Psychonauts/Characters

This article contains descriptions of the many characters who feature in the game Psychonauts. It also lists the names of the mental worlds found inside the minds of the appropriate characters.

Raz

 * Main article: Razputin
 * Mental worlds: Brain Tumbler Experiment (partial), Meat Circus (combined with Morceau Oleander)

Short for Razputin. One of many children attending Whispering Rock Psychic Summer Camp, Raz is the ten-year old player character of the game.

Lili Zanotto
Lili, the daughter of Truman Zanotto, grand head of Psychonauts (whose picture can be seen in the campfire area carved on a log), is a fellow trainee at Whispering Rock Psychic Summer Camp, and has been so for a number of years prior to Razputin's temporary enlistment. She has a wealth of existing psychic experience, and loves nothing more than exciting adventures to stir up the otherwise quiet nature of the campgrounds.

From the very moment that Razputin walks (or drops, as the case may be) into the camp, Lili falls for the budding Psychonaut. However, her natural resilience to throw herself at him prevents her from immediately revealing her affections. Eventually, the two finally come together and all is revealed -- seconds before the unthinkable happens.

Morceau Oleander

 * Mental worlds: Basic Braining, Brain Tumbler Experiment (partial), Meat Circus (combined with Raz)

Tiny, easily angered, and the head coach of Whispering Rock. Oleander seems like the typical army man. Morceau Morry Oleander's job is to ensure that the participating children all receive the best psychic education possible, so that they can secure a place on the journey to becoming a Psychonaut. He runs his classes with the maximum efficiency, and drives the children to the very edge of what they can handle, using his years as a serving soldier to aid this process.

Coach Oleander seemingly spends a lot of time devising plans for his next class, and has a habit of accidentally snoring directly into the campground's speaker system, much to the distaste of those trying to relax within the campground's boundaries. When awoken, he initially expresses fear and paranoia, followed quickly by anger.

Repressed memories stored away in mental vaults reveal how disturbed the coach's mind truly is. As a child, Little Oly loved bunnies. Unfortunately, his father was a butcher who believed that animals were only good for meat, and often took his son's rabbits and chopped them up (with Little Oly watching in horror and crying). This, coupled with the shame that he was never actually accepted into the military, led Oleander to develop a hatred of mankind in general.

Razputin eventually discovers that Oleander is behind the abduction of Whispering Rock's campers. Driven mad by his nightmares, memories, and insecurities, Oleander plans to conquer the world using tanks powered by the children's psychically powerful brains. He enlisted the mad scientist Dr. Loboto to assist him, and together they mutated a lungfish to transport the children to their headquarters within the island-based Thorny Towers asylum.

After several battles, Raz is forced to combine his consciousness with that of Oleander for a final confrontation; the result blends the two foes' memories into a bizarre circus made of meat and mutilated animals. During their mindmeld, Raz is able to defeat both his own inner demons and Oleander's (both are haunted by mental images of their fathers), giving Oleander true inner peace. He later apologizes to everyone for stealing their brains and thanks Raz for his efforts.

Sasha Nein

 * Mental world: Sasha's Shooting Gallery

Sasha Nein is a true Psychonaut, with years of experience on the field behind him. He works between missions at Whispering Rock Psychic Summer Camp, where he helps out Coach Oleander with the teaching of the summer camp's kids, in the hope that at least some of them will turn out to one day become powerful Psychonauts just as he is. Sasha is constantly seen downstairs in his lab testing his experiments. His contributations to the Psychonauts as an international secret agent and scientist makes him a valuable asset.

Inside Sasha's mind, everything seems to be well organized and structured in a cube that's as cool and calculated as Sasha himself. However, once Raz overloads the Censor generator, bits and pieces of Sasha's history appear.

As it turns out, Sasha's mother got sick and died back when he was still an infant. In his mind, he has early memories of her feeding him, and playing with him back when he was a baby. She was Sasha's first loss. (This is the reason why various baby items and a deathbed appear in Sasha's mind)

Later in life, Sasha is working for his father, a shoemaker, as a teenager. Not knowing much about his mother, he tries using his early psychic talents to read his father's mind. He finds happy memories about his mother when she was alive and how his father is sure she must be an angel in heaven now. However, Sasha's mind probing seem to go a bit too deep, and he finds some thoughts about his mother that he REALLY did not want to know about. Highly embarrassed, he leaves home in order to practice honing and controlling his powers, leading into his career as a Psychonaut. Between his time in his father's shoe store and joining the Psychonauts, he worked in a factory making tacky lamps; he apparently had a miserable time there, for to this day the sight of those lamps fills him with disgust, and he has Razputin use them as target practice while earning his Marksmanship badge.

He also bears a striking resemble to Andrew Fletcher, a member of the electronic music band Depeche Mode.

Milla Vodello

 * Mental world: Milla's Dance Party

Milla Vodello, The Mental Minx, completes the trio of Whispering Rock Psychic Summer Camp's trainers. A fun-loving international secret agent and Psychonaut teacher, Milla projects the image of a party girl who enjoys being the center of attention. Her area of psychic specialty seems to be Levitation, which she teacher to the campers within a dance party in her mind.

She has two memory vaults, one of which contains a sad, dark past that belies her party girl appearance.

The first, more easily accessible memory vault shows her going on various adventures with Sasha Nein as Psychonauts. Partnering with the more cool and reserved Sasha seemed to make for an odd pairing, but deep down she seems to harbor strong feelings towards Sasha Nein. One image shows Milla smiling down at Sasha, into whose arms she appears to have been thrown during a dangerous mission.

The second memory vault contains Milla's nightmares. Hidden in her mind is a small room with various children's toys, figments, and a large toy box. She warns Raz to get out of that part of her mind and rejoin the party, because whatever is in there is a party killer. If Raz disregards her warning and enters into the toy chest, he uncovers a room containing another memory vault and Milla's nightmares. The room contains various dark, menacing shadows held within a cage made of what appears to be fire. Milla tells Raz that he has stumbled upon her deepest and darkest nightmares, but that she manages to keep them under control. Listening closely to the nightmares reveals whispers directed towards Milla: Save us, Why did you let us die? and other disturbing voices.

More information can be found in the memory reel from the second vault, Milla's Children. Presumably before becoming a Psychonaut, Milla Vodello held a position as a nun or a nurse (which one is not clear) at an orphanage. Her memories depict her feeding the children, singing songs with them, and playing with them; it is obvious that she cared deeply for the children. A subsequent image shows Milla returning from grocery shopping to find the orphanage consumed in flames. She is seen covering her head in anguish as the children's cries surround her; it is unclear whether this occurs during the fire itself or whether she is haunted by the pleas later. She clearly feels a great amount of guilt over being away from the orphanage when the fire started, and this may be what drove her to become a Psychonaut: the prospect of righting wrongs to atone for her (self-perceived) failure.

According to the Psychonauts website, Milla is Brazilian, and her manner of speech and accent is mildly reminiscent of Spanish-born entertainer Charo.

Ford Cruller
At first glance, Ford Cruller seems to be a somewhat senile old man who finds a way to be everywhere at once. In each location, he is wearing a different outfit and filling a different position (Admiral Cruller in the boathouse, Ranger Cruller in the wilderness, Chef Cruller in the lodge, et cetera). However, there is much more to Ford than meets the eye.

Ford Cruller is one of the original Psychonauts, and one of the best. His immense psychic powers earned him prominence and a leadership position within the Psychonauts. Unfortunately, a battle with a powerful enemy psychic left him physically unharmed but shattered his psyche. As a result, Ford can only ever be himself when he is near a large quantity of psitanium, an element that focuses and amplifies psychic energy. His personality fragments as he moves away from the metal, causing him to forget his true identity.

Since this condition left him nearly useless as a Psychonaut, Ford became involved with the Whispering Rock Summer Camp for two purposes: to help train young, new recruits and to be near one of the world's largest deposits of psitanium. His underground sanctuary is built directly over the enormous meteor that created the valley in which Lake Oblangata now lies.

The operational branch of the Psychonauts now seem to regard Ford as a crazy old has-been. Only Sasha Nein and Milla Vodello maintain any respect for him; secretly, Cruller monitors information feeds from around the world and assigns Sasha and Milla to undertake missions for him.

Later, with Nein and Vodello out of the picture, Raz is the only one capable of stopping Coach Oleander's evil plot. Ford takes the roles of Raz's supervisor, mentor, and confidante throughout his mission. Any time Raz needs advice or extraction back to Ford's sanctuary, he only has to wave a piece of bacon (Ford's favorite food) beside his ear. In response, a psychic projection of Cruller emerges from Razputin's ear.

In the final stages of the game, Ford discovers that he is able to leave his sanctuary without fragmenting his mind by strapping a large piece of psitanium to his back. Though the effects are, temporary at best.

Children at Whispering Rock
Below is a list of Raz's fellow bunkmates at Whispering Rock Psychic Summer Camp. Each kid can be found at different locations during different times of the day, and depending on which part of the story being played through.


 * Benny The Nose Fideleo: Bobby Zilch's sycophantic friend. He mocks the other campers, but becomes quite insecure whenever Bobby is not around. Later, a failed attempt at trying to torment Maloof results in being held upside down in the air by Mikhail, Maloof's new friend and bodyguard.  Despite his rather large ears, he is called The Nose.
 * Bobby Zilch: Bobby is the camp bully, and singles out Raz for particular abuse. He is convinced that the entire camp is below him, and employs Benny as his sidekick/yes-man. His skin is greenish, his mouth is sparsely populated with crooked, discolored teeth and he sports an enormous 'cotton candy-like' clump of orange hair. Bobby secretly holds a crush on Chloe.
 * Chloe Barge: A space cadet in every sense of the word, Chloe is absolutely certain that she is from outer space because she believes she hears transmissions (which are actually her natural telepathic powers reading other people's thoughts).  She usually uses Coach Oleander's radio, connected to the camp's PA system, to try and contact any UFO passing by so she can get off Earth. However, if you climb the speaker pole before Basic Braining, you can hear her message. Her most notable trait is the space helmet she wears all the time, and she can be found either out flying a remote control space ship, or fiddling with the camp radio in Oleander's cabin.  She is the only person Bobby Zilch is authentically nice to.  She is well aware that Bobby Zilch has a crush on her, but says that his technique needs a lot of work.
 * Clem Foote: Clem is an eerily enthusiastic cadet who is close friends with Crystal. Both seem very happy on the outside, and see all other campmates as football players (as seen when Raz uses clairvoyance). However, when he is alone, he starts to track down the other half of this two-man cheerleading group, possibly to keep Crystal from hurting herself. Like Crystal, he seems to be hiding a suicidal and/or homicidal side.
 * Chops Sweetwind: Chops is a Canadian cadet whose most notable feature is his afro hairstyle. He feels betrayed when his best friend J.T. becomes more involved with his relationship with Elka than his friendship with him. However, the pair reunite at the end of the story.
 * Crystal Flowers Snagrash: Crystal is an eerily enthusiastic cadet who is close friends with Clem. Both seem very happy on the outside, and see all other campmates as football players (as seen when Raz uses clairvoyance). After Ford recranializes her stolen brain, she casually admits to Raz that she has attempted to poison herself and thrown herself from a roof.
 * Dogen Boole: Dogen is a short friend of Raz who has incredible psychic powers. Poor Dogen has yet to master his psychic talents, and says that one time he kind of made someone's head explode, hence his special tin-foil hat (he later admits it was more like four times).  He seems to be very agitated with the local squirrels, who he claims are lying. (After his brain is returned to his body, Dogen says the squirrels were saying the little man is going to kill everyone; Dogen thought they were talking about him, but they meant Oleander.)  He also accidentally makes some squirrels explode when they bother him too much. In the campfire area, a picture of someone named Compton Boole is carved into a log. The connection, if  any, is never explained.
 * Elka Doom: Elka is a snobby, controlling, prissy girl at Whispering Rock who first appears to be in a one-sided relationship with J.T. (whom she calls James). Later, it turns out that this was merely a revenge tactic against Nils, her ex-boyfriend.  At the end of the game, she breaks off her relationship with J.T., and gets back together with Nils (who does not seem to be overly thrilled with this development).
 * James J.T. Hoofburger: J.T. is a kid who looks like he's seen way too many westerns on TV over the years.  J.T. always wears a cowboy hat, and speaks as if he was a real cowpoke.  Unfortunately for him, he seems to be in a one-sided relationship with Elka Doom which is putting a strain on his friendship with fellow camp cadet, Chops.  Despite being Elka's whipping boy, J.T. eventually gets out of the relationship, and gets back together with Chops.  He can be found at the target range outside the main lodge during the day, practicing his primary psychic ability, psychic energy blasts.  After recranialization, he patrols the kids' cabin area with his buddy, Chops.
 * Maloof Canola: Maloof is a short child who has always been the prey of bullies Bobby and Benny. Roughly halfway through the game, Maloof befriends Russian cadet Mikhail, who defends Maloof by threatening bullies with his famous Deadly Nelson. Before long, Maloof attempts to form a protection racket based on Mikhail's powers.
 * Mikhail Bulgakov: A Russian immigrant with a funny hat, Mikhail is obsessed with a giant hairless bear that he believes is in the nearby woods. This happens to come up in conversation every time Mikhail is included in a scene. He is recruited by Maloof near the end of the game as a bodyguard and to help him get back at Benny by using variants of his Deadly Nelson technique.
 * Milka Phage: Milka is a cadet who is extremely gifted in the art of invisibility. Early on, she can be found in the main lodge drawing at one of the tables, but usually disappears whenever you get close to her. (She's very shy.)  However, examining her drawings show Elton Fir with hearts around him.  Later, she and Elton begin hanging out, and then even later, they go steady.
 * Elton Fir: A fearful child who can psychically communicate with fish. He has a crush on Lili early in the game, but halfway through he starts going out with Milka Phage. He still seems to harbor some resentment towards Razputin over stealing Lili from him, though.
 * Nils Lutefisk: A boy with the appearance of a child's doll, Nils is convinced he is a playboy. His first concern in any situation is how it relates to the ladies. His last serious relationship was with Elka Doom. He is commonly seen practicing clarvoyance with a squirrel and it's acorn, next to the girls cabin to see 'everything.' When he tells Raz he's practicing for tonight, Raz wonders why that such a thing would require practice, but Nils responds, My parents let me watch R-rated movies, so I think I know a little more about this than you do. His primary psychic ability is clairvoyance. For a history of his relationship with Elka Doom, read the last entry on the giant tree slab in the parking lot.
 * Phoebe Love: Phoebe is a member of a band with Quentin (they can not agree on whether to call themselves The Fire-Starters or The Levitators).  Her main musical talent is playing the drums. Quentin once levitated her as part of their act, resulting in her crashing on top of her drum set.  She is usually found practicing in the main lodge with Quentin, and later, the two collaborate on writing Raz's victory song.  Her primary psychic talent is pyrokinesis.
 * Quentin Hedgemouse: Quentin is a member of a band with Phoebe (they can not agree on whether to call themselves The Levitators or The Firestarters). His main musical talent is record scratching on the turntables. Phoebe accidentally melted his turntable records once with some unplanned pyrotechnics of hers. He is usually found practicing in the main lodge with Phoebe, and later, the two collaborate on writing Raz's victory song.  His primary psychic talent is levitation.
 * Vernon Tripe: Is he a boy? Or a veritable library of epic fiction, beautifully indexed and cross-referenced? Either way, he is cursed with the inability to recount his harrowing yarns in anything but an incoherent, rambling, randomly-generated drawl of story fragments. His mantra: Never follow a snake into its den. That is the code of the mongoose. The code of the hunter.
 * Kitty Bubai: Kitty is your classic snotty, stuck-up, spoiled rich girl. She often insults Raz whenever he speaks to her.  Kitty and her best friend Franke spend most of their time making friendship bracelets behind the main lodge.  Quentin has a crush on Kitty, and can often be heard singing a song about her while practicing in the main lodge.
 * Franke Athens: Franke is Kitty's best friend, and possibly her only real friend, as the two of them don't seem to like anyone else besides each other. She is almost as snotty as Kitty, though Kitty is better with the insults.  Franke has a secret crush on Vernon.

Thorney Towers staff and residents
These are people Raz meets in the Thorney Towers Home for the Disturbed:

Boyd Cooper

 * Mental world: The Milkman Conspiracy

Employed as the security guard at Thorney Towers, Boyd is extremely paranoid. He constantly mumbles bizarre fragments of conspiracy theories involving a sinister individual he calls The Milkman; he has also been ordered by Oleander not to let anyone into the asylum until the Milkman arrives. In order to find out more about the Milkman, Raz journeys into Boyd's mind. After exploring a warped suburban neighborhood crawling with shadowy agents who are also looking for the Milkman, Raz discovers that Boyd is the Milkman; or, more specifically, the Milkman is a currently-dormant persona within Boyd's mind.

The contents of Cooper's mental vaults describe a troubled past. He was a security guard at a department store until being fired (apparently, this was only one in a string of similarly-lost jobs). This latest blow sent Boyd over the edge, and he burned the place down with a Molotov cocktail. He was arrested and committed to Thorney Towers, where Oleander recruited him as the asylum's security guard. Using hypnosis (and possibly drug-laced milk), the coach planted subconscious orders into Boyd's mind: when triggered, Boyd would assume the role of the Milkman, making a final fiery delivery that would burn down the asylum and erase all traces of Oleander's plot for world domination.

Raz discovers that the Rainbow Squirts (a youth organization similar to the Girl Scouts) are dedicated to protecting the secret of the Milkman's location, but in doing so he accidentally leads the agents to their headquarters. Their leader, the Den Mother, hurls boxes of exploding cookies at Raz, but he manages to deflect them back at her. With her defeat, Raz accidentally triggers Boyd's transformation into the Milkman. Under Oleander's mental control, Boyd opens the gates to the asylum and prepares to throw the firebombs, but seems to await one last signal.

After Raz defeats Doctor Loboto, Boyd finally manages to fling the molotov cocktail into the asylum, burning it down. With his mission finally complete, the Milkman and all associated psychoses (including the agents and the Rainbow Sprites) are exorcised from his mind and he, Edgar, Fred and Gloria leave the asylum for good.

Gloria von Gouten

 * Mental world: Gloria's Theater

A former world-renowned actress, Gloria now suffers from bipolar disorder. She shifts suddenly from kindness to rage without warning. Unsurprisingly, her mental landscape is that of a troubled theater. Stage manager Becky is at her wits' end because the only two plays she can stage are mediocre, drawing in no audiences except Jasper Rolls, a vicious critic. Jasper's constant harrassment has taken its toll on Bonita Soleil, the star of the show and the inner light representing Gloria's youth, beauty and talent. Bonita sobs in her dressing room and refuses to take the stage until Raz encourages her to return. Before she can utter a line, however, a masked fiend called The Phantom drops a stage light on one of the performers, sending Bonita back to her refuge.

The two plays, as well as additional ones Raz finds, are loosely based on Gloria's early life, and have two aspects. A lighting mechanism controls whether the current play is performed in a cheerful, happy manner or with a darker, more cynical air. Between these plots and the memories hidden in Gloria's vault, the story of her past emerges. At a very young age, Gloria's acting talent was apparent. Before long, her fame exceeded that of her mother, apparently also an actress. Gloria's mother sent her to Hagatha Home, an intensive-training boarding school for the arts at the insistence of her manipulative, duplicitous boyfriend. Gloria felt abandoned and unloved, and quickly found Hagatha Home to be a very difficult, demanding, even cruel environment. Her twin hopes, to be rescued by her mother or at least to receive encouraging mail from her, never came true (the latter, it is implied, because her mother's boyfriend kept destroying the letters instead of delivering them). After finally leaving Hagatha Home, Gloria cut all ties with her mother out of anger and fled to Paris to continue her expanding career. Soon afterward, she received news that her mother had committed suicide. Flooded by guilt and regret, Gloria spiraled into mental illness until she was institutionalized at Thorney Towers.

Raz finds, to no surprise, that the Phantom is actually Jasper, Gloria's overdeveloped inner critic. He defeats the critic by exposing him to intense spotlights that sap his power. With Jasper reduced to a tiny, ineffectual figure, Bonita returns triumphantly to the stage, entrancing audiences with her beauty. Gloria's mental balance is restored and she leaves her self-imposed prison, allowing Raz to take an award trophy that resembles Dr. Loboto's claw arm.

Gloria's faded-star, slighty-insane personality is a reference to Norma Desmond, the lead character of Sunset Boulevard; her first name comes from Gloria Swanson, who played Desmond in the film.

Fred Bonaparte

 * Mental world: Waterloo World

Fred is a direct descendant of Napoleon Bonaparte and the former head orderly of Thorney Towers. He is confined to a straitjacket when Raz first encounters him, alternating between his normal speech and an imperious French accent. He endlessly plays a strategic board game with improvised pieces such as a teddy bear and a lawn gnome while Crispin Whytehead watches and makes bitingly sarcastic comments.

As Raz enters Fred's mind, he finds that Fred is entangled in a continual strategy game with the genetic memory of his ancestor Napoleon. Fred seems resigned to eternal defeat, unable to muster the effort even to hope for victory. Raz finds that he can enter the game board, shrinking enough to move the pieces or becoming even smaller to interact directly with the basic game elements.

The images in Fred's memory vaults reveal that as head orderly, Fred felt pity for the unresponsive patient Crispin. He taught Crispin how to play a strategic board game called Waterloo and was amazed when Crispin not only came out of his shell enough to play, but to beat Fred repeatedly. As the string of his losses grew, Fred began to consider himself a disappointment to his famous predecessor; an image shows an enraged Napoleon leaping at Fred from inside a mirror. The diminuitive emperor now subjects Fred to a never-ending series of abuse and defeats in an internal game of Waterloo.

On this mental game board, the pieces talk and have wills and demands of their own. Raz convinces several peasant pieces to fight for Fred and recruits a carpenter to fix the bridges Napoleon has destroyed. To Napoleon's utter shock (and pride), Fred's knight storms the castle, finally winning the game for the hapless orderly. As the senior Bonaparte fades, he joyously assures Fred that this is the first of many victories in life and that he will share in the family greatness.

Cured of his massive inferiority complex, Fred shrugs out of the straitjacket. He sets his mind on making Crispin pay for his constant cruelty... right after a nap.

Edgar Teglee

 * Mental world: Black Velvetopia

Edgar is an obsessed artist. No matter what he begins to paint, the result depicts a charging bull. Dr. Loboto, he says, has chained him to the floor near an easel until he is capable of painting something other than a bullfight.

As he enters Edgar's mind, Raz finds him building a giant house of cards. He is lacking the four queens he needs to reach the image floating in the sky, that of a beautiful woman crying rose petal tears. A huge pink bull (El Odio, Spanish for Hate) races in suddenly, knocking down the cards and sweeping Raz into alleys abutting a long, winding street. Every few seconds, the bull speeds by, making it dangerous to set foot into the road. Raz encounters a series of dogs in the alleys, selling their art and explaining bits of Edgar's history.

Edgar was an acclaimed artist married to a beautiful woman named Lampita Pasionado. When famous matador Dingo Inflagrante commissioned Edgar to paint his portrait, Lampita left Edgar for the bullfighter. The artist descended into madness, painting nothing but bullfights as he obsessed over his heartbreak. A tragic story -- but a romanticized version of the truth. What actually happened, one of the dogs tells Raz, is that Edgar was the captain of the high school wrestling team. Each member of the team had an animal-themed nickname; Edgar was Bull and his teammates were known as Tiger, Eagle, Dragon, and Cobra. Edgar's talent led them to the state semifinals, but it was there that his cheerleader girlfriend Lana left him for Dean, a male cheerleader. The betrayal broke Edgar's fighting spirit and cost his team their shot at the championship. His teammates turned viciously on him after the loss, compounding his sadness and shame.

In order to acquire the four queen cards, Raz must dodge El Odio and defeat representations of Edgar's former teammates. When Edgar finally completes his tower of cards, Raz is transported to a bullring where the bull is Edgar himself. In self-defense, Raz has to telekinetically lodge four banderillas (harpoon-like weapons) in Edgar's back. When Edgar is near defeat, however, Dingo suddenly appears to slay him as Lampita looks on from a balcony. Even though Raz hurriedly removes the banderillas, Edgar is too weak to resist Dingo's attacks. To defend the artist, Raz pelts Dingo with confusion grenades that make the matador think he is a bull, then strikes him with the harpoons. As Dingo collapses, Lampita throws herself on him, her voice transforming from that of an exotic señorita to that of a high school cheerleader. His mind clear at last, Edgar sees Dingo and Lampita for the pathetic teenagers Dean and Lana really were. He refuses to waste any more of his life torturing himself over them, opening a pit in the bullring beneath the two.

Cured of his compulsion to paint bulls, Edgar presents Raz with a portrait of Dr. Loboto, who he considers his patrón.

Crispin Whytehead
Crispin was formerly a withdrawn patient at Thorney Towers. The head orderly, Fred Bonaparte, introduced him to Waterloo, a strategy boardgame, as a form of play therapy. It worked magnificently: Crispin not only became communicative, but subjected Fred to a series of humiliating defeats. The losses instilled a massive inferiority complex in Fred, turning him into an inmate as well. When Dr. Loboto took over the abandoned asylum, he gave Crispin the job of guarding the elevator that led to the upper floors. This position of power, along with the reversal in roles with Fred, affected Crispin profoundly. He watches Fred, who wrestles with his insecurities while bound in a straitjacket, mocking him with sarcastic glee.

Crispin's eyesight is terrible. He recognizes Loboto by his three distinct features: his shiny, clawlike artificial arm, his white smock, and his unique, robot-like face. By wearing Fred's straitjacket, sporting Gloria's three-pronged trophy, and holding Edgar's portrait of Loboto, Raz manages to fool Crispin into letting him use the elevator. Moments later, Fred chases Whytehead from his post in pursuit of vengeance.

Dr. Loboto
A deranged dentist whose secret lab occupies the top of the asylum's highest tower. Although Loboto initially appears to be the main villain, he turns out to be a subordinate of Oleander. His bizarre appearance includes a metallic face with one green and one red eye and an artificial arm ending in three golden prongs.

As Whispering Rock's campers are captured, he binds them in a special chair that nullifies their psychic abilities. He twists his forearm like a pepper mill, releasing sneezing powder into the victim's face; the powder causes the children to sneeze so violently that their brains fly out through their noses. Loboto hands the brains over to Oleander, who places them into psychic death tanks he plans to use for world domination.

When Raz attempts to free Lili, Sasha, and Milla, Loboto falls from the tower during the struggle and is not seen again.

His name is probably a combination of lobotomy and Roboto (from a popular 1980s song).

Sheegor
Dr. Loboto's assistant Sheegor is a frightful-looking woman whose personality is in stark contrast with her appearance. She is a hunchback with wide, bulbous eyes and a shock of white hair standing on end; however, she has an extremely high-pitched voice, a peaceful temperament and a simple mind. Loboto compels her to help him by holding her beloved pet turtle as hostage. The thought of Mr. Pokeylope coming to any harm is nearly more than Sheegor's mind can bear.

When Raz rescues Pokeylope, Sheegor gratefully agrees to help him free his friends. Clueless as to a plan, she solicits advice from the turtle, who answers in a deep, resonant voice reminiscent of Barry White.

Her name is a combination of the feminizing prefix she- and Igor, the stock character of a mad scientist's assistant.

Linda the Lungfish

 * Mental world: Lungfishopolis

Raz first knows this character as The Hideous Hulking Lungfish of Lake Oblongata, a scary tale told among campers at Whispering Rock. He discovers that the creature exists when it lures Lili with a flower, then apparently swallows her and walks into the lake. Raz enters a bathysphere to follow, which drops into a huge underwater mucus bubble filled with air. After battling the fish into submission, he uses the Psycho-portal to enter its mind, where he appears as an enormous figure terrorizing a city of tiny, law-abiding lungfish.

After viewing the contents of the fish's mental vaults and speaking with tiny members of a rebel force, Raz learns that Linda was once an ordinary lungfish living in an air bubble at the bottom of the lake. The villainous Loboto and Oleander mutated her and implanted a device in her brain that compelled her to kidnap the psychic children. The mind-control device appears in Lungfishopolis as a giant radio tower and is defended by Kochamara (Coach Oleander in a superhero costume). Once Raz destroys the transmitter, Linda becomes an ally and transports him to Thorney Towers, the asylum on a tiny island in the middle of the lake.

If the player reaches rank 100 by completing all the game's objectives, a bonus cut scene reveals that Linda and Mr. Pokeylope have a bit of history between them.

(Note that Linda bears no resemblance to an actual lungfish. Lungfish are rather eel-like in appearance, do not possess modified spinal barbs they use to attract prey as anglerfish do, and do not live in mucus-lined air bubbles underwater.)

Mr. Pokeylope
Mr. Pokeylope is Sheegor's pet, a small turtle wearing a crown and boots. Dr. Loboto ensures Sheegor's compliance by threatening violence against Pokeylope; he keeps the turtle in a small terrarium over a stove, promising to cook Pokeylope alive if Sheegor disobeys. After Raz rescues the turtle, he finds that not only does Pokeylope talk in an extremely deep voice, but has a plan to stop Dr. Loboto.

If the player attains rank 100, an extra cut scene shows that Pokeylope's real name is Sam, and that he and Linda the Lungfish are old acquaintances.

Razputin's father
Although not seen until the final scenes of the games, Razputin's father is mentioned at several points. When Raz began to exhibit psychic abilities, his father (who is a circus acrobat) ordered him to continually practice very physically demanding stunts and tricks. This regimen led Raz to believe that his father hated him and was trying to kill him; at a loss for any other explanation, Raz concluded that his father hated psychics. This reasoning was strengthened by the curse placed upon his family by Gypsy psychics, that everyone in Raz's family is destined to die in water. (This curse is called the Hand of Galochio, named for the group that cast it.)

The final mental landscapes of Psychonauts combine aspects of Raz's past (being raised in the circus) and Oleander's past (traumatized by his father being a butcher). Raz's father appears as a sinister figure, forcing Raz to speed through a dangerous acrobatic course while water continually rises beneath them. In addition to pelting Raz with scornful, mocking comments, he throws flaming torches meant to knock Raz into the water. He also appears as a towering figure in much the same manner as Oleander's father; the two monstrous creatures are eventually knocked into a meat grinder and emerge one final time as a horribly mutilated combination.

In reality, Raz's father is a psychic himself, which Raz had also begun to suspect. He was very worried about Raz and hoped that the harsh acrobatic routines would help hone his discipline and help him deal with his powers. He assists Raz in the final mental battles against the monstrous visions of himself and Oleander's father.