Characters / Fight Club

"Jack"/The Narrator

Portrayed by: Edward Norton (film), Dave Wittenberg (video game)

"This is your life, and it's ending one minute at a time."

The main character, who trudges through life with his dull corporate job and countless group meetings until he meets Tyler Durden.

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• Ambiguously Bi: While he's definitely sexually attracted to Marla, there's some definite homoerotic subtext in his relationship with Tyler, most prominently his jealousy of Angel Face when Tyler says he likes him. Though the fact that Tyler is his Sexier Alter Ego makes this a bit complicated.
• Ate His Gun: How he defeats Tyler Durden, although he survives.
• Beware the Quiet Ones: Seems calm and morose, but as Angel Face can attest, he can be vicious in a fight.
• Color Motif: Cornflower blue.
• Creepy Monotone: Slips into this while narrating.
• Deadpan Snarker: Regularly, especially in his narration.
• The Every Man: Is perhaps the dullest and most unsatisfied character in the setting... at first.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: Goes from a dissatisfied office worker to the leader of a nationwide terrorist organisation. Though Tyler helped with that.
  • This is taken further in Fight Club 2 when Tyler ends up taking over the world and is responsible for worldwide annihilation. Although that is retconned in Fight Club 3.
• Glasgow Grin: Not quite, but he gains a prominent gunshot wound along his mouth.
• Green-Eyed Monster: Gets very jealous when Tyler shows fondness for Angel Face, leading him to beat the latter's face to a pulp.
  "I am Jack's inflamed sense of rejection."
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Often acts like an asshole to people around him, especially Marla, but his treatment of Bob show his better side.
• The Insomniac: At the beginning of the film, but he loses his insomnia after going to support groups, and later joining Fight Club.
  "With insomnia, nothing's real. Everything's far away. Everything's a copy of a copy of a copy."
• No Name Given: The audience never learns his name. "Jack" is merely a moniker he takes from the collection of essays he stumbles upon in the decrepit building. But his alter ego is Tyler Durden. The comic book sequel Fight Club 2 gives him the name Sebastian.
• Split Personality: Tyler is his.
• Tsundere: To Marla, thanks to him and Tyler being the same person, though he first doesn't realize it. Tyler treats her with affection and sleeps with her, while Jack is snarky at best to her and an asshole at worst.
• The Unfettered: Becomes this in his attempts to stop Tyler.
• Wounded Gazelle Gambit: Beats himself up in his boss's office, and when other people come in to find out what's going on, begs for mercy. The boss is so freaked out by this he agrees to give him a generous severance package, just to get rid of him.

Tyler Durden

'Portrayed by: Brad Pitt (film), Joshua Leonard (video game)

"You're not your job. You're not how much money you have in the bank. You're not the car you drive. You're not the contents of your wallet. You're not your fucking khakis. You're the all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world."

A mysterious man who makes friends with the Narrator. He holds anarchist and anti-consumerism beliefs, and he takes to organizing the titular Fight Club. He eventually descends into outright terrorism with a group of his own, Project Mayhem.

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• Adaptational Heroism: Downplayed in the film. Tyler's master plan might be as destructive as in the book, and arguably even more so, as the film sees him targeting multiple buildings, unlike in the book where he only targets one building. But also unlike in the book, he makes sure that the buildings he plans to blow up are emptied of people beforehand. In addition, in the film, he's targeting office buildings belonging to the world's leading credit companies, while in the book, he's trying to blow up a museum, something people are less likely to support.
• Ax-Crazy: He is violent, unpredictable, sadistic, very open to murder, a Mad Bomber, commits brutal acts randomly, and is generally a Straw Nihilist who lives a life of pure hedonism.
• Bald of Evil: He shaves his head near the end of the film. Except not really. The Narrator only starts seeing him as bald after getting a better picture of his real nature.
• Big Bad: Tyler is the main antagonist of the book and movie, being one of the masterminds of Project Mayhem.
• Boom, Headshot!: A strange variation. Because he is the alter ego of the Narrator, he is destroyed when the latter fires a gun into his own mouth.
• Bright Is Not Good: He has a thing for garishly colored clothing.
• Broken Ace: Being the Narrator's subconscious conception of his ideal self, which he manifests as an alternate personality.
• Demolitions Expert: Knows how to make a variety of explosives from everyday household items.
• Deuteragonist: Tyler gets the most focus in the movie after narrator himself, since he is Narrator's split personality. And the entire plot of the movie revolves around Tyler trying to control the narrator, and the narrator overcoming him.
• Drives Like Crazy: At one point he drives into incoming traffic and lets go of the steering wheel while simultaneously speeding up, and later intentionally crashes into a parked car.
• Even Evil Has Standards: In the movie, at least. When executing Project Mayhem, he arranges for the office buildings he plans to blow up to be empty before he carries out the demolition.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: He started off as a soap maker.
• Hypocrite: He talks at length about how modern society has taken away most men's sense of rugged individuality and broken them down into nothing but servants who exist only to follow orders. He then proceeds to do exactly the same with those who join him, regularly insulting and demeaning them and breaking them down to be nothing but loyal followers who will follow him without question.
• Laughing Mad: It's especially noticeable when he's getting beaten up by Lou.
• Manipulative Bastard: Easily dupes dozens of people into joining Fight club and later Project Mayhem.
• Rule-Abiding Rebel: In a strange way, yes. Despite his hatred of societal values and consumerism, Durden (and Project Mayhem in general) has completely founded his ideals on what society tells him a "real man" is like. His attempts at self-actualization are largely an attempt to be a "real man" in the traditional hypermasculine tough-guy way; it's just that he feels society hasn't given him the tools needed to fulfill that image.
• Rummage Sale Reject: He dresses like this all the time.
• Sexier Alter Ego: He's the Narrator's more charismatic alter-ego. In his own words, he "look(s) like you want to look and fuck(s) like you want to fuck." Interestingly, since he only looks like Brad Pitt to the Narrator, the difference is entirely in his actions and attitude.
• Shadow Archetype He's a manifestation of the narrators inner alienation.
• Sinister Shades: He is fond of them.
• The Snark Knight: Loves to make mocking jabs at the world.
• Split Personality: He is this to the Narrator.
• Straw Nihilist: He has no rules, no limits, and no standards. He simply believes that there is no goal in life. That's the reason why he's an Ax-Crazy anarchist.
• The Unfettered: Nothing checks Tyler's plans.
• Villain Has a Point: Tyler is not wrong when he says that the capitalist system makes the people toiling under it unhappy, and that trying to fill the void left by this unhappiness with rampant consumerism is a foolish solution that is only temporary at best, but his own ideas on how to fix it, namely by forming an oppressive terrorist organisation that plans to violently tear down society to only leave chaos in its wake is all in all a worse solution to a bad problem.
• Walking Spoiler: He turns out to not be real and actually the narrator's alter-ego. He was part of the "narrator's" dissociative split personality, who took over when the "narrator" slept.

Marla Singer

Portrayed by: Helena Bonham Carter (film), Nika Futterman (video game)

"The condom is the glass slipper of our generation. You slip one on when you meet a stranger. You dance all night... then you throw it away. The condom, I mean, not the stranger."

A headstrong woman the Narrator first meets in a support group. He initially dislikes her for interfering with his method of dealing with insomnia, but eventually the two work up an uneasy rapport.

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• Cloudcuckoolander: Comes off as more than a bit strange, but mellows out a bit later on in the movie.
• Driven to Suicide: Subverted. She swallows a whole bottle of Xanax, but survives. She admits it was "probably one of those cry-for-help things."
• Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette: Well, she is played by Helena Bonham Carter.
• The Immodest Orgasm: Much to the annoyance of the Narrator.
• Manic Pixie Dream Girl: Inverted, she's quirky yes, especially at the beginning of the film, but the film makes it very clear that she's only mentally stable compared to everyone else and if she does improve the Narrator's life it's mainly because of a stern "The Reason You Suck" Speech.
• Only Sane Woman: Interestingly, despite her role as a Cloudcuckoolander, she becomes this later in the film. She's the only character that realizes something is very wrong with the Narrator, and when she confronts him about it, advises him to seek serious help.
• Rummage Sale Reject: "I got this dress at a thrift store for one dollar."

Robert Paulson

Portrayed by: Meat Loaf

An overweight man with gynecomastia who the Narrator meets at a support group for survivors of testicular cancer. He eventually joins Fight Club, and later Project Mayhem. He's killed when a mission for Project Mayhem goes awry.

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• Boom, Headshot!: He's killed when a security officer shoots him in the back of the head.
• Irony: Bob's use of steroids in pursuit of an ideal masculine physique led directly to him being literally emasculated and needing to take hormones that left his body flabby and with feminized breasts.
• I Was Quite a Looker: He used to be a bodybuilder who took steroids. He stopped doing both after getting testicular cancer, and it shows.
• Marshmallow Hell: The Narrator gets trapped between Bob's bitch tits.
• Morality Pet: For The Narrator. Outside of Tyler, he's only named character who the Narrator doesn't treat with contempt or hostility; he doesn't even snark at him like he does with Tyler, but treats him as if he were a little sibling. Him dying is what causes the Narrator to fully turn against Tyler and Project Mayhem, and the Narrator even says that Bob was his friend upon learning that he died.
• Nice Guy: Despite how much his life's gone downhill, he's probably the most amiable character in the whole film. So, of course, he's also the first casualty.
• Pretty Little Headshots: Seemingly played straight when he's shot in the back of the head with little noticeable damage, then subverted when the Narrator takes his balaclava off and reveals that the bullet destroyed most of the top of his head.
• Recovered Addict: Stopped taking steroids after they caused him to get testicular cancer.
• Shoo Out the Clowns: He acts as dark comic relief, and gets killed before the third act.

Angel Face

Portrayed by: Jared Leto (film), Michael McMillian (video game)

A regular at Fight Club. After Tyler shows a fondness for him, the Narrator beats his face into a pulp with the explanation that he "wanted to destroy something beautiful."

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• Easily Forgiven: Zig-zagged. While he doesn't try to get revenge against the Narrator for ruining his face and still calls him "sir," he seems rather bitter and traumatized over it but has found some way to rationalize it away. This makes sense considering Project Mayhem's increasingly cult-like quality: its members believe that the leaders can do no wrong, and so hold no grudges even if they get treated terribly by them.
• Eye Scream: One of his eyes is completely swollen and covered over by skin after he gets beaten.
• Facial Horror: His face after getting brutally beaten by the Narrator is less than pretty, to put it mildly.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: He's on the receiving end of one from the Narrator due to his jealousy over Tyler seemingly favoring him, and it leaves his face permanently disfigured.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: His real name is never given.
• Pretty Boy: Hence the nickname. It doesn't last.

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