History Characters / Hannibal

* AmbiguousDisorder: He's directly asked if he falls somewhere on the autism spectrum and exhibits several characteristics commonly associated with Asperger's (e.g. difficulties in grasping social norms, inappropriately blunt remarks and trouble maintaining eye contact). Bryan Fuller has stated that "[With Asperger's] you can't [instinctively] read social cues. He has an empathy disorder where he reads too much and it overwhelms him." Expanded upon in ''Buffet Froid'' where Hannibal says that Will possesses an abnormally high number of [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_neuron Mirror Neurons]].

** Ironically, this description of Will's "empathy disorder" (taking in too much at once, leading to an overload) quite neatly matches with several psychiatric theories of autism, which Bryan Fuller does not appear to be particularly well-read on.

* CastingGag: Given that Anderson played [[spoiler: ''Series/TheXFiles'' a Clarice Starling-inspired FBI Agent for 10 years]]...

* CastingGag: Given that Anderson played [[''Series/TheXFiles'' a Clarice Starling-inspired FBI Agent for 10 years]]...

* DelusionsofDoghood

* {{Sleepwalking}}: Starts having bouts of this. First he wakes up on the road a few miles from his house, and then later wakes up standing on his own roof, having somehow gotten out there during the night.
* SanitySlippage: As detailed above - he feels the way killers feel, and worries he'll eventually do as they do. Suffering from a neurodegenerative illness which he was unaware of from as early as ''Coquilles'' certainly didn't help one bit. As of Season 2, he's finally been treated for encephalitis, so the worst of his neurological madness is behind him. Now he simply has to cope with being framed, locked up in an insane asylum, and potentially executed for his crimes, along with his original mild instability. Easy-peasy.

* YourApprovalFillsMeWithShame: At the end of Su-zakana, Hannibal is openly delighted to see Will [[spoiler:ready to execute a serial killer in cold blood.]]

** Several times, he has touched Will Graham as though to reassure him after Will has done something to compromise his morals. In Trou Normand, he only rests a hand on Will's shoulder after Will decides not to [[spoiler:tell the FBI that Abigail Hobbs killed Nicholas Boyle]]; by Su-zakana, when Will [[spoiler:tries to shoot a helpless serial killer whom he thought couldn't be prosecuted]], he cups his cheek with open delight.

** This is also clearly show in his fight with [[spoiler:Jack, at the start of season 2]] who he is outmatched by. Mads Mikkelsen himself remarked the only way for him to win in that fight was to cheat.

* FrameUp: [[spoiler:He murders Dr. Sutcliffe, then frames Georgia for the killing. In the season 1 finale, he framed Will for his murder of Abigail, leading to Will's incarceration in a psychiatric facility. In season 2, he frames Chilton for the murders of Abel Gideon and two FBI agents.]]

* SerialKillerKiller: In season 1, he kills Tobias in self-defense, and later kills Georgia because she witnessed Sutcliffe's murder. [[spoiler:In season 2, he murders the man responsible for a wave of killings and installs him in his own "mural" made of human bodies.]] Subverted in that Hannibal kills other serial killers for pragmatic rather than moral reasons.

* ShirtlessScene: He has several in ''Mukōzuke'', such as when he's swimming, and later when [[spoiler:Matthew Brown torments him and nearly kills him while he's wearing nothing but swimming trunks. His love scenes with Alana in season 2 also show him shirtless.]]

** [[spoiler: Miriam's death is unusual in that he internalized responsibility for it. Although she's not actually dead]]
** He develops beyond this in season 2, [[spoiler:accepting his complicity in what happened to Will, and telling Alana she was right to report him, even though it may destroy his career.]]

* StoutStrength: As show in the season 2 opener [[spoiler:against Hannibal, who is more of a LightningBruiser]].

* TookALevelInJerkass: Halfway through season 2. She goes from being kindly, sympathetic, and very level-headed (if disillusioned) with Will to resenting him for [[spoiler: trying to kill Hannibal.]] After she [[spoiler: enters into a romantic relationship with Hannibal]], her screen time is basically split between her chiding Will or Jack for [[spoiler: Will getting off lightly over the attempted murder]], to her [[spoiler: in bed with Hannibal]] lamenting about how much pain and grief Will's actions have caused the both of them. It doesn't help that [[DramaticIrony the audience knows Will is completely correct]] and that [[spoiler: Hannibal is just using Alana as part of a greater alibi.]]

* BeneathTheMask: Throughout season 1, Bedelia presents herself as calm and confident. [[spoiler: In season 2, when she ends her therapy sessions with Hannibal, the mask drops. Her voice and body language become that of a fragile, traumatized woman.]]

* CastingGag: Given that Anderson played [[Series/TheXFiles a Clarice Starling-inspired FBI Agent for 10 years]]...
* DefrostingIceQueen: Throughout season 1, she presents a cool exterior while maintaining professional boundaries with Hannibal. By "Savoureux", however, she agrees to see Hannibal outside of a clinical context when they dine at her house one evening.

** [[spoiler:Subverted in season 2 when she realizes that Hannibal is dangerous, and that he may have had something to do with Will Graham's institutionalization.]]
* [[spoiler:ScrewThisImOuttaHere:]] In season 2, [[spoiler:she realizes that Hannibal is dangerous and ends their therapeutic relationship. Soon thereafter, she goes into self-imposed exile, disappearing without a trace.]]

Phyllis "Bella" Crawford is a NATO staff member and wife to FBI Behavioral Science Unit chief Jack Crawford. The two met many years ago in Italy; Phyllis earned the nickname "Bella" because the local Italian men kept calling her "''bella, bella''" ("beautiful, beautiful"). She and Jack have maintained a basically happy marriage, but as two headstrong, career-oriented individuals, communication between them has often been strained � especially during Bella�s most recent crisis, which she hoped to hide from her husband.

* AndShowItToYou: In ''Rôti'', Dr. Gideon kidnaps him and begins taking out his organs while he's still conscious. He doesn't quite get to his heart and Chilton is still alive when Crawford arrives because Freddie is keeping him alive with a ventilator. He eventually recovers by season two, minus one kidney and forced to go vegetarian.

* BeardOfEvil: Not so much evil as despicable. Season 2 he's shaven it off. Whether this may be [[HeelFaceTurn symbolic]] is yet to be seen.

* {{Pride}}: He oozes it. [[spoiler: Will uses Chilton's pride to his advantage in season 2, offering Chilton the privilege of studying his mind as long as he removes Hannibal from the equation.]]

* SmugSmiler: He is ''very'' convinced of his own talent for psychoanalysis, telling the seasoned FBI profiler Dr Bloom that her observations were "more or less helpful" to him. And his reaction to Will is ''appalling'', describing the empathic gift as a "thing" he'd love to dissect to Will's face - basically embodying all the reasons Will doesn't much like psychoanalysts or psychiatric hospitals. In the season 2 premiere, he can barely contain his excitement towards Will during their sessions as Will serenely ignores every single thing that comes out of his mouth. Just to drive Will's opinion of Chilton home, he disdainfully points out he's completely aware Chilton records any conversations he has and calls it "gossipy".

* ItAmusedMe: A motivation in season 2.

* LossOfIdentity: By the end of his story arc in season one he's fallen fully into this.

* ManipulativeBastard: In season 2.

* NotQuiteDead: As revealed in season 2. Turns out Will's shot to the head wasn't as fatal as it appeared, something he snarks about.

* PetTheDog: [[WordOfGod According to Bryan Fuller]], he genuinely wanted to prevent Will from becoming a killer in season 2. Why he did so is anyone's guess, considering Will tried to kill him.

Will Graham's attorney in season 2.

* TheDogBitesBack: [[spoiler:After his social worker Clark Ingram manipulates him, frames him, and releases all his pets, Peter overpowers him and sews him into a dead horse so that he'll understand how his victims suffered.]]

* MessyHair: It doesn't matter whether he's asleep, just woken up, wandering around semi-conscious in his underwear, dressed for teaching, or visiting someone; his hair is always the same mass of untamed curls. One suspects that if he does own a comb, it gets used on his dogs (who all have very well-maintained coats). Likewise, though he owns a hair dryer, we only see him using it to dry a dog after its bath. As of the end of Yakimono, however, he's sporting a quite neatly styled new 'do as part of his new "lure" for Hannibal.

* TookALevelInBadass: When Will gets released in ''Yakimono,'' his entire demeanor has shifted. No longer is he the nervous, mentally unstable wreck he was prior to his incarceration, but he is clear-headed, confident in his words, and possibly even colder than he was before, but out of determined clarity rather than from his antisocial tendencies.

An anthropologist at the Natural History Museum who kills wearing a mechanical suit that mimics the killing style of predatory animals. Also a former patient of Hannibal's.

* SplitPersonality: Of a sort. Suffers from an identity disorder where he believed he was born as the wrong species. He is aware that he isn't able to physically transform into an animal but he appeases his predatory instincts by building a suit that imitates physical attributes of animals.

* BatmanGambit: In Season 2, Will starts to perform these. In ''Mukōzuke'', he plays on Freddie Lounds' obsession with him and offers her an exclusive interview as part of his plan to discover his secret admirer. He then plays on his admirer's affections by convincing him to [[spoiler: kill Hannibal.]] He's also clearly playing with Hannibal's perceptions of him. Since [[spoiler: being released from the asylum]], he's resumed his therapy with Hannibal, and is playing a careful balancing act with his own behavior to entice Hannibal in a move that WordOfGod has outright referred to as "Seduction".

** In ''Shiizakana'', he [[spoiler: beats a man to death for doing precisely that.]] Poor Buster.

* EasilyForgiven: For his treatment towards Hannibal during his incarceration by both Jack and even Hannibal himself. Subverted with Alana Bloom, to whom Will becomes a BrokenPedestal too.

** Illustrated vividly in ''Mukōzuke'', when he imagines growing his own pair of Wendigo antlers after [[spoiler:asking a serial killer to murder Hannibal]].

* OrderliesAreCreeps: He even says that being an orderly is good for people like him and Will; if institutionalized, once you already know a lot of the drills, no one suspects you, and you learn a lot.

* LipstickLesbian: Implied to be one of the reasons why her brother is inheriting the family company and not her.
** It's actually outright stated that this and her being a woman are the reasons.

* LipstickLesbian: Implied to be one of the reasons why her brother is inheriting the family company and not her.
** It's actually outright stated that this and her being a woman are the reasons.

* AmbiguousDisorder: He's directly asked if he falls somewhere on the autism spectrum and exhibits several characteristics commonly associated with Asperger's (e.g. difficulties in grasping social norms, inappropriately blunt remarks and trouble maintaining eye contact). Bryan Fuller has stated that "[With Asperger's] you can't read social cues.[[note]]This is misleading; people with Asperger's can't read them ''instinctively'', but can definitely learn how to do it, similarly to acquiring a second language or naturalising in a foreign culture. For more on the subject, read the UsefulNotes about UsefuelNotes/AspergersSyndrome.[[/note]] He has an empathy disorder where he reads too much and it overwhelms him." Expanded upon in ''Buffet Froid'' where Hannibal says that Will possesses an abnormally high number of [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_neuron Mirror Neurons]].

* WardensAreEvil: Boy howdy. He brainwashes Gideon into believing he's the Chesapeake Ripper. He secretly records nearly all of his inmate's conversations, [[spoiler:and secretly shares Will's conversations with Hannibal without his consent. He also hired Matthew Brown as an orderly, despite Brown's history of mental illness.]]
** This is a YMMV. Chilton may be generally incompetent at his job and a pompous ass, but he's hardly an evil warden. He's more of an administrative egomaniacal GloryHound. He didn't share Will's conversations with Hannibal, he discussed Will's therapy ([[JerkAss though he also had agreed with not to]]). He later explained it was part of a XanatosGambit (how [[GambitRoulette successful]] it'd be due to Hannibal being a master of XanatosSpeedChess remains unknown).

** PayEvilUntoEvil: In ''Su-zakana'', [[spoiler:he would have killed a particularly loathsome serial killer in cold blood if Hannibal hadn't stopped him.]]
** UnscrupulousHero: [[spoiler:After being institutionalized and framed for Hannibal's murders, Will is forced to use increasingly risky and extreme methods in his attempts to expose Hannibal. When working with Beverly results in her death at Lecter's hands, Will goes all out and sends [[TheSociopath Matthew Brown]] to kill him.]]

* [[spoiler: [[HeKnowsTooMuch She Knows Too Much]]: Hannibal kidnapped her as soon as she realized that he was the Chesapeake Ripper.]]
* SuspiciouslySimilarSubstitute: For [[TheSilenceoftheLambs Clarice Starling]].
** And ironically [[spoiler:Catherine Martin, what with being trapped at the bottom of a pit (in her case a well) by a psycho.]]

* CastingGag: Given that Anderson played [[TheXFiles a Clarice Starling-inspired FBI Agent for 10 years]]...

* BerserkButton: Will puts up with a lot of things, but someone hurting his beloved dogs? Absolutely ''not''.

* FriendToAllLivingThings: His barn is full of animals. When he learns that a starling was discovered in a murder victim's body, he's concerned about who's caring for it.

* ATasteOfTheirOwnMedicine: [[spoiler:He sews Clark Ingram up in a dead horse, just as Ingram did to his last victim.]]

[[caption-width-right:350:''"It's hard to be your own person when you can't get out of your own head."'']]

* [[spoiler: KilledOffScreen: Presumably killed straight after his morbid last meal with Hannibal.]]

* BatmanGambit: In Season 2, Will starts to perform these. In ''Mukōzuke'', he plays on Freddie Lounds' obsession with him and offers her an exclusive interview as part of his plan to discover his secret admirer. He then plays on his admirer's affections by convincing him to [[spoiler: kill Hannibal.]] He's also clearly playing with Hannibal's perceptions of him. Since [[being released from the asylum]], he's resumed his therapy with Hannibal, and is playing a careful balancing act with his own behavior to entice Hannibal in a move that WordOfGod has outright referred to as "Seduction".