The Outsider is a fictional supernatural being in Arkane Studios' Dishonored franchise, residing in an empty otherworldly dimension called the Void.

In the lead-up to Dishonored's release, the Outsider was introduced in more detail in The Tales from Dunwall, a series of webisodes giving more information on the game's lore.

Taylor was not familiar with the game beforehand, but studied Lush's "amazing" performance in preparation of the role and was given detailed information on the character and the world by Arkane.

[4] Dishonored 2 takes place 15 years after the events of the first game, and in it the player can choose to play as either Corvo Attano or Empress Emily Kaldwin.

The throne is usurped by the witch Delilah, who strips Corvo of the Outsider's mark and turns the character the player hasn't chosen to stone.

There she finds the Outsider's physical presence, carefully guarded by cultists and encased in stone, surrounded by Daud and other dead spirits wandering the Void.

Rath supports this position with how other characters gifted by the Outsider—Daud, Granny Rags, Piero—all seem headed for "a bad end", destabilizing Dunwall in the progress.

[9] Jeff Howard considered the Outsider a "trickster figure" whose "moral Otherness" from the rest of Dunwall society allowed the magic of the franchise's world to be an "amoral force", whose uses are left up to the player.

[10] Frank G. Bosman sees the Outsider as a "morally neutral" figure whose ties to the Biblical Leviathan represent an association with the primal chaos before creation.

With the Outsider as a figure of "chaos and anarchy" whose grace is "arbitrary", the Abbey in opposition to him fight for "order, discipline, separation and rationality", and more negatively "for the inclination of domination and control"—thereby themselves becoming complicit in the oppression of the common people by Dunwall's elite.

Dishonored 2 intended to detail more of his backstory, with Smith describing him as someone who "suffered great abuse" before becoming the Outsider and now "struggles to maintain some sort of human consciousness".

[12] Ricardo Bare, lead technical designer of the first Dishonored, acknowledged the Outsider had done things that reminded people of trickster gods, but preferred to relate him to the Jungian shadow self.

[16] GamesRadar's Alex Avard considered the ending of Death of the Outsider to "shatter all of our preconceived notions" by revealing him to be an "incarcerated victim" rather than a "machiavellian villain".

Club's Matt Gerardi commented: "[The Outsider]'s the ultimate symbol of the abuse that Dishonored's many monstrous characters perform and a reminder that [...] humanity's inclination to do evil to each other is a far greater threat than some unknowable agent".

[22] Art director Sébastien Mitton called the Outsider a twisted projection of the player, giving this as a reason for the character's "androgynous" look.

[23] Javy Gwaltney, for Game Informer, wrote that the Outsider was "an embodiment of what Dishonored is all about: an intersection between our choices and our identity, a celebration of the flexible design of immersive sims themselves, and the responsibility that comes with great power".

[28] Kirk Hamilton of Kotaku contrasted him unfavorably to the Lutece twins from BioShock Infinite, similar characters in a "mysterious stranger" role.

[30] In the lead-up to Death of the Outsider's release, Rock Paper Shotgun's Adam Smith criticized the character and wrote how he would be glad to kill him.

Smith called the character "condescending and smug", and felt that the more fantastical elements of the Dishonored world were "a distraction" from the rest of the series' "grungy reality and messy class conflicts".

Hillier commented on the differing fan depictions and readings of the character, from lovable scamp to devil figure, calling the Outsider "delightfully ambiguous and open to interpretation".