Ford Cruller

Ford Cruller is the deuteragonist of the Psychonauts series. The founder and former leader of the Psychonauts before the battle against Maligula shattered his psyche, he served as Razputin Aquato's mentor and mission control in Psychonauts, before his past with The Psychic 7 was explored in Psychonauts 2.

Appearance
Ford Cruller is a lanky, elderly man with pale green skin. He has a square head with asymmetrical, sunken blue eyes, bushy white eyebrows, a triangular orange nose, small orange ears, a white mustache, and a jutting chin. Although he is balding, the remaining white hair puffs out in a wild horseshoe hairstyle, elongating the size of his head by half on either side. He has four fingers on each hand, and a bacon tattoo on his left forearm.

When in control of himself, Ford wears the standard uniform of a Psychonauts agent: a long-sleeved, ribbed, forest-green jumpsuit, emblazoned with the organization's logo on the left breast, along with dark green gloves and shoes.

Due to his split personalities and occupations thereof, Ford wears many different costumes and accessories across both games. His janitor persona in Psychonauts wore a a long-sleeved red-and-black plaid shirt, a short-sleeved blue jumpsuit, and pink bunny slippers. The admiral persona added an orange safety vest and a white sou'wester hat, while the chef persona added a tall toque blanche, a red-and-white checkered neckerchief, and a white apron reading "Kiss my food." The ranger persona wore the plaid shirt, high-waisted green shorts, a red vest with badges, a bolo tie, tall green socks, and a wide-brimmed campaign hat bearing a brain logo.

In Psychonauts 2, Ford's alternate identities wore more elaborate costumes. His barber persona wore a red-and-white striped vest and orange suspenders over a white dress shirt, a red bowtie, pinstriped red pants, a brown leather apron, and white-and-black saddle shoes. A comb and a pair of scissors stuck out of his hair. As the bowling lane manager, Ford wore a red-and-pink polo with a black nametag, a white belt, brown tartan pants, and blue-and-red bowling shoes. As the mail clerk, he wore a navy blue vest with a name badge over a white dress shirt and a red necktie, a navy blue peaked cap with a gold postal service emblem, blue jeans, and grey shoes. As the gravedigger, Ford wore a brown newsboy cap, a red plaid shirt under a long leather coat, dirt-encrusted blue overalls, and brown shoes.

A wood carving in Psychonauts and memory vaults in Psychonauts 2 depict Ford Cruller as a young man. He had black hair, styled neatly compared to his later wild mane, and a slim black moustache. His eyes were more symmetrical in size and placement. He routinely wore a sweater vest over a button-up white shirt with a tall collar.

Personality
Ford was once an ambitious and visionary leader, founding a close-knit community of psychic pioneers who held him in high esteem even decades later. He harbored deep regret and longing for his lost love, friends, and purpose, even as he worked in secret beneath Whispering Rock Psychic Summer Camp, unable to remember the circumstances that shattered his mind.

His alternate personas, such as the admiral and the janitor, were characterized by their obsession for their respective hyperspecific tasks, and their quickness to threaten children with violence at the slightest provocation. Other personas, such as the mail clerk and barber, were capable of more nuance, helping Ford cope with his regrets through elaborate metaphors.

Ford frequently teases and insults his friends and allies, such as Razputin Aquato and Otto Mentallis. He is a resourceful problem solver, with insight into the defeat of nearly every type of mental enemy. He has a fondness for bacon and a fear of heights.

Notable Psi-Powers and Skills
Teleportation

Ford is capable of teleportation, able to transport himself and others around camp, across the lake, and to Psychonauts headquarters. He is the only character in the Psychonauts series known to have this ability.

Astral Projection

Ford can project himself into the psyche of others up to two layers deep; for example, he can visit Raz's mind to talk with him while Raz is inside the mind of a Thorney Towers inmate.

Other Psi-Powers

Ford is capable of elaborate mental manipulation: erasing or burying memories, and replacing them with elaborate constructs capable of overwriting someone's identity.

Major Relationships
Razputin Aquato

Ford and Raz began their mentor-and-student partnership with a great deal of respect and trust for one another. Raz idolized Ford due to reading about his adventures in “True Psychic Tales” magazine, while Ford became impressed and intrigued by Raz’s raw psychic talent and dedication to joining the Psychonauts. Ford saw all of the qualities of a capable agent in him, and told him as such in a ceremony where he proudly presented Raz with a Psychonauts uniform. Once Ford’s memories returned, and both learned the true extent of Ford’s influence on Raz’s family, Raz’s faith in Ford was permanently shaken. Ford welcomed Raz’s fury, aware that he made a terrible mistake, but insisted that conversation wait until after the mission was complete. In the postgame, Raz remains conflicted about Ford’s role in his family’s lives, deciding to resolve his feelings for his former mentor when he’s older.

Lucrecia Mux

Ford and Lucrecia fell in love while studying the human psyche together as colleagues in Green Needle Gulch. Ford is routinely concerned for Lucy's safety and psychological vulnerability. Even after Lucy became a criminal, Ford remained devoted, making his own breaches of morality to save her and give her a new life. His obsession with Lucy was so strong, that he erased his own memories as the only way to move on. They currently live together in Green Needle Gulch, where Ford is helping her recuperate. He plans to take her on a trip to Whispering Rock.

Otto Mentallis

The inventor Otto Mentallis was Ford’s first partner in the psychic research team which would eventually become the Psychonauts. They are close friends, but prone to mockery of each other’s intelligence. Upon reuniting at the Heptadome, Otto was happy to see Ford’s senses returned to him, and says in the postgame that he is looking forward to having Ford around again to keep him humble, even if he doesn’t trust Ford’s ability to keep the Psychonauts funded.

The Psychic 7

Ford worked with Otto, Lucy, Bob Zanotto, Helmut Fullbear, Cassie O'Pia, and Compton Boole as the psychic pioneers known as the Psychic 7. Together, they pushed the boundaries of their minds with new methods and technology, with little fear for consequences due to their close friendship and support of one another. They drifted apart after the Battle of Grulovia, due to their trauma and their joint feelings of failure. The group holds immense respect for Ford, and all were overjoyed to see his mind healed years later. The Psychic 7 shared a group hug upon reunion and worked together to eliminate Maligula once and for all.

Sasha Nein and Milla Vodello

After Ford's mind was shattered, he gradually lost the respect of the Psychonauts at large, save for agents Sasha Nein and Milla Vodello. In addition to serving as camp counselors with Morceau Oleander at Whispering Rock Psychic Summer Camp, the three worked as a unit wherein Sasha and Milla executed Ford's assignments in secret, unbeknownst to headquarters.

Backstory
As a young park ranger, Ford Cruller studied the psitanium-rich land which would become Green Needle Gulch. He constructed impenetrable psychic illusions over the area to study its paranormal phenomena in peace. Over time, he recruited a team of renowned psychics to join him: inventor Otto Mentallis, hydrokinesis specialist Lucrecia Mux, author Cassie O'Pia, herbophony specialist Robert Zanotto, zoolepathy specialist Compton Boole, and musician Helmut Fullbear. The Psychic 7 became close friends, united in the goal of pushing the limits of the human mind with innovations such as Otto's Astralathe.

During the team's age of exploration in Green Needle Gulch, Ford fell in love with Lucrecia Mux. When her home country of Grulovia was invaded, Lucy left her friends to aid the war effort with her psychic powers, unaware that the Astralathe experiments opened a deep, primal part of her mind that left her vulnerable to radicalization and violence. Ford and Lucy exchanged letters for a time, as Lucy became Gzar Theodore Malik's right hand and enforcer, Maligula, and the severity of her patriotic rhetoric began to frighten Ford.

Ford and his team were called upon by world leaders to vanquish Maligula, after she broke the Valermo Dam and drowned hundreds of peaceful protesters, including her own sister, Marona Aquato. In the ensuing Battle of Grulovia, Maligula felled each of Ford's friends, including Helmut Fullbear, who was plunged into the frozen lake, before Ford finally subdued her. While Ford restrained Lucy, Helmut expelled his brain from his body using sneezing powder, landing at Cruller’s feet.

Returning to Green Needle Gulch with both Lucy and Helmut’s brain, Ford turned the Astralathe on Lucy once again, building a wall deep within her subconscious and sealing the Maligula persona away behind it. Having restored Lucy’s personality but aware that she wasn’t safe from the consequences of her crimes, Ford resolved to hide Lucy from the world. He implanted an elaborate construct in Lucy’s mind, to change her identity from the inside to that of her dead sister Marona. He took Lucy’s orphaned nephew, the young Augustus Aquato, and hypnotized him via the Astralathe to accept Lucy as his mother. Content that Lucy was safe in her new identity, Ford implanted a deep-seated hydrophobia in the pair before leaving them to their own devices as a false mother and son in a small family circus.

Knowing that he couldn’t move on from Lucy or live with the knowledge of what he did to her, Ford returned to Green Needle Gulch and used the Astralathe on himself. He shattered his own mind, creating a multitude of uncontrollable split personalities, forgetting everything about Lucy, Maligula, and the abandoned brain of Helmut Fullbear.

With Lucy and Helmut presumed dead and the Psychonauts declared heroes, Ford joined Otto Mentallis in the groundbreaking of the Motherlobe. As the other founders sans Otto isolated themselves, Ford lead the Psychonauts for an unknown duration, though his slipping sanity soon discredited him. He was eventually banned from the Motherlobe due to his instability, though not before working in the mailroom, the bowling alley, and establishing a hair salon.

Ford was relegated to menial tasks at Whispering Rock Psychic Summer Camp, bouncing between his alternate personas of park ranger, fry cook, boatman, and janitor. Discovering that he became more stable near the large psitanium deposit beneath the camp, he built an underground lab to monitor psychic threats around the world on his own. He found new loyalty in young agents Sasha Nein and Camilla Vodello, becoming their dispatcher even as the Psychonauts organization proper continued to disregard his status reports.

Roles
Psychonauts

When circus runaway Razputin Aquato arrived at Whispering Rock Psychic Summer Camp, Ford took a shining to the budding young psychic, neither aware of their connection to Maligula or each other. After Raz discovered Ford's underground lab, Ford privately trained him in pyrokinesis, telekinesis, and invisibility. Otherwise teleporting across camp to fulfill his duties as scoutmaster, janitor, and cook, he gave Raz the ability to summon him for assistance via a strip of bacon, his favorite food.

That night, every camper at Whispering Rock was kidnapped and robbed of their brain by Morceau Oleander and Caligosto Loboto. Ford collected their bodies in his observation room for their safety. He appointed Raz as his field agent after agents Nein and Vodello were kidnapped as well, confessing the truth of his broken mind and the fact that he was only sane and useful within the walls of his lab.

Ford sent Raz across the lake to Thorney Towers Home for the Disturbed to rescue Sasha, Milla, and Lili Zanotto, and thwart Oleander's world domination plot. As Raz scaled the asylum and traversed the minds of the Inmates, Ford remained on psychic speed-dial to advise him on obstacles and enemies. He teleported Raz back to the lab upon request so Raz could collect supplies and drop off recovered brains, which Ford installed back into the heads of the campers with a funnel.

After Raz rescued Sasha and Milla, they engaged Oleander in a psychic battle. Ford arrived, levitating into Thorney Towers with a stabilizing chunk of psitanium strapped to his back, and turned the tide of the battle by hitting Oleander with sneezing powder. Although knocked out along with Sasha and Milla later, Ford still psychically aided Raz through the Meat Circus.

After the defeat of Oleander and Loboto, Ford, still strengthened by psitanium, honored Raz with a speech commending his heroism before bestowing him with the title and uniform of a Psychonaut. The psitanium proved unreliable shortly thereafter, reverting Ford to his dotty cook persona and rendering him unable to participate in the Rhombus of Ruin mission.

Psychonauts 2

Following orders from Truman Zanotto, Raz summoned Ford to the Psychonauts' headquarters via a strip of honey pepper boar bacon, seeking his help as the person who supposedly killed Maligula twenty years prior. When Raz entered Ford's mind to find it shattered, he expressed his desire to repair it, but Ford declined, declaring some memories better left forgotten.

Ford immediately regressed into his Motherlobe roles as bowling alley manager, barber, and mail clerk, forgetting Raz but easily tricked into letting him enter his mind again. Each division of Ford's Fractured Mind taught Raz a new aspect of Ford's connection to disgraced Psychonauts founder Lucrecia Mux. In Strike City, the bowling persona, Raz learned of Ford's courtship of Lucrecia and their first date to a bowling alley. Ford's Follicles, the barber persona, informed Raz of the darkness that grew within Lucy when she returned to Grulovia. In Cruller's Correspondence, the mailman persona, Ford relived his desperation as he witnessed Lucy's transformation into Maligula from afar.

The guilty fragments of his mind reassembled, Ford returned to lucidity with full cognizance of his past and actions. He took Raz to one final mindscape, the Tomb of the Sharkophagus, where he assumed the persona of the gravedigger and revealed Lucy's current fate: living with altered memories as Raz's beloved grandmother, Nona. Betrayed, Raz ran off to find his family, but Ford stopped him, begging for his help.

Ford led Raz through the illusions of the Forgetful Forest to the Green Needle Gulch, where he reunited with an elderly and addled Lucy in her old home. To eliminate Maligula and restore Lucy once and for all, Ford assigned Raz to repair the abandoned Astralathe in the Heptadome while he watched over Lucy. Raz readied the machine with help from Cassie O'Pia and Bob Zanotto, who reunited with Ford and Lucy along with Compton Boole, Helmut Fullbear, and Otto Mentallis. The Psychic 7 shared a group hug before working together to send Raz and Ford into Lucy's mind.

As the three walked through Lucy's memories, Ford explained the extent of his influence on Raz's family: minimal save for the initial deception of Lucy and Augustus, with every subsequent relationship and connection being legitimate and organic. Arriving at the mental dam Maligula was sealed behind, Ford explained the plan to unlock the dam, draw Maligula out, and use the Astralathe to blast a deep pit in Lucy's mind to bury her. He and Raz destroyed the dam together, but before they could banish Maligula, Raz was yanked from Lucy's mind by Gristol Malik.

Alone, Ford successfully dug the pit, but was ejected from Lucy's mind before he could fill it, leaving Maligula as the dominant personality. In the physical world, Ford begged Lucy to return and let him help her, but Maligula refused to listen, sweeping Ford away in a tidal wave.

After Raz returned to Lucy's mind and helped her defeat Maligula for good, the Psychonauts granted Ford and Lucy permission to live in Green Needle Gulch together. When visited in the postgame, Ford tells Raz of his future plans to work at the Motherlobe's bowling alley, steer the Psychonauts back to their roots of exploring the human mind, and take Lucy to see Camp Whispering Rock.

Ford also appeared as a mental construct in four other minds in Psychonauts 2 aside from his own-- as the harsh food critic Faun Cruller in Compton's Cookoff, the psychedelic violinist Vision Quest in PSI King's Sensorium, a paper cutout of himself in his prime in Cassie's Collection, and the flea circus ringmaster in Lucrecia's Lament.

Behind the Scenes
Ford Cruller is voiced by David Kaye, who also voiced Linda the Lungfish, several lungfish denizens in Lungfishopolis, and the ride operator in Fatherland Follies.

Trivia

 * Each of Ford's four alternate personas in Psychonauts 2 wears an accessory the same vibrant shade of red that appears across Lucrecia Mux's costumes, creating a deliberate visual connection between the two.