The character sheet for the 2012 film Chained.
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Bob
Robert "Bob" Fittler
Following through is the key to life.
Portrayed By: Vincent D'Onofrio / Daniel Maslany (young)
"No kid of mine is gonna grow up uselessly educated."
A cab driving serial killer who abducts the young women he picks up and murders them in his home.
- Abusive Parents: He and his brother were horrifically abused by their father as children, which led to him becoming a killer. In trying to be a father to Rabbit, (his nephew), he becomes physically and emotionally abusive in his own right, even though he does come to care for him in his own twisted way.
- Agony of the Feet: His heel is cut open by Angie, which helps Rabbit gain the upper hand over him.
- Attention Whore: He keeps a scrapbook containing newspaper articles about the disappearances he's responsible for and also watches news reports about his crimes.
- Awkward Father-Son Bonding Activity: Bob's activities to bond with Rabbit are rather twisted - they're playing a card game with the driver's licenses of his past victims and driving through the city to find a young woman to kidnap and murder.
- Blinded by the Light: Angie stuns him with a flashlight beam when he enters the darkened crawlspace.
- Even Evil Has Loved Ones: He does care about Rabbit, even if that care involves turning Rabbit into a serial killer. Which might be partly due to Rabbit being his nephew.
- He also cares about his younger brother, despite Brad not showing care for anyone but himself. The fact that Bob didn't cash the check his brother gave him to abduct Sarah and Rabbit indicates he did it for his brother and not for the money.
- Even Evil Has Standards: Turning Rabbit into his prisoner, keeping him chained to the wall, and trying to make him a killer are all hardily humane, but he has no intention of taking Rabbit's life. Brad only asked him to take Rabbit away; he kept the boy alive on his own accord.
- Evil Uncle: He's Rabbit's uncle.
- Fat and Skinny: The former to Rabbit's latter, in no part thanks to Rabbit only being allowed to eat his leftovers.
- Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse: Despite having a traumatic childhood, not even Bob himself tries using it to justify what he does. Instead, his justification is that the women are asking to be murdered.
- Jerkass Has a Point: In trying to establish himself as Rabbit's father, he reveals that Brad has moved on by remarrying, leaving him as the only person left who actually cares about Rabbit. He stops short of outright confirming that Brad doesn't care about his son by not revealing he was hired by Brad to get rid of Sarah and Rabbit.
- Groin Attack: The young Rabbit punches him between the legs, prompting him to warn the boy that any further strikes will be met with retaliation.
- He-Man Woman Hater: He firmly believes all women are promiscuous and deserve to be murdered, a belief he stands behind even as Rabbit questions the logic behind it.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: His efforts to turn Rabbit into a serial killer, beginning with trying to force him to murder Angie, results in Bob becoming the first person killed by Rabbit in order to save Angie. And to add insult to injury, he's stabbed with his own knife and buried alongside his victims.
- Large and in Charge: A big man in respect to his height and girth, especially in comparison to his captive, the shorter and gaunt Rabbit.
- Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: By having Rabbit educate himself about human anatomy, Rabbit is able to save Angie by stabbing her in a non-fatal location and fooling Bob into thinking he killed her. Bob's attempt to turn Rabbit into a serial killer by forcing him to murder Angie instead results in Rabbit turning on Bob to save her and killing him, finally becoming free in the process. And by keeping Rabbit alive and not disposing of Brad's letter asking him to abduct Rabbit and Sarah, Rabbit learns the truth about his kidnapping.
- Trauma Button: Watching a passenger abuse his son triggers Bob's memories of his own abusive father.
- Wouldn't Hurt a Child: While he does warn Rabbit that he'll beat him if he acts out, he doesn't add the boy to the corpses buried in his home, unlike the other passengers he abducts. This also may be due to Rabbit being his nephew, but being a relative didn't stop him from murdering his sister-in-law.
Rabbit
Rabbit / Tim Fittler
They never asked to be murdered.
Portrayed By: Eamon Farren / Evan Bird (young)
"I've seen a lot of dead girls."
A young man held captive by Bob since he was a child.
- Abusive Parents: Bob becomes one to him, although he refuses to acknowledge Bob as his father. Then it turns out his own father isn't so great himself.
- Bring Me My Brown Pants: Hearing his mother being murdered causing him to lose control of his bladder.
- Calling the Old Man Out: He questions Bob for being a killer and points out that the murdered women obviously didn't want to be murdered, but Bob dismisses him and tries to present Rabbit as the crazy one.
- Rabbit also confronts Brad for giving him and his mother away to Bob. The outcome is even worse.
- Chekhov's Skill: His knowledge of human anatomy allows him to stab Angie in a location that won't kill her, while tricking Bob into thinking she's dead.
- Defiant Captive: As a child, he tries to fight back against Bob and escape, which results in him getting chained to the wall. He becomes more submissive as he gets older, but remains defiant to Bob, culminating with him killing his captor.
- Earn Your Happy Ending: He goes through years of physical and emotional abuse in a home filled with death and suffering that he's trapped inside of and only by overcoming Bob and his own father will he be free from all of it. He kills them both, but whether he truly obtains a happy ending is left open-ended.
- Faking the Dead: He doesn't want to kill Angie, but Bob will if he doesn't so he stages her murder.
- Fat and Skinny: The skinny to Bob, mainly because he's only allowed to eat what Bob doesn't eat.
- From Dress to Dressing: He uses his shirt to treat Angie's knife wound after stabbing her to appease Bob.
- I Want My Mommy!: Not long after being brought inside Bob's home, he asks for Sarah. She's not coming back.
- Made a Slave: Courtesy of Bob.
- Nothing Is Scarier: The death of Sarah. Hearing her screams, helpless to save her, and left to imagine what Bob is doing to her.
- Oh, Crap!: He's taken by surprise when he learns that Bob was recording him with Angie and Bob wants watch the video. The video footage would reveal he didn't kill her and deceived Bob.
- Only Known By His Nickname: "Rabbit", the name Bob gives him, is the only name he's referred to while living with Bob, up to the point where even he starts calling himself "Rabbit". His real name is eventually revealed to be Tim.
- Only Sane Man: Not just in comparison to Bob, but also in comparison to all the known men in his family - his uncle Bob, his father Brad, and his paternal grandfather - who all inflict harm onto others, including their own family members. Only Rabbit appears to possess basic human compassion and even after all the trauma he faces, he doesn't become violent except to those harming others.
- Parental Abandonment: Rabbit's situation leaves him without his parents. His mother is dead and his father's remarriage implies that he's given up looking for him. Turns out that his father abandoned him from the onset by asking Bob to take him away.
- Patricide: He winds up killing both his uncle and his father.
- Trauma Button: Bob's cab triggers memories of Sarah before she was murdered. And witnessing Brad attack Marie brings back further traumatic memories of Bob.
- Trauma Conga Line: As if being chained to a wall and witnessing murders on a near daily basis for years (beginning with his mother) wasn't bad enough, when he finally escapes, he learns that his abduction was arranged by his father, resulting in another confrontation.
- Troubled Fetal Position: After Bob leaves him and Angie alone in a room for him to murder her, he responds by going into this position on one side of the room while she's in fetal position on the other side.
- Wife-Basher Basher: After a decade of witnessing Bob rape and murder women, seeing his father assault his stepmother causes him to beat his father to death.
- Wouldn't Hit a Girl: Unlike Bob (and Brad), he's very reluctant to harm women, to the point where he tries to make certain he's not hurting Angie by touching her. He does end up stabbing Angie, but it's to save her life.
Sarah Fittler
Sarah Fittler
Mommy's fine, baby.
Portrayed By: Julia Ormond
"You're gonna have to hold my hand during the really scary parts."
Rabbit's mother.
- Cell Phones Are Useless: Her cell phone loses its signal when she begins to realize her and Rabbit might be in trouble.
- Deceased Parents Are the Best: She's the only good parent Rabbit has and he loses her when he's nine.
- Divorce Requires Death: Rather than leave her by divorce, Brad has Bob take care of her.
- Empty Promise: After being taken to Bob's house, she tries to assure her son that everything is alright and when Bob starts to take her away, she insists that she's fine. Neither reassurance ends up coming true.
- Good Parents: She strives to be one to her son, unaware of what Brad has planned for them.
- Happily Married: She is, at least. Her husband, not so much.
- Killed Offscreen: She's last seen being taken away Bob, who later makes it clear to Rabbit that she's not coming back.
- Mama Bear: She tries protecting Rabbit by getting in between him and Bob to give him time to escape. It ends up being in vain because her son won't leave her and Bob knocks her out.
- Missing Mom: Thanks to Bob.
- Parents in Distress: She gets targeted by Bob, but as he emotionally recounts later, Rabbit was too young to save her.
- Sibling Murder: Murdered by a sibling-in-law to be exact.
- Sound-Only Death: Only her screams are heard while Bob kills her, which is also all that Rabbit hears.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: She goes to the movies with Rabbit and hails the first taxi she sees to take them home, unaware of what the driver has in store for them. Although unknown to her, the circumstances of their abduction had been pre-arranged.
Angie
Angie
Are you gonna hurt me, Rabbit?
Portrayed By: Conor Leslie
"He hurts you, doesn't he?"
A teenage student kidnapped by Bob to become Rabbit's first victim.
- Captain Obvious: After Rabbit stabs her, her reaction is to state what Rabbit just did to her. This reaction is understandable because Rabbit then starts trying to comfort her.
- Damsel in Distress: Rabbit comes to her rescue while she's being attacked by Bob, leading to the final confrontation between Bob and Rabbit.
- Defiant Captive: While initially too frightened to fight back, she tries to convince Rabbit to escape together and when Bob shows up to kill her, she manages to slice his heel open.
- Faking the Dead: Bob will kill her if Rabbit doesn't, so Rabbit stages her murder to save her life.
- From Dress to Dressing: Rabbit uses his shirt to bandage her knife wound.
- Mood Whiplash: There's a sweetness to when Angie gets close to Rabbit, in part because they're both victims being held captive and it's also the first time anyone has been intimate with him, but the mood is hampered by her being there to be murdered and Rabbit pointing his knife at her. Then the mood completely changes when Bob barges in and Rabbit stabs her in the stomach.
- Nothing Is Scarier: She gets abducted from her campus, locked in a dark car trunk, and taken to an isolated home to be murdered. Naturally, she's in a state of a complete despair when her and Rabbit are left in a room together, alone with the person tasked with ending her life.
- In order to be saved, she has to spend a day hiding in a darkened crawlspace with a knife wound and the bodies of Bob's past victims, not knowing when a rescue may come. And when she hears the sound of the garage door opening, she knows it's Bob, not the police - especially when Bob starts shouting her name.
- Oh, Crap!: She already knows that Bob wants Rabbit to hurt her, but Rabbit confirming that he's supposed to kill her causes this realization to really sink in.
- The noise of the garage door opening while she's hiding in the crawlspace makes her immediately get up because the police wouldn't be arriving through the garage.
- Playing Possum: To fool Bob into thinking Rabbit killed her, Angie pretends to be dead while Bob watches Rabbit drag her body away. She later plays dead a second time during the struggle between Bob and Rabbit, dropping the act once Rabbit kills Bob.
- Questionable Consent: She gives Rabbit permission to touch her body and have sex with her, but it's done out of fear and desperation to save her life.
- Tears of Fear: A natural reaction to the situation she's in and Rabbit's comments about how he's supposed to kill her and he's see a lot of dead girls certainly don't help.
- Troubled Fetal Position: Being kidnapped and brought to a stranger's house with people who are likely going to hurt her causes Angie to assume this position.
Brad Fittler
Brad Fittler
In one ear and out the window.
Portrayed By: Jake Weber / Michael Maslany (young)
"Hey, champ, you look after your mom, okay?"
Rabbit's father.
- Abusive Parents: Bob's little brother witnessing their father abuse them? That's him. And he inherited that abuse.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: He appears to be a loving father and husband who was merely an Unwitting Instigator of Doom when he insisted Sarah and Rabbit take a cab home. Then it turns out he arranged for Bob to kidnap them.
- Call-Back: Before Rabbit was abducted, the last thing Brad told him was to look after his mother, followed by a comment about how Rabbit presumably wasn't listening. Rabbit reminds him of both of these comments to emphasize that Brad knew he was too young to protect Sarah from Bob and he was listening the whole time.
- Divorce Requires Death: He wants to be rid of Sarah, but rather than divorce her, he hires his serial killer brother to take care of her.
- Domestic Abuse: He presumably never directly abused Sarah, but when confronted about his true nature by Rabbit, he becomes physical with Rabbit and Marie.
- Disappeared Dad: In part because Bob took Rabbit away from him. And because Brad wanted Rabbit to be taken away.
- Faux Affably Evil: His appearance as a family man drops when Rabbit confronts him with the fact that he asked Bob to abduct his wife and son. This causes him to physically assault Rabbit and then Marie when she tries to intervene.
- Like Father, Unlike Son: His lack of compassion isn't present in Rabbit.
- Walking Spoiler: His true nature isn't revealed until the end.
Marie
Marie
Don't you dare come down here.
Portrayed By: Gina Philips
"You're safe now, honey."
Brad's new wife.
- Character Witness: After Rabbit saves her by killing Brad, she protects Rabbit from getting arrested by staging her husband's death as the result of a break-in.
- Domestic Abuse: While it might not have happened before, Brad attacks her after Rabbit reveals the truth about who he is.
- Good Stepmother: Despite never meeting Rabbit before, she's genuinely happy to see him, unlike his actual father.
- Half-Truth: She reports her husband's death to the police, but leaves out the actual circumstances so it won't be traced to Rabbit.
- Ignorance Is Bliss: Keeping the details of Brad's death not only prevents Rabbit from going to jail, but also prevents her son from learning that his father was a monster.
- Parents in Distress: Although not Rabbit's parent by blood, he still saves her when she's being assaulted by Brad.
- Trophy Wife: She's clearly younger than Sarah, even after a significant passage of time.
