Henry Stein

"Alright, Joey. I'm here. Let's see if we can find what you wanted me to see."

— Upon revisiting Joey Drew Studios from the beginning,

Bendy and the Ink Machine: Chapter 1
Henry Stein is a former animator of Joey Drew Studios working under his work partner Joey Drew. He is responsible for the creation of various cartoon characters, including Bendy, Boris the Wolf, and Alice Angel.

He is the main protagonist of Bendy and the Ink Machine. After having left his old workplace for 30 years, a letter from his old friend and ex-business partner, Joey Drew, takes Henry back to the studio to discover "something special." It soon becomes clear that the technology Joey wanted to reveal, the Ink Machine, is no mere animation tool, but also works to bring cartoon characters to life with horrifying results. Now, Henry must use his wits to survive the cartoon horrors that stalk the halls of the abandoned studio and escape to the outside world in any way possible to free himself from their wrath and the other horrors of the abandoned studio.

Physical Appearance
While it is currently unclear what he exactly looks like, his eye level is at the same height as Buddy Boris, Tom, Twisted Alice, and Allison Angel, implying that he is a tall man.

Personality
Henry is a rather soft-spoken man, rarely expressing emotions stronger than minor shock and/or annoyance upon seeing the bizarre happenings at the studio, as well as sentimentality upon recording how much he misses his wife Linda as evident by the third Chapter 5 audio teaser. As the co-founder of Joey Drew Studios, he was a punctual worker, claiming of always being on time, whenever using the punch-machines, and when Joey Drew reacts in surprise to him arriving at his apartment one hour prior to when Joey was expecting him, which incidentally caused him to jokingly remark "Now you're just trying to impress me.". He also seems to be curious about his surroundings and the things he doesn't remember since his departure 30 years ago. It is revealed that his obliviousness was due to the fact that despite the fact that he joined Joey Drew Studios upon its founding date in 1929, he left the company one year later. He does show signs of optimism and a positive attitude on rare occasions, as evidenced in his dialogue diary from an old audio log during his past employment at the studio found in Chapter 3. He even admits to Allison Angel that he has no idea why he's caught up in his own situation. As evident by his audio logs in general, he is shown to have been pushed over the edge.

In the audio log teasers for Chapter 5, Henry seems to show signs of pessimism, slowly losing hope in escaping the studio. In the third teaser, he mentions how much he misses Linda and what he had gained ever since he left the studio warning others that if they get out, they shouldn't return to the studio no matter what.

Early Life
Henry and Joey Drew decides to open an animation studio having great goals in mind. He starts working with Joey at the animation studio on 1929. Due to Joey's questionable work ethic, Henry decided to leave the studio around the early 1930's so that he could also go move to Pasadena, California[1] and spend more time with his wife, Linda.[2]

Chapter 1: Moving Pictures
The letter Henry gets from Joey Drew.

The game begins after Henry receives a letter from Joey Drew, asking him to visit the workshop. Upon entering, he quickly discovers that the power is still running and that references to the studio's creation, Bendy, The little devil, are strewn throughout the environment. It isn't long before he finds the Ink Machine and decides to activate it to see what it does.

During his exploration in the studio to find the six items necessary to turn the Machine on, Henry is shocked to discover the dissected corpse of Boris the Wolf, strapped to a table, and wonders what Joey could have been doing to do this. He restores the ink pressure in the theater, then returns to the break room and pulls a switch to turn the Ink Machine on. He goes back to the area where he previously found the Ink Machine, only to find that the entrance has been oddly blocked off from the outside.

As he approaches, a twisted and deformed ink monster known as Ink Bendy suddenly appears and lunges for Henry to knock him down before vanishing. As the studio begins to flood with ink, Henry runs for the exit door but the floor beneath him breaks and he falls downward, trapping him in the studio's basement.

Slowly draining the flood of ink as he ventures deeper, Henry uses an axe to break open a boarded door barring his path. Entering a strange room with a mysterious ritual symbol in the center, Henry is suddenly struck down with pain, seeing visions of strange images as the symbol begins to emit smoke. He collapses to the floor unconscious.

Chapter 2: The Old Song
Henry regains consciousness in the same room he passed out in. After he retrieves his axe that was propped against Grant Cohen's coffin, he heads down to Utility Shaft 9, remarking his surprise at the studio's size in his absence. He soon discovers evidence that he is not alone in the studio, finding graffiti and more diary cassettes from the former employees that speak about how the Ink Machine affected their daily working lives.

While walking down a hall, Henry notices a strange ink-covered figure, passing by from the hall and whistling while carrying a Bendy cutout. As soon as he approaches where the figure went, Henry is baffled to find that the man has walked through the wall. He enters the Music Department's entrance shortly after, the entrance to the audio recording sections of the studios where music and voices were recorded for the Bendy cartoons. Finding that the exit to the department is blocked off by another ink flood, Henry focuses on trying to drain it. He is also attacked by Searchers numerous times, strange creatures made of ink that appear out of the puddles in the ground.

After activating the ink pump from Sammy's office to drain the flood, Henry is suddenly hit on the back of his head and knocked out by an unknown assailant. When he regains consciousness, he finds that he has been attacked and tied up by Sammy Lawrence, the former music director transformed into the same ink-covered figure he saw and driven into a religious devotion to Ink Bendy. Thinking that the Ink Demon will free him from the body he considers to be a prison and abyss, he decides to use Henry as a sacrifice to Ink Bendy. In the commotion, however, Ink Bendy turns on Sammy and attacks him, given Henry the distraction he needs to escape by undoing the ropes that are holding him.

After his axe breaks trying to destroy the wood and debris in his path, Ink Bendy himself materializes before Henry can leave and chases him. As the walls once again begin to be corrupted with ink just from Ink Bendy's presence, Henry barely manages to escape and barricades the door behind him.

As he turns away to proceed, Henry sees a can of bacon soup rolling in from around the corner. Henry demands whoever's there to come out and show themselves, only to find that it is Buddy Boris, seemingly alive and well.

Chapter 3: Rise and Fall
Henry wakes up from sleep in the safehouse, somewhere that Buddy Boris has apparently been living and hiding from Ink Bendy in. Evidently, Henry has been hiding out with Buddy Boris for some unknown amount of time before deciding to finally find a way out. After giving Buddy Boris a bowl of Bacon Soup and retrieving the safehouse door's lever, Henry travels with Buddy Boris into the depths of the studio.

Henry discovers the entrance to Heavenly Toys, a merchandising section of the studio that he has no memory of. Making his way through the machines and discarded plush toys, he stumbles into a room dedicated to displaying the shorts and toys of Alice Angel, one of the studio's characters. As Alice's signature theme song begins to play, Henry is startled by the appearance of an inky and half-deformed woman by the name of "Twisted Alice", screaming that her name is also "Alice Angel". After she questions whether Henry is fit to walk among the angels, Henry reunites with Buddy Boris and the two search for her after killing Piper, a disfigured member of the gruesomely mutilated Butcher Gang trio.

Entering Twisted Alice's room, Henry and Buddy Boris discover numerous corpses of other cartoons all over, many of them being copies of Boris with their hearts removed. Twisted Alice explains that she has been taking pieces from the other failed cartoon creations in order to make herself "perfect". Claiming that she will help Henry escape if he does favors for her, she sends him out into the complex to find items for her.

Along the way, Henry must avoid Ink Bendy, who frequently appears without warning whenever Henry makes too much noise running. Henry can only escape him by hiding inside the Little Miracle Stations scattered through the halls, or closing the gate after entering the elevator. He also discovers the fate of Norman Polk, the former projectionist of the studio who has now turned into his job role as an ink monster with a projector for a head.

A hidden audio log from Henry himself, recorded only two weeks after the studio opened, can also be found. It confirms that Henry helped to set up the studio with Joey as a co-founder. He complains that Joey is only an "ideas man" rather than just a worker and that the constant flow of work has kept him away from a woman named Linda, Henry's wife. The diary ends with Henry remarking that he's come up with a new cartoon character (unknown if it were an existing character or a character who remains to be seen) that he thinks people will love.

After doing Twisted Alice's bidding and finding her required items, she allows Henry to enter the elevator and ascend to the surface. However, just before he reaches the top, Twisted Alice betrays him and sends the lift falling, screaming that she knows who Henry is and why he has come back to the studio. Yelling that the Boris traveling with him is "the most perfect" one she has seen and that she needs Buddy Boris in order to make herself perfect.

Shortly after the elevator crashes on Level S, mainly the Accounting & Finance location, Buddy Boris starts trying to wake Henry up. Although Twisted Alice soon arrives from the hallway, then snatches Buddy Boris into the darkness by force and Henry is left unconscious in the broken remains of the elevator.

Chapter 4: Colossal Wonders
After waking up beside the wrecked elevator, Henry begins exploring Level S, discovering the eventual madness and corruption of financial supervisor Grant Cohen. He gets into the nearby archives and finds a way through a door marked "private" by activating certain books on the shelves. After opening the door, Henry's vision distorts for a few seconds, then reverts back.

Henry comes to a deep chasm, finds a cable-gondola system to cross it. He repairs the mechanism by using an ink maker to turn the scooped ink into a Gear and crosses to the other side.

He then enters a long hallway, where he has a vision of hundreds of inky arms reaching out of the walls. He arrives in a shaft where the Ink Machine had previously descended and hears Twisted Alice speaking to him as he climbs the stairs, taunting him about Buddy Boris.

At the top of the stairs and entering the lounge & hideout, Henry discovers the Lost Ones, a gathering of the humanized ink creatures. He leaves them to enter a vent, and as he crawls through he encounters Ink Bendy and a suicidal Lost One before emerging into a room where he discovers the plans for a Bendy themed amusement park: Bendy Land. Henry opens the door to Storage 9, which he discovers contains various components of Bendy Land, including game booths, various ride parts, freaky costumes, and a haunted house.

Henry visits each department off of Bendy Land, finding switches to power up the haunted house and encountering the Butcher Gang, the Projectionist, Ink Bendy and a monstrous version of Bertrum Piedmont, the park's chief architect. After powering the haunted house, Henry enters and begins to ride, while Twisted Alice begins monologuing. After arriving in the house's ballroom, Henry is confronted by Buddy Boris, who is now a twisted version of himself, and Henry is forced to battle him. Using another Ink Maker, Henry creates Gent Pipes out of Brute Boris' inky blood and uses them to end his former friend, much to Twisted Alice's anger. She then rushes at Henry in a fit of rage and a desperate attempt to kill him herself but is stabbed through the chest before she can do so. After watching her lifeless body collapse to the floor, Henry looks upon the individuals who saved him, who are Allison Angel and Tom.

Chapter 5: The Last Reel
Henry awakes in Allison Angel and Tom's safehouse, listening to a song that Allison was singing as she paints ink messages on the wall. Henry starts talking to her, then she says that she doesn't remember her name and that people call her "Alice", and she states that she is no angel. When Henry wakes up, he sees Tom being asked by Allison to keep an eye on Henry as she leaves. After that, he sits on a chair and begins to hit his robotic arm with an axe, silently threatening him. In the next scene, Allison gives Henry some Bacon Soup in a bowl after stating that is the only thing edible that she could find and that she thinks that Henry might be hungry. After she leaves, Tom breaks it by shoving it onto the floor and begins to publicly show his dislike for Henry. After that, Tom leaves to confront Ink Bendy. In the next scene, Allison scolds Tom for his reckless actions, while Allison repairs his mechanical arm, stating that it's just a matter of time before Ink Bendy finds them. After that, he and Allison realize that the Ink Demon is right outside their base. Allison stated that they can't just leave Henry there, but Tom refuses to listen. Allison tries to break the wooden planks that Henry is trapped behind, but Tom places a gentle hand on Allison's shoulder, silently reassuring her that she did all she could.

Henry then uses the device that Allison gave to him to find a secret room in the prison and finds a Gent Pipe that he uses to break the plates in the door. Henry then escapes his prison, traversing through a series of tunnels where he is attacked by multiple Searchers. Henry then witnesses Allison and Tom departing on a barge across the Inky River. Henry follows in pursuit and boards the second barge, forced to navigate his way through while avoiding the giant hand that emerges from the ink and chases him. Henry arrives at the Lost Ones' Village, where he encounters the now-insane Sammy Lawrence, who escaped Ink Bendy, and was violently attacked. After knocking off Sammy's mask, Henry is thrown to the ground by Sammy and was almost killed. Fortunately, Tom sneaks up behind Sammy and digs his axe into Sammy's head, killing him for good. Henry, Tom and Allison then proceed to fight a horde of Searchers and Lost Ones. After an intense battle, Allison cuts down a door and the three continue on. Not long after, they come across an unstable-looking set of planks. Henry starts to cross them, but the plank breaks and falls down. He lands in the administration maze area and realizes he needs to obtain three pipes from the maze of offices and hallways. Within these halls, the Butcher Gang (having left Bendy Land) are lurking and searching for Henry, much to his dismay. He sneaks past them collecting the Ink and bringing it back to the Ink Maker where he constructs three pipe pieces. After he has fixed the ink circulation, Henry proceeds to the Vault.

As he enters the Vault, Allison and Tom arrive after descending the chasm, using Allison's trusty rope. Henry reveals that he is going to Ink Bendy's lair, which was where the Ink Machine was descending to, causing Allison to reluctantly agree. The three of them follow to the Ink Machine to a path that resembles the starting location from Chapter 1 (with Henry's old desk) and encounters Ink Bendy, who slowly walks by a hall with a wall made of glass. Henry is forced to enter the Ink Machine alone because of the ink river that surrounds the machine, which would cause Allison and Tom to die. Before parting ways, Henry admits to Allison that he has no idea why he is in this.

After entering the machine, Henry finds a throne room where Joey Drew's final audio log to him is located. During the log, Joey seemly communicates to Henry, saying that Henry is their last hope in stopping Ink Bendy and saving the lost souls. At the end of this, Joey reveals to Henry that although Ink Bendy saw the beginning of the Bendy show, he never saw how it ended. Henry takes a reel named "The End" and encounters Ink Bendy. He undergoes a gruesome transformation into a beast version of himself that attacks Henry. Henry then runs from this new form of Ink Bendy from all over the Ink Machine, turning on switches and breaking tubes where ink flows by. Henry returns to the throne room, where he places "The End" in a projection that makes all the screens change into the final, lost episode of the Bendy show. Beast Bendy is then caught by the reel and a strange and strong light coming from the projector, killing it once and for all.

Henry ends up in Joey Drew's apartment, where he talks to his old friend that says how Henry has a perfect family and he only has a ruined empire, how he ended up doing terrible things to his studio, his workers, and himself, and how Henry's acts finally convinced him to do the right thing. He states that Henry might see how the studio ended after all those years and Henry opens a door, where he reenters the studio, going back to Chapter 1 leading many players to the story of Bendy and The Ink Machine.

Henry's autograph on the framed picture.

In a post-credits cutscene, the camera zoom from across the other side of Joey's kitchen to a nearby photo frame of Bendy, Boris, and Alice, with Henry's signature across it, revealing Henry's surname to be Stein. Shortly after, a young voice of Joey's niece was heard from Joey to tell her another story.

Bendy and the Ink Machine
Henry does not have a model in the game files to view, most likely due to the game being played from his perspective.

In addition, Henry does not cast shadows nor leave ink trails after walking in an ink pool.

Strangely enough, Henry has no reflection in the mirror at the lavatory of the safehouse from Chapter 3. Using the Seeing Tool on the mirror revealed the message, "Who Am I Now?".

TheMeatly, the creator of Bendy and the Ink Machine, is the voice of Henry. On the first Q&A video, when asked if theMeatly really voiced Henry, theMeatly jokingly said that while he could understand why people would think that, he could not confirm or deny the answer while using Henry's voice.

Henry is the only character Sammy never mentioned during the Hot Topic Q&A on Twitter, despite numerous fans asking questions about him. This was probably to avoid giving out spoilers.

Henry seems to be heavily influenced of the real-life animator Ub Iwerks, with both having a similar long-time partnership with Walt Disney as well as being responsible for co-creating both companies' mascots.

Henry is one of few surviving employees of Joey Drew Studios that didn't get corrupted by the ink along with Wally Franks and Joey Drew himself.

According to Crack-Up Comics Joey Drew is 71 years old as of 1972. Since the events of Bendy and the Ink Machine take place in 1963, it means that Joey would only be 62 at the time of Henry's return to the studio. If that is indeed the case, it means that Henry has remained trapped in The Cycle for 9 years.

Chapter 1: Moving Pictures
Henry has some sound files which only occur in the prototype for Chapter 1:

He lets out a gasp and then a relieving sigh when encountering the Bendy cutout for the first time to express his startled emotion. His question of who put the Bendy cutout in front of him occurs instantly rather than after approaching it.

Henry also used to comment "I'm getting the hell out of here!" after encountering Ink Bendy when the entire workshop starts flooding.

All of Henry's voice clips in the prototype are slightly higher pitched than in the full release versions and as well lacked faint echoing effects. This is probably because they weren't as edited as the full release versions.

Chapter 2: The Old Song
There was a bug where Henry's next subtitle along with his "Where the hell did he go?" dialogue are out of sync when rushing to the entrance hall quickly after he finished speaking to try seeking Sammy for help. This was fixed in a patch upon Chapter 4's release.

Chapter 3: Rise and Fall
There was an dialogue for Henry which was not used anywhere in this chapter but only located in the files: "What the heck was that?".

Chapter 5: The Last Reel
A short countdown series of teaser videos are uploaded in Joey Drew Studios Inc.'s YouTube channel starting from October 3 to October 17, 2018, playing one of each three audio logs of Henry's diary dialogue.

Chapter ?: The Archives
In the Archives, there is a stand for Henry that is empty. If you stand on it, you will unlock an achievement called "Standing Proud".

Miscellaneous

Even though he is American, Henry's surname "Stein" is a common German-Jewish name. The name derived from German means "stone" or "rock".

Stein also bears resemblance to Frankenstein's name. This perhaps suggests a similarity in stories.

Henry is inspired by the real-life animator and creator of Mickey Mouse, Ub Iwerks, who was of German ancestry.

According to Crack-Up Comics, Joey Drew is 71 years old as of 1972. Since the events of Bendy and the Ink Machine take place in 1963, it means that Joey would only be 62 at the time of Henry's return to the studio. If that is indeed the case, it means that Henry has remained trapped in the Cycle for 9 years.

In the Dreams Come to Life novel, while Henry has already left the company for a very long time, Buddy Lewek uses Henry's desk to work at the workstation.