that's why it's beautiful

Partial game timeline

• Born on the 27th January 1899 - in the Amestrian calendar, which isn't the same as the Gregorian calendar. He's already picked up the habit of telling people it's 1905 to avoid odd questions, though; it's not as if he has any paperwork to contradict that.
• Right-handed, so the hand he writes with isn't dominant. When he started writing left-handed, he'd print most things just so they were legible. Years later, he's considerably faster and doesn't need to any more, but his handwriting remains on the scrawly side. He prefers chalk and a hard surface when he has the option, although he still favours pen and paper over typing, at which he's a little slow.
• Naturally has something of a xenophobic streak, which he's aware of and usually manages to ignore. It extends to non-humans, provided he can actually tell.
• All-round quick on the uptake, but especially when it comes to languages. In particular, he didn't know German the instant he passed through the Gate, and had to learn it the hard way. By the time of the movie he was near-idiomatically fluent, but still had a slight accent and some grammatical quirks that just weren't depicted; most native speakers would notice he was foreign after a few sentences at best. (On the other hand, his English was fine.)
• The anecdotes he's used to relating were always restricted to the relatively light-hearted wacky adventures that he knew people would consider fantastical instead of creepy. He never breathed a word about anything that happened in the series after arriving in Ishval. The homunculi he might have described in passing, but not by name, and he's been completely silent about Dante (except obviously in front of his dad).
• He doesn't drink that much. It's mainly social, plus occasionally when he thinks there's too much going on in his head for him to get to sleep otherwise, but normally he's just fine with juggling plenty of things in his head without it.
• Drunk Ed is largely just regular Ed with a bit more of an inclination to ramble but not much less cageyness overall.
• As far as Ed knows (leaving open the possibility that it just never came up), Alfons was an only child, and the alternate Ed who died in London wasn't any close relative of his.
• Had a very brief thing with Noah not too long after the movie. They split up amicably.