if it can help you, regarding the problem with WHDLoad, it seems I managed to solve it using the NoVBRMove tooltype
https://www.whdload.de/docs/en/opt.html#NoVBRMove
still about the character lock, not sure but it seemed to occur much more frequently when Tommy is using the knives and encounters the knife throwing characters in the tenth level, especially the first two knife throwing characters. Try it yourself when Tommy uses knives, it happened to me many times