Orel Puppington
Orel is the main character of the show. He is an 11 (later 12) year old boy whose quest is to be moral and good, which drives most of the plots of the episodes. He collects religious action figures and makes short animated movies with them. In his attempts to remain moral, he listens to Reverend Putty's sermons very closely. Even though he's very attentive and always means well, Orel tends to misinterpret the minister's teachings, leading to chaos for both him and the town.
One of the show's aspects has been Orel's slow awakening to the flaws of the people around him as well as expanding his personal belief system beyond the rigid fundamentalist Christian doctrine of the town. In "Praying", Orel defies his father's orders and uses Buddhist meditation to deal with his stress. In "Charity", Orel became a full-fledged drug addict. While in "Orel's Movie Premiere," Orel (perhaps without realizing the implications) uses rather harsh portrayals of the people around him in his home movies, most notably portraying his father as a sadistic, drunken snarling wolf (which in turn led to Dr. Potterswheel asking Clay if he was molesting his son to make him see him as such a monster)while still referring to the appearance as a " loyal and good " puppy, still somewhat unaware of Clay's true character.
After the disastrous sequence of events in the two-part season two finale "Nature," Orel loses all respect for his father. When Clay shoots Orel in the leg in a drunken state, followed by drinking the disinfectant (Clay: "This may sting a little") and subsequently denying fault for the incident (Clay: "Oh, I don't remember that, so that means it's not my fault"), Orel not only tells his father for the first time that he hates him, but when asked if he shot a bear that had wandered into their camp whilst Clay was passed out, Orel lies and states that it was Clay who had shot it in order to deny him the joy of fatherly pride. Later on, after "Hunting" Orel is seen still being polite and cheerful towards the townspeople, but becoming incredibly emotionally distant towards Clay: "Nesting" shows Orel being completely indifferent to Clay's threats of punishment in his study, completely in contrast to the audible gulp that took place in previous situations of the similar. As a result of the shooting (and likely Dr. Potterswheel's incompetent job in healing the leg), Orel gets a permanent limp, which Dino Stamotopolus said would have been kept throughout the series had it continued (and is indeed shown in the show's final scene of an adult Orel). Orel has yet to realize the flaws of the people in Moralton including his mother and his whole family (including his grandparents), though this is partly because Orel refuses to see anything but the good in people.
In the series finale, Orel realizes the exact nature of his father's relationship with Coach Stopframe, but the realization doesn't bother him much and a substantial bond between them develops. It's also shown that at the end, despite the apparent collapse of his family, Orel ultimately becomes a much better man than his father ever was, marrying his childhood sweetheart Christina Posabule and maintaining a loving, happy family with two kids and a puppy, unlike his still unhappy parents.