Other Father

"All will be swell, soon as Mother's refreshed, her strength is our strength."

- Other Father

"Making up a song about Coraline. She's a peach, she's a doll, she's a pal of mine. She's as cute as a button in the eyes of everyone who ever laid their eyes on Cor-a-line. When she comes around exploring, Mom and I will never ever make it boring. Our eyes will be on Coraline!"

- Other Father singing while subliminally warning Coraline. The Other Father is an anti-hero of the 2009 stop-motion film Coraline. Created by the Beldam, he was manipulated into luring Coraline to stay forever in the Other World. However, the Other Father secretly wanted to protect Coraline from the Beldam, making him one of the Beldam's most hated enemies.

He was voiced by John Hodgman and by John Linnell.

Appearance
The Other Father holds a strong resemblance to Coraline's real father Charlie Jones, only much more improved. He is clean-shaved, his styled hair a chocolate shade of brown. He wears a red and black evening robe, black pants, glasses and orange monkey-slippers. The only noticable quality he has (that he also shares with every other inhabitant of the Other World) are the matching black buttons instead of eyes.

In the book, the Beldam locks him in the basement, turning him into a slimy, grub like creature. In the film, as punishment for scaring off Coraline earlier, the Other Mother warps his body into resembling that of a pumpkin, a vine from his ear used by the Other Mother to tighten his lip to keep him from talking.

Powers and Abilities
Unlike the Other Mother, the Other Father possesses no supernatural abilities, the various machines and gizmos that he uses being able to use themselves for him.

Personality
On the surface, the Other Father is an exciting, "cooler" version of the real Charlie, making light puns and teasing Coraline as a loving father would, with a perfect relationship with his "wife".

In reality though, the Other Father is a slave to the Beldam, terrified of what she may do and regretful to the point of being traumatized by her. When transformed into a pumpkin-like creature, he has become even less coherent and aware, but was coherent enough to understand his situation, telling Coraline that he was attacking her against his will, then sacrifices himself while giving her the ghost eye.

Defeat
After being attacked by several creatures in the Other Garden, Coraline quickly recovers and uses her magical stone to search for the first ghost eye. Looking through the hole of the stone, she spots the ghost eye but suddenly, the Other Father in his pumpkin form emerges and is forced to use his praying mantis vehicle to attack her. Coraline runs away on the bridge but the Other Father catches up to her. However, the weight of his vehicle causes the bridge to collapse and at the very last moment, he gave her the ghost eye. Soon after that, the Other Father drowned in the pond below along with his vehicle and the pond and eventually the rest of the Other Garden turned grey and transformed into stone.

Trivia

 * It's possible that the Other Father was trying to warn Coraline of the Other Mother's intentions from the beginning, as his song possesses subliminal messages about the Other Mother's intentions and future events.