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Characters / Dead Space 3

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Sovereign Colonies Armed Forces

    In General 
The military attachment present for the Sovereign Colonies expedition to Tau Volantis, 200 years prior to the events of Dead Space 3. They're obviously all dead by the time Isaac visits, but the specifics of how they died are quite the mystery.

  • Badass Army: Although not without taking significant losses in the process, and despite being populated for the most part with New Meat, the fact that they were familiar with the infected to the point that they had managed to not only figure out and dedicate a portion of their combat manual to eliminating them, but openly research them to the point that they were tacking dead Necromorphs onto the walls and vivisecting them heavily hints, if not states outright that the S.C.A.F were fighting a fierce ground war with the undead for around three years and holding their own well enough that they were still carrying out their archaeology operations as well, all while the Brethren Moon in orbit and the countless Markers in and around the planet played their usual tricks on them. Compared to how well the military fared in the last two outbreaks, that’s no mean feat indeed.
  • I'm a Humanitarian: Low supplies, desperation and in some cases, Marker sickness, led to some of the S.C.A.F trying to extend their resources by eating killed necromorphs. Naturally, this backfired on them horribly, turning them into a new strain of necromorph nicknamed "Feeders".
  • Leave No Witnesses: Part of the Liquidation order was to exterminate anyone who might be able to pass on the infection, or even tell people where they could get infected.
  • New Meat: There was a civil war on Earth occurring during the same time period of the excavation, so Sovereign Colonies Command mostly sent those who they judged weren't vital to the war effort, plus a few veterans to keep them in line. Many of the more experienced soldiers lambasted that, "half of these guys don't know how to hold a gun, and the other half run for the hills when they hear one go off."
  • Posthumous Character: Everyone, considering their time on Tau Volantis was 200 years before the series proper. With the exception of the Feeders.
  • Ragnarök Proofing: Despite the ruins of the flotilla and ground facilities spending the last two centuries accumulating rust in the wake of their previous owners being killed or infected, most of the technology works with little problem when Isaac and company stumble across it.
  • Senseless Sacrifice: If they'd gone down into the city and activated the machine, they could have destroyed the Brethren Moons forever. Instead, they wasted their lives by simply offing themselves and destroying the Codex instead, in a classic bout of Lawful Stupid. This was mostly due, in no small part, to the many MANY Markers (and their end result) being in such close proximity. Giving everyone on the planet and in orbit a solid dosing of Marker signals, driving them insane.
  • Undying Loyalty: Granted, not 100% loyalty, but there are enough fanatically loyal soldiers present that a Liquidation order is met with near-universal acceptance in the military attachment. One text log describes a soldier retrieving a body bag, sharing a last smoke and speech with the author, sitting down inside and then calmly offing himself.
  • Well-Intentioned Extremist: The "Liquidation" procedure. It's official title is Scenario 5, part of a set of procedures generated for first contact situations. Scenario 5 is only to be invoked in the most extremely lethal of cases, where a bio-outbreak that threatens the extinction of humanity occurs.

    The 163rd "Reapers" 
An elite band of black-ops soldiers, the Reapers were specifically chosen to guard the Tau Volantis research mission, with their own dedicated barracks near the Research Compound.
  • Asshole Victim: Reading some logs about them really doesn't make you feel any form of sympathy when you find their decapitated heads.
  • And Then John Was a Zombie: Upon investigating their barracks 200 years later Isaac finds out the hard way that many of the beheaded Reapers had become Creepers, some of them turning while he’s in the midst of looting the facility.
  • Brainwashed and Crazy: The 'Reapers,' are apparently psychologically conditioned to accept orders. In their barracks, they have their own version of the Liquidation order, which is instead a series of repeated instructions plus many subliminal images.
  • Initiation Ceremony: Zigzagged with the Horrific and Humiliating varieties; they play off their treatment of Private Myers as a hazing ritual to make him prove he's worthy of joining the Reapers, but the reality is they're just doing it for laughs and have no intention of letting him in.
  • Karmic Death: After taking advantage of Private Myers’ aspirations of becoming one of their number to mistreat and bully him for shits and giggles, Myers snaps from their abuse and kills them all in their sleep. To add to the ironic twist, the Reapers were apparently the best of the best out of the military contingent sent to Tau Volantis, yet in the end these elite black ops troops ended their lives being struck down in the dead of night by a mundane, if vengeful, recruit.
  • Kick the Dog: Several files found in their barracks talk about their brutal psychological torment of a hopeful aspirant, Private Myers, culminating in them making him clean the toilets with his bare hands for a week — and with no showers in between — before they finally reveal they never were going to let him join.
    • The Dog Bites Back: Snapping as a result of what they did, Private Myers took their claims he would become a Reaper only when all of them were dead literally, grabbing an axe and decapitating all of them in their sleep.
  • Mockstery Tale: When Isaac initially enters their barracks and finds severed heads laying everywhere, the stage is set for an ancient, horrifying mystery to unravel. By the end of the next room, Isaac's found the three logs which anti-climatically explains the details, and lets him get on with looting the barracks.
  • Sociopathic Soldier: The Reapers are explicitly stated to be bloodthirsty, brutal, psychotic killers. In fact, they earned their reputation doing black ops and "wetwork" (assassination, torture, and other usually-illegal activities) during the early parts of the Seccessionist Wars.
  • Undignified Death: These “best of the best” elite soldiers were decapitated in their sleep by a single disgruntled private. All the more karmic too given how they treated said private beforehand.

    Spencer Mahad 
Played by: Keith Szarabajka

Leader of the S.C.A.F. ground unit at Tau Volantis.

  • Boom, Headshot!: He kills Caufman, and then kills himself, with a single shot to the head each.
  • Four-Star Badass: He managed to stop the outbreak on his world dead, even if it was at the cost of both his life and everyone else's.
  • Honor Before Reason: Even after Caufman tells him that Serano knows a way to stop the Necromorph infestation, and the Codex is the key to salvaging everything, he still views the situation as beyond recovery and fulfills the Liquidation order anyway.
  • Murder-Suicide: After executing Caufman, he turns to a Sovereign Colonies flag, salutes it, and then kills himself.
  • My Country, Right or Wrong: Even when his orders involve killing everyone under his command and protection, and then himself, he obeys without hesitation.
  • Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Could have stopped the Necromorphs from existing 200 years before the first game if he'd only trusted Serano's claims that the Codex could also be used to activate the "Necromorph Destroy Mode" of the Machine.
  • Not Brainwashed: When Mahad kills Caufman then himself, at first it appeared to be the case of the Marker influence just like in the previous games, but then audio logs in the game revealed it's not the case and was part of the Liquidation order policy originally enforced by the S.C.A.F..
  • Only Sane Man: Of the command trio, he's the only who thinks experimenting on Markers is a bad idea. He's absolutely correct.
  • Peeling Potatoes: In a log, he threatened to dole out this punishment to Caufman if he doesn't find the munitions depot key by sundown.
  • Posthumous Character: Like all S.C.A.F characters, he was alive two centuries before Isaac and company were even born.
  • Well-Intentioned Extremist:
    • He got involved with the Marker experiments only to try and avert the looming energy crisis for humanity. Furthermore, the level 5 containment action is only to be activated in the case of an "extinction level" biohazard outbreak — and freeing the Brethren Moon would certainly count as that.
    • It's shown that he had his doubts about the mission from the start; he would've preferred spending his time fighting what would eventually become EarthGov, and clashed with Admiral Graves and Doctor Serrano over it.
  • You Are in Command Now: Pulled this on himself, as he relieved Admiral Graves and took command of the expedition after Graves started to lose her marbles.

    Tim Caufman 
Played by: Scott DeFalco

An S.C.A.F. Private, Caufman was part of a mission to Tau Volantis 200 years before the incident on the Sprawl.

  • Cowardly Lion: He panics at the sight of the Necromorphs, but still fights his way through.
  • Decoy Protagonist: He's the player character in the prologue, and like the rest of the S.C.A.F. expedition to Tau Volantis, he ends up getting killed.
  • Determinator: Most of his comrades dead, his leadership dead, hasn't had much (if any food) in days, undead horrors trying to kill him, his partner constantly saying that the mission is doomed (if the player is playing co-op), and being a green as grass support troop who was never even trained to deal with this kind of situation would not stop him from finding the Codex and stopping the necromorph threat. Too bad that his insane General and a loaded revolver could..
  • Gosh Darn It to Heck!: Other then the "God" utterance, he most of the time never swears or uses profanity, even when panicking.
  • Naïve Newcomer: He is a naive and well-mannered, but inexperienced soldier who still attempted to stop the horrors on Tau Volantis.
  • New Meat: His inexperience shows through his constant panic. He also forgot to grab ammo before setting out to find the Codex.
  • Shoot the Shaggy Dog: He struggles to retrieve a cylinder containing data for Doctor Serrano, but is killed by General Maheed, who deletes all of the data before killing himself.

    Sam Ackerman 

Another S.C.A.F. Private, he appears alongside Caufman if the prologue is played on co-op.

  • The Cynic: Is extremely critical of his and Caufman's chances of accomplishing the mission, given that the necromorphs have already killed everyone else (most of whom were more experienced and better trained than they were). He was absolutely right.
  • Determinator: He was trapped in a very small bunker with dozens of necromorph infected, cannibalistic soldiers (who were more experienced than him), he hadn't had food in days thanks to the shortage (and refusing to eat necromorph tissue). Yet he still manages to escape, trap his insane comrades in the bunker, and then set off on a mission to find the Codex. It took the flaming wreckage of a crashed space ship and an avalanche to finally stop him.
  • Dropped a Bridge on Him: Caufman may avoid being crushed by the falling spaceship midway through the prologue, but poor Ackerman doesn't.
  • I Did What I Had to Do: You can find his logs in the Feeder barracks. He hid in a back room for days, and eventually locked his unit in when he ran. Since they were going crazy at the time, it's pretty justified.
  • Only Sane Man: Of his unit, he was the only one not foolish enough to start eating Necromorph flesh to bolster their meager meals; conversely, he was the only one who didn't become a Feeder.
  • Red Oni, Blue Oni: The red to Caufman's blue, but with only a few lines of dialogue between the two, it's hard to tell.
  • Sole Survivor: Out of his entire unit, he was the only one who refused to eat the tainted flesh of the infected, and the only one who didn't degenerate into a savage, cannibalistic ghoul as a result.

    Marjorie Graves 

The leader of the S.C.A.F. expedition to Tau Volantis, and commander of the ship CMS Roanoke.

  • All for Nothing: Her entire quest to understand and use the Markers to save humanity ultimately (and unsurprisingly) ended up being doomed from the start. Alongside the given reports of suicides, random violence and Necromorph outbreaks both among their flotilla and from planetside outposts, Graves herself would ultimately lose her sanity to Marker Sickness and be reduced to an impotent prisoner in her own quarters. Eventually this would be capped off by the S.C.A.F High Command finally deciding that the Markers were too dangerous to play around with, period, and pulling the plug on their projects for good via Scenario Five, resulting in the deaths of the entire expedition.
  • Meaningful Name: Her name was Marjorie Graves, and she led her ill-fated expedition into theirs.
  • Room Full of Crazy: Her quarters are absolutely covered in scrawlings, ranging from Marker script to pleas for somebody to "Turn It Off!"
  • Sanity Slippage: Was one of the earliest sufferers in the S.C.A.F. forces. General Mahad would order her confined to her quarters, where she wound out writing "Turn it Off" in Marker script all along the walls.
  • Well-Intentioned Extremist: She sought the Markers in order to try and save humanity from the resource and energy crisis that had consumed them, and believed that finding the source of the Markers would greatly aid the Sovereign Colonies in their war.

    Tucker Edwards 

Pilot of the CMS Terra Nova. When the Liquidation order came in, he killed his commander and barricaded himself in the ship's conning tower.

  • Arc Villain: Despite being 200 years dead, he manages to be the main antagonist of the "Conning Tower" side mission, by way of his recordings and traps.
  • Crazy-Prepared: Tucker was fully aware how far Mahad and his men would go to ensure even he would comply with Scenario Five, so he holed himself in the Conning Tower, not only booby trapping it with bombs and other lethal hazards, but also using the infected soldiers stored there as a ready-made army to hide behind.
  • Dead All Along: If Isaac chooses to go into the Conning Tower to nab Tucker's supplies, you'll hear audiologs from him, taunting you as you progress. Given that he lived 200 years ago, this doesn't count as a spoiler, as it's not much of a surprise when you get to the end of the road.
  • Determinator:
    • The tally marks on the floor indicate he lived ten years and seven months by himself after the order was given. Though this brings up the question, why didn't he just leave if there was a shuttle and he was a pilot? See headscratchers page for more detail.
    • Considering that the bodies of those infected by The Virus were lurking in the exact same ship he was in, he probably barred himself in to stop them from killing him.
  • Driven to Suicide: Eventually, loneliness and guilt overcome him and he kills himself.
  • Enemy Summoner: In an indirect way. Some of Tucker’s traps involve locking Clarke in a room, blowing the air vents open and then making a din to draw the infected to his position.
  • Fate Worse than Death: He spent 10 years in the tower by himself, with Isaac and Buckell discussing whether it was worse to die with everyone else or be the only one who survives. After 10 years, he decided it was worse to live alone and killed himself.
  • Go Mad from the Isolation: After surviving on his own for ten years trapped inside the Conning Tower, the guilt and loneliness eventually became too much for him and he decided to end it all.
  • Hesitant Sacrifice: His logs constantly talk about how he wants to survive, and he killed his captain, the woman he loved, rather than let her shoot him. He then retreated to the Conning Tower and rigged it full of booby-traps to protect himself from any S.C.A.F forces coming after him. Subverted when, years later, realizing he was the only one left caused him to give up and commit suicide anyway.
  • Mad Bomber: Rigged bombs and other traps all around the Conning Tower.
  • Optional Boss: Visiting the Conning Tower is entirely optional; you get quite a lot of loot for persisting through all his traps.
  • Taking You with Me: In his despair over being the last one alive on Tau Volantis, Tucker set up traps in his own base of operations, with the intention that they summon Necromorphs and kill off those who would come to loot his stash. Rather than out of spite, as would have been the case before, his description indicates that he sees it as helping his fellow soldiers fulfill their duty.
  • Villainous Breakdown: Not much of a villain, but the deeper you progress, the more unhinged his audiologs become. He starts out somewhat boastful, before just repeating that he doesn't want to die, before realizing that he should have accepted the Liquidation order and shooting himself dead.
    Tucker Edwards: Congratulations. You found me. Kind of stupid, ain't it? I just wanted to live and now that I'm the only one left, I couldn't give a shit. With all this time alone, I realize it's just like Sam said. I'm a lazy prick who never took one for the team. Well, team, if you can hear me now, this one's for you.

    Earl Serrano 

The head researcher of the Sovereign Colonies expedition to Tau Volantis, the player can find audiologs throughout the game describing his discoveries and research on Tau Volantis.

  • Face Death with Dignity: He busts his knee open trying to leave the Heart of the Machine and thus is unable to leave, but his final audio log, next to his body, shows he is rather calm, sad that he won't live to see the fall of the Blood Moon, but otherwise at peace.
  • The Faceless: His face is shrouded in darkness in the audio log that explains existence of the Brethren Moons. We do find his body just before the Heart of the Machine, but, being two hundred years old, it's desiccated. He does have a known physical appearance in concept art for 3, seen in the series artbook.
  • Fling a Light into the Future: Not wholly intentionally, but his audiologs and research prove to be quite useful instructions for Isaac Clarke.
  • My God, What Have I Done?: The only time we hear him sound defeated is when he explains that the SCAF expedition has doomed humanity by awakening the Moon.
  • Nightmare Fetishist: He's fascinated by both the Necromorphs and the alien species that lived on Tau Volantis.
  • Only Sane Man: Unlike almost any other scientist who worked on the Markers, Doctor Serrano remained completely sane and rational. Of the Sovereign Colonies expedition, he realized the truth about the Markers and attempted to activate the machine, however, Mahad's killing of Caufman and his own injuries stopped him from doing so. His audiologs tend to be quite helpful to Isaac Clarke, however.
  • Title Drop: He performs the only one in the entire franchise when he realizes in his final audio log that mankind never encountered alien life in centuries of space travel because the Brethren Moons turned much of the galaxy into dead space long before humans ever got the chance to make first contact.

USM Eudora

    John Carver 
Played by: Ricardo Antonio Chavira

An Earth Defense Force Space Marine from the colony world or Uxor, home of the Site 4 Marker. Carver lost his family after a Unitologist terrorist attack destroys the shroud surrounding the Marker. He later joins the crew of the USM Eudora with Isaac Clarke on a mission to Tau Volantis, hoping to destroy the Markers once and for all.

  • The Atoner: He expresses a desire to make up for his past towards the end and questions if his actions up that point have at least partially made up for it. Isaac tells him You Are Better Than You Think You Are.
  • Brains and Brawn: In the co-op, he serves as the Brawn to Isaac's Brain; as a soldier, he's not very good at puzzles, but he is good at killing necromorphs and keeping Isaac safe.
  • Co-Op Multiplayer: Serves as player 2 in Dead Space 3 dropping in and out of the action depending on the number of players.
  • Dark Is Not Evil: Most if not all of his RIG suits have shades of red and other dark colors, mainly black. Alongside being a bit rough around the edges. Even then, he's one of the good guys and becomes Isaac's partner throughout Dead Space 3, especially in the Co-Op Campaign.
  • Deadpan Snarker: Practically everything that comes out of his mouths is snark.
  • Death Equals Redemption: A side mission reveals that following a domestic abuse incident involving his wife and son, Carver attempted to kill himself only for his wife to interrupt.
  • Deuteragonist: He serves in this role for Dead Space 3, adventuring alongside Isaac to the very end of the game, although he's only directly fighting alongside him in a co-op campaign.
  • Domestic Abuse: A side mission reveals that Carver has been suffering from PTSD pre-game, and he even ended up assaulting his wife in front of his son. Despite therapy and understanding from his family, he later tried to kill himself out of guilt.
  • Doomed Hometown: His home planet of Uxor is destroyed by a Necromorph outbreak.
  • Driven to Suicide: An audio log on one of Carver's side missions reveals he was on the verge of killing himself from guilt before his wife unexpectedly walked in.
  • Fire-Forged Friends: With Isaac. During their first proper conversation he tells Isaac quite flatly, "We're not friends", but by the end there is a mutual respect between them.
  • Foil: He's this to his portrayer Ricardo Chavira's last character in the franchise Alejandro Borges, as both Chavira's characters are Hot-Blooded crew members, but while Borges is the Only Sane Man who happens to be the only one not affected by Marker influence, Carver in contrast is shown to be not immune to it, at least in co-op.
    • He is also one to Stross:
      • Both ally with Isaac early on, though Stross did so by choice whereas Carver was out of necessity. In addition, Stross eventually loses his mind and turns on Isaac, while Isaac and Carver start off rough but become Fire-Forged Friends.
      • Whereas Stross was The Load whose only usefulness was his knowledge on how to destroy the Marker (which turned out to be false), Carver is more than capable with handling himself in the field and aids Isaac at various points throughout the campaign.
      • Both had a wife and son whom they killed, the act of which continually haunts them; while Stross killed his wife and son under the impression they were Necromorphs, Carver was forced to kill his wife and son because they had been turned into Necromorphs. Additionally, Stross is unable to accept that he killed his wife and son, while Carver, though traumatized, succeeds in moving on.
  • Good Is Not Nice: He's willing to Shoot the Dog if necessary, such as letting Santos die, but the guilt clearly weighs on him.
  • Good Scars, Evil Scars:
    • As the second protagonist in Dead Space 3, his facial scars are considerably less horrific than other physical deformities in the franchise.
    • It's not even as horrific as the other heroes! During the game's final cutscene, it's Isaac with a scalp gash, while Carver remains unblemished. This is true even during co-op play, when Carver is actually involved in the shooting. Throughout the game, only Isaac's character model of the two of them changes.
  • Heroic Sacrifice: Stays behind with Isaac to prevent Convergence, even knowing that this means dying when the Brother Moon slams into Tau Volantis.
  • Honor Before Reason: Even before we find out what it would ultimately lead to, Carver giving Danik the way to deactivate the machine and awaken the Moon in exchange for Ellie was, to put it bluntly, idiotic beyond imagination. While he can’t be faulted for wanting to make up for his past misdeeds, an unquestionably noble thing to do in many other circumstances, Carver decided to act upon that desire at the worst possible moment, in the worst possible way, and as a result he ended up paving the road to humanity’s extinction.
  • Hidden Depths: Despite Carver being a more action friendly and stereotypical shooter hero, he is a relatively pretty intelligent guy. The series states that the more active you keep your mind and the smarter you are, the better you are at dealing with Marker induced insanity. Carver holds up extraordinarily well despite having serious mental trauma that the Markers can exploit. He is also just as capable as Isaac at crafting his own weapons. The fact that he can withstand the full effects of the Brethren Moons' Mind Rape and come out of it without becoming a drooling vegetable, a psychotic lunatic, or a barely coherent, broken wreck says all you need to know about his mental capabilities.
  • I Did What I Had to Do: How he feels about cutting the cable holding up the Elevator, allowing it to fall and killing Santos in the process. It was about to bring the whole cliff down around them.
  • Jerkass: He's taciturn, ruthless, and has zero people skills. If you play solo, he mostly just comes across as a goon with a gun, although he does Pet the Dog once or twice such as when he backs Isaac up after Isaac shoots Norton. The co-op game and side missions show him as having quite a lot of Hidden Depths, though, and the latter portions of the game act as though he was there for the co-op anyway.
  • Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Though unpleasant and sometimes bitter, it's clear he's a good person at heart.
  • Parental Neglect: He wasn't the best father to his son, which features in his hallucinations.
  • Parents as People: He wasn't able to spend as much time with his son as he would have like to, because of his job.
  • Sensitive Guy and Manly Man: The choleric Manly Man to Isaac's melancholy Sensitive Guy.
  • Shell-Shocked Veteran: The Markers make Carver see remnants of his dead family and the horrors he has experienced as a soldier. One of his side-missions reveals he's been suffering from PTSD and hallucinations before his wife and son were killed.
  • Sir Swears-a-Lot: Swears even more than a freaked out Isaac Clarke.
  • Space Marine: He's an Earth Defense Force soldier fighting Necromorphs throughout space. Which makes him a decent partner for Isaac.
  • Staking the Loved One: When he finds his family, they've both been killed by Danik and claimed by the infection, forcing him to re-kill them both when they attempt to kill him.
  • Red Oni, Blue Oni: He's a rage-filled Space Marine, as opposed to melancholic engineer Isaac Clarke. In fact his main color of red and his visor glowing the same color, fits makes this fitting contrast with Isaac Clarke's usually blue visor glow.
  • Red Eyes, Take Warning: Invoked. The visor lights in military RIGs all glow red to make them look more threatening.
  • Unreliable Narrator: Playing as Carver results in the player seeing things that the less-insane Isaac cannot. His second side mission begins with entering an elevator, only to find out in the end that they've been standing in the elevator for five minutes and Isaac's just waiting for him to push the button.
  • You Are Better Than You Think You Are: Near the end he confesses to Isaac that he is not a good man and has made a lot of mistakes. Asking if he thinks fighting and potentially dying to stop the Necromorphs makes up for all the bad stuff he's done. Isaac assures him that despite all his mistakes he means well, and that that alone makes him a good man.

    Robert Norton 
Played by: Robert Gant

Leader of EarthGov's last remaining battalion after the Unitologists wiped out most of the military. He searches for Isaac on Ellie's behalf, as Isaac's the key to stopping the Necromorph threat to the galaxy.

  • Asshole Victim: Nobody is crying when Isaac finally kills him, especially seeing as how he had just sold them all out to the Circle. In-Universe, the only one who is upset is Ellie, who isn't there when he tries to sell Isaac to Danik.
  • Authority Equals Asskicking: Subverted. He's the leader of the group and the only coward among them. While everyone else is risking their lives to stop the Necromorphs for good, Norton is always complaining about the odds or trying to convince them to escape instead. Eventually, no one bothers to listen to him anymore.
  • Boom, Headshot!: Isaac accidentally shoots him in the head in self-defense.
  • Came Back Wrong: Ultimately his corpse gets infected by the Necromorph pathogen and attacks Isaac and John, who quickly kill him the second and final time.
  • Crazy Jealous Guy: Acts this way to Isaac about Ellie, but assumes it's the other way around. Ellie even calls him out on it in Liberation, but he shrugs it off with a Kick the Dog.
  • invoked The Danza: He's obviously called Robert Norton because he's voiced by Robert Gant.
  • Deadpan Snarker: Part of his Jerkass persona, he can't answer Isaac's questions without it dripping in sarcasm.
  • Dirty Coward: Once he sees that Ellie is safe, he'd rather use the shuttle to get as far away from the Necromorphs as possible.
  • Enemy Mine: How he views his deal with Big Bad Danik against Isaac.
  • Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: More "Selfish" than "Evil" but right up until the end he seems to be convinced that Issac's main motivation is getting back together with Ellie rather than stopping the Necromorphs, culminating in an attempt to Murder the Hypotenuse.
  • Fake Ultimate Hero: Seems to believe he's the hero rather than Isaac, but shows signs of indecision, cowardice and possessive behavior towards Ellie.
  • Hate Sink: Norton spends the majority of his screen time being an abrasive contrarian who loudly voices that his girlfriend's plan to save humanity from the Necromorphs is doomed to fail and being jealous over her past relationship with Isaac, whom he treats like garbage no matter what hardships he endures. He eventually endangers all of humanity by giving the Unitologists the coordinates to Tau Volantis and sells Isaac out to them in exchange for a ride off world for himself and Ellie. Even after Isaac saves his life during the Unitologists inevitable betrayal, Norton still tries to murder Isaac while ranting about how Ellie loves him.
  • Hidden Heart of Gold: Likely just a sliver, and most of it's in the Salvage comic, but he has a few moments. Though he gets possessive, he does genuinely care about Ellie, and starts to apologize for his disrespectful remark about Carver being a "screwed up basket case". It's implied that the Marker signals inflated his jealousy and led to him making a deal with Danik.
  • Horrible Judge of Character: He actually believes that Danik, a member of a cult who worships death, will actually keep his side of his deal of getting him and Ellie out of Tau Volantis alive.
  • Informed Attribute: We are told by Ellie that he is not usually as abrasive as he is in 3, implying it is nearly entirely due to his jealousy. However, Liberation shows he is just as bad, if not worse, when Isaac has nothing to do with the situation, thereby implying Ellie is just not being honest with herself.
  • Jerkass: To Isaac in 3 and to Carver and Ellie in Liberation, with him telling Carver immediately after he had to kill his family that the Necromorphs are Classified Information despite Ellie objecting, and telling the latter to go and help the former because she "likes helping screwed up basket cases". It leaves one wondering what exactly Ellie sees in him.
  • Jerkass Has a Point: For all the headbutting he and Isaac exchanged with each other, there was only one thing he and Isaac could wholeheartedly agree upon... That their mission to Tau Volantis would be a one-way trip.
  • The Mole: He tells Danik where Tau Volantis is and sells out Isaac to him in exchange for safety for Ellie and himself. Shockingly, Danik lied.
  • Murder the Hypotenuse: Norton attempts this and becomes the target of it instead when Isaac kills him in self-defense.
  • The Neidermeyer: His indecisiveness and cowardice drastically affect his ability to be an effective leader.
  • Never My Fault: His rant moments before his death shows that he refuses to take responsibility for his actions, justifying his selling the others out to save himself and Ellie as trying to "save them" and pushing all the blame on Issac.
  • Psychopathic Manchild: His indecisiveness, possessiveness towards Ellie, inability to accept blame for his own screwups, intemperate attitude and craven-hearted desire to simply run away from the Necromorph plague (despite there being nowhere else to go thanks to the efforts of the Circle) can make one wonder at times as to how he managed to successfully become a soldier with such immaturity. While part of it can be possibly explained by Marker Sickness, Liberation shows him to have a childishly petty and petulant side to him even then, giving the implication that he had his own share of internal problems from the get-go but for the most part had managed to keep a lid on it, at least until the Markers enhanced what was already there to turn him into a completely dysfunctional mess.
  • Pet the Dog: Even at his worst, he would rather fire warning shots than shooting his own subordinates.
  • Stupid Evil: Part of this can be justified by Marker Sickness, but selling out Isaac to Danik in a ploy to keep Ellie was extremely stupid, considering that even if he did manage to pull it off without Danik wasting him afterward to tie up loose ends, he wouldn’t have her for very long before the Moons wake up and come knocking on his door.
  • Ungrateful Bastard: After Danik reneges on their deal and tries to kill them all, Isaac saves Norton from Danik. Then Isaac rescues him again from a huge Necromorph. Norton still tries to kill Isaac.
  • Unwitting Pawn: To the Markers, through his obsession with Ellie.
  • We Have Reserves: In Liberation, this is his position about Carver's Sanity Slippage and need to Kill the Ones You Love. He says that Carver can be easily replaced with any other soldier... even though he can't, which seriously pisses off Ellie.
  • Yandere: Is willing to kill Isaac and sell out every living thing in Earth-space to keep Ellie for himself.

    Mark Rosen 

Crewmember of the USM Eudora.

  • Jerkass: Very hostile against Isaac in their only real interaction when securing an engine, saying he isn't an idiot in response to a routine check and complaining that "some of us just want to go home." It gets to the point where Isaac even outright calls him an asshole. Likely an imitation of his superior's own Jerkass attitude towards Isaac. To drive the point home, Isaac doesn't even mourn him, more relieved that his corpse was not Ellie's when he dug it out.
  • Mauve Shirt: Played with. There is considerable effort to keep them alive only to be killed off violently along with Locke during the Crozier's crashlanding.
  • Off with His Head!: Gets his head sliced in half horizontally by debris on the way down to Tau Volantis.

    Locke 

Crewmember of the USM Eudora.

  • Action Girl: Naturally, since she's military. She holds her own against the Necromorphs aboard the Roanoke while Isaac is restoring ship systems.
  • High-Voltage Death: What kills her during the descent down to Tau Volantis: an exploding panel next to her rips her apart and electrifies her.
  • Last-Name Basis: Her first name is never revealed in the game.
  • Mauve Shirt: She's a competent fighter who lasts through the first few chapters of the game, but ultimately dies before reaching Tau Volantis.
  • We Hardly Knew Ye: She barely gets any actual characterization, mostly revolving around protecting Rosen when he gets hurt, and has no direct conversations with Isaac, meaning no chances to distinguish herself. As such, these factors, along with being the only member of the team with No Full Name Given, leaves her easily forgotten when she dies, to the point that nobody even mentions it happening.

Marker Ops

    Jennifer Santos 
Played by: Michelle Johnson

An engineer Ellie Langford brings along to Tau Volantis to help figure out how to get rid of the Necromorphs.

  • Black Dude Dies First: Inverted, she is the last character of Isaac's group to die in 3.
  • Break the Cutie: As the game progresses, and more and more of the team dies, she slowly becomes this, going from chirpy to when she and Isaac meet, to her screaming to Isaac not to let the Snow Beast get her.
  • Cruel and Unusual Death: When the elevator she’s riding is attacked by the Snow Beast, she ends up falling down a cliff to her death. When Isaac (and in Cooperative play, Carver) falls too and manages to survive, the player will find that she was also buried under a tonne of heavy snow and ice. Ouch.
  • Nightmare Fetishist: She thinks the Nexus is beautiful, and she sounds a little too eager when she tells Isaac that they'll have to crawl into one.
  • The Smart Guy: She's the most intelligent and studied member of the team. Buckell even calls her the "little lady with the big brain."

    Austin Buckell 
Played by: Frank Ashmore

A Marker researcher Ellie Langford brings to Tau Volantis.

  • Cool Old Guy: He's the oldest member of the team, but he managed to survive whilst stranded in the S.C.A.F fleet with its ancient necromorphs, despite his injuries. He's also one of the nicest members of the team.
  • Heroic Sacrifice: The team manages to find winter suits in an outpost but there weren't enough for everyone. He volunteers to be left behind without a suit. While the trope below states that this could be a case of Sensless Sacrifice. It does appear he was already way too grievously wounded to go on, and decided to no longer prolong the inevitable.
  • I'm Cold... So Cold...: Dies of his hypothermia and various existing wounds.
  • Nice Guy: One of the friendliest characters in the franchise to Isaac, which may explain why he unfortunately was the first one to die when they actually reach the surface of Tau Volantis.
  • Obi-Wan Moment: Out of all the characters of the Dead Space universe, Buckwell arguably has the most peaceful death. He isn't torn apart by Necromorphs or shot, but dies of hypothermia and existing wounds.
  • Senseless Sacrifice: A rather Zigzagged trope. Probably due to Gameplay and Story Segregation, but, there's a manually-operated generator not twenty feet from where Buckell is left behind, which Isaac uses to restore the heating to the building so he can survive long enough to get his own suit. Buckell could have had the team turn that on and wait for them. That being said, the nature of his wounds alongside how grievous they were, may have meant he was doomed either way and preventing hypothermia may have just prolonged the inevitable painfully.

The Circle

    In General 
A violent and fanatical sect of Unitology, the Circle rebelled against EarthGov following the Marker experiments that occurred in 2. They serve as the primary human antagonists in 3, seeking to kill Isaac Clarke and bring about Convergence to humanity.

  • Ax-Crazy: Despite the fact that how eloquent or polite some, like Danik, make themselves out to be, it's clear that they are very, very insane. Especially considering that they tend to kill everyone living they see that isn't them.
  • Belief Makes You Stupid: As always, being Unitologists makes them crazy doomsday cultists who consider the annihilation of humanity to be a good thing.
  • Church Militant: A militant Unitologist sect.
  • Conflict Killer: After four years of games, comics, and novels seemingly leading toward a confrontation between EarthGov and Isaac (or other Necromorph hunters), the Circle, a new Unitology sect to the franchise, suddenly overthrows the government offscreen. The effect was so sudden that Isaac did not even know that EarthGov was down to its last battalion until he was outright told.
  • Double Think: One would think that a group that ruthlessly works towards ensuring Convergence happens would gladly line up to be butchered and infected, but every time the Circle’s forces run into a pack of Necromorphs they’ll unhesitantly start fighting each other. While this is because they believe the Necromorphs are the flawed result of EarthGov experimenting with the Markers, the amount of times that the infection shows up even when the government had absolutely no involvement with the Marker responsible should have raised more than a few eyebrows by itself with the implications.
  • Driven to Suicide: Several times on Tau Volantis, Isaac can stumble across a lone soldier who screams a Unitologist proverb before shooting himself. At one point, he witnesses several members performing a ritual before they all slit their throats.
  • Elite Mooks: Certain Circle troops wear black gear and have more durability. They also tend to carry heavier weapons.
  • Even Evil Has Standards: A few of the Circle members who haven't completely lost their minds seem to think the Necromorph cultists are a little too barbaric. And these are the same zealots who were perfectly willing to blow themselves up to hasten Convergence.
  • Evil Versus Evil: EarthGov undoubtedly trampled on the rights of its citizens, performed unethical experiments, and manufactured Markers like crazy. The Circle overthrows them, guns down civilians left and right, and deliberately engineers Necromorph outbreaks.
  • Eviler than Thou: Unitologists weren't a pleasant bunch to begin with, but The Circle makes mainstream Unitologists look like saints in comparison. Also pull this off by toppling EarthGov.
  • Glass Cannon: As they are normal human beings, they are much easier to kill with gunfire than most Necromorphs. However, since they're similarly armed, they can be a substantial threat.
  • N.G.O. Superpower: They're members of a cult that has the resources to undermine and overthrow EarthGov.
  • Omnicidal Maniac: Their goals are to trigger what is a massive planet-wide species harvesting by their Eldritch Abomination "Gods." And they will even express this through indiscriminate shootings and massacres.
  • Selective Obliviousness: In the core game of Dead Space 3, they insist that necromorphs are "perversions" of Convergence born of tampering with the Markers, rather than the actual intended result.

    Jacob Arthur Danik 
Played by: Simon Templeman

Leader of The Circle. After bringing ruin to EarthGov and its colonies, he hunts down Isaac as he's the only one capable of stopping his plan of bringing Convergence to the galaxy.

  • Adaptational Origin Connection: The 2023 remake has a "J. A. D." be a witness to Octavia Clarke's will that signs over all her property to the Church of Unitology- which also implies he had some prior influence over her and therefore her murder-suicide.
  • Arch-Enemy: Danik is Issac's most personal enemy in the series. Throughout 3, Danik stalks Issac across the galaxy and on multiple occasions hold Ellie at gunpoint. The 2023 remake also implies that Danik played a role in the Octavia Clarke's murder-suicide, and strengtening Isaac's hatred for the Church.
  • The Bad Guy Wins: At the end of 3, he succeeds in waking the Moon, which in turn wakes it Brothers and tells them about Earth. The series ends with them consuming humanity. So Danik gets everything he wants except living long enough to see it.
  • Belief Makes You Stupid: He may think otherwise, but he's just as much of a deranged loony as the rest of the Unitologists. Even when Isaac directly confirms that the Markers are used to gather food for the Brethren Moons, he refuses to accept it, insisting his interpretation of Unitology is truth.
  • Enemy Mine: He allies temporarily with Captain Norton against Isaac.
  • Evil Brit: He has a very strong British accent and mannerisms, but he's a genocidal lunatic.
  • Faux Affably Evil: He speaks in a polite and refined manner, and even hands out compliments to his adversary. However, he usually follows it up with a death threat, and his compliments always have an smarmy, insincere tone to them.
  • The Fundamentalist: Although he claims what he does is For Science!, every word out of his mouth hints at the religious fanaticism that he denies.
  • Humans Are the Real Monsters: Seems to hold firm to this belief.
  • Hypocrite: Danik claims to be grounded by reason and logic, and is not a dogmatic zealot. Doesn't stop him from calling Isaac a "filthy heretic".
    Danik: Isaac! What are you doing?
    Isaac: Finishing something that should have been done a long time ago.
    Danik: Well, stop it! You're tampering with things you know nothing about!
    Isaac: Right back at you, jackass.
  • Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: In a near standing position, with a stalactite.
  • Ink-Suit Actor: Looks a lot like his voice actor, Simon Templeman.
  • Karmic Death: Bites it by being impaled with a stalactite that falls due to him turning off the machine that was preventing Convergence.
  • Knight Templar: Like all Unitologists, he truly believes he's doing the right thing by forcibly "ascending" all of mankind through Convergence.
  • Know-Nothing Know-It-All: Insists on making grandiose statements about the "true purpose" of the Markers, when in reality he's a deluded fanatic who knows absolutely nothing about the reality of things.
  • Light Is Not Good: He dresses completely in white, which probably references how holy he thinks he is.
  • Non-Action Big Bad: He's the Big Bad of Dead Space 3, although he does very little to directly threaten Isaac.
  • Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist: Like all Unitologist villains in the series, he genuinely believes that "Convergence" will mean an end to all individual suffering and want. He's just stubbornly blinding himself to what Convergence actually means, both immediately and in the long run. Except he's even more fanatical about it and enjoys being important.
  • One-Steve Limit: Shares a forename with Jacob Temple from the first game.
  • Sinister Shades: He always wears dark glasses over his eyes, which add to his sinister mien.
  • Smug Snake: When things are going his way, he tends to gloat and carry a polite facade. When things don't go his way, however, the facade quickly breaks down.
  • Stalactite Spite: Turning off the Alien Machine causes tremors, which results in a massive, jagged spike of rock falling from the ceiling and impaling him.
  • The Unfought: He gets impaled by a stalactite before Isaac or Carver can kill him.

The Necromorph Cult

    In General 

An especially deranged band of Circle remnants that took over CMS Terra Nova. They have embraced the open worship of Necromorphs and strive to match them in form through bodily mutilation. They serve as the primary human antagonists of Awakened.

  • Apocalypse Cult: As is more or less par for the Church Of Unitology already, the Necromorph Cultists in Awakened have fully embraced this aspect, having devolved into degenerate madmen worshipping the Brethren Moons and mutilating themselves or others out of fanatical devotion to them.
  • Ax-Crazy: These Cultists are even more insane than the members of the Circle, hunting down others that aren't into their way of thinking and tearing them apart as offerings to their "gods", as well as cutting their own limbs off as offerings and replacing them with metal blades.
  • Double Think: Averted. They have abandoned the Circle's double thinking and accepted the truth behind Convergence, spiralling into full-on, Necromorph-worshipping madness.
  • Eviler than Thou: The Cultists eagerly sacrifice the members of the Circle who haven't lost their minds.
  • Go Mad from the Revelation: Upon learning the truth behind Convergence through exposure to the dementia signal released by the Tau Volantis Moon, it completely annihilated what little sanity they had left in their homicidal, broken minds, with those who didn’t lapse into mindlessly terrified, near-catatonic babbling gladly turning their ruthless devotion to the service of their new gods.
  • Malevolent Mutilation: The Cultists are so far around the bend that besides the usual Self-Harm, they’ve resorted to grafting crude metal appendages onto themselves to better emulate their undead idols, resulting in them resembling a Slasher in appearance. Unfortunately, they do not limit this to themselves either, with them gladly carving up anybody that doesn’t fall into their ranks and decorating their shrines with what remains.
  • Religion of Evil: Mainstream Unitologists and the Circle merely border on this, but the Necromorph cult in Awakened are much more on the nose, offering the Moons dismembered body parts of dead worshipers and anyone who disagreed with their way of thinking (if you can call it that), including members of the Circle.
  • Sanity Slippage: They are Circle members who have completely lost it, outright worshipping Necromorphs (when in the base game artifacts show that they previously had considered them abominations caused by heretics messing with the Markers), and engaging in self-mutilation.

    "The Prophet" 

The leader of the Necromorph Cult. He serves as The Heavy of Dead Space 3: Awakened.

  • Ambiguous Ending: On a personal level for him alone. The Prophet is the only boss in the whole franchise that doesn't need to be actually killed to advance the story. Once his Boss Battle is won and he's kneeling before Isaac and Carver, it's up to the player(s) whether they put him down for good or simply leave the room for their next objective. Both choices have a separate achievement attached, and due to DS 3's Franchise Killer status it's never been made clear which ending is considered canonical.
  • Ax-Crazy: Considering his plans, this probably shouldn't be a surprise.
  • Bandaged Face: Though considering his methods, this is probably better than the alternative.
  • Dark Messiah: The Brother Moons even call him "the prophet" to their "god".
  • Eviler than Thou: Even to the Circle, who are themselves this to most other Unitologists, he mutilates his own cultists and uses their body parts as offerings to the Brother Moons.
  • Final Boss: The last boss you meet in Awakened.
  • The Fundamentalist: He's even more fanatic than Danik.
  • The Heavy: Of Awakened, sort of. He isn't in direct contact with the Brother Moons, but he is trying to help the goal along in his own way.
  • Implacable Man: Due to Isaac and Carver's Hallucinations, he appears capable of Flash Step and Nigh-Invulnerable, though it's highly likely they are simply missing. Once they manage to subvert the Moons' hold on him and wound him, things get a lot easier.
  • Made of Iron: When Isaac and Carver manage to hit him, he still takes a lot of punishment for someone who never wears a shirt.
  • Mouth of Sauron: He speaks for the Brother Moons.
  • Multi-Armed and Dangerous: Subverted. He wants this, having put Slasher arms into his back, but he doesn't actually have it.
  • No Name Given: Even the title, "the Prophet" is only given to him by the Brethren Moons and he's only called it once in the entirety of the DLC. One of the Unitologists, Randall Carr, knows most of the people in Danik's crew and not even he can figure out who the Prophet is any more.
  • Self-Harm: How he seems to have put the Slasher arms on his back.
  • Time Stands Still: Has access to a Stasis module. How he uses it is unknown.
  • Touched by Vorlons: He seems to have some control over the hallucinations that Isaac and Carver suffer as a result of his connection to the Moons.
  • Walking Shirtless Scene: He walks around barechested throughout the Awakened DLC. Probably relates to his Sanity Slippage.
  • Zero-Effort Boss: Once he's actually found after the Let's You and Him Fight and his wounding in a hallucination fight, he doesn't even fight back. He just sits on his knees, bowing and mumbling his Madness Mantra over and over like his followers until Carver and/or Isaac kills him. The two don't even comment on killing him.

Necromorphs

    Fodder 

A Necromorph that takes the form of a decaying human wielding melee weapons.

  • Adaptive Ability: Depending on where they are injured, the resulting Combat Tentacles that sprout will either be used as stabbing weapons or fire barbs like that of a Lurker.
  • Development Gag: Based on an early concept for the Necromorphs in general: an octopoid Puppeteer Parasite wearing a corpse that erupts into a mass of Combat Tentacles when severly injured.
  • Dual Wielding: Always carries two weapons, whether it be ice axes, hatchets, bone saws, or wrenches.
  • Expy: Of a Divider, in how they change their form once they lose their legs or torsos, growing tentacles from the stump.
  • Glowing Eyelights of Undeath: A distinguishing trait of these Necromorphs is that they possess glowing yellow lights emitting from their eyes, mouth and the space where their nose used to be due to the bioluminescent pus-like gunk leaking from them. Oddly enough, the glow is absent when they’re inactive or dead.
  • Humanoid Abomination: This Necromorph bears the most resemblance to a man, with an absence of tentacles and extra limbs and can pass for human at a distance. Doesn't change the fact that it's the furthest thing from human as you can get.
  • It Can Think: This necromorph won't go for bone blades or barbs (at first anyway) and will settle with beating, maiming or stabbing you to death with hatchets, crowbars, wrenches, ice axes and other vicious, blunt or sharp weaponry that appeals to its desire to kill.
  • Improvised Weapon: The only Necromorph thus far to use an actual weapon aside from what they spit or have attached to their bodies.
  • Metamorphosis Monster: sprout Combat Tentacles when their limbs get dismembered.
  • Powerful Pick: Some Fodders make use of ice axes when assaulting our heroes. Most of these ice pick wielders are more common in Tau Volantis.
  • Playing Possum: While they won’t try this trick in the middle of a fight, Fodder are perfectly capable of playing dead. This is made significantly more convincing than even the Slashers due to their largely human appearance, so it’s easier for the unwary to dismiss them as ordinary corpses until they spring into life, draw their weapons and descend upon their victim.
  • Shout-Out: Their parkas, generally humanoid form, glowing eyes within their hoods, and their sudden and swift transformation once they are damaged enough all recalls the representation of the titular monster from The Thing (1982) seen on that movie's theatrical poster.
  • They Look Like Us Now: Looks mostly like a human. Besides the whole glowing eyes and looking anything but friendly.

    Feeder 

Naked, emaciated Necromorphs resulting from humans desperate enough to eat Necromorph flesh.

  • Ax-Crazy: As their food supply dwindled and the S.C.A.F teetered dangerously close to outright famine, some of the personnel would attempt to remedy this by eating the flesh of killed Necromorphs, only to degenerate into deranged cannibals as the tainted meat gradually infected them from the inside out. Sam Ackerman had to run from his own comrades and trap them by disabling the elevator when they too succumbed to their obscene diet and began hunting him. Fast forward 200 years later and it's a safe bet to say that their hunger is all that remains of them.
  • Boom, Headshot!: Surprisingly, one of the only Necromorphs where headshots are the best way to take them down, tying into their Technically-Living Zombie status. The regular variants are weak to any attack, but when facing Enhanced versions, aiming for the head is a must.
  • Disability Superpower: They're nearly blind, but have acute hearing to make up for it.
  • Expy: A taller, slightly more durable version of the Pack. The main difference is there are Advanced Feeders, who aren't so squishy.
  • Eyeless Face: Their eyes appear to be totally gone, or shriveled away.
  • Fragile Speedster: One or two rounds will take a standard Feeder down, but they close the gap between you and them fairly quickly, and attack in droves. Enhanced Feeders are significantly less squishy, but can still be disposed off quite easily compared to other Necromorphs.
  • Fate Worse than Death: Unlike other Necromorphs with the exception of the Guardian, these poor bastards are still alive despite their utterly horrific state.
  • Flesh-Eating Zombie: The only Necromorph seen in the series that can and will devour their victims instead of simply killing or infecting them.
  • Full-Frontal Assault: They aren't wearing anything at all, though there's not much left to show.
  • Gorn: They explode when you shoot them.
  • Horror Hunger: People becoming them retained mental capacity to some degree. They just seemed willing to eat anything.
  • I'm a Humanitarian: Feeders are not very picky about who or what they start tucking into. As a bonus, they're usually created when the person in question infects themselves by eating meat, human or otherwise, that has been tainted by the Necromorph plague. A fate that would see a sizeable contingent of the S.C.A.F personnel planetside reduced to hordes of emaciated revenants, lurking in the darkness of their long-abandoned facilities.
  • More Teeth than the Osmond Family: Has extra teeth formed from the jaw bones.
  • Monstrous Mandibles: Unhinge their jaw like a snake during their death scene when they're about to bite off Isaac/John's head.
  • Nothing but Skin and Bones: The Feeders encountered are little more than a bunch of skeletons with just a very thin layer of flesh coating them, with most of their organs and muscles having withered away.
  • Our Ghouls Are Creepier: Rail-thin, starving pseudo-zombies come about from desperate men eating the flesh of creatures best left untasted. They don't have ice or Psychic-Assisted Suicide powers, disqualifying them from the Wendigo trope despite the frozen setting.
  • Sense-Impaired Monster: Feeders are blind, but have increased hearing to compensate, due to having evolved in a pitch-black basement. They can be distracted by throwing things accross the room to make a noise to attract them. They aren't completely blind, though. They can tell light from dark, and light drives them into a murderous rage.
  • Technically-Living Zombie: Unlike other variants, Feeders appear to be mostly mental transformations and extended life. This extends to their Fragile Speedster status.
  • You Are Who You Eat: They were humans who ate necromorphs, and so turned into necromorphs.
  • Zerg Rush: Attack aggressively in waves.

    Shambler 

Corpses taken over by the heads of Divider necromorphs.

  • A-Team Firing: Downplayed. While they do actually try to aim at you with their guns, they'll still miss a lot.
  • Boom, Headshot!: The divider head is a weak point; removing it is an instant kill.
  • It Can Think: The Shambler is the first Necromorph to be seen using guns against their targets, even if their ability to aim leaves something to be desired.
  • Fastball Special: When on low health, it throws the controlling head at you.
  • Parasite Zombie: They're corpses animated by a singular parasite, and if the body is destroyed, the parasite can attempt to claim a new host. Unusually for this trope, the parasite is another corpse's independently zombified head.

    Alien Necromorphs 

Necromophed members of the original alien species that once ruled Tau Volantis, these abominations have been waiting for over two million years for new prey, and they weather damage as much as they've weathered time.

  • Airborne Mook: One variation is a sort of flying jellyfish, encountered during Zero-G sequences. It has float-sacs and four tentacles that throw homing wisps or smack Isaac when he flies to close.
  • Boss Rush: Every Alien 'morph is essentially a dangerous miniboss in its own right, and they have the nasty habit of attacking in groups of three or more. One particular battle near the end of Dead Space 3 has them spawn indefinitely from at least three directions, to the point where you can be fighting six or more of them at once.
  • Enfant Terrible: The Crawlers that the 'Brute' variation spawns from its chest? They're made of the Alien species' spawn, just like they were made with human infants before.
  • Expy: The 'Brute' variation is much like the old Brute. It's slow moving but can quickly charge, has tremendous resilience, and has ability to spawn exploding pods from a orifice in its chest.
  • Mook Maker: The Brute equivalent of these monsters has the ability to spawn Crawlers made from its zombified young out through a hole in its abdomen.
  • Made of Iron: The 'Brute' variation doesn't possess the indestructible bone plates of the human-based Brutes, but in turn also lack the glowing yellow weak point that make shooting off limbs easier while still having similar health. It takes a lot of ammo or a really powerful gun to snap their limbs off.
  • Non-Human Undead: By virtue of being the reanimated and twisted corpses of aliens.
  • Piñata Enemy: The Alien Brutes drop three items upon death. You'll sorely need them to replenish your depleted stocks of ammo and medkits.
  • Pregnant Badass: The fact that the Brute variation can repeatedly give birth to Crawlers made from their own young while fighting them indicates that they themselves may have been carrying to term when they were killed and infected. They're also highly resistant to dismemberment despite their lack of visible armour and can easily pummel Isaac to mulch if he isn't careful while dealing with them.
  • Starfish Aliens: Or Starfish Necromorphs, due to the species that they were formed of. However, their infections parallel our own; their facial structure looks relatively intact and have similar growths fusing and adding new limbs as suited.
  • Sealed Evil in a Can: A combination of being imprisoned within the ice sheets of Tau Volantis, their lunar leader remaining trapped in a Forced Sleep thanks to the Alien Machine, and a lack of motivation due to there being nothing to hunt and kill has kept these Necromorphs dormant and pacified for countless eons. It's only when the S.C.A.F investigate the planet in 2311, then again two centuries later with the arrival of Isaac and his companions along with the Circle, that their bloodlust is rekindled and they start to awaken once again.
  • They Look Just Like Everyone Else!: Non-human equivalent, but the Brute variation is notable for noticeably lacking in significant external mutation, being almost identical in appearance to the uninfected aliens entombed within the ice. The only anomalous characteristics plainly evident are the reddened flesh on its forelegs and the ability to spew the undead young of its alien host from its abdominal cavity like an unholy Grenade Launcher.

Boss Necromorphs

    The Hunters 

A Necromorph type first encountered about the USM Terra Nova. Like the Hunter and Ubermorph before it, it regenerates lost limbs at a rapid pace, making killing it permanently a difficult proposition. Unlike the Hunter and Ubermorph, there's more than one.

  • Dug Too Deep: These Hunters were originally members of the deep dig teams sent to excavate Tau Volantis, coming back completely and utterly mad. It's implied that whatever transpired on their trip below the ice was also what caused their unique infections.
  • Extra Eyes: Like the Ubermorph they possess several more eyes arranged in a similar pattern around their heads.
  • Immune to Fire: Subverted. These guys are fireproof, so flame-weapons have no effect on them whatsoever.
  • Ludicrous Gibs: Isaac and Carver finally manage to kill the Hunters stalking them on the Terra Nova by commandeering nearby auto-cannon turrets and blasting the beasts into paint while in the process of unjamming the gears in the engine room.
  • Optional Boss: Although the first set of Hunters (aboard the Terra Nova) are unavoidable, a later set is encountered in an optional mission towards the end of the game.
  • Palette Swap: Looks a bit more like the Hunter from the first Dead Space than the Ubermorph, except its skin is very pale and has Marker runes carved all over it.

    The Snow Beast 

A large Necromorph that is encountered on Tau Volantis.

  • Combat Tentacles: Has a trio of them on its back, plus another set in its face.
  • Cowardly Boss: In the first two encounters, it retreats after enough damage has been done. By the last encounter however, it finally stays put and engages Isaac in a battle to the death.
  • Eaten Alive: Should Isaac or Carver get struck by a tentacle at low health, it will devour him.
  • Giant Enemy Crab: It looks a lot like an enormous, alien crustacean. Fittingly, given that Tau Volantis was originally a water-world before the Aliens froze it solid as part of their Heroic Sacrifice.
  • Half the Man He Used to Be: Isaac ultimately finishes it off by using two harpoon guns to impale it and then pull it in half.
  • Healing Factor: Can regrow its back tentacles repeatedly.
  • Super-Persistent Predator: It attacks Isaac shortly after he crashes on the planet and continues to stalk him throughout most of the game. Even after he fights it off several times, it keeps hunting him. It takes Isaac ripping it in half with some nearby harpoon guns to end its hunt for good.

    The Nexus 

Several giant Necromorphs Isaac and Ellie find frozen on Tau Volantis. Isaac has to explore the inside of one to locate the origin of the Markers, which thaws it out.

  • Expy: Similar to the Hive Mind from the first game; even the game's achievement text calls it the Hivemind, probably because it is one, albeit one made from aliens, not humans.
  • Mook Maker: Similarly to the Hivemind, except it spawns Enhanced Feeders.
  • Womb Level: Twice. During the second time, you are promptly swallowed whole and forced to kill it from the inside.

    The Blood Moon (MAJOR SPOILERS) 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/necromoonfull.png

A massive Necromorph formed from the Convergence Event on Tau Volantis, that has gone into hibernation due to the alien machine that stopped the Convergence Event and turned Tau Volantis into an ice planet. This unfinished Convergence Necromorph is masquerading as Tau Volantis' broken moon, using the Marker signal to call other humans to it to wake it up and "make it whole."

  • The Chessmaster: Manipulated everyone in the series at one point or another until 3. Those who it didn't tended to end up dead, except for a select few.
  • Chekhov's Gunman: Seen prominently throughout the game, shown on various posters and promotional material, literally hiding in painfully obvious sight from the protagonists throughout the entirety of the game.
  • Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: Isaac and Carver, two characters who barely measure up to the size of its teeth, manage to not only go toe-to-toe with it, but end up doing what the aliens failed to accomplish and actually kill the Brethren Moon with the Machine.
  • Eldritch Abomination: It fits the bill more so than any other Necromorph. It has the ability to send out signals to its brethren to awaken them, cause hallucinations and madness, is incredibly massive with enormous Combat Tentacles, and swallows entire planets.
  • Eye Scream: Its weak points are its eyes, and it can only be weakened by hurling Markers at them.
  • Final Boss: The final boss of 3.
  • Genius Loci: A representative of an entire race of creatures that seem moons.
  • Greater-Scope Villain: Of the entire series up to 3, being the source of the Marker signals in human space.
  • Hidden in Plain Sight: It's the moon of Tau Volantis, so it's kind of hard to expect it would be the Big Bad of the third numbered game.
  • Hoist by His Own Petard: Isaac repeatedly impales it with the very Markers it used to control the Necromorphs.
  • It Can Think: It's certainly smart enough to manipulate people through its own version of Marker visions.
  • My Death Is Just the Beginning: Before its death, it sends out one final signal to reawaken the remaining Brethren Moons. At the end of the DLC, Isaac and Carver arrive at Earth just in time to see that the Moons are already there and are well on their way to devouring the planet.
  • Planet Looters: It's presumed that after finishing its own birth, it would have roamed the galaxy, homing in on humanity's Marker signals and eating everyone.
  • Serial Escalation: The single largest boss and Necromorph encountered by far in the entire franchise.
  • Starfish Aliens: Sapient planetoid aliens, but still. Also the justification for the Absent Aliens trope—the Brother Moons ate them.
  • That's No Moon: Appears to be a broken moon of Tau Volantis when it's really a giant Necromorph whose birth is stalled.
  • Ultimate Life Form: A post-Convergence, size-of-a-moon ultimate Necromorph.
  • Walking Spoiler: As the final boss of Dead Space 3, virtually all information about it is a spoiler.

    The Brethren Moons (MAJOR SPOILERS) 
https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/brethren_moon_overview.png

You can kill the prophet, but you can't kill the god! Your chance to warn the Earth has come and gone. We are coming. We are hungry. We are here.

The Blood Moon was but one among an entire race of unfathomably ancient Necromorphs, and its fall has awakened its brethren to the existence of humanity. Convergence Events have happened countless other times across the universe, as rising civilizations fall into energy crises and become tempted by the Marker's powers, unknowing that it's in fact a seed for the Necromorphs and the Moons. They have consumed countless worlds before Tau Volantis, creating a massive area utterly devoid of life - a "dead space".

  • The Bad Guy Wins: Awakened ends with them having successfully stalled Isaac and Carver until they reached Earth and began to turn its biosphere into another Brother Moon, with no means of destroying them known. As this was the last entry of the original series, they appear to have ultimately won out in the end.
  • Body of Bodies: To an absolutely ludicrous degree. Each and every Brethren Moon is created from an entire civilisation, destroyed and subjugated by the corruption of the Markers.
  • Big Bad: As of Dead Space 3: Awakened they are the biggest Bads there are. Literally, even.
  • Bizarre Alien Reproduction: Their consumption of whole civilisations and planets full of life is their version of a reproductive cycle. It goes like so: a Marker is sent to a planet with life or the potential for life while the Brother Moons wait for a planet to be ready for Convergence, since they don't need to eat to survive and can wait as long as they need. The Marker acts as a receiver for the Moons' psychic signal(which is limitless since the Moons are The Ageless), which causes insanity in creatures and either drives them to suicide or murder rampages. The same signal creates Necromorphs from the corpses, which go off and kill more creatures that then turn into more Necromorphs. If a species is intelligent enough, such as with a civilisation, then the Markers' signal is interpreted as the chance at unlimited electromagnetic energy, which any society would inevitably need at some point as alternative resources run out. Of those civilisations, some subjects with a strong enough mind will receive the blueprints to make more Markers, and usually a compulsion to build them as well(though they still lose a varying amount of their sanity). Of course, this makes the situation worse since it means there are more Markers causing more people to kill everyone, making more Necromorphs, and repeat. Meanwhile the people not on a killing-spree will eventually use the people with the Marker blueprints to make more Markers, either due to greed or misguided fanaticism. All of this culminating in creating a new Brother Moon(or several) when enough Necromorph-flesh is achieved, intiating Convergence and wiping out all remaining life as they and even parts of the planet itself are drawn in to create it with a Marker as the core of the Moon/s. The new Moon/s connect itself to the rest of the Moons' Hive Mind, before then taking one of the Markers the consumed race created and sending it to another planet to begin the Cycle anew.
  • Beast of the Apocalypse: A whole group of them, no less! Each and every one of these creatures are capable of destroying entire worlds on their own and have done so throughout the eons, spelling doom for each world they prey upon as madness runs rampant and the dead rise from their graves.
  • The Chessmaster: A whole race of them. Manipulate everyone in the series at one point or another, both in the present and the past.
  • Eldritch Abomination: Massive, inhuman, incomprehensible, and seemingly have limitless power. More so than any other type of Necromorph.
  • Evil Sounds Deep: Contrasting with the high-pitched screams of most Necromorphs. They are also the only Necromorphs that can speak, albeit only through a proxy.
  • Faux Affably Evil: While speaking through the Prophet, they are calm and cordial with Isaac, all while trying to break him and stall him while he tries to warn Earth about the incoming danger.
  • Fermi Paradox: An ongoing question in the series is that, given how expansive the galaxy is and how much it has been explored thus far, the fact that the only forms of life known are humans and Necromorphs (for as much as they count) is stunning to several In-Universe scientists and researchers. The Brethren Moons are the answer to the Paradox; the galaxy might have once been teeming with life, but then a Moon came along, started the Marker signal up, and ate the entire species it brought under its sway to make a new Moon and perpetuate the cycle. This has been going on for, bare minimum, two million years if that Tau Volantis aliens are anything to go off of, and that is more than enough time to effectively depopulate most of the galaxy.
  • Genius Loci: The race so large per individual, they can be easily misconstrued as moons.
  • God Is Evil: The Brethren Moons are the closest contenders to an actual divine power seen in the Dead Space universe and, provided that it's not an embellishment fabricated by their Unitologist thralls, had a major hand to play in uplifting humanity into their current state. They're also a bunch of self-absorbed sadists who actively want to burn down the civilisations they helped foster, subjecting their populations to a hell without end as the Moons twist them, both in body and mind, into their broken undead slaves.
  • A God Am I: The immense power and knowledge they have has invoked a god complex in them.
  • Greater-Scope Villain: Of the entire series, being the source of Markers and Marker signals, and therefore, Convergence events.
  • It Can Think: As revealed in Awakened, not only can they think, they can talk too, though they use a proxy.
  • Lack of Empathy: They don't think much of their fallen brother on Tau Volantis, and only see those insane enough to worship them as puppets to speak through and don't show any anger when Isaac kills their "prophet".
  • Lovecraft Lite: Only by the most bare of technicalities, given that the climax of 3 ends with Isaac and Carver managing to kill the Tau Volantis Moon. Even then this still probably counts as a Subverted Trope since it was more or less a minor miracle that the Tau Moon was in a state where it could be killed to begin with, and the act of doing so nearly killed Isaac and Carver (and before the Awakened DLC, looked like it had for all intents and purposes), and by the end of Awakened the rest of the Moons have made it to Earth and are already in the process of harvesting humanity, rendering the base ending of 3 a Pyrrhic Victory.
  • Mind Rape: They're the actual source of the debilitating Marker signal that keeps causing almost all of the trouble that goes down throughout the franchise. Its effects on the human mind range from simple, often suicidal and always homicidal insanity, to a compulsive urge to construct more Markers. Only those with an iron will can power through the hallucinations and come out more or less sane, but even these rare individuals can't prevail against the signal strength emitted by the Moons on a war/hunt footing, which can mind-rape entire planets from light years away. The strength is such that even Isaac Clarke falls prey to it on some level when they focus on him.
  • Necromancer: They control the Necromorphs through the Markers, possibly even down to shaping the corpses.
  • Planet Looters: Their goals don't seem to include much in the way of replacing what they eat. And "what they eat" is entire biospheres of planets.
  • Perpetual-Motion Monster: Unlike regular lifeforms, the Brother Moons do not feed to survive; they feed to reproduce. They live in the vacuum of space and have existed for millions of years, seemingly without any form of nourishment. The Markers they create offer the promise of unlimited electromagnetic energy to any race who finds them and makes more. However, the Markers do not create this limitless energy, for they are merely receivers of it from the true source; the telepathic signal of the Moons' hive mind.
  • Serial Escalation: The single largest boss type and Necromorph encountered by far in the entire franchise.
  • Starfish Aliens: Sapient planetoid aliens, to be precise.
  • That's No Moon: Though it's easy to make a mistake about that, considering that they look just like them.
  • Time to Unlock More True Potential: Even as Earth is being converged, they ask Isaac to make them whole, implying that they're just another instar of necromorph development.
  • Ultimate Life Form: A post-Convergence Necromorph the size of a moon., although reading between some of their lines indicates even these abominations may not yet be the final stage in the necromorphs' unlife cycle.
  • Undead Abomination: All Necromorphs are this to varying degrees, but these ones take the cake: Sapient undead planetoids made from the countless dead bodies of entire civilisations, they possess unimaginable psychic abilities, are so horrifically powerful that it took Isaac and Carver an honest to god miracle to kill just one of them (and an incomplete one at that), and their presence alone can drive even the most impregnable of minds to madness.
  • Walking Spoiler: They only debut at the end of the third game, so any kind of details on them is a massive spoiler in itself.

Others

    The Aliens 
The alien species that inhabited Tau Volantis millions of years ago and were seduced by the Markers just as humanity was. Long dead (or worse) by the time of the game, it was their actions that gave Clarke and company a fighting chance against the Necromorphs.

  • All for Nothing: Their sacrifice bought humanity time, but it wasn't enough. At the end, the Moons still devour humanity.
  • Dark Is Not Evil: Their city/machine is full of creepy architecture and they were quite odd looking, but they were very similar to humans and they ultimately killed themselves in hopes of saving future species.
    "Whatever they had been, they were men!"
  • Dying Moment of Awesome: With a Convergence Event well underway, and their world in the midst of being assimilated by the newborn Brethren Moon overhead, the last few members of their race to resist the corruption of the Markers managed to construct and activate a machine capable of stopping the massive Necromorph in its tracks before it could complete its formation, in the process not only laying out the groundwork to help any inclined future races put the slumbering beast down once and for all, but also throwing a massive spanner in the plans of its dormant kin for millions of years onward.
  • Greater-Scope Paragon: Their creation of the Machine stopped the Moon from being completed and preventing the Moons from finding humanity. For awhile, at least.
  • Heroic Sacrifice: The last living and sane members of their race activated the Machine, killing themselves but putting the Moon to sleep.
  • History Repeats: Their history was almost the exact same as humanity: the aliens expanded to the stars, were forced to experiment on the Markers in hopes of solving an energy crisis, and were ultimately consumed by Convergence events.
  • No Name Given: We only know them as "the aliens". What they actually called themselves is never discovered.
  • Posthumous Character: Their race was wiped out a long time ago.
  • Starfish Aliens: They're almost certainly a reference to the Elder Things, especially in how they communicate via strange piping sounds.

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