Oh! Just thought of something interesting. Since you're living in the cursed forest when you're so big, perhaps it would be possible that you could get jumped by one of the characters while sleeping in the forest? That could be interesting...
Surprisingly, I assume you haven't gotten to dreams yet. Perhaps this can be another way to guide you along the path of characters and giving you hints on what to do with them. For example, you could have a dream of impressing the Dinosaur Knight while he's working in the gym to give you a hint on progressing with him.
It also may be possible to even have dreams of characters you haven't even encountered yet. Possibly giving us teasers of later characters. But let's not get too out of scope that it ruins the quality of the game!
In any case I hope we can not only have some fun with these characters but also learn more about them. Actually I have a list of characters in the order I find them interesting. But it might be a bit long to put in one post.