Roger, more commonly known as The Janitor, is the first antagonist encountered in Little Nightmares. He appears briefly in The Prison chapter and is the main antagonist of The Lair chapter.
He is also the second antagonist encountered in Secrets of the Maw, appearing briefly at the beginning and the end of the Depths chapter and is the main antagonist of The Hideaway chapter.
Website Description
With long forgotten things from long forgotten places, he fled the world and found The Maw. Now as The Janitor he is a tall tale hiding in the shadows, stalking the silence, a monster alone.[2]
Appearance
The Janitor is humanoid monster whose proportions are greatly warped and exaggerated compared to a normal human. His skin is extremely pale and chalky while his head is large and connected to his torso by a wrinkled neck which bends his back into a hunch by its sheer weight. The most striking feature of his head is how the top half of its skin seems to have collapsed and sags down over his eyes, revealing the top of his bare skull and leaving him blinded by the folds of flesh. His mouth is stretched wide from ear to ear, and almost always wears a sinister grin while grinding his many teeth.
More so than his head, The Janitor's arms and legs are the most grossly dis-proportioned: while his legs are almost comically short and stumpy, his arms stretch to over twice his body length, and can stretch even longer at will, ending in large hands with long, bony fingers that constantly twitch and grope at everything they touch.
His wardrobe consists of a worn-out brown fedora hat, a filthy green jacket with a name tag (revealed to say "Roger" up close), a pair of faded black shoes, and a pair of brown trousers disappearing underneath his shirt.
Personality
Like many of the other Little Nightmares characters, the Janitor does not speak, but his personality can be inferred from his actions. Like many of the other inhabitants of the Maw, he dutifully performs his work, trapping any children who attempt to escape. The Janitor is blind, and so he has acquired acute hearing and swift reflexes. If he hears the slightest noise, made by child or Nome, he will immediately seek out and pursue its source. The Janitor is smart, but too persistent, which ultimately results in the loss of both of his arms (and his life) when Six severs them with a watertight door after he gives chase.
Though dutiful, the Janitor is also implied to be a collector or hoarder of sorts, having a room full of dolls and other toys he presumably collected over the years from kidnapped children. The Janitor appears to have an affinity for these many objects, as he is has been seen carefully interacting with, organizing, and keeping them in good condition.
Little Nightmares (video game)
For the first time, the Janitor can be seen dragging a cage, high and deep in the background when Six is heading towards the Prison.
The second time, the Janitor appears when Six enters the children's bedroom, where she will have to hide from him. It is in this place that the Janitor finally becomes hostile towards the player.
When Six begins to starve for the second time, she finds a raw piece of meat in a cage, which is presumably bait for escaped children or rats. Unfortunately, the Janitor senses motion inside the cage and closes its door, then carries the caged girl to a room with many other caged children. He drags one caged child away .
Six escapes from her cage. She soon finds the Janitor in a room where he is wrapping up limp kids. The floorboards in this area creak and trigger him, and he begins looking around. Six gets to the next room and turns a crank to escape down a chute. However, her escape did not go unnoticed - the Janitor notices the disappearance of Six and tries to catch her by ambushing her outside of the area where the chute ends.
He chases her into an elevator, where he closes the door behind him and searches around the room, hoping to find her. Upon hearing Nomes, the Janitor exits the elevator and enters a storage room, where he hoards toys, dolls and other miscellaneous items. Six distracts him with the noise of a toy monkey, and climbs up the chest-of-drawers to enter the vents.
But the Janitor once more goes to the next area to search for her, entering a room where he stores grandfather clocks. These clocks ring at specific intervals, deafening the Janitor and allowing Six to get to the next area, his personal library.
He comes here as well, for an unknown reason, and begins feeling the shelves, narrowly missing Six. She gets a crank she needs to progress. To distract the Janitor she turns on a TV, but the Janitor realizes she is nearby once more. He begins feeling around in the ventilation for her, but the scuttle of a rat makes him realize he missed her.
He drives her into a laundry room. A massive door closes down on a cage and begins to crush it. The Janitor pokes his arms through the gaps to find her. The protagonist notices this and pulls out two of the support rods from the cage, and the sudden slam of the door slices the Janitor's arms clean off. For a brief moment the Janitor's screams can be heard from behind the door. The Janitor is never seen again after this, and it is believed that he either died of massive blood loss or due to not being able to access food or water.
Secrets of the Maw
At the time the Runaway Kid begins his escape, the Janitor has not yet encountered Six. He first appears when the Runaway Kid leaves the children's bedroom. The Kid can witness the Janitor catching a young boy and (presumably) carrying him back to the bedroom.
The Janitor reappears when the Runaway Kid escapes the Depths, as the Runaway Kid climbs out a vent, the Janitor ambushes and quickly captures the boy. The Janitor puts him in a large cage in a room with other captured children, including Six. He drags away the cage containing the Runaway Kid.
The last place in which the Janitor appears is in the Hideaway, where he will wander around his workshop and in unknown dark halls of the coal area.
Little Nightmares (2017 comic series)
Issue 1
The Janitor can first be seen trying to capture Six while she listens to a music box. She escapes him after running underneath a table, and then distracts him by turning on a television, which he turns off shortly after.
He can again be seen briefly trying to catch Six while she tried to evade him from a high surface.
Strategy
The Janitor's most prominent feature is his lack of eyesight, which can be used to Six's advantage, leaving the player to manipulate the senses of touch, smell and sound. It is important to consider all noise, such as the creaking of wood or disturbance of coal, as the Janitor is drawn to them. However, the player is able to freely walk and run on carpet and floors with cloth laid out on them. Despite his sluggish pace, he uses his long arms to capture the player, which will result in a game over.
Powers and Abilities
- Long reach: With the possession of a pair of long arms, the Janitor is able to reach anything at great distances, whether they are objects far away or escaping intruders. These arms also help the Janitor to traverse through floors in the Lair.
- Great sense of hearing: While the Janitor is blind, he has a great sense of hearing which can even hear the smallest sounds, like creaking boards.
Theories
- It is speculated that the Janitor was affiliated with the the Pale City as well as the Doctor as a wall of masks in the Hospital revealed a face mask that heavily resembles that of the Janitor's face, which is depicted in concept art to be loose and disconnected from his skull, his missing eyes leaving him unable to see and be susceptible to the televisions, but still gaining an intrigue in the sounds of the broadcast nonetheless.
Trivia
- The name tag reveals that the Janitor's given name is Roger.
- The Janitor's arms are capable of limited movement for a while after they are severed.
- A close up view of the Janitor's clothes reveals some faint blood stains, implying that he may have killed some children.
- The presence of a blood stained guillotine in the Lair further supports this.
- Concept art and a portrait of the Janitor within the Maw depicts him with part of his skin detached from his skull, pulled back to reveal his empty eye sockets, implying that he was supposed to have his mask cover up his entire face.
- Initially, the Janitor was supposed to appear in The Kitchen and The Guest Area chapters. For unknown reasons, this was cut from the game.[3]
- In the toy room, the Janitor can be seen picking up a spoon and stroking it with a finger at one point. This may be a reference to David Firth's 2005 video series, Salad Fingers, in which the titular character is shown to enjoy the texture of rusty spoons.
- The Janitor's defeat appears somewhat similar to the Hunter and the Doctor, antagonists from Little Nightmares II. All three are persistent and continuously chase the protagonists until they corner them, only to suffer a brutal fate.
- Some of the Janitor's weaknesses include his inability to see and his sensitivity to loud noises.