William Clarke

William's father left the family when he was young and as such, William has little memory of him and was raised solely by his mother. She was very strict with him growing up, driving him to and from school until he was twelve and placing high expectations on him and his grades. She also didn't allow him to date until he was sixteen years old, claiming that he shouldn't be thinking about girls until then. [1]

When William was in kindergarten, he apparently broke his knee. The circumstances for this injury are not elaborated upon.

When William was fifteen years old, he had a crush on a girl named Annie. His mother would get upset whenever he brought her up until eventually she stopped. He thought this meant she had changed her mind, so he took Annie home one day. Will's mother asked to speak to them and William agreed so she sat the two of them down at a table. For the next several minutes William's mother proceeded to say vile things both about her own son and Annie, to the point where William was in tears begging for her to stop. Annie stopped talking to William after this happened. Despite the difficult childhood William had, it is claimed by Lila that he still loved his mother and knew she did the things she did because she cared about him.

Three years before the events of the game, William's mother died in an accident that occurred in the boiler room of their house, when she had gone to fix something. This event had a large impact on William's life, as he was forced to work in order to support himself, causing him to rarely be able to attend school. He repressed many of the details surrounding her death due to how traumatic it was for him. On June 11, William became a member of the Lawrence Fraternity, after having previously helped out here and there in an unofficial capacity. The Fraternity gave the isolated William a much needed sense of community, as he referred to them as his "second family". At first, he only helped out with tasks related to the nearby farm that was used to produce animal sacrifices for Lila, but later progressed to communicating with Lila directly, which apparently came to him rather quickly and easily. This made the other members of the Fraternity jealous of him.

On November 12, Lila instructed William to stay home instead of attending the Fraternity's meeting that day, sparing him from the fire that destroyed Lawrence's apartment and killed all other members except him and Strupnev.

The day after, William learned of the fire through a newspaper and realized that Lila had tricked him into staying behind, making him one of her only remaining hosts. Disgusted with her actions, he locked her out of his mind (by symbolically removing her reel from his projector and throwing it into a pit, seen in The Tower ending), allowing him to forget about her for a time. He later poured cans of beer onto the newspaper, making the address of the apartment impossible for Lila to read, in case she ever did come back.

On November 16, William decided to visit the burned remains of Lawrence's apartment in order to investigate what had happened. He entered the building by lying to a police officer about being a tenant there.

William has short, black hair and wears dark-colored clothing. He's seen to wear a semi-long coat. In the undithered picture of his face, he has fair skin and wavy ginger hair. His appearance shares some similarities to the mysterious Stranger. His age is unknown, but it can be inferred that he is at least eighteen years old. This is because he recounts a story about his mother from when he was fifteen, and his mother had died three years before the events of the game. William is a shy and socially awkward boy. Before meeting Tanya, he did not have any friends and rarely attended school. He sometimes struggles with empathy and makes uncontrollable, inappropriate facial expressions in certain situations, which makes it even harder for him to form friendships. He is implied to possibly be neurodivergent, but has never been tested for any specific conditions. Despite his unfriendly exterior though, he is shown to have a great deal of emotional intelligence, giving Tanya thoughtful advice about friends and relationships.

At times, William is shown to be rather innocent and naive, most likely thanks to his sheltered upbringing and lack of extensive social interaction. This made him an ideal target of Lila's manipulation.

He seems to have a great fondness for animals and also mentioned once that he likes lemon soda.