Warning! Here be spoilers!
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The Adamas
Joseph Adama
Played By: Esai Morales
Father of William and Tamara Adama, an attorney working for the Tauran mafia in Caprica City.
- Amoral Attorney: He's a mob lawyer.
- Bumbling Dad: When it comes to Willie, Joseph generally is unsure of how to proceed. It's clear from early on his relationship with his son is strained, all the more so because he's preoccupied with Tamara. His brother calls him out on it several times, even basically taking custody of Willie when Joseph really hits bottom.
- Deal with the Devil: The Ha'la'tha paid for his college and law school education.
- Papa Wolf: At least when it comes to Tamara. He will go to any lengths necessary to protect her. Somewhat Deconstructed in that it turns out she neither needs his protection nor wants it (since it's ruining his life and causing him to neglect her brother).
Sam Adama
Played By: Sasha Roiz
Joe's brother, a legbreaker and assassin for the Tauran mob.
- Anti-Villain: He's a hitman, but sees his job as being part of the protection of the Tauron immigrant community on Caprica.
- Cool Uncle: To Willie, whom he'd really rather not involve in criminal activity, though his nephew really wants to learn the family business.
- Deadpan Snarker: Has a bone-dry wit.
- Friendly Neighborhood Gangster: Tauron immigrants treat him with respect and see the Ha'la'tha as protecting their interests from the Capricans who look down on them.
- Gayngster: He's homosexual and married to a man, and is a button man for organized crime.
- Manly Gay: He's a mob hitman for the gods' sake! Neither Sam nor his husband ever act effeminate or stereotypically gay. In many episodes, it's easy to miss his orientation entirely.
- Parental Substitute: Towards William, particularly since Shannon and Tamara's deaths and Joseph's subsequent lapse into deep depression.
- Tattooed Crook: Has a series of elaborate tattoos across his torso, all of which have specific meanings in Tauron culture. The markings on his chest indicate his allegiance to the Ha'la'tha while another marking indicates his relationship with his husband.
William Adama
Played By: Sina Najafi
Joe's young son.- Foregone Conclusion: He will live on to shake off his Ha'la'tha roots and become an Ace Pilot. Except he doesn't, since he's a different William Adama—Bill's older brother.
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Dyeing for Your Art: Averted, which also gave away the twist at the ending of the season. The actor of Old!William, Edward James Olmos, was dark-eyed but intentionally wore blue contacts for the role. So William#1 having a distinct Southern appearance with dark eyes already indicates that something is off here - why wasn't he outfitted with the same contacts if his older version had to do it? And lo and behold, the actual Young!William in the last episode has piercing blue eyes.
Tamara Adama
Played By: Genevieve Buechner
- Joe's teenage daughter.
- Action Girl: In the "New Cap City" V-World MMORPG.
- Death by Origin Story: The original, human Tamara is killed in the maglev bombing.
- Virtual Ghost: Her Avatar lives on in V-World after the original Tamara's death.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: Is said to be present but offscreen in the second-last episode, and not mentioned in the last episode or its "five years later" epilogue, leaving her fate up in the air.
Ruth
Played By: Karen Austin
Joe's mother-in-law.- Never Mess with Granny: "Tauron children play jacks with the bones of Tauron children who lose at jacks."
- Retired Badass: She used to be a Ha'la'tha assassin.
The Graystones
Daniel Graystone
Played By: Eric Stoltz
- Corrupt Corporate Executive: To some degree. He's much, much more human than your average CCE, however. At least until he lost his company whereupon he made a deal with the H'la'tha and Jumped Off The Slippery Slope
- Genre Blind: Oh no, creating a sentient slave race of war robots isn't going to have any consequences up the line. Well, okay, yes it does, just a few. Psychologically torturing your already-estranged daughter who just happens to be inside the prototype of that race probably didn't help, either.
- Jerkass Has a Point: When he points out that a virtual avatar that feels and thinks identically to his late daughter still isn't her and isn't ever going to be.
- Mad Scientist: To beat Vergis in winning the Caprican military contract, he performs twisted experiments on his daughter's virtual avatar even while insisting that she is his daughter and eventually creates a humanoid robot out of her.
- Supreme Chef: How does Dan Graystone relax? He makes dinner.
Amanda Graystone
Played By: Paula Malcomson
- Family Versus Career: Somewhat unfairly, Zoe accuses her of being both a trophy wife and a distant parent because she has a career as a plastic surgeon.
- Hospital Hottie: She's an M.D. and she's beautiful.
- Nice Girl: Would normally be Daniel's Morality Chain, were she not having an emotional breakdown over the fact that her daughter was a terrorist, being distracted by the ghost of her brother and Clarice's manipulation.
- No Sympathy: Towards Zoe, initially. But Amanda remembers life before they were rich, and regarded Zoe as more than a little spoiled.
Zoe Graystone
Played By: Alessandra Torresani
- Anti-Villain: Thinks she is going to lead a benign religious mass-conversion.
- Bratty Teenage Daughter: Lives in a mansion custom-designed to accommodate her claustrophobia, has just about anything she wants, her parents are busy but not hostile. Yet she behaves like an abused, neglected, child and acts out by joining a terrorist group. Deconstructed somewhat in that her parents were self-involved enough to not even realize she had a boyfriend and part of Zoe's anger at them came from genuine disgust at the corruption of Caprican society and lack of interest in their wealth.
- Came Back Wrong: The avatar did not actually possess all of Zoe's memories. For example, she does not know what Zoe's plan for her was, or why Zoe didn't trust Clarice. This causes her to improvise dangerously.
- Daddy's Girl: Her relationship with her father is very fraught, but she's visibly closer and has more in common with him than her mother and appears to have idolized him somewhat before she grew older and became disillusioned with his career.
- Death by Origin Story: The original, human Zoe is killed in the maglev bombing at the start of the show.
- Robot Girl: In both the U-87 and later her gynoid body.
- Teen Genius: Hands down the best computer programmer in the Colonies.
- Touched by Vorlons: It is strongly implied that Zoe's incredible intellect was cultivated by the Messenger that had been interacting with her since childhood.
- Virtual Ghost: The real Zoe dies in the maglev bombing, leaving only her virtual avatar alive in V-World.
Others
Lacy Rand
Played By: Magda Apanowicz
- Catholic School Girls Rule: Well, Athenian Academy girls.
- Took a Level in Badass: From "Blowback" onward, and increasing every episode thereafter.
Sister Clarice Willow
Played By: Polly Walker
- Bad Habits: Poses as a priestess of Athena, while actually being a senior cleric in a terrorist monotheist group.
- Big Bad: Is the mastermind behind the terrorist attack at Atlas Arena in the finale. The epilogue montage hints that she may have been influential in the Cylon rebellion.
- Depraved Bisexual: To the point where even attempting to seduce Lacy, a teenage girl (and getting her handsome young husband Nestor to help), is not beyond her.
- Even Evil Has Standards: Even though she orders the death of Obal Ferras, Willow has a look of absolute shock and horror as she watches Diego and the rest of the Conclave stab the old man repeatedly.
- Functional Addict: Her opium-smoking doesn't usually affect her life otherwise, apart from one very unfortunate verbal slip.
- Manipulative Bitch: Even her devotion to her religion is tainted by her personal ambition and cutthroat behavior.
- Polyamory: She's in a group marriage with several other men and women. They're all secret monotheists, although it's not only monotheists who have group marriages.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: Or so she sees herself. Actually closer to a Knight Templar.
Philomon
Played By: Alex Arsenault
Tomas Vergis
Played By: John Pyper-Ferguson
- Better to Die than Be Killed: After he realizes the Ha'la'tha are going to kill him, he tries to get Daniel to kill him. When Daniel refuses, he forces Daniel to kill him by forcing him to grip a knife and then plunging the knife into himself.
- The Chessmaster: He really knows how to get people to do exactly what he wants them to do.
- Corrupt Corporate Executive: He had his own dealings with the Ha'la'tha before the series.
- A Father to His Men: His biggest reason for seeking revenge on Daniel Graystone is that two of his employees were killed when the Ha'la'tha stole the meta-cognitive processor, one of whom was his godsson.
- Revenge: He wants to take everything Daniel loves from him for stealing his technology and murdering two of his friends.
Drew
Played By: James Pizzinato
- Asshole Victim: Downplayed. Even though he doesn't die, he gets his fingertip chopped off by Zoe-A. It is hard to feel sympathy for him, given his treatment of Zoe-A.
- Fingore: Gets his middle fingertip cut off by Zoe-A while trying to fix her. A few episodes later, he is shown with a splint on his middle finger.
Barnabas Greeley
Played By: James Marsters
- Never Found the Body: Clarice straps him to a bomb and detonates it, but we don’t get to see the bomb detonate of kill Greeley.
- Psycho for Hire: He is absolutely out of his mind, and works for Lacy Rand for a bit.
- The Starscream: To Clarice, who he is constantly trying to betray so that he can go on with his much more violent and attention grabbing methods.
- To the Pain: He believes that pain is a pathway to clearer thinking, and he sure practices what he preaches, what with the self-flagellation and all.
Evelyn / Emanuelle
Played By: Teryl Rothery & Leah Gibson
- Foregone Conclusion: She will indeed be William Adama's mother, and Joseph Adama's wife.
- Hidden Depths: In order to help Joseph get over the death of his daughter, when his obsession with finding her avatar-copy in New Cap City was ruining his life, she disguised herself and entered the game to help him find Tamara. She found her first, and both agreed that it was for the best that Joseph not waste his life, after which Tamara killed his avatar to prevent him from going back. And this was all from someone presented (at first) to just be his secretary, albeit a loyal one.
Baxter Sarno
Played By: Patton Oswalt
- No Celebrities Were Harmed: Imagine Jon Stewart meets Jay Leno, with shades of Bill Maher.
- Running Gag: Caprican college students get most of their news from him. He also jokes that his audience is stoned (a reference to an old appropriated nickname for the Daily Show fandom, "Stoned Slackers").
