| “ | What a story. What a goddamned story you got... was it worth it? | ” |
— Victor to the survivors
|
Victor Milgram was a supporting character in The Inpatient, serving as the janitor at the Blackwood Pines Hotel. He is also a mentioned character in Until Dawn, being the prominent figure in Josh's made-up story. He is voiced by Arnold Youngak Kim and modelled on Jozef Aoki.
Appearance[]
Victor is of pale complexion, has long, black hair worn loose down to his shoulders, and appears to be of Asian extraction. His clothes consist of a brown undershirt, a light blue, long-sleeve work shirt, and denim overalls. He also wears light brown mountain boots and a brown leather tool belt used to carry several work accessories. Josh later recreates his outfit for his Psycho persona.
Personality[]
Victor is a hardy individual who is trusted as the caretaker of the hotel in its off season and keep it maintained and organized during the winter. Despite this privileged position, he helps the protagonist unlawfully infiltrate the Blackwood Sanatorium to uncover a story. Regardless of his motives, he remains cool under pressure. He tells the Patient that his decisions will affect the lives of other and needs to think before doing anything that could mean that he cares for his fellow co-workers.
Victor appears to be a relatively kind and helpful man. He will know how to fight the snowstorm and take the survivors to the cable car.
The Inpatient[]
Victor Milgram in The Inpatient.
The real Victor Milgram was the custodian of Blackwood Pines Hotel. In 1952, when the sanatorium experienced the Wendigo outbreak, Victor, the player, and others try to escape via the cable cars. Victor dies either by being eaten or by being shot by the police who wish to suppress the truth about the Wendigo crisis.
Until Dawn[]
In Until Dawn, Victor Milgram plays a major role in the Mystery Man Clueline.
Six decades after the sanatorium incident, Josh Washington uses “Victor Milgram” as the true name of the Psycho character he creates. It can be surmised (see trivia) that Josh took Victor’s name and general background from records and proceeded to add fiction to his story. Victor’s identity serves as part of Josh’s Psycho, used in order to make his friends believe there is a maniac on the mountain who killed Hannah and Beth and is now out to kill them. It is interesting to note that Josh did such thorough research, that he recreated Victor Milgram’s exact outfit for his Psycho persona, donning the exact same overalls, shirt, pants, and shoes as Milgram did in 1952. He even used his mask to make it look like he has Victor’s long hair. Furthermore, while Josh kept details about Victor such as him being the hotel janitor, he also changed certain facts of Milgram's actual life and fabricated a story about him being an escaped convict who was last seen in 1998, as evidenced by the Wanted Poster.
In the Newspaper Fragment as well as the Answerphone Message, Josh sets up Milgram as an adversary of the Washington family, swearing revenge on them after Bob Washington supposedly fired him from his job at the hotel when he built his family lodge. Victor’s motive, as Josh depicted it, was to kill Hannah and Beth, as he told Melinda Washington (who was pregnant with the twins at the time) he would do. The Threatening Letter indicates that the twins’ disappearance was due to Victor’s success in carrying out his threat. It is interesting to note that, in 1998, the real Victor would have already been dead due to the Wendigo outbreak at the sanatorium.
Trivia []
- He uses the same character model as:
- Karl Carter, a detective from Hidden Agenda.
- Ted Rhodes, the section chief from Supermassive's mobile game Shattered State.
- Danny, one of the three main antagonists from Man of Medan.
- The passer-by/Judge Thomas Wyman from Little Hope.
- Corporal Nathan Merwin from House of Ashes.
- In a podcast,[1] Will Byles, the director of Until Dawn, mentioned that Victor’s last name came from “The Milgram experiment,”[2] a test run by Yale University psychologist Stanley Milgram. The experiment measured how often people will become obedient to calm authority figures, even to the point of violating their own moral codes.
- In Until Dawn, Josh originally had a line in which he referred to the others as his “Milgram pilgrims,” due to the fact that his own experiments compelled the participant to make immoral choices. According to Will Byles, the developer team’s lawyers advised that, in order not to cause conflict with those associated with the Milgram experiment, it should be cut.
- Strangely, Chris was the only person ever used as the main subject in these experiments, and he was not compelled by obedience to the psycho’s authority so much as the fact that his situations forced him to choose between multiple immoral options in order to spare lives at the cost of others.
- Josh knowing about the “Milgram experiment” is in line with his studies on psychology (mentioned in his bio) and the fact that he uses other psychological terms such as “Pavlovian” at other points.
- When questioned about Victor being a real person whom Josh knew about, Will Byles implied that much of this lore was not specifically intended when Until Dawn was written but that the writers are allowing this connection between the two characters to be made:
- Question: “So what’s the situation with Victor Milgram? Because the events of Until Dawn would have you believe he’s a character made up by Josh. However, Victor Milgram was actually a character from the past and appeared in The Inpatient. Did Josh know of him?”
- Byles’ answer: “We have to be really careful with the retconning. There’s a little bit of duplicity in that. We didn’t specifically have it that he did, but we allowed it that he could.”
References[]
- ↑ Interview with Will Byles
- ↑ Info on the Milgram experiment