Characters / Godless

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• Beware the Nice Ones: He's a pretty amiable fellow for a former outlaw, but he's still a master gunman willing to put his skills to work if he sees someone committing wrongdoing as Logan and his men find out after he finds out they stole La Belle's horses.
• Heel–Face Turn: He broke from Griffin's gang prior to the events of the story.
• Improbable Aiming Skills: Shoots the head off a snake in the first episode.
• Line-of-Sight Name: The sheriff names him "Ward", from a Montgomery Ward ad.
• Never Learned to Read: Due to being an outlaw for most of his life. He agrees to help Alice break her horses in exchange for being taught.
• Nice Guy: Despite his blood-soaked past, in the present he's a pretty amiable, polite, and patient fellow.
• Parental Substitute: He becomes this to Truckee over the course of the show.
• The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything: He supposedly did some pretty bad things while in Griffin's gang, but the only people we see him assault, rob, and kill in the present are all terrible people, leaving it up to the imagination just what kind of crimes he committed in the past.
• That Man Is Dead: He takes up the identity of Mr. Ward when he leaves La Belle, and it is reported that Roy Goode and Frank Griffin killed each other.

• Action Girl: She and Maggie take charge of the final battle.
• Bash Brothers: With Maggie McNue.
• Determined Homesteader: It would seem her late husband was this, though she would much rather go back to her old life in Boston.
• Doom Magnet: The residents of La Belle view her as cursed, and the source of the town's misfortune.
• Maligned Mixed Marriage: Not a lot of people seem to support her marriage to Truckee's father.
• Rape as Backstory: After her husband died she was gang raped, which plays into her current isolation from society.

• The Alcoholic: Pretty much constantly drinking. His hunt for Frank ultimately sobers him up.
• Awesomeness by Analysis: He's able to recreate the scene of a gunfight in his mind several days after it took place.
• Battle Couple: He defended the town with his wife back when she was alive.
• Blind Mistake: Makes these occasionally, tripping over things and the like.
• Handicapped Badass: The final shootout with Frank's gang shows that he's still quite good with a rifle even with his failing eyesight.
• How the Mighty Have Fallen: He was once quite respected and very formidable in a gunfight, having taught Whitey everything that he knows. Now he's an alcoholic who's barely around and suffering from failing eyes. His journey to find Frank manages to right his course, and he returns just as badass as he had been in the past.
• The Lost Lenore: Anna, his wife who died in childbirth.
• Maternal Death? Blame the Child!: Though he is trying to suppress it, he cannot help but blame his daughter for the death of his wife. He gets over it by the final episode.
• The Sheriff: He is the Law in La Belle.

• Action Girl: She's taken to guns pretty damn well since the town lost all its men. She can even beat Whitey to the draw.
• Always Someone Better: She surpasses Whitey in speed when it comes to the quick draw.
• Don't You Dare Pity Me!: Her overall outlook is that the women of the town don't need the charity of outsiders. For her part it seems to be the case.
• Parental Substitute: Since Bill's hardly home since the death of his wife, it falls on her to take care of his son and daughter. She's also more or less is Whitey's mother, as she regularly checks in on him and makes sure that he's fed and clean.

The town deputy.

• Black Gal on White Guy Drama: Louise's family is displeased to say the least.
• Clueless Deputy: To a degree, he is a much more competent fighter than the sheriff, but in any other context, he is rather bumbling.
• Dropped a Bridge on Him: He gets uncerimoniously stabbed to death by one of Frank Griffin's men.
• The Pig-Pen: Multiple characters complain about how bad he smells.
• Undying Loyalty: To Sheriff McNue
• Young Gun: He's a fairly youthful young man who's very quick on the draw.

An outlaw menacing the area on his hunt for his surrogate son turned enemy, Roy Goode.

• Affably Evil: He's pretty polite and well-spoken for a mass-murdering outlaw, though it frequently crosses over into Faux Affably Evil, as he uses that same politeness to not-so-subtly threaten people.
• As the Good Book Says...: Though nobody really knows which book he's referring to. At one point he admits one of his quotes is from a can of shaving cream.
• Dirty Old Man: One of his most vile acts involves forcing one of the wives of two Norwegian immigrants to have sex with him.
• The Dreaded: His reputation for being a slaughterer of whole towns means that no posse short of a literal army wants to deal with him.
• Et Tu, Brute?: He by all accounts did sincerely treat Roy like his son, and he took it very hard when Roy decided to not only split but interfere with his robbing. Unfortunately, he made it everyone else's problem.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • He reprimands the Devlin Twins for making small talk immediately after witnessing an entire household full of small pox sufferers.
  • He's actually genuinely remorseful about massacring Blackdom and had only showed up to convince them not to get involved only for things to escalate.
• Evil Is Petty: He not only slaughters the families of anyone who harbors Roy but the entire towns, all to make Roy feel bad about betraying him.
• Freudian Excuse: His entire family was slaughtered by Mormon outlaws when he was a child, while he got taken in by their leader and raised as his own son. Said raising involved a lot of beatings and being taught an incredibly skewed version of Christianity. It goes a way towards explaining his...issues.
• Handicapped Badass: Only has one arm, but it makes him no less terrifying.
• "Not How I'm Dying" Declaration: Anytime Frank is faced with a potential lethal danger, he will boldly state that he has "seen his death, and this is not it", so he knows he will survive. Which he does, up until the series finale where Roy shoots him dead and even tells Frank that he saw wrong.
• Parental Substitute: He was this to Roy before the series began. The finale implies he makes a habit of becoming this to lost young boys.
  Frank: Have you got a pappy, boy?
• Pet the Dog:
  • He tries to offer aid to a household filled with small pox sufferers and clearly is unhappy that he can only deliver them a Mercy Kill.
  • Upon coming across Truckee mourning his crippled horse, he hands him a gun to put the animal out of its misery and consoles him afterwards. He doesn't even make an attempt on his life after finding out his connection to Roy.
• Sinister Minister: His go-to guise is a preacher.
• Wicked Cultured: He may be the most well-read character in the series.