ENTRY 03: THE WRAITH (Philip Ojomo)
"Using his Wailing Bell to render himself invisible, The Wraith tracks his prey and strikes with little warning. Upon hearing the Bell’s fateful chime, Survivors must think fast or suffer the consequences. A hit-and-run specialist, The Wraith is adept at keeping everybody injured."
LORE SUMMARY: Philip was originally an okay guy, an immigrant working what he hoped was an honest enough job at a scrapyard, except that he knew his employers at Autohaven Wreckers were involved in some sort of shady side hustle. He just didn't think that was any of his business, until he learned that every car he'd ever smashed into a cube had contained a bound and gagged human being the scrapyard was being paid to dispose of. Mad with guilt and rage, he tore his boss's entire head and spine from his body before he fled the scene and went mysteriously missing.
LORE SUMMARY: Philip was originally an okay guy, an immigrant working what he hoped was an honest enough job at a scrapyard, except that he knew his employers at Autohaven Wreckers were involved in some sort of shady side hustle. He just didn't think that was any of his business, until he learned that every car he'd ever smashed into a cube had contained a bound and gagged human being the scrapyard was being paid to dispose of. Mad with guilt and rage, he tore his boss's entire head and spine from his body before he fled the scene and went mysteriously missing.
First off, I love that in the context of his default profile, Philip only deliberately killed one guy that we're aware of, but it was just that hardcore. Every other guy in the roster had to eat a bunch of people or blow up an orphanage or run a suicide cult, but our man Phil here simply executed one single epic fatality maneuver with nothing but his bare hands that was just so unequivocally gnarly, it practically blew the entity's dick off on the spot.
...In the expanded lore, on the other hand, it turns out he was no stranger to death and violence. Growing up poor in the midst of the 1987 Nigerian civil war, he witnessed one atrocity after another at the hands of paid mercenaries who would go on to slaughter almost everyone he ever cared about, at one point leaving the woman he loved in such a horrific state he had no choice but to end her suffering himself. Finally broken, he took it upon himself to hunt down and massacre any mercenary squadron he could find, whether or not they were the ones responsible, seeing himself as an "angel of mercy."
100% justified as this may be, he eventually wanted to get as far away from his violent past as possible, fled his country and took on his new job as a fresh start. You can easily imagine how it would break this guy's mind to find out he had unwittingly become some other greedy monster's paid executioner. You can't really blame him for anything we know he's done so far, I mean he's pretty much a superhero all things considered, but you don't have to be "evil" to catch the entity's attention. You just have to be really good at killing and have tasty enough emotions about it.
Philip is easily up there as one of the most tragic killers. Some of these sick freaks are having a grand old time in the entity's realm, while others are basically just monsters who don't know any other way of existence, but being forced to terrorize and kill innocent people is literally Phil's personal hell; we just don't really know exactly how aware he is of what he's doing. There's a fan theory that his glowing eyes indicate some sort of possession by the entity, and it may be he's little more than a puppet, or it may be his perception has been warped to perceive innocent captives of the realm as the hated enemies of his past.
It's all much cooler and more intriguing lore than I went in expecting, but what's the angle here, as a killer? His aesthetic is vague, but certainly imposing. He's a tall, broad-shouldered figure, his upper body draped in layers of black leather and his limbs wrapped in dark bandages. His hook-shaped weapon is fashioned from a human skull and spinal cord, and his face, on close inspection, seems to be caked completely with mud and twigs, perhaps a kind of makeshift camouflage he resorted to back when he was kicking so much kickable ass.
The Wraith's signature gimmick, however, is his "Wailing Bell." This is later revealed to be a distortion of a bell his father had given him to warn others of danger, and in the entity's realm, he can ring it to shift in and out of the spirit world, becoming intangible and invisible until he rings it again.
Philip isn't quite as "tropey" as either the Trapper or the Nurse. He fits in just as well with any other horror movie menace, but he feels a little subtler, less referential and more his own thing. He's obviously supposed to evoke something like a "specter of death" or "grim reaper," riffing on "for whom the bell tolls," but it's in a more original way than the usual robed ghoul with a scythe. From his design alone, I initially thought I'd find him the most forgettable of the original three, but I think he's finally really "clicking" for me. If Trapper and Nurse are chocolate and vanilla, maybe wraith works as the strawberry, though technically the "main three" killers are supposed to be Trapper, Wraith, and tomorrow's entry.
There's also a running gag that Wraith and Nurse are somehow an "item." If you're wondering how, or when, then so is everyone else from what I gather. But we've definitely caught some glimpses that there's more to the entity's reality than just the repetitive killing trials; that there's definitely some other subrealities of some sort where they might even get to socialize, or maybe take a breather between all the slashifying...maybe? I mean, there's even a cute little dating sim that features the Wraith, which is allegedly non-canon, but still operates completely within the canon rules as if the entity is just kind of experimenting with a different sort of dreamworld. It's unfortunate that this does NOT include the Nurse, but maybe the entity just didn't want her to distract Phil from the player.
BEST SKIN(S):
"WAX WARLOCK:" I feel bad saying that very few of Philip's alternate outfits really do anything for me, but this one with the big white candle melting all over his face is pretty eerie, and easily could have been iconic enough for his default. It just feels "right" to throw a candle motif into the bell-tolling death angel thing.
"STRAY CAT:" there's actually a whole cute little thing they do for Halloween called Night of the Living Cat, where they'll release some spooky cat-themed items. This has included more than one felinian Killer skin, and Philip's isn't half bad; the cat face appears to just be a mask at first, but he definitely has real actual fangs, while his hands and feet are clawed and mutated like he's some kind of lycanthrope. The belt of dead rats is also a wacky touch.
"PHANTOM LIZARD:" this one's really the breakout star. I'm not sure what the premise was exactly, but it's a colorful and extravagant costume covered in petals and feathers and cloth scales with fluorescent edges, completed by a slightly reptilian looking wooden mask. It's visually cool and pretty and I'm not aware of any one real-world thing it was lifted from.
"WEATHERED SCARECROW:" I think this one's my personal favorite, transforming Philip into a disturbing corpselike figure with pale roots running through bark-like flesh, clothing that looks stitched together from tanned human skin and a mass of branches jutting from his leathery hood instead of a recognizable face or even face mask. It's those branches that make this design stand out best, just not a feature I've ever seen done in quite the same way, and definitely creepy as heck.
