipping out when Vega is assigned to be her guard.
- Green-Eyed Monster: Downplayed. Miley is usually pretty envious when Joker shows (even platonic) interest in other people, but never does anything immoral because of it.
- Guilt Complex: Toyed with after Miley and Joker are arrested at the end of Mass Effect 2Miley: [to Joker] I'm sorry, this is probably my fault somehow.
- And again during the Citadel DLC. Miley apologizes to Joker when the sushi restaurant they're at is attacked by people trying to kill her.
- Homosexual Reproduction: While Nora and Jack are a straight couple, they both have fully functional vaginas. Through science
, Miley enables them to both bear a child each. - Identity Amnesia: Happens when she ends up in the Outlast universe. It ends up helping her unlearn all sorts of nasty habits.
- Idiot Hair: Miley had this when she was a teenager. It was a symbol of mischief rather than stupidity.
- Immortality Hurts: Particularly during the Five Nights at Freddy's series, where Miley is shred to pieces, over, and over, and over, and over.
- Interrupted Suicide: Joker thinks he does this for Miley during the Citadel DLC. Although, you could say he technically did.
- I See Dead People: Chara, the spirit of the first child, finally gets Miley to notice them after Fallout 4.
- Is This Thing Still On?: Not that she knew it was on in the first place, but Miley reacts something like this when she realizes Sinclair can hear her during Bioshock 2, since she had been singing and mimicking his accent.
- I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: Miley encourages Joker and EDI's relationship despite her feelings for him.
- Killing Intent: While it's more like harming intent, Mike has this pretty much all the time. His version of Cáel describes it as feeling like you're trapped in a room with an apex predator.
- Knuckle Tattoos: Between Mass Effect 2 and Mass Effect 3, Miley gets some "cut here" lines tattooed around where her missing fingers used to be.
- Living Emotional Crutch: Joker becomes this for Miley after she gets away from Mike, though she's still a wreck even when he's around.
- It's also implied that Miley thinks of Cáel this way.
- Long-Haired Pretty Boy: Mike.
- May–December Romance: Sinclair is twice Miley and Cáel's age.
- Morality Adjustment: Miley starts out as The Sociopath, then after the events of Outlast, she gets a lot better morally (while still retaining her ASPD), and flops around a lot after getting conflicting messages from Nick, but never truly ends up back on "awful person" again.
- Morality Chain: Miley seems to consider Nick from Fallout 4 this, even though she had been doing pretty well on her own before then. This may be because she considers Hancock to be a mild version of The Corrupter.
- Noodle Incident: Miley makes jokes about having traumatized Cáel by making pancakes, and never specifies why or how it was traumatic.
- An in-universe example, EDI's death is something like this to Mike. He hears some vague mentions of it while in the Mass Effect universe, and later actually uses it against Miley to remind her why she needs him.
- Not Good with Rejection: Miley, after being rejected by Joker in Mass Effect 3, gets drunk for the first time in her life. Extremely drunk. Somewhat justified, considering Miley has never asked anyone out before (because she's aromantic,) it was also her first rejection.
- Oblivious to Love: Joker. He thinks Miley is overly affectionate with everyone. She's not.
- "Oh, Crap!" Smile: Miley tends to smile when she's nervous or tense.
- Only Known by Their Nickname: This happens to Miley a lot, usually due to Miley retaining the original protagonist's backstories.
- The patients from Outlast call her Annie. Some of them do this even after she remembers her real name.
- In Bioshock 2, Miley is called Subject Delta.
- Everyone in the Mass Effect verse calls her Shepard, because they believe it's her real name.
- Like with Frisk, no one in the Undertale verse asks Miley for her name until the very end. Those who refer to her by a name call her Chara.
- Out-of-Character Alert: There are a few things that the Mass Effect cast notices when Miley visits with Mike.
- Previously, if Miley had to wear formal clothing, she wore something traditionally masculine. This time she's wearing a dress, suggesting she didn't choose her outfit. Resembles Unwillingly Girly Tomboy.
- She can look at Joker. When she had left last time, she couldn't stand looking at him due to guilt and PTSD flashbacks, and it's unlikely she merely got therapy for it.
- Perception Filter: The pockets to other universes.
- Perpetual Smiler: Miley is this before the Outlast shift. Mike counts too.
- Physical Scars, Psychological Scars: Plenty for Miley. Particularly when she has some of her fingers are cut off and later, some toes.
- Platonic Life-Partners: Miley and Cáel. Others later get dragged into the mix as well.
- Race Fetish: Discussed. Miley begins to wonder if her fondness for robots counts as this, since synthetics are considered their own race in Mass Effect and Fallout 4.
- Rape Discretion Shot: Sort of. Miley's sexual traumas are only ever implied through PTSD flashbacks and relationship struggles.
- That is, until Mike shows up. It still happens off-screen, but to say it's only implied would be pretty generous considering how straightforward Mike is about what he wants and what he's going to do.
- Really Gets Around: Miley is known to do this early on.
- Redemption Earns Life: The Purple Guy/Springtrap in the original game seems to burn down with the rest of the building, but survives when he encounters Miley due to their teaming up to escape.
- Relative Error: Mike and Miley, sort of. This is intentional on Mike's part, to create an awkward situation for Miley to deal with.
- Robot Maid: Doll.
- Screw Yourself: Mike and Miley. Not used as fetish appeal or Played for Laughs, at all, considering it's nonconsensual on Miley's end.
- Serial Rapist: Mike's whole schtick. Though it can be hard to tell, since most of his victims are experiencing Stockholm Syndrome.
- Shock Collar: Mike puts his victims in these. Although, he switches over to heat collars by the next time he and Miley meet, due to the health issues electricity can cause.
- Skewed Priorities: Joker being the only thing in the Mass Effect verse Miley cares about leads to this.Liara: Something's wrong with the Normandy!Miley: Is Joker okay?! ...I mean, is everyone okay?Joker: [over headset] Wow. Great priorities, Shepard.
- Split Personality: Cáel has dissociative identity disorder, and has five alters; John, Miss Kathy/Grandma, James, Devon, and Lily.
- Surprise Party: Joker throws Miley one of these, believing that her (misinterpreted as) suicidal behavior is at least partly due to feeling unappreciated.
- Technical Pacifist: Miley becomes this after the Undertale verse, to the point where she won't even kill zombies during a zombie apocalypse.
- They Would Cut You Up: Miley tells many non-human characters this so they don't follow her straight to the Foundation.
- Trauma Conga Line: Pretty much, due to experiencing the individual traumas of various video game characters. Starts off with result A, and sinks towards G as time goes on.
- Undead Child: Chara after the Undertale verse.
- Unwanted Rescue: Miley teeters on this while her friends try to get her away from Mike. While she was actively trying to tell them that something's wrong, she starts to have second thoughts when they actually help her. Partly because she's experiencing Stockholm Syndrome, and beceause she feels like she deserves it due to her actions before her Face–Heel Turn. Leads to a You Are Better Than You Think You Are moment.
- Waistcoat of Style: Tenyuu and Vic, as they're frequently seen in their waiter outfits. Miley also always wears one of these if she has to attend a fancy party of some sort, aside from one time.
- What the Hell, Hero?: Miley does this with herself pretty often, especially when she realizes all the traits she shares with Mike.
- Who Wants to Live Forever?: Becomes a huge theme as time goes on. Stated outright at some point.Hancock: But hey, what's not to love about immortality?
- Would Hurt a Child: It doesn't happen on-screen, but Mike frequently mentions the time Miley dissected an alien boy, while he was awake (although Miley specifically states that he wasn't in pain and survived... probably.)
- You Never Did That for Me: The Normandy crew to Miley when they realize Joker has special privileges. Mostly Played for Laughs, since Miley's already very lax about the rules on the Normandy and the crew knows this.
- Your Tomcat Is Pregnant: Miley finds out her deathclaw, Bud, is a matriarch. Not from it getting pregnant, however. It's actually thought to be sterile.
