The characters of the Madness Combat world have a very simple, cartoony design that has nonetheless been a great part of the stylish action of the series. Originally it was assumed that the characters were simply stylized humans (in fact, Krinkels has drawn concept art of the characters as humans in the past) but in recent years it is clear that the characters are their own species with a unique character anatomy. The species name is revealed to be "Nevadean" in MADNESS: Project Nexus. Their simplistic design is rather iconic and memorable yet so cartoonish for a violent series such as Madness.
The species as a whole is based on a facsimile of a human, though heavily simplified and with many stylistic liberties. Their bodies consist of four main parts: the head, body, hands, and feet.
Nevadean anatomy poster extracted from M:PN. The poster can be found in the commercial sector of Nexus City.
Head[]
The head is very simple to understand. The face is represented by a cross, which is a technique often used when drawing to help locate facial parts. For example, the mouth would be at the bottom, the eyes would be at the left and right points, and the forehead at the top. In later episodes of Madness Combat, most characters began to wear sunglasses or other facial equipment to help identify these points. The few characters to lack the facial cross are Mag Hank, the Auditor, the Mag Agent: V3, the Demon and the Sun.
The Mag Agent: V5's brain.
The heads of characters are known to have brains. At the end of Madness Combat 4: Apotheosis, when Hank slices a zombified 1337 agent's head in half, it revealed a brain, a throat, a skull, and a tongue. In Incident: 110A, Jesus exposes, pulls out, and destroys a mag agent's brain. Another appearance of a brain was in Tricky Madness 2, when Tricky punches a hole in Jesus' head, some of his brain is visible. In addition to this, Tricky takes out the organs of 2 grunts; one with a hunting machete, and the other with a chainsaw.
Inside of a Zombie's head, showing the bones of the skull and the Zombie's brain inside their cranium.
The presence of teeth is also in several characters. At the start of Madness Combat 5: Depredation, when Hank shoots an agent through the back of his head, the bullet comes out through the mouth area and exposes his teeth. Hank in Madness Combat 6: Antipathy and zombies have been shown with teeth.
Nevadeans also appear to be completely missing nasal cavities on their skulls. This is seen with Scrapeface's exposed skull during An Experiment and with the skeletons summoned by Tricky during Madness Combat 11: Expurgation. While this would suggest the inability to detect smells, MPN/Deimos and MPN/Sanford make a comment during MADNESS: Project Nexus's MPN/Inner City story mode mission about the smell of indoor garbage fires moments before using a pair of gas masks to protect themselves from being poisoned by said fires.
The M:PN (Classic) Abomination's nose
In M:PN (Classic), one of the Abomination's sprites have nose holes. This may suggest that they are either mutated/altered to have these, or this may simply be a mistake.
Body[]
Position of the neck and waist
The body consists of a neck, torso, and waist. The neck however is sometimes shown to be a part of the head and a part of the body (See image on right). This is shown by when enemies have their heads ripped off. It could also be that, the characters do not visually have necks, just as they do not visually have arms.
Various organs
Characters, when wearing clothing such as shirts and jackets, are shown to extend all the way to the end of the body. This is mostly for visual appearance. In Madness Combat 6.5, Deimos is seen wearing a belt around his waist. However, Sanford is wearing camo shorts, which are buckled higher above the regular character's waist. This however, is all for visual appearance, because Sanford's main clothing item is shorts. The waist was moved up to better represent it.
Certain organs have been shown in the series. In Madness Combat 7: Consternation, Hank kills two grunts who were being trained by an agent; one by ripping out his heart, and the other by tearing skin off his body and head, exposing some bones and his teeth. In Madness Combat 9: Aggregation, the corpse of Jesus after the first normality restoration blast shows his skull and rib cage.
It is implied that Nevadeans can consume and digest inorganic materials in order to survive, as seen with the bandits in MADNESS: Project Nexus. This is reinforced with the presence of hotdogs, beer bottles, etc. More evidence to support this is the teeth present in skulls and zeds, and the digestive system in the image to the left. Presumably there are some elimination organs, as suggested by the Urinal in Madness: Interactive (though this could have been chosen purely for comedic effect), but these have not been seen or mentioned.
Krinkels has stated that characters in the Madness universe don't have elastic skins as ours and they would feel like "clay" to real life people
Grunts have been said to not possess reproductive organs and when asked "How are grunts born?" Krinkels replied with "they just sort of happen".
Hands[]
The hands of characters can be seen "floating" in mid-air. This is because there are no arms seen visually, excluding in Madness Combat 9: Aggregation, Madness Combat 10: Abrogation and Madness Combat 11: Expurgation when Hank has a mutated arm. It is shown in An Experiment that hands can be removed from the body if the two are separated by a wall, the subject will be dragged towards the hands' position but eventually the two will become disconnected until brought back together. However, the process is reversible, and is not comparable to an amputation, and furthermore the hands can still move (and bleed) while temporarily disconnected. This process is very painful, but also seems to grant reality-distorting abilities to the individual undergoing the operation, presumably due to reality itself glitching out due to pushing the limits of how the hands work in the Madness Combat Universe, however, this glitching effect will not happen with dead bodies, and it would be possible to safely remove them at that point.
Incident:100A features Sanford holding a Grunt in a headlock. Despite the lack of arms, the Grunt still behaves as if there is an arm around his throat.
Feet[]
The feet of Madness characters are connected directly to the body. There is no space indicating any sort of legs. Most characters are shown performing a leaning gesture when picking up certain items that indicate kneeling, although characters do not have knees. In Madness Combat 7.5, Sanford army crawls on his stomach rather than kneeling because it is easier to be seen visually. In Madness Combat 8: Inundation, Jesus appears to fall to his knees after being shot by the Auditor. In Madness Combat 9.5 part 2, Tricky seems to mysteriously have his own foot fall off after getting angry at Hank for bashing his head with a falchion. It's unknown if Tricky did this on purpose or the weird shape of his body after getting angry caused him to lose the foot.
In Madness: Project Nexus, character models have legs and knees underneath their torsos. These are never actually seen, and are only visible when watching a character move or in the files for the models.
Aging and Sex[]
An interpretation of Krinkels' response to a question on CuriousCat suggests that while characters are able to age, further backed up by Rich growing a beard in MADNESS: Project Nexus, few characters (or at least characters that affiliate themselves with the Nexus Core or with the A.A.H.W.) are able to reach ages where they could be considered objectively old. Krinkels has also implied that aging is irrelevant in Nevada.
Krinkels has heavily implied that the characters are all technically sexless. Nonetheless, every character so far has displayed largely masculine features, clothes, and names. Every character has been referred to with the pronouns "he/him/his", though as of Madness Combat 9.5, Krinkels has started calling Hank as both "he" and "they", seemingly at random. However, this later turned out to be intentional, as multiple Hanks are trapped within the Other Place, indicating that Hank can be referred to in both singular and plural terms. The Auditor has also been referred to with they/them pronouns by Krinkels, along with Church as seen in this image. Krinkels also jokingly(?) stated that Tricky canonically has "boobies".[citation needed]