Problem Sleuth/Characters

Team Sleuth

Problem Sleuth

A hard-boiled, charismatic detective, diplomat, and de facto leader of Team Sleuth.

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• Aggressive Negotiations - Spoofed - "Sleuth Diplomacy" is only an increasingly indefensible euphemism for canned whoop-ass. And the only time he does have to negotiate he cheats.
  • Fair Shake: You give equal consideration to both sides of the argument.
  • Impromptu Caucus: Your allies weigh in on the matter.
  • Ceasefire: Not one for violence, you opt for the diplomatic route and motion for a laying down of arms.
  • Summon Henry Clay: The beasts and the Zombie Muscle have all been slain by the rampaging Kentucky senator.
  • Poison Pen Letter: DMK's SICK BURN meter suffers a critical spike.
  • PAX PROBLISCUM: In a last ditch effort to salvage diplomatic proceedings, you invoke the ultimate resolution in your formal attache of plenipotentiary clauses, motioning for bilateral demilitarization and cessation of hostilities for the mutual advancement and prolonged commitment to the furtherance of harmonious relations among sovereign parties. PEACE BE WITH YOU.
• Bond One-Liner: Sorry to cut and run...
• Bullet Dodging: Auto-Parry: Sleuth Roll. Played completely straight, unlike his teammates' Auto-Parries.
• The Charmer: Pulchritude is his highest stat.
• Classic Cheat Code: Employed (via Game FAQs no less!) to solve The Plight of the Four Kingdoms without a lot of Back Tracking for rare items and reading the instructions for the incomprehensible Allegiance Mesh interface.
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: Or rather, Fluthlu. And it was more of a Portal Cut than a punch.
• Face Framed in Shadow: Done while gripping his only friend in the world right now against his palm.
• Guile Hero: Pulchritude is his highest stat (as unconventionally as it ends up getting used).
• Jack of All Stats: He has at least decent scores in all his stats, and both his non-specialized ones still grow when he levels up. For comparison, AD's imagination and PI's vim bars actually shrank.
  • In fact, PI lost his vim gauge entirely.
• Knife Nut: TRUSTY KNIVES.
• Lightning Bruiser: As Candy Corn Vampire.
• Locked in a Room: How we meet him at the beginning of the story.
• The Mario: Hussie specifically describes him as an analogue to Mario in Mario Kart and Ryu in Street Fighter.
• Mr. Imagination: He likes to imagine that he's a successful detective as opposed to a guy who's locked in his office with a broken telephone.
• Power Gives You Wings: Once he finally uses Sepulchritude.
• Power Trio: PS serves as the Ego.
• Private Detective
• Private Eye Monologue: Several, but the one at the end is the longest and most hard-boiled.
• Trademark Favorite Food: Candy corn.

Ace Dick

Problem Sleuth's rival turned friend, Ace Dick is a rough-around-the-edges hero with little imagination and a big gun.

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• Action Hero: Via his high Vim; Enough to possibly count as a deconstruction if the comic took itself seriously.
• Attack Hello: >Punch * in snout to establish superiority.
• Big Eater: His stomach capacity increases with each Level Up.
• Cloning Blues: Inverted. He becomes a bit envious of Zombie Ace Dick taking his place in the spotlight when the gambit schemas start coming out.
• Dance Battler: Supplements his more mundane attacks with a weaponized Truffle Shuffle. Later performances with his copies increase its potency exponentially.
• Driven to Suicide: During his Game of Life, after the loss of his family, his empire, what little remained of his possessions, and finally finding the Suicide Stump.
• Fat Idiot: He lacks imagination or the patience for puzzles. He's a more successful detective than Problem Sleuth, but that doesn't say much.
• Kevlard: Auto-Parry: Shot in the Gut.
• Locked in a Room: He's in the same situation as Problem Sleuth when introduced.
• Made of Iron / Stone Wall: "Dodges" by taking attacks head-on. See Kevlard.
• More Dakka: Wields a tommy gun, then upgrades to a belt-fed machine gun.
• Mr. Vice Guy
• Power Trio: Id all the way.
• Private Detective
• Stout Strength
• Ugly Guy, Hot Wife: With Wifehearst.
• World's Strongest Man: Only the strongest man in the universe can shut the door to the Afterlife or lift the Megaton Key.

Pickle Inspector

An imaginative, polite, but socially awkward detective who teams up with the others against his better judgment. He's instrumental in saving and creating the universe.

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• Ambiguous Disorder: Easily distracted, stares intensely at seemingly random things, bumblingly polite in social situations, exceedingly skilled at puzzles and logic problems.
• Attention Deficit Ooh Shiny: Auto-Parry: Pickle Distraction
• Chekhov's Skill: Puzzle games, and oh does it ever come in handy.
• Cloudcuckoolander: See Ambiguous Disorder
• Gentleman and a Scholar: Not the worldly kind of gentleman, but a gentleman nevertheless.
• Improbable Piloting Skills: Once he takes the helm of The Chicago Overcoat and gets a hang of it.
• Locked in a Room: Noticing a theme here?
• Mighty Glacier: Taken Up to Eleven as Tootsie Roll Frankenstein.
• Me's a Crowd: Every particle (or, rather, Part-Pickle) in the universe is in fact a tiny Pickle Inspector.
• Mr. Imagination: He's much better at it than even Problem Sleuth, to the point where one of his imaginary selves ascends to godhood.
• Neutral No Longer: Subverted with Godhead Pickle Inspector. When the fabric of the universe is ripped in half, it looks like he's going to act to help our heroes... Except all he does is just sew it back together, and go about minding his own business.
• Power Trio: PI's an obvious Superego.
• Private Detective
• Science Hero: In spirit, though his high Imagination fuels magic in actual practice.
• Squishy Wizard
• Thousand-Yard Stare: His trademark Disconcerting Ogle. Not due to trauma of any kind; He's just like that.
• Trademark Favorite Food: Tootsie Rolls, though not to the same degree of obsession as Problem Sleuth and his candy corn.

Alter Egos

Hysterical Dame

A female version of Problem Sleuth drawn into the game via the Quest of Spirit.

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• The Berserker
• Badass Damsel: She does get into a lot of Damsel-like situations, but after managing to get out of her apartment, she Took a Level In Badass.
• Chainsaw Good: Once item duality rears its head on her lipstick.
• Chekhov's Gunman
• Distaff Counterpart: To Problem Sleuth.
• Distressed Damsel: Subverted. She's not "hysterical" so much as "furious."
• Hysterical Woman: Played with.
• Sizeshifter: A function of the Scale Bodice.
• Tomboy and Girly Girl: The former to Nervous Broad's latter.
• Took a Level In Badass: From when she first agressed MK and onwards.

Nervous Broad

Pickle Inspector's female counterpart. Suffers from the vapors.

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• Badass Damsel: Less so than Hysterical Dame, but still very badass in her own right.
• Distaff Counterpart: To Pickle Inspector.
• Kill It with Fire: She obtains a can of paint stripper/flamethrower, which becomes a staple of her attacks.
• Sizeshifter: Unlike the Scale Bodice, the Aspect Corset changes its wearer's aspect ratio from tall and thin to short and fat and back.
• Tomboy and Girly Girl: The latter to Hysterical Dame's former.
• Took a Level In Badass: Around the same time as Hysterical Dame.

Fiesta Ace Dick

A giant, red Ace Dick with superhuman strength and durability, born from drinking distilled hot sauce.

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• Captain Ethnic: Subverted. He starts out with a poncho and sombrero but quickly changes back into his normal clothes, aware that "this silly ethnic shit is probably going to get really old really fast."
  • Eventually begins to Enforce the trope by making others intimidated whenever they intend to bring up his ethnicity.
• Cross-Popping Veins
• Hulking Out: After drinking some homemade Five Alarm Hot Sauce, this Ace Dick turns red and obtains Latin Vim.
• Powerup Full-Color Change: He turns red upon eating the Five Alarm Hot Sauce.
• Super Strength

Zombie Ace Dick

Although undead, this stupid, decaying version of Ace Dick remains firmly on the side of the heroes.

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• Dumb Muscle: described by the narration as "borderline-retarded".
• Everything's Deader with Zombies
• Meat Shield
• Nigh Invulnerability: He "Auto-Parries" attacks by simply absorbing the damage with his rotting flesh.

Villains

Mobster Kingpin

The Mafioso mastermind responsible for locking the heroes in their office building.

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• Exactly What It Says on the Tin
• Fat Bastard
• Gravity Master: Once he obtains the Gravity Brassiere, he becomes capable of altering his density and transforming into a black hole.
• Mobile Menace: MK is a pretty active villain. When the story starts, he's trapped the heroes in their building, trapped their female alter egos in a dollhouse, and escaped from his own office on the Chicago Overcoat. He then goes on to complete his own Quest of Spirit, although we don't see it.
• Moral Event Horizon: Lampshaded in the book when he beats up Hysterical Dame:

Violence toward women is standard practice for characterizing a villain. See? Now you hate him.

• Random Number God: He uses his Running Numbers ability in hopes of shuffling his stats around in his favor. It works.

Madame Murel

The matronly paintress who runs Whore Island's Sleazy Brothel in the Sky.

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• Chekhov's Gunman: Here.
• Distaff Counterpart: To Mobster Kingpin.
• Mad Artist: She's the fiend responsible for all the murals depicting Ethnic Cheer.
• Miss Kitty

Demonhead Mobster Kingpin

Mobster Kingpin's imaginary self who descends to demonhood and threatens the universe.

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• Demon Head: Well, yeah.
• One-Winged Angel
• Marathon Boss: The battle lasts for more than half the story.
• Healing Factor
• Puzzle Boss: Some of the things the heroes need to do to defeat him are ludicrously complicated.
• Turns Red: Depleting his health only causes him to change into a more powerful form.
• Weaksauce Weakness: Diabetes at first, then Emotions, then Insults, although sugar is still needed to finish him off.

Others

The Infinite Summation Honeybee Professor

Provides helpful tips to the player and oversees production of the Jocose Honey that powers the characters' Comb Raves.

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• Captain Obvious: "I'm a bee!"
• The Cassandra: Turns out his advice would've been pretty helpful if anyone could put up with him enough to listen.
• Einstein Hair
• Exposition Fairy
• Everything's Worse with Bees: Beetter actually.
• The Professor: Naturally.
• Pungeon Master
• Stop Helping Me!: Those he tries to help tend to bee like that.

The Midnight Crew

A team of ne'er-do-well jazz musicians, consisting of ringleader Spades Slick, master planner Diamonds Droog, brawny safecracker Hearts Boxcars, and Clubs Deuce. They first appeared in the non-canon Problem Sleuth donation comics, and later went on to play an important role in Homestuck.

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• Breakout Character: All of them qualify, but Slick is the most dramatic example — he went from being a noncanonical enemy in a handful of Problem Sleuth donation comics to (an alternate version of) a multiverse-spanning nigh-omnipotent threat in Homestuck.
• Casting a Shadow: When introduced, they're said to use "sinister shadow-based magic." We don't really see much of this magic in action, though.
• Face Framed in Shadow: It's their trademark.
• Four Man Band
  • The Hero: Slick
  • The Lancer / The Smart Guy: Droog
  • The Big Guy: Boxcars
  • The Chick: Deuce
  • Sixth Ranger: Shadow Mobster Kingpin
• Improvised Weapon: Each member has his own signature weapon: Slick's Cast Iron Horse Hitcher, Droog's Ultraviolence Cuestick, Deuce's Crook of Felony, and Boxcars' TV Antenna.
• Quirky Miniboss Squad
• Shout-Out: One member of the Crew is a droog who indulges in a bit of the old ultraviolence.
• Theme Naming: Each member is named after a suit of cards.

The Four Heroes

A group of adventurers assembled by the Four Kingdoms: the Weasel Warrior, the Elf Mage, the Hog Cleric, and the Clown Bard. They ultimately achieve very little.

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• An Adventurer Is You
• Butt Monkey: The Hog Cleric takes a lot of abuse. Most of the time, it's from his own party.
• Total Party Kill

Death

The polite, games-obsessed overseer of the Afterlife.

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• Chess with Death: He'll play any game with you, including chess. One such game appears to be a mix of Tetris, chess, sudoku, jousting, and crossword puzzles.
• Don't Fear the Reaper: He's a pretty nice, low-key guy who really enjoys games.
• Extreme Doormat
• Morph Weapon: His scythe, which can turn into anything from a teaspoon to an atomic bomb as required.
  • The MSPA wiki lists the Scythe's Object Duality as everything.
• Psychopomp

Wifehearst and Sonhearst/Bathearst

Ace Dick's wife and son, obtained during a game of Life he plays with Death.

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• Disposable Woman: The name "Wifehearst" is a bit of a clue as to how developed a character she is.
• Missing Mom: Sonhearst loses his mother to mobsters, causing him to avenge her by going crimefighting alongside his father.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: In the Candy Mecha, no less.
• Ugly Guy, Hot Wife: Ace Dick and Wifehearst.