open/close all folders
Protagonists
Captain
- Action Survivor: Downplayed. Whilst you aren't playing the legendary Big Boss, you are playing a competent commando, who's a member of Big Boss's Badass Army. That being said, it's still a regular, if well-trained, soldier going up against hordes of zombies and other monsters.
- And Then John Was a Zombie: Happens to the Captain in the "Home" ending, which requires you to follow Chris through the portal and abandon the fight against the Lord of Dust. The Captain succeeds in getting back home to Earth, but at the cost of his sanity, becoming one of the Wandering Mother Base soldiers that we see in The Phantom Pain. If there is some silver lining to this it would be that Venom Snake does succeed in bringing the Wandering Mother Base soldiers home.
- Big Damn Heroes: Also doubles as a Heroic Sacrifice. As Morpho's helicopter was taking off from the sinking Mother Base during the climactic battle, XOF commandos were about to shoot down Big Boss and all the survivors. Cue to the Player Character icing them with a bullet to the head from their sniper rifle, relinquishing their chance of escape to save their boss.
- Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": The player character is never given a name (other than what the player chooses for them, and it briefly shows up on a clipboard Goodluck looks at) and instead everyone follows Goodluck's suggestion and calls him Captain. Ironically, Goodluck calls Captain and his allies "heroes with no names" (despite some of them having very clear-cut names). There's actually a very good reason for why Goodluck insists on the player character having the codename Captain, it's because when he was a little boy Chris that's what he remembers everyone calling the player character.
- Private Military Contractors: Of MSF before Section recruited him.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: During the final battle against the Lord of Dust, the Captain has the option to leave his team behind using the same wormhole Chris entered. The Captain ends up in a desert, becoming a wandering Mother Base Soldier similar to the ones that appeared in Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain.
Reeve
- Elites Are More Glamorous: Reeve's an XOF commando deployed during the raid on Mother Base.
- Enemy Mine: One of the major allies in the single-player campaign turns out to be a XOF commando. Though it's possible he's a Token Good Teammate to XOF's otherwise sinister motives. To be fair to both parties, the Captain and the XOF commando in question both realize that they have a better chance at survival and getting back home to Earth if they work together. Reeve does mention to Miranda, the nurse, that he has no intention of sticking together with the Captain when they get home, showing that he hasn't forgotten his animosity towards Mother Base.
- Token Good Teammate: Reeve is revealed to be an example of this for Mother Base's arch-enemy XOF being the only member of that group with any significant positive characterization, or even personality for that matter. That is if you don't count Skull Face.
Miranda
- The Heart: Tries to be in the group in keepingt them united despite the animosity between Reeve and the Captain, due to the rivalry between MSF and XOF.
Nicholas
- Hidden Depths: Mentions that he'd be a chef if he didn't take on his law enforcement career.
Chris
- Child Soldier: Chris is revealed to be a child soldier. Apparently he suffered some sort of war injury which has left him wheelchair bound. Reeve for his part expresses disgust at the concept, pointing out that kids should live the sort of average life that children in America live — going to school, playing with their friends, and reading comic books. He even goes so far as to say that adults like them have paid for their sins, but a child doesn't deserve to be in a hellish place like Dite.
- Fish out of Temporal Water: This is Chris', otherwise known as Goodluck's, situation. Happened to him twice no less. Apparently, he's a child soldier who comes from the 80s, sent back in time to Survive's 1975 setting (some After the End revelations imply it might be the 22nd century relative to Dite's framework). Then at the end of the game he gets sent back in time to 1943 so he can grow up to be Goodluck by 1975. Time travel is confusing.
Dan
See Charon Corp
Charon Corp
Chloe Dubois
- Action Girl: The lone member in CC unit sent to Dite, despite her main profession in WS as a researcher. Didn't help her survive in Dite.
Dan
- Shotguns Are Just Better: Uses a Remington 870 expy as his main weapon in Dite.
- Sole Survivor: Of the CC. Most of them were killed due to the extreme environment of Dite. At least one of his comrades was backstabbed by Seth.
Ernest B. Aspinwell
Harley Warren
Joel Merton
Virgil AT-9
- Machine Monotone: Virgil AT-9, both the male and the female personalities, speak in this way. Gets borderline hilarious in some scenes, where they speak to the protagonists about urgent matters with all the excitement of "Oh man, did I leave the stove on?"
- Voice with an Internet Connection: Takes over from Goodluck in helping the Captain navigate through Dite.
- Two Beings, One Body: This is the case with Virgil AT-9. There are two AI units housed within, one that speaks with a male voice and the other with a female voice. Confusingly, both male and female personalities share the exact same name.
Wardenclyffe Section
Goodluck aka Chris
- Voice with an Internet Connection: Makes contact with the Captain and the others via wormhole transmission. Later on, he leaves recorded messages through Virgil.
Joseph Gruen
- Da Chief: Leader of WS and Goodluck's immediate supervisor.
Enemies
Wanderers
- Back Stab: Wanderers have weak points on their backs. If you sneak up on them, you can knife them in the back for a One-Hit Kill.
- Body Horror: They have crystal-like spines sticking out of their flesh and in some cases their head is gone and replaced with a cluster of spines.
Big Mouth
Frostbite
Seth
- And I Must Scream: Based on Seth's perspective, who the audience is treated to him transforming into a Wanderer from a first person view, Wanderers maintain some small measure of their original identity. Making it worse is that even this small measure of identity is stripped of them as their bio-mass is replaced by nanomachines and their consciousness is just fluxed straight into a wireless network up in the sky. To what degree they're aware of their own suffering is ambiguous, but it's not a pleasant experience to say the least.
- Private Military Contractors: Of MSF before CC found him alive in Dite.
- Walking Spoiler: It's risk to talk about Seth in great detail, especially of his involvement in wiping out most of the CC and getting himself infected in Dite.
Lord of Dust
- Big Bad: Of the single-player scenario.
- Hive Mind: The Lord of Dust is actually this. Through Seth it explains to the Charon Corps that the collective memories and consciousness of every human it has absorbed lives on as a massive colony of nanomachine dust cells. These dust cells are flying around in the upper atmosphere as they speak, allowing for a global communication network of the sort humanity on its own could only dream of. This existence allows the individuals in the colony to be guided by a collective will, preventing conflict and therefore ensuring "paradise" on Earth.
- Mouth of Sauron: The Lord of Dust explains its motives, and by proxy the nanomachine collective, to the Charon Corps using Seth as its vehicle. Dust Seth lampshades that using this body is useful for communication as the rest of its forms are too unwieldy to communicate in any real sense. Moreover, the sentimental attachment the Captain has to Seth makes it easier to convince him to listen.
