Character sheet for Platoon.
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Taylor
Private Chris Taylor
"Somebody once said Hell is the impossibility of reason. That's what this place feels like. Hell. I hate it already and it’s only been a week."
Played by: Charlie Sheen
Dubbed by: Ulrich Matthes (German)
- Ax-Crazy: Taylor generally manages to keep a clear head and a defined moral compass, but as the war begins to wear on his mental state he snaps several times. Special mention goes to him wiping out a good chunk of the assaulting NVA in the Final Battle.
- Blood Knight: Temporarily exhibits this in the heat of the Final Battle. As he kills scores of enemy soldiers, he calls it "fucking beautiful".
- Break the Cutie: Vietnam gradually breaks him. His ending narration implies that he has recovered somewhat.
- Heroic BSoD: After the village massacre.
- Military Brat: He comes from a military family - his father fought in World War II and his grandfather fought in World War I.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Breaks down in tears of shame after terrorizing a mentally disabled boy in front of his terrified mother.
- Naïve Newcomer: At the beginning.
- New Meat: The outgoing veterans at the beginning recognize him, and treat him, as such. As a result, Taylor is subject to frequent bullying and criticism at the start.
- Sanity Slippage: With Elias's death, the war, his disillusionment, and his drug addiction, Taylor starts to lose it.
- Took a Level in Badass: At the beginning of the film, he's a glass-eyed recruit who is easily exhausted by the conditions of Vietnam. By the end, he's wearing a bandana and killing NVA soldiers left and right.
Elias
Sergeant Elias Grodin
"Feelin' good is good enough."
Played by: Willem Dafoe
- A Father to His Men: Without question. He offers to haul Taylor's excess cargo after Taylor collapses due to heat, despite being new, and gives Taylor and Gardner sound advice about what to do when separated.
- Badass Native: In a deleted scene, Lerner mentions that Elias was born in Oklahoma and is half Native American.
- Big Damn Heroes: A downplayed example, but he enters the village just in time to stop Barnes from going out of control even further.
- Blood Knight: A downplayed example. Elias is presented as someone cut from a similar cloth to Barnes, both being senior non-commissioned officers who’ve spent several tours in Vietnam, reenlisting of their own volition. But they differ in while Barnes has continuously lost his humanity, Elias has maintained his own sense of justice and remains a good man at heart.
- Captain Smooth and Sergeant Rough: The Smooth to Barnes' Rough. Partially subverted since they’re both Non Commissioned Officers, though Barnes outranks Elias nonetheless.
- Determinator: Even after being shot 3 times by Barnes, he still has enough strength to try and run back to the platoon before being cut down by the overwhelming amount of enemy soldiers.
- Dying Moment of Awesome: One of the most famous in all of film.
- Erudite Stoner: Loves his pot, and also offers some poetic and practical insight about the war.
- The Heart: Of “the Heads” and arguably, the entire platoon as a whole. Elias’ style of leadership balanced with Barnes’ own harsher brand, but following the former’s death, the entire platoon feels the loss and the film begins a noticeably darker shift in tone.
- Hopeless War: He correctly believes that this what Vietnam has become.Elias: Barnes believes in what he's doing.Taylor: And you? Do you believe?Elias: In '65, yeah. Now... no. What happened today is just the beginning. We're going to lose this war.Taylor: Come on. You really think so? Us?Elias: We've been kicking other people's asses for so long, I figure it's time we got ours kicked.
- Determined Defeatist: And yet he goes back out there and still gives it his all the very next day.
- The Strategist: Such a good one that even Barnes values his advice. Not enough to save his life, though.
Barnes
Staff Sergeant Bob Barnes
Played by: Tom Berenger
- A God Am I: It's implied that Barnes' power over life and death has gone to his head. While hammered on Jack Daniels, he declares to Elias' posse that he "is reality" while in the middle of berating them.
- A Father to His Men: Deconstructed. Barnes projects the image of a tough but fair leader who cares for the men under his command and it is genuine to an extent, but he mainly uses it to justify giving in to his own bloodlust and it becomes increasingly clear that his own well-being will always come first.
- The Alcoholic: The two times we see Barnes at base camp, he's absolutely hammered drunk on whiskey.
- The Bad Guy Wins: In a sense, since even though Barnes pays for murdering Elias in the end, he successfully goads Chris into killing him, in keeping with his ethos that conflict is the true nature of man. Chris rejects this philosophy at the end, but also states that Barnes will always be a part of him the same as Elias will be.
- Big Bad: While the larger conflict is with the VC, Barnes is the true evil force of the story and drives the conflict within the platoon itself.
- Blood Knight: A very frightening example.
- Captain Smooth and Sergeant Rough: The Rough to Elias' Smooth.
- Colonel Kilgore: Well, Staff Sergeant Kilgore in this case. He exists to live out his survivalist ideals, and enjoys war to its fullest.
- Deep South: A horrifyingly understated version of some of the worst aspects of this trope. Barnes' accent sounds like it's somewhere in the vicinity of Louisiana, and he's a violent war criminal who peddles various flavors of racism at the highest frequency of anyone in the movie.
- Despair Event Horizon: Barnes only really descends into evil after discovering Manny's corpse.
- Drill Sergeant Nasty: Despite not being a drill sergeant, he still acts the part.
- Entitled Bastard: Barnes murders Elias, and tries to do the same to Chris in a blood-crazed frenzy during the climatic battle, but a nearby bomb blast stops him and wounds them both. When Chris wakes up and has a gun trained on him, Barnes has the nerve to command Taylor to go and get him a medic.
- Establishing Character Music: The first scenes at base camp show Barnes playing poker and getting drunk off his ass in his squad's barracks while Merle Haggard's "Okie from Muskogee" plays in the background, a song that explicitly disparages weed-smoking - which Elias and his squad are actively doing in their barracks as this scene takes place. This indirectly establishes both Barnes' background as a whiskey-drinking, war-loving Southern soldier and his disdain for Elias and his people.
- Even Evil Has Standards:
- When Junior falls asleep on his watch, blowing an ambush and causing one platoon member to be killed, he immediately tells a bold-faced lie and says it was Chris. While the others believe the lie, Barnes isn't fooled by Junior for one minute and is disgusted by him trying to weasel out of his screw up. When Barnes gives his lecture on what he's going to do to the next person who falls asleep on watch, he pauses to give Junior a blistering death glare
- When Junior sprays a can of bugspray onto his feet and claims he has jungle rot and can't walk, Barnes doesn't think too highly of his pathetic lies or his blatant cowardice, threatening to stick a centipede in his crotch and 'see if he can walk.' Bunny and O’Neill are equally disgusted, especially when Junior promptly wusses out and declares he can walk.
- Barnes gives Wolfe a devastating "Reason You Suck" Speech when his incompetence ends up calling down friendly artillery fire on his own men's positions, assailing him while laying into him over how many men he just got blown to hell. It gets so bad Barnes and Elias team up to try and salvage the clusterfuck their lieutenant has made of the situation.
- Evil All Along: You could argue Barnes is Obviously Evil because of the scar on his face and his mannerisms, but that's all superficial and you could easily take him for a battle-hardened platoon sergeant with an incompetent lieutenant on his hands who's just being as brutal as he feels he has to be in order to get himself and the load of draftees that make up his platoon out of the war alive. Then he shoots a civilian woman in the head with a rifle for yelling at him, and puts his sidearm to a little girl's head to get her father to 'admit' he's really VC.
- Evil Is Petty: His casual cruelty is often tied to his power high. After Rhah talks him out of killing Chris, Barnes still feels the need to slice his cheek to feel just a bit more power over Chris.
- Evil Counterpart: To Elias.
- Good Scars, Evil Scars: Barnes has a nasty scar that zig-zags all up and down the right side of his face. He also sports several more dotting his chest and arms.
- Hypocrite: Barnes gives Elias' posse a rambling speech where he casually insults them all, calling them a bunch of potheads trying to escape from reality, whereas he 'is reality.' The entire time he's absolutely slugging Jack Daniels and is obviously plastered on the stuff.
- Jerkass: He's cruel, gruff, and sadistic, as well as needlessly hostile.
- Jerkass Has a Point: While ranting about Elias to Wolfe, he does make a valid point that the war is being handicapped by leaders totally disconnected from the realities on the ground and that men are dying needlessly because of it.
- Karmic Death: Shot three times by Chris in the torso, similar to how Barnes killed Elias.
- Made of Iron: Barnes had apparently been shot seven times prior to the events of the film and the rest of the platoon think he can't die as a result. Chris shoots him three times at close range to finish him off after he survives the airstrike.
- Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: Rhah claims that Barnes is immortal, as he has survived numerous injuries that by all means should have been fatal. When Taylor finally kills him after the airstrike, he only does it after Barnes demands he Get It Over With.
Rhah: Only thing can kill Barnes is Barnes.
- Military Maverick: A malicious example.
- Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist: Barnes justifies his murder of Elias as trying to stop him from destroying order in the platoon, when really he's just trying to save his own ass from a court martial.
- Obviously Evil: He's exactly as nice as he looks...
- Perpetual Frowner: Is almost never seen smiling. And when he does, it's... disturbing.
- Politically Incorrect Villain: Just to garnish the cocktail of how monumentally awful he is, Barnes treats the Vietnamese like garbage and calls Junior the N-word at one point.
- Pragmatic Villainy: Rhah is able to talk him out of killing Taylor after the latter attacks him by pointing out that all of the other men in the room are potential witnesses, and since Barnes has Taylor at his mercy, he can't claim self-defense.
- Sergeant Rock: An interesting villainous example.
- Villainous Valor: He's a murderous bastard, but Barnes is tough and courageous, and not a coward like, say, Wolfe and Junior are.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: Played with. Elias tells Taylor that Barnes acts as he does because he truly believes in the righteousness of America's cause in Vietnam, and that the end justifies the means. However, a lot of his actions are driven more by his ego than anything else.
- Would Hurt a Child: Puts a gun against the village headsman's daughter who looks about six or eight years old and pretty serious about killing her unless her father confesses to being NVA.
King
King
Played by: Keith David
- The Big Guy: Fills this niche with Big Harold, following several casualties in the platoon King takes up the role of machine gunner with the M60.
- Book Dumb: King is introduced writing a letter to his girlfriend in the States. According to Francis - who comments, "Damn, you dumb!" - he doesn't have an especially good grasp of spelling and grammar. King merely laughs it off in response. Subverted in the sense that while King may not be very book-smart, he comes off overall as very sharp and introspective.King: There’s a way out of everything man. Just keep your pecker hard and your powder dry… And the world will turn.
- Erudite Stoner: Is the soldier who first introduces pot to Taylor, and is prone to humorously waxing philosophical about class divide and religion while smoking himself silly.
- Large Ham: King is very jovial, and his deep laugh courtesy of Keith David‘s equally distinct voice undercuts many of the film’s more comedic scenes.
- The Mentor: To Taylor, at least on the war. He is among the first real friends Taylor makes among the platoon, introducing him to both pot-smoking and the rest of “the Heads” while at base camp.
- Nice Guy: Probably the nicest in the film alongside Elias. He's jovial to a fault, he's always good to Chris, and he's far offscreen when the platoon goes off the rails and starts committing war crimes, meaning he isn't even guilty by association.
- Retirony: Averted. King is sent on the last helicopter home before the Final Battle.
Big Harold
Big Harold
Played by: Forest Whitaker
- An Arm and a Leg: Loses a leg thanks to Wolfe calling down friendly fire on his own men.
- Dramatic Irony: Harold comforts Chris after Chris is shot in the neck during the first ambush. Chris later returns the favor when Harold's leg is blown off.
- Jerkass Realization: Expresses his regret about what happened to the village to Francis, Warren and Junior. Even Junior briefly seems to contemplate what Harold is saying.Harold: I don't know, brothers, but I'm hurtin' real bad inside.
- Nice Guy: A very jovial and reassuring fellow. Sadly averted during the village scene, however, due to losing his temper after Manny's death, but he's also the most remorseful of the whole platoon in the aftermath.
Bunny
Bunny
Played by: Kevin Dillon
- Asshole Victim: Killed by an NVA soldier in the Final Battle.
- Ate His Gun: Though not exactly his gun per say. An NVA soldier shoves his gun in Bunny's mouth and fires during the final battle.
- Ax-Crazy: Bunny loves war, and all the wanton violence that comes with it.
- Card-Carrying Villain: Bunny tells Junior that he loves war because it allows him to do whatever he wants.
- Establishing Character Moment: After establishing himself as a bullheaded dick in a conversation with Junior, Bunny takes a bites off a piece of a beer can and hands it to Lt. Wolfe, showing him to be a deeply unbalanced, bullheaded dick.
- Even Evil Has Standards: Bunny is disgusted by Junior faking jungle rot, loudly complaining to Sgt. Barnes about having to share a fighting hole with him.
- For the Evulz: Gets his kicks killing helpless people and burning down villages. He also thinks the vicious Barnes is a grade-A guy.
- Hair-Raising Hare: He sports a tattoo on his arm invoking Bugs Bunny, and is a complete psychopath.
- Hate Sink: Unlike Barnes, whose cruelty is at least partly motivated by a sincere belief in America's cause, Bunny just enjoys killing for the sake of killing and being in an environment where he can indulge his sadism.
- Ironic Name: He's proudly sadistic about his role as a soldier and he's called "Bunny".
- Jerkass: Arguably the biggest one in the platoon, and that's taking Barnes, Wolfe, O'Neill, and Junior into account, among others.
- Pet the Dog: Other than the fact he's clearly got guts, the only remotely nice thing you can say about the normally racist Bunny is that he's just as outraged as everybody else in the platoon about Manny's death.
- Psycho for Hire: Probably the only clear cut example of a psychopath in the movie and a particularly low functioning one at that. Bunny commits murder because he think it’s entertaining and displays just about no forethought or impulse control at all throughout.Junior: And Bunny? That motherfucker scares me, man... he just scares me.
- Sadist: Openly admits he likes hurting other people.
- Shotguns Are Just Better: Unique among the platoon, Bunny uses a pump action shotgun instead of an M-16.
- Sociopathic Soldier: Bunny really enjoys war, as he is able to commit all sorts of atrocities with no one caring.
- Took a Level in Jerkass: He starts out as an unpleasant prick, but as the film goes on he turns out to be far, far worse.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Whether he's serious or not is debatable, but he offhandedly suggests someone should frag Elias for actually daring to report the crimes under the watch of Barnes and Wolfe. Turns out Barnes took that suggestion seriously.
- Villainous Valor: Like Barnes and unlike Junior, Bunny is not a coward and faces the enemy head on.
Junior
Junior Martin
Played by: Reggie Johnson
- Asshole Victim: Bayoneted by an NVA soldier.
- Dirty Coward: To an absurd degree, to the point that fellow Dirty Coward O'Neill is disgusted by him.
- Even Evil Has Standards: Barnes, Bunny, and O'Neill are utterly disgusted by him. That should tell you a lot about Junior.
- Meanwhile, Junior is similarly disgusted with Barnes' attack on the village and privately calls him out as a monster. He also admits to be terrified of Bunny and is deeply uncomfortable when forced to work with him.
- Of course, this is the hypocrite that also used the village attack as a pretext to gang-rape. A pre-pubescent Vietnamese girl no less.
- Meanwhile, Junior is similarly disgusted with Barnes' attack on the village and privately calls him out as a monster. He also admits to be terrified of Bunny and is deeply uncomfortable when forced to work with him.
- Everything Is Racist: Junior often goes into rants about how anyone who calls out his attempts to weasel out of his responsibilities is a racist.
- Jerkass: Junior is an irresponsible, hypocritical coward.
- Laser-Guided Karma: Falls asleep during the first ambush resulting in casualties. Later is killed after running from his foxhole during the final battle and hitting his head rendering him unconscious.
- Never My Fault: Junior blames everything on other people, and refuses to take responsibility for his own actions.
- Straight Edge Evil: He refuses to use drugs and talks about Christian values.
- Too Dumb to Live: He falls asleep while on watch during an ambush his own platoon set up. It very easily could have gotten them wiped out if somebody else hadn't been awake and started shooting.
O'Neill
Sergeant Red O'Neill
Played by: John C. McGinley
- Deadpan Snarker: Every other sentence out of his mouth is a quip, tall-tale or insult of some kind. Deconstructed, since it just makes him come off as a dick more than anything else.
- Dirty Coward: Spends the Final Battle hiding under a corpse while his comrades are slaughtered. However he certainly has taken part in the fighting and it could be argued this allows him to survive whilst he couldn't have done virtually anything anyway, the unit only saved by the captain calling down an airstrike on their own position
- The Dragon: Barnes' second-in-command, as much as someone as useless as O'Neill can be second in anything.
- Establishing Character Moment: When Barnes puts a cigarette in his mouth during a command huddle, O’Neill seamlessly puts out his lighter to light Barnes’s smoke... except it doesn’t light up at first and it takes O’Neill a second try to get it right. He’s a brown-nose, and not an especially competent NCO, either. Although him having a problem with sending some of his guys who are about to go home on a potentially lethal ambush patrol shows he might be a weakling, but he’s not completely apathetic. (Or a psycho like Barnes is)
- Hypocrite: He despises Junior for his cowardice, but in the final battle scene he hides under a pile of corpses to save himself.
- Jerkass: O'Neill is sarcastic, bullies King, Crawford, and Taylor, and is a Dirty Coward.
- Jerkass Has a Point: Says during the poker game that Lieutenant Wolfe is a sorry officer and probably isn't going to make it out of the war alive. He's correct on both counts.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: To a degree. O'Neill displays a couple of times - in his characteristic unlikable way - that he accounts for the morale and well-being of his men, and he's one of the only characters in the movie who never directly partakes in war crimes, only shouldering guilt by association.
- Laser-Guided Karma: After the Final Battle, Harris promotes him to platoon leader. Considering O'Neill had been weaseling his way out of danger the entire film, it's a fitting punishment.
- Oh, Crap!: His expression when he's made platoon leader at the end just screams this.
- Pet the Dog:
- Early in the movie, he protests sending some of his men whose tours are almost up on a dangerous patrol (although in the process he displays a fairly callous attitude towards the New Meat), and reluctantly agrees to go out in their place.
- Tries to talk Bunny out of murdering a mentally handicapped Vietnamese kid.
- Constantly seems uncomfortable with Barnes’s later actions.
- Seems genuinely happy (if understandably jealous) for King whose tour ends just before the final battle allowing him to be transferred back to the US.
- Politically Incorrect Villain: Heavily, heavily downplayed when compared against his superior's war crimes, but Red refers to King as "boy" in one scene, which is not exactly uncommon for the day but still acts as another indicator of Red's general unlikability.
- Professional Butt-Kisser: To Barnes and Wolfe.
Crawford: That O'Neill, he's got his nose so far Top's ass, he's gotta be Pinocchio.
- You Are in Command Now: He is made platoon leader after Barnes' death.
Francis
Francis Washington
Played by: Corey Glover
- Cowardly Lion: Especially during the final battle.
- Deadpan Snarker: Outside of battle.
- Deliberate Injury Gambit: Stabs himself in the leg after the Final Battle to get out of the platoon.
- Nice Guy: Tries to keep everybody level-headed in the hellish conditions of Vietnam.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: After the final battle he decides to get out of Vietnam by stabbing himself in the leg.
Rhah
Rhah Vermucci
Played by: Francesco Quinn
- Erudite Stoner: A more intense example than most, as Rhah often rants wild-eyed when high or sober regardless and sports “LOVE” and “HATE” tattoos on his knuckles.
- His implied heroin habit alongside his regular pot smoking may have something to do with it.
- A Father to His Men: Well, A Big Brother To His Men, anyway. Knowing that morale is beginning to lower to dangerous levels, Rhah tries his best to keep his squad grounded and alive, especially during the final battle.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Among Elias' followers. He's a little rough around the edges and sarcastic, but he definitely cares about his fellow men.
- You Are in Command Now: Takes over for Elias' squad after his death.
Lerner
Gator Lerner
Played by: Johnny Depp
- Nice Guy: Friendly and amiable with everyone. He is noticeably shaken and disturbed by Barnes' actions in the village.
- Translator Buddy: One of the friendlier soldiers in the platoon, and their translator.
Wolfe
Lieutenant Wolfe
Played by: Mark Moses
- Authority in Name Only: Wolfe is allegedly the leader of the platoon, but leaves most of the actual decision making to Barnes. He is also totally incompetent, and makes mistakes that get several of his own soldiers killed.
- Boom, Headshot!: He is blinded by an explosion in the final battle, then shot in the head by a VC.
- Dirty Coward: He's too much of a pushover to stand up to Barnes although the audience has some sympathy with a man plunged into combat and expected to command hardened veterans such as Barnes and Elias. Captain Harris has to tell him to man up and hold his position when he is fighting during the final battle. Arguably however he is proven correct and that the platoon cannot hold, it's simply there's nowhere for anyone to fall back to.
- Establishing Character Moment: Arguably has two. The first is when Captain Harris asks him sarcastically over the radio during a patrol if he's "having compass trouble again" (i.e. he’s not a very good field commander and makes excuses). The second is when he shows up to visit his men in the barracks wearing a college wrestling sweater, looking - and behaving - sorely out of place in a room full of hardened, trained killers.
- Implausible Deniability: Claims to Elias and Harris that he saw nothing when Barnes shot the village chief's wife. If one looks closely enough, you can see it was happening right in front of his very eyes.
- Jerkass: As the film goes on, he orders the village burned, screams at his own men, ignores advice from others, and turns a blind eye to Barnes's war crimes. In the DVD commentary Dale Dye comments that he has simply given up faced with an impossible situation.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: That being said, he still shows some concern for his men, as seen when trying to go back for Elias.
- The Load: It's difficult to understate how staggeringly useless Wolfe is. He never displays any particular talent for soldiering, and his skill as an officer is even worse, to the degree that he ends up calling in an artillery bombardment on the platoon instead of the enemy during an already-mismanaged ambush, killing or wounding several of his own men.
- Mission Control: An incredibly poor, ineffectual and ultimately deadly one that can barely relay orders and can't make them because he is more worried about his subordinates' feelings and reactions.
- The Neidermeyer: An incompetent coward who is unable to control his own soldiers, he lets Elias and Barnes do as they like (and the only order he gives is to burn down the village). US Army leadership classes have used Wolfe an example of how a junior officer should not behave.
- Stopped Caring: By the final battle, he tells Rhah, "To tell you the truth I don't give a shit, okay? I just don't give a flying fuck anymore."
- Weak-Willed: Gets stomped on by the more authoritative Barnes and manipulated by the slimy O'Neill in his second scene. Gets interrupted by both his subordinates and superiors constantly, is indirect and indecisive with orders, cares more about feelings than strategy and as a result his platoon ultimately gets slaughtered along with him.
Crawford
Crawford
Played by: Chris Pedersen
- An Arm and a Leg: Is wounded at one point during an NVA ambush, but manages to survive.
- Nice Guy: Tries to keep up a positive attitude during the war, giving Taylor the advice to count backwards on how many days he has in-country before he goes home.
- Surfer Dude: Talks in a distinct SoCal drawl, and expresses a desire to surf and smoke once he gets out of the war.
Gardner
Gardner
Played by: Bob Orwig
- Fatal Family Photo: Of a Girl Back Home, at that.
- Red Shirt: And tragically so.
- Sacrificial Lamb: Gardner is a rookie like Taylor, is kind to him, and has a Fatal Family Photo of a Girl Back Home. It's not surprising when he gets killed by the NVA.
Harris
Captain Harris
Played by: Dale Dye
"It's a lovely fuckin' war."
- Cool Old Guy: In the grisly context of the film, certainly. He's the commander of the company, and while he's very curt and businesslike to the soldiers serving under him, he's also one of the only people left with his morals on straight by the end of the movie.
- Freeze-Frame Bonus: Wears a West Point class ring.
- Old Soldier: They don't come much more grizzled than Harris. Visually, he appears to be old enough to have served in World War II.
- Pyrrhic Victory: After the entire forward outpost is overrun by NVA in the Final Battle, Harris orders an air strike on the entire vicinity, knowing it’s the only last ditch effort his men have, and hoping to kill as many enemy combatants as possible.
- Reasonable Authority Figure: He sure as hell tries to be, at least. He seems to be the only person on Earth capable of keeping the peace between Barnes and Elias, and puts the fear of God (and more specifically court martial) into the former when given notice of the massacre in the village.
- Thousand-Yard Stare: After the final battle.
Warren
Sergeant Warren
Played by: Tony Todd
- Cruel and Unusual Death: Warren is last seen trying to put his intestines back in during the penultimate ambush.
- Functional Addict: Is implied to be one.
- Jerkass: In the village scene, he is seen treating the villagers roughly, even the women and children. He also tries to convince Francis, Harold, and Junior that even the obviously innocent ones were all NVA, and he expresses his full support of Barnes in spite of what he's done.
Manny
Manny Washington
Played by: Corkey Ford
- Killed Offscreen: The NVA capture and murder him offscreen. The platoon (and the audience) only find this out when his corpse is discovered.
- Nice Guy: Seemed like an easygoing guy based on when we see him hanging around with Elias's crew. Just about everyone in the platoon takes his death personally.
- Red Shirt: Manny gets no characterization before being murdered by the NVA.
- Small Role, Big Impact: The brutality of his death leads to the platoon taking out their indignation on nearby villagers, which is where Elias and Barnes finally come into direct conflict when Barnes murders an unarmed civilian woman and Lieutenant Wolfe does absolutely nothing to stop him.
Sal
Sal
Played by: Richard Edson
- Cigar Chomper: Pretty much always has a stogie hanging from his mouth, unlit or otherwise.
- Kill It with Fire: Incinerated by a booby trap.
- Mauve Shirt: Gets some characterization, but dies very early on.
