Characters / Rainbow Six Siege Operators - Base Game

Rainbow Six Siege Characters
Operators: Base Game | Year One | Year Two | Year Three | Year Four | Year Five | Year Six | Year Seven | Year Eight | Year Nine

These are the operators who came shipped with the original version of the game. They became reclassified as "Pathfinder" operators as of Year 1, and were either available for free for owners of the Standard Edition, or unlockable for 1,000 Renown each for Starter Edition players.

After the Starter Edition was discontinued at the start of Year 4, all Pathfinder operators were made available to all for no cost.

SAS

Sledge

Seamus "Sledge" Cowden

"Coming through!"

^{Click here to see Sledge's Elite Skin L Detachment}

^{Click here to see Sledge's Skin Spartan-117}

Voiced By: Ryan Nicolls (EN); Yasumichi Kushida (JP)
Date of Birth: April 2
Age: 35
Team: Attackers
Squad: Redhammer

A tall, imposing man and a natural leader, Sledge wields a giant Breaching Hammer called "The Caber", destroying walls, hatches, barricades, and bulletproof gadgets with a single swing.

For tropes applicable to his counterpart in Rainbow Six Extraction, see Rainbow Six Extraction REACT.

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• Amicable Exes: With Irish Defender Thorn. They used to date some years back, but the relationship dissolved after a while, though they still see each others as good friends and Sledge put forth his personal recommendation for Thorn as a candidate for Team Caveira in the 2022 SIX Invitational.
• Artistic License – Military: Sledge's gas mask doesn't have a filter in it, meaning he should be suffocating. He also doesn't wear a hood. In fact, Smoke is the only SAS operator who has a full CBRN suit.
• Armor-Piercing Attack: Applies to both Defenders and their gadgets.
  • Since hammer strikes count as melee attacks, hits from the Caber will ignore Rook plates as well as the target player's armor class, and are immediately fatal, meaning that a 3-Armor Tachanka will go down to a single hit as will a 2-Armor Ela.
  • Caber blows also count as explosions, and can circumvent the armored shells of bulletproof cameras and Maestro's Evil Eyes.
• The Big Guy: At 6'3'', he's one of the tallest of all the Operators, and has some of the more powerful weapons in his arsenal.
• Brave Scot: He's the only SAS member born in Scotland if the plaid cloth wrapped on his hammer and his "Wallace" headgear is any indication. His profile confirms that he was born in John o' Groats, Scotland, and was captain of the Scotland National Under-20 Rugby Union team before joining the military.
• Breakable Weapons: In a gameplay sense, his Caber has a durability of twenty-five points. Hitting a wall or enemy player deducts two per hit, and banging against anything else takes away one. Once out of charges, it can't be used again until the next round.
• Carry a Big Stick: "The Caber" is this stick, which was built for him by Thatcher's uncle, and it can destroy thin barricades like walls, trap doors, and people with ease. Its namesake is an even bigger stick, being a massive wooden beam the size of a telephone pole that is carried and thrown around in the Scottish sport of caber tossing.
• Cutscene Power to the Max: Sledge hammers a hole into a concrete wall through repeated strikes in his Operator Video, which will never happen in-game no matter how hard you try due to the Caber only being able to destroy soft surfaces.
• Dynamic Entry: His hammer is mostly designed to smash through an unreinforced wall or hatch for him and his team to make an unexpected and sudden attack. It can also be used to blow open barricades, windows, floors, and ceilings and shoot the Defenders from above or below.
• Exactly What It Says on the Tin: His name is Sledge. His gadget is a sledgehammer.
• Genius Bruiser: Not only is he an imposing SAS soldier, Sledge also holds an Engineering degree.
• Humongous-Headed Hammer: Sledge, as his codename suggests, carries a sledgehammer that can break through walls and destroy certain gadgets that can't be affected by gunfire, such as barbed wire or bulletproof cameras. It can also be used to kill enemies.
• I Call It "Vera": According to Sledge's Device Evaluation, the Caber is also known as "Brucie".
• The Leader: His biography and psychological profile state that he is a capable leader.
• Lightning Bruiser: Holds the strength and speed record for SAS.
• Not the Intended Use: As unbelievable as it sounds, his Caber wasn't meant to be used as a melee weapon, but a breaching utility. Not that that stops players from playing whack-a-mole with the Defenders, though, as it kills in one well-placed swing regardless of their armor class.
• Shout-Out: Sledge's Spartan-117 Elite Skin has him dress up as Master Chief Petty Officer John-117 from Halo Infinite, with his breaching hammer replaced with a Gravity Hammer used by the Banished.
• Simple, yet Awesome: He's very easy to play, with versatile guns and a simple gadget, but easy to master for beginners and a force to be reckoned with.
• One-Hit Kill: Anyone struck by the Caber will die in one hit.
• There Was a Door: As a soft breacher, Sledge's main job is to smash holes into soft walls to allow his team to egress or shoot through while bypassing the actual doorways if they can, which is justified seeing that those are where the bulk of Defender traps and utilities are often set.

Thatcher

Mike "Thatcher" Baker

"GPS satellites, unmanned drones, fucking laser sights? The more crutches you have, the more it hurts when they're kicked out from under ya. If there's one thing I know for sure, it's that a six inch blade never loses reception."

^{Click here to see Thatcher's Elite Skin Operation Nimrod}

Voiced By: Jamie Muffett (EN); Kosuke Sakaki (JP)
Date of Birth: June 22
Age: 56
Team: Attackers
Squad: Viperstrike

An experienced, decisive veteran of three wars, Thatcher is equipped with EG MKO-EMP Grenades that temporarily disable electronic gadgets in a wide radius.

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• The '80s: His Elite skin is British tactical gear from that era, known as Operation Nimrod. He's also named for Margaret Thatcher.
• Artistic License – Military: While Thatcher's SF-10 gasmask does have a filter on it, he wears a hood under the mask, breaking the seal.
• Big Brother Instinct: As shown in The Hammer and the Scalpel short film, Thatcher still looks out for his younger brother Paulie, despite their age. When the latter was beaten up by thugs he owed money to, Thatcher's response was to visit them, pay them what his brother owed... then beat the crap out of them.
• Break Out the Museum Piece: Not so much in regards to his guns selection, even if some of them can be considered particularly old by the time of the game, the most outstanding example would be his SF-10 respirator mask, which was introduced in 1986 and discontinued in the early 2000s in favor of its successor, the General Service Respirator, in the service of the British Armed Forces. At best, it would be an ornamental piece of gear, as all S10-series air filters manufactured in the United Kingdom have expired by 2014 and were not replaced.
• EMP: Thatcher's EMP grenades disable all electronics in a large area, and can easily cripple electronically reliant teams. Starting in Operation Dust Line, they can also disable electronic gun sights (holographic, reflex, red dot, etc.), further messing with anyone in their radius.
• Foolish Sibling, Responsible Sibling: According to the Hammer and the Scalpel trailer, he's the Responsible sibling to his brother Paulie's Foolish. Where Thatcher is hard-working and dedicated, Paulie is often waist-deep in debt and frequently runs afoul of the less reputable elements, which occasionally results in him getting severely beaten.
• Good Old Ways: He's not one to rely on electronic gadgets, and keeps a six-inch-long knife strapped to his arm just in case. His SF10 gasmask is also outdated, having been replaced by a different model in 1997. Unlike the rest of his teammates, who use modern load-bearing vests, he also appears to be wearing an older flak jacket.
• Houseboat Hero: Thatcher's home is the "Iron Maggie", an old fishing boat that's moored in the docks of Plymouth. It shares its namesake with the operator himself.
• Knight in Sour Armor: Years of experience and an observant personality make him appear cynical, but he has a strong sense of ethics and does his damnedest to teach junior operators.
• Manly Facial Hair: Several headgears that reveal his face also reveal his SAS standard-issue muttonchops. Other face-revealing cosmetics have full, large beards.
• Nerf: His EMP grenades used to outright destroy electronic gadgets, making him the premiere offensive utility remover and a frequent operator ban. Shadow Legacy reworked him to where they would only disable them for 15 seconds, requiring more coordination with hardbreachers to open walls.
• Named After Somebody Famous: Thatcher is nicknamed after Margaret Thatcher, who was PM during both the Falklands War and the Iranian Embassy Siege, both of which he took part in. He also owns a boat named "Iron Maggie", which became his home after his wife left him.
• No-Sell: Mute's Moni jammers don't affect his EMP grenades, making Thatcher one of the more reliable counters to this type of utility denial. Likewise, EMP grenades are not destroyed upon hitting an electrified spool of barbed wire or Reinforced Wall, so Kaid and Bandit won't be able to protect them as easily when Thatcher is around as otherwise.
• Old Soldier: At launch, Thatcher was the oldest operator in the game by nearly a decade^note He is 57, but has since been surpassed by Kaid^note Aged 58 and Zero^note Aged 63. Nevertheless, the trope still applies to him since he's fought in The Falklands War, the Iranian Embassy Siege, The Gulf War^note where he was part of Bravo Two Zero, and the War on Terror, and he shows little sign of stopping. The teaser for The Scalpel and the Hammer actually shows that he had previously retired.
• Older Than They Look: He's 57 but looks at least a decade or even two younger. If it wasn't for a few streaks of gray hair, Thatcher could convincingly pass for someone in their late 30s.
• Power Creep: While not the only person capable of removing utility at launch, Thatcher's niche of disabling breach denial for hard breachers has been crept on by the introduction of Kali and later impact EMP grenades. While Kali isn't as useful in close quarters and impact EMPs lack area of effect and duration, they are more available than Thatcher, who is almost always banned in competitive modes, and allows other ops to bring more utility.
• Simple, yet Awesome: His EMP grenades are extremely straightforward to use but very effective due to their massive wall-penetrating radius, to the point where any other method of destroying electronic gadgets feel convoluted in comparison.

Smoke

James "Smoke" Porter

"I know what you're wondering. 'What's in the canister?' I could tell ya, but then I'd have to kill you. Hehe. I'm only mucking about, relax. As for what's in the canister, it's best you don't ask."

^{Click here to see Smoke's Elite Skin Sanguine Arsenic}

Voiced By: Martin Sims (EN); Hiroki Eto (JP)
Date of Birth: May 14
Age: 36
Team: Defenders
Squad: Nighthaven

A loud-mouthed and aggressive thrill-seeker, Smoke carries Compound Z8 Remote Gas Grenades that he can throw and stick to surfaces, remotely detonating them at his choosing. Filled with an "undisclosed substance", the toxic gas emitted covers a wide area and damages enemies (and teammates) caught in its fumes.

As of the conclusion of the events of SIX Invitational 2022, Smoke is officially a member of NIGHTHAVEN, and is no longer associated with either the SAS or Rainbow.

For tropes applicable to his counterpart in Rainbow Six Extraction, see Rainbow Six Extraction REACT.

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• Action Dad: His updated Bio reveals that he has an adopted daughter, whom he dotes over quite a bit. One item description in the Operation Brutal Swarm Battlepass indicates that her welfare was a big reason why he left Rainbow for NIGHTHAVEN.
• Artistic License – Military:
  • The United Kingdom is one of the founding proponents of the 1925 Geneva Protocol prohibiting the use of any chemical or biological weapons in armed conflicts, with all reservations being lifted in 2002. Smoke's use of the Z8 compound would be declared unlawful in a realistic scenario, and could net him accusations of war crimes if witnessed in action in international scenes.
• Blood Knight: Smoke's psychological profile suggests that he "enjoys the chaos and havoc of war". Considering he joined the British Army as a teenager using a fake ID, found his posting in Belfast to be too dull, and took up boxing to keep himself occupied in the meantime, he's quite the thrill-seeker.
• Damage Over Time: His Z8 compound deals 15 flat points of damage every two-thirds of a second to operators of all armor classes, allowing him to down them in around three seconds should they continue to stand in the cloud. Attackers under the effects of Finka's Adrenal Surge will take twice as much damage due to their accelerated respiration.
• Deadly Gas: His Compound Z8 Remote Gas Grenade is filled with an "undisclosed substance" that Smoke probably mixed himself. He himself is the only Operator who's immune to the gas, due to the heavy duty filters on the back of his rig. Anybody else is fair game, however, including his fellow Defenders and the Hostage, which can lead to some... unfortunate... scenarios.
• Delinquents: Smoke's Sanguine Arsenic Elite Uniform has this aesthetic, as it has him wearing a bright red hoodie, track pants, and a crude breathing mask.
• Difficult, but Awesome: Effective smoke play requires careful resource management and judgement, given the limited number and duration of his grenades. Shutting down an early rush could be a round-saver, but so could saving them for the final push in the last 30 seconds. Otherwise the Attacks have the luxury of waiting the smoke out.
• I Call It "Vera": Smoke refers to his gas grenades as "his beauties" or "his toxic babes".
• No Indoor Voice: Smoke is possibly one of the loudest and most bombastic member of his group, with many of his voice lines being him barking out calls at the top of his lungs. A lot of his lines are him noisily cheering at the expense of his targets, and his "LOADING NEW MAGAZINE!" is among one of the single loudest reload quotes in the game. That being said, he's got nothing on Mute of all people, whose majority of voice lines are loud, whereas Smoke only shouts on occasion.
• Not the Intended Use:
  • The Gas Grenade was originally intended to be a trap, being remotely detonated and having a heavy throw arc like a Nitro Cell. Players instead used it as on-demand area-denial, and the throw distance was changed accordingly.
  • Before it was changed in Y6S2, Smoke players figured out that triggering a gas grenade on a floor could make it damage opponents through walls as it propagated in a hemisphere.
• Required Secondary Powers: Being the only one who knows what his Z8 compound is, Smoke is uniquely immune to it. He also wears a full NBC suit with gloves and a rebreather, compared to his SAS counterparts who only wear masks. However, he makes the same mistake of wearing his mask over his hood for an imperfect seal.
• Rugged Scar: The 2022 Invitational cinematic reveals his face with a nasty burn scar on his right temple.
• Sir Swears-a-Lot: Smoke has a notably potty mouth, and is one of the few Operators who swear in English on a regular basis.
  Smoke: Friendly! For fuck's sake, don't shoot!
• We Used to Be Friends: The promotional comic for Demon Veil reveals that Thatcher did not take Smoke's departure from Rainbow quite well, referring to him as a "back-stabbing shite of a James Porter".

Mute

Mark R. "Mute" Chandar

"People think my codename is Mute because I don't like to talk. Maybe I just don't like you."

^{Click here to see Mute's Elite Skin F Squadron}

Voiced By: Gary Milner (EN); Hiroki Tasaka (JP)
Date of Birth: October 11
Age: 25
Team: Defenders
Squad: Viperstrike

A young prodigy and tech specialist of a few words, Mute sets down GC90 Moni "Signal Disruptors" to actively jam enemy electronics in their radius.

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• Ambiguously Brown: Although his face was never revealed and his ethnicity unclear, Mute's surname, Chandar, is Hindi for "moon", implying that he's at least of Indian descent. The name of his jammers, "Moni", is Hindi for "silent". The exposed forearm on his Elite costume also depicts him as rather brown-skinned.
• Bollywood Nerd: Take his implied ethnicity under Ambiguously Brown above, now add in the Child Prodigy part, and the only thing he lacks to truly cement this trope is the accent.
• Child Prodigy: Mute graduated secondary school at the age of 12, was accepted to Cambridge at 14, and is only 26 in-game. He even has a PhD in Electrical Engineering, effectively making him Doctor Mute.
• Emergent Gameplay: After Ubisoft gave Mute a jamming radius buff, players have found out that it is possible to jam reinforced hatches at special points on some maps.
• Everyone Has Standards: Even he finds 707th SMB Operator Vigil too quiet for his tastes.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: "Nobody" is a bit harsh, but it's made apparent in his dossier that very few actually like him, due to his curtness which can be misconstrued as him being rude and hostile, and the impatience and stubbornness demonstrated in his line of work can be off-putting to those around him. His background in information security also made him extremely hesitant to share anything, which is very obstructive for an organization like Rainbow. Aside from probably only Glaz and Vigil, everyone else just seem to begrudgingly tolerate his presence at best.
• Gadgeteer Genius: Mute not only helped develop the Moni Signal Disruptor but he also personally made the improved version he uses today.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: Harry's profile on him describes Mute as a particularly short-tempered individual who has difficulties letting social irritations slide. If he's sufficiently annoyed, which is easily done due to his impatience, Mute will be quick to loudly protest, which is speculated to be one of several factors that contributed to him being The Friend Nobody Likes.
• Impeded Communication: In addition to disrupting Attackers' ability to use their drones, his jammers disrupt all Attacker electronics. They prevent all electronic breaching charges from being activated within their range, even when they should automatically deploy, like secondary hard breach charges and Ace's SELMAs. They also prevent Defenders in their radius from being affected by Lion's scan and Dokkaebi's Logic Bomb, as well as prevent Finka from activating her nanoboost. Even Blitz's shield cannot flash within a jammer's radius. Claymores and airjabs are also prevented from triggering within a jammer's radius.
• Interface Screw:
  • His gadget, the Moni Signal Disruptor, is designed to do this against Drone-happy teams, causing their screens to fill with static when near a jammer but not close enough to stop entirely. Attackers standing within a jammer's radius also cannot access their drones.
  • This also applies to Jackal's Eyenox, which suffers the same static effects as drones do, and blacking out entirely if right next to the jammer if its not turned off.
• Ironic Name: Despite being named "Mute", he's actually the loudest and most shouty member of his CTU. Harry's psychological evaluation on Mute even states that while he Hates Small Talk, Mute is not all all, well, mute, and is quick to voice his irritation if sufficiently annoyed.
• Meaningful Name: His Moni jammers are named after the Hindi word for "silent", which is about as self-explanatory as it can get.
• Pintsized Powerhouse: He was only 5'6" (1.70m) tall at release, making him the shortest male operator in the entire roster. He has since been supplanted in this capacity by Mozzie, who only stands 5'4" (1.62m) tall, and Mute himself has been given several height adjustments, which gave him a current height of 5'11" (1.80m).
• Terse Talker: His quotes? Two, three words each. At best, four.

FBI SWAT

Ash

Eliza "Ash" Cohen

"When I was little, my savta taught me that 'Silence was a women's best garment'. But, I have to admit, I never really took her advice to heart."

^{Click here to see Ash's Elite Skin Sidewinder}

^{Click here to see Ash's Skin Tomb Raider}

Voiced By: Patricia Summersett (EN); Yukino Maruyama (JP)
Date of Birth: December 24
Age: 33
Team: Attackers
Squad: Redhammer

An impulsive and aggressive demolitions expert from Israel who transferred to US FBI SWAT in an exchange program, Ash uses a M320 grenade launcher loaded with explosive M120 CREM Breaching Rounds to create massive holes in destructible walls/surfaces at a distance.

For tropes applicable to her counterpart in Rainbow Six Extraction, see Rainbow Six Extraction REACT.

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• Abnormal Ammo: The Breaching Rounds look mostly identical to a normal grenade round at a glance, except that it burrows itself into walls. We get a good look at the round in Ash's operator video, and it looks nothing like a normal 40x46mm grenade.
• Arrogant Kung-Fu Guy: Well, Girl. Her Psychological Profile states that she has an "inflated sense of self".
• Badass Israeli: She's actually from Israel, and was transferred to the United States in an international law enforcement exchange program.
• Boxing Battler: New official artwork in 2020, along with new items and equipment released with the Around the World Battle Pass, indicate Ash is one. Most notably, a Battlepass headgear of hers is a "SWAT Boxing Club" boxing headgear with her name written on it. She also has a charm that's a pair of boxing gloves.
• Cassandra Truth: She tried to convince Harry on multiple occasions that Kali and her crew were trouble and it would be a terrible idea to hire her on, and although he did consider the warnings, no actions were ultimately made to prevent potential incidents. Ash's warnings became vindicated after the conclusion of the 2022 SIX Invitational, where Kali managed to convince every member of her team to leave Rainbow and join NIGHTHAVEN instead.
• Cool Shades: Wears a pair of them.
• Cutscene Power to the Max: Her Breaching Rounds destroy a concrete wall in her Operator Video, which is completely impossible in-game.
• A Day in the Limelight: She is a key figure in the "Outbreak" Event in Operation Chimera.
• Demolitions Expert: Her Gadget, the Breaching Rounds, can destroy walls and utility from afar. She can also equip conventional breaching charges.
• Dynamic Entry: In addition to blasting out a large hole in soft walls, her CREM rounds will also do considerable damage to anyone standing nearby. This can potentially wipe out or injure some of the Defenders in the site and allow Ash and her team to swoop in and eliminate the rest.
• Fiery Redhead: She's a redhead whose psychological profile describes her as "aggressive, impulsive, and overly confident".
• Fixed Damage Attack: If her Breaching Round hits another person, it deals 50 damage regardless of their Armor rating.
• Fragile Speedster: A Light Armored Operator with almost memetic status due to her former Hitbox Dissonance, but is fast as well.
• Genius Bruiser: She's a Rainbow operator who graduated from Tel Aviv University with a degree in Structural Engineering, and is said to have excelled in math and physics while growing up in Israel.
• Glass Cannon: Ash's loadout is extremely powerful, but as a 1-Armor Attacker, she herself is very physically-fragile and can't stand up to as much damage as her more well-protected teammates.
• Grenade Launcher: Her M120 CREM Breaching Rounds are fired from a modified M320.
• Guest Fighter: She appears in Arknights as a playable Sniper operator.
• Irony: Her savta (Hebrew for grandmother) taught her to be quiet at a young age, but everything about her playstyle (her weapons, speed and gadget) is anything but.
  Ash: "But, I have to admit, I never really took her advice to heart."
• Lawful Good: Ash takes counter-terrorism, even training exercises, extremely seriously and cares about working as a team. This puts her in opposition to Kali, a ruthless mercenary, to the point that Ash punches her for treating the Invitational as a game and injuring Ash in the process. Her suspicion of NIGHTHAVEN leads her to call in a favor and pursue an investigation of her own, which in the end, turned out to be well-placed when NIGHTHAVEN poaches several Rainbow operators and leaves.
• Leeroy Jenkins: An Informed Attribute, where Ash is described by Mira in the M120 CREM's Device Evaluation as an impulsive operator who "tends to get caught up in her own hype and rush ahead without enough intel". She was given the In-Series Nickname of "Miss KickInTheDoor" for that reason.
• Not Even Bothering with the Accent: Despite being from Israel, Ash speaks with an American accent.
• No-Sell: CREM rounds aren't affected by Mute's signal jammers, and the Y6S2 patch additionally rendered them immune to electricity, meaning that Kaid and Bandit are also powerless to stop them with their unique utilities.
• Not the Intended Use: Shooting at the Defenders directly with her CREM rounds deals about 50 points of damage to them, meaning that Ash can wield her utility as a makeshift slug thrower in a pinch.
• Recognizable by Sound: Ash charges make a distinct winding sound on impact as it drills into a surface before exploding.
• The Rival: Developed a rivalry with GEO Operator Mira following Operation Blue Orion as well as getting belligerent with Kali.
• Series Mascot: Ash features heavily in promotional and story material, in part due to her popularity in-game.
• Shout-Out: Her Tomb Raider Elite set lets her dress up as Lara Croft, specifically as she appeared in the original 1996 title, orange sunglasses and all.
• Splash Damage: Upon exploding, her CREM rounds will deal significant damage to operators and gadgets within 3 meters of the blast. This can be used to wipe out Defender utilities as well as maiming or even killing enemy players if they're already wounded.
• This Is a Drill: Ash's class icon is a drill-tipped missile, and her Breaching Rounds are grenade launcher shells with special piercing blades at the tip.
• There Was a Door: Ash is a more explosive soft breacher compared to the likes of Sledge or Buck, where her CREM rounds are designed to blast open large holes in destructible surfaces to open up more angles of approach for her team and allow them to avoid booby-trapped areas.

Thermite

Jordan "Thermite" Trace

"When you mix fuel, metal oxide and metal powder in just the right way, it burns at 2000 degrees Celsius. Hot enough to cut through nearly any barrier known to man. Throw some C4 into the mix, and you've got one hell of a combination."

^{Click here to see Thermite's Elite Skin Vintage Bureau}

Voiced By: Carlo Mestroni (EN); Hiroto Kazuki (JP)
Date of Birth: March 14
Age: 35
Team: Attackers
Squad: Redhammer

A disciplined and orderly former Marine, Thermite can deploy and remotely-detonate Brimstone BC-3 Exothermic Charges, which burn through and breach reinforced walls and hatches wide open.

For tropes applicable to his counterpart in Rainbow Six Extraction, see Rainbow Six Extraction REACT.

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• Artistic License – Chemistry: Real thermite isn't realistically utilized in breaching scenarios due to the intense heat it generates^note over 2,000 degrees Celcius, enough to melt through steel and asphalt that would prevent anyone from entering through the opening, the difficulty in extinguishing and cooling such heat afterwards, along with the copious amount of molten slag created that can pose a fire hazard if flammable objects are nearby. Coupled with an explosive charge, this slag becomes even more dangerous as it can be splashed much further away from the breach, and potentially onto the Attackers waiting to egress through the newly-created hole.
• Artistic License – Military: One of his primary weapons is the SIG 556xi, an updated and multi-caliber form of the earlier 556. However, the fully-automatic mode is Ubisoft's taken creative liberty, as the entire 556 line were made for civilian and Law Enforcement markets, and therefore were specifically designed with semi-automatic receivers only.
• Boring, but Practical: Of the four operators who can breach reinforced walls, Thermite is by far the easiest to use. Hibana is limited in her launcher's pellets blowing open a fragment of the wall, Maverick has to slowly melt out holes with his torch and risk getting shot while doing so, and Ace makes multiple crouch-sized holes, but Thermite is a one and done affair and leaves, as he puts it, "a really big fucking hole" big enough to run through. Thermite is often picked in pro league play just because of this gadget, because even if it isn't very fun or flashy, it's undeniably one of the most useful gadgets in the game.
• Cool Helmet: Wears a PASGT helmet with a variety of cosmetic decorations. The helmets won't protect him from headshots, though.
• A Day in the Limelight: While not playable, Thermite acts as the Voice with an Internet Connection for the Outbreak Event.
• Demolitions Expert: A more traditional example than Ash, in that he carefully sets stationary bombs rather than blasting away with a Grenade Launcher.
• Dungeon Bypass: Thermite's Exothermic Charges work like this, allowing him and his team to just blast through reinforced walls rather than funnel into obvious chokepoints.
• Exactly What It Says on the Tin: Name's Thermite, burns through walls with thermite.
• Fighting Irish: According to the St. Patrick's Day weapon skin announcement, he is of Irish descent.
• The Friendly Texan: Dude's from Plano, Texas, and is quite the Nice Guy if you're not on the team he's shooting at.
• Goggles Do Nothing: He wears a pair of welding goggles in both his default skin and his Elite skin. In-game, they don't really do anything.
• Handicapped Badass: A past op with Aruni led to a bomb he was trying to defuse going off and injuring his hands enough to leave ample scarring and implied permanent numbness.
• Handwraps of Awesome: His hands are wrapped with charred bandages, presumably related to the aforementioned hand injuries.
  • His Outbreak skin trades the bandages for yellow kinesiology tape meant to apply pressure and reduce numbness.
• Icy Blue Eyes: His Outbreak face reveal showed that Thermite hides steely pale blue eyes behind those googles.
• Meaningful Name: Thermite's last name, Trace, comes from Ireland from an Anglicized form of the Gaelic Ó Treasaigh, or "descendant of Treasach," a personal name meaning "warlike," "fierce". Appropriate, given his heritage.
• Perma-Stubble: Has one in Outbreak, which eventually grew into a full beard in Extraction.
• Precision F-Strike: Notably one of the few Operators who openly swears, especially when breaching an objective.
  Thermite: A really big fucking hole coming right up.
• Recognizable by Sound: The Exothermic Charges always make a loud hissing burn sound before they explode, accompanied by sparks visible on the inside of the reinforced wall. The sparks and hiss serve as a double purpose - break through the wall, of course, but also inform the Defenders to either get the hell out of there or bunker down and react to the breach as it happens.
• Rule of Cool: His special MVP animation with his Elite Skin on shows him doing a burning hands magic trick. It really has nothing to do with the theme of the skin, which is a set of historical FBI gear, but it looks cool.
• Semper Fi: He's a former marine who served two tours in Iraq. He went back to United States and got a degree in chemistry, then joined the FBI.
• The Smart Guy: Of the FBI SWAT, and possibly Rainbow as well. Thermite is one of the specialists in charge of all things technical regarding operator equipment R&D alongside Mira, and served as the chief consultant for Ash and Doc during the course of Outbreak, a role that he eventually reprised in Extraction.
• Splash Damage: The Exothermic Charges have a much larger explosive radius to make thermal breaching more effective. Players have found out that with this larger radius, it is possible to indirectly destroy walls protected by a Signal Disruptor or a Shock Wire by slapping on a Brimstone on any given surface near one whilst outside of their effective radius and letting the explosion overlap with the protected wall. This splash damage can also destroy reinforced hatches simply by having a Brimstone exploding on a surface close to them.

Castle

Miles "Castle" Campbell

"Listen up, people: No one dies today. Any questions'll just have to wait."

^{Click here to see Castle's Elite Skin Point Blank Justice}

Voiced By: Luke Forbes (EN); Takeshi Maruyama (JP)
Date of Birth: September 20
Age: 36
Team: Defenders
Squad: Wolfguard

A level-headed, empathic expert of defence and reinforcement, Castle deploys UTP1-Universal Tactical Panels on windows and doorways. These Armor Panels are bulletproof and more resistant to melee damage compared to the standard wooden barricade.

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• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • In High Calibre, armor panels can be placed on pre-existing wooden barricades without having to pull down the barricade first, instantly breaking them in the process.
  • If his fellow Defenders pulled down his armor panels, they will be put back into his inventory instead of outright destroyed.
• Cool Helmet: Wears a PASGT helmet with a variety of cosmetic decorations. The helmets won't protect him from headshots, though.
• Critical Existence Failure: Outside of a minor blemish on the surface, an armor panel that's one melee hit away from breaking is identical to a fully intact one. Having the thing suddenly break open in front of you can throw off some players. There have even been strategies set up where you intentionally melee the panel until it's one hit away from breaking then use the element of suprise to get the jump on attackers with the last hit.
• Cunning Linguist: If his psych profile is any indication, Castle studies languages as a hobby and knows Latin, Spanish, and Korean in addition to English.
• Cutscene Power to the Max: His bulletproof barricades apparently go to the ground in his Operator Video, allowing him to sit behind it. In-game, the gap that all barricades have is still there, which drones and bullets can pass through.
• Difficult, but Awesome: Castle sees almost no use in casual gameplay with random players. However, he truly shines in top-tier competitive games, where his bulletproof barricades have tactical uses that are almost impossible to be effective without a good team. This probably goes with how his barricades are most effective as the enemy team dwindles and makes it more likely their survivors will be quite hampered by being forced to go through/around them as the round's time ticks down rather than blowing through with gadgets nearly immediately.
• The Heart: Castle is surprisingly empathetic, and strives to keep not just the peace but also personal calm.
• Heroes Love Dogs: One of the things he does in his off-hours is caring for rescued dogs in animal shelters. This is reflected by several customization items Castle can have, but none more apparent than in his Elite Set, which gives a red bulldog decal on his Armor Panels.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Castle's armored panels work wonders against gunfire, however, this can run both ways. An armored panel makes for a juicy target for Ying and Fuze players, who can place their gadgets and have them spew grenades into the room without risk of being shot back at from behind the barricade. If Castle is extremely careless, he could lock his teammates in or out of the objective, fully at the mercy of the attacking team.
• Jack of All Stats: There's nothing wrong with his guns overall, his gadget is decent if used correctly, and is a Medium Armored Operator. His kit brings a lot of utility but is pretty unremarkable.
• Meaningful Name: Possibly. The Scottish Clan Campbell is known for owning or having owned a lot of castles. In gameplay terms, his panels can turn any given room into a fortified and defensible position akin to a castle.
• Not the Intended Use: Some players turned Castle into an ambusher by exploiting the fact that the bulletproof barricades always break after nine hits. By hitting the barricades eight times in the same spot beforehand, a player can then strike the barricade once more, destroy it, and rush through, surprising the enemies on the other side since it still looks like an intact panel and avoids the telltale noise of explosives. This works better when placed on windows, since the panel will stretch down below the windowsill, so the preemptive hits can be placed where Attackers can't easily see them.
• Skill Gate Characters: A peculiar Inverted case. Due to the tighter amount of teamwork and communication, Castle is seen more often in higher tiers because as mentioned before, they're able to pull off strategies that wouldn't quite work in Casual's random selection of teammates.
• Stone Wall: A more literal example than most. Castle can put up reinforced barricades that are much stronger than the normal wooden barricades. When combined with Mute's signal disruptor, they can only be breached by physical impact (like Sledge's breaching hammer), or by manually hitting it nine times.
• Token Minority: Castle is the only non-Caucasian member of his team.

Pulse

Jack "Pulse" Estrada

"In a life threatening situation, the average person's heartbeat can be upwards of 175 beats per minute. A well trained tango is able to stay cool, keep calm. Their heart rates can be 70 to 100 beats per minute. But by the time I'm done, that number goes down to zero."

^{Click here to see Pulse's Elite Skin Lucky Seventh}

Voiced By: Eric T. Miller (EN); Kenji Sugimura (JP)
Date of Birth: October 11
Age: 32
Team: Defenders
Squad: Nighthaven

A natural negotiator with a knack for noticing microscopic variances, Pulse carries an HB-5 Cardiac Sensor that allows him to actively detect enemies at short distances through solid obstacles such as walls and floors.

As of the conclusion of the events of SIX Invitational 2022, Pulse is officially a member of NIGHTHAVEN, and is no longer associated with either the FBI or Rainbow.

For tropes applicable to his counterpart in Rainbow Six Extraction, see Rainbow Six Extraction REACT.

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• Agents Dating: He and fellow Rainbow operator Hibana appear to be in a relationship. Ubisoft has been dropping subtle (and not so subtle) hints that Hibana and Pulse are together, although it is not currently known to what extent.
  • In Nov of 2018, the Wind Bastion DLC gave us the map "Fortress", which featured an Easter Egg hidden inside the piano in Dining Room. When the piano is shot, it reveals a photo of what looks like Thermite, Pulse, and Hibana together.
  • The Road to S.I event in January 2019 brought its own set of event packs including headgear, uniforms, gun skins, and weapon charms. One of which is a charm called "Pulse's Heart". It has the name "Yumiko" written on it in Japanese, which is also Hibana's real name.
  • 2020's Valentine's Day challenge came with a photo of both of them. Upon completing the challenge, you received the "Ladybug Heart" charm, which has 'You're my Love Bug' inscribed on the back.
  • During the Invitational 2020 cinematic, Pulse visibly hesitates to shoot Hibana despite being on opposite teams. When Hibana, taking advantage of Sledge's sudden attack, manages to take down Pulse, she says 'Sorry Babe' before shooting him and in turn winning the match for her team.
  • Unfortunately, they're no longer an item as of Year 8. According to a recording of Kali's psych reports in the "Nighthaven Labs" map, Pulse broke up with Hibana when he left Rainbow.
• Awesomeness by Analysis: Pulse is very good at reading people, making him a good negotiator and amateur profiler. His Heartbeat Sensor is essentially a technological reflection of his skill.
• Cool Shades: Wears a pair of them. Unlike his fellow FBI agents, it's the only headgear he wears.
• Death from Above: His ability to see enemies through walls and floors lends well to blasting them from any angle with his guns or nitro cell.
• Friendly Rivalry: He has one with IQ, who reciprocates in kind, due to their intelligence. Makes sense, since they're direct counters to each other in-game.
• Glass Cannon: He's a Light Armored Operator with an M1014 shotgun, a UMP45 submachine gun, and a Nitro Cell in his arsenal. Combine that with his Heartbeat Sensor, and he's this in a nutshell.
• The Little Detecto: His Heartbeat Sensor can read heartbeats from up to 9 meteres, allowing him to see people even through walls and smoke. However, there's a small delay when swapping between his Heartbeat Sensor and weapon, leaving Pulse vulnerable during this action. In addition, other people can hear the sensor beeping, and IQ can see it outright.
• Military Brat: His bio states that he was raised in a military family.
• Shout-Out: His Lucky Seventh Elite Set appears heavily inspired by Fury (2014), but his haircut and shades also resemble Robert de Niro's appearance in Taxi Driver.

GIGN

Twitch

Emmanuelle "Twitch" Pichon

"Machine learning and teamwork have one thing in common: Always lead by example."

^{Click here to see Twitch's Elite Skin Maquis}

Voiced By: Brigitte Bourdeau (EN); Kiyoko Nagaki (JP)
Date of Birth: October 12
Age: 28
Team: Attackers
Squad: Wolfguard

A tech-savvy but empathic engineer, Twitch can deploy and drive around her RSD Model 1 Shock Drones that fire a laser to destroy electronic gadgets and damage enemies.

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• Achilles' Heel: Her shock drones are really big, limiting their ability to hide and fit through some drone holes. Before Crystal Guard, they couldn't jump, and so were stopped by deployable shields and windows. It used to even have a giant flashing light on top as well.
• Attack Drone: Her RSD Model 1 Shock Drones are improved versions of the standard observation drone with a built-in shock probe capable of zapping people and electronics. However, it's somewhat bulkier.
• Artifact Title: After her RSD was reworked to firing lasers instead of shock darts in Y6S3, Twitch became incapable of tasing Defenders anymore, thus rendering the "twitch" part of her callsign redundant. Also of note is that her unique drone is still referred to as the Remote Shock Drone, despite the "shock" part of its title no longer holds true.
• Brainy Brunette: Her Maquis Elite Uniform reveals her brown, neatly tied hair, alongside the fact that she's a mechanical engineer.
• Cherry Tapping: Kills with her Shock Drones are always examples of this trope since each shot deals only 10 damage. In Operation Void Edge, this was further reduced to 1 damage.
• Drone Deployer: While she starts with a standard drone in the Prep Phrase to facilitate Attacker-repick, she carries two shock drones - more drones than the standard kit.
• Frickin' Laser Beams: In Crystal Guard, her drones' taser projectile was changed to a laser to increase its range and consistency. While it's no longer able to disable Maestro cams or Melusi Banshees, it can detonate Goyo canisters now.
• The Gadfly: She's not as much as an outright jokester as Blitz, Jäger or Bandit, but she has serious shades of this in addition to some of her dialogue suggesting some trollish tendencies ("Stop complaining. It's just electricity."). In Terrorist Hunt, she trash-talks the most frequently, primarily teasing the older operators for their age and supposed decrepitude.
• The Heart: Like Montagne, she is explicitly described as a highly intuitive and empathetic individual—in direct contrast to many engineers, which makes her well-liked by virtually everyone in Rainbow. Her genuine belief in the ability to improve people's lives is her motivation for military service, as well as the whole point for her research in artificial intelligence.
• Jack of All Stats: Twitch has a few minor weaknesses balanced by a really good gun, and is overall a decent Operator. Ironically, she's the only one with Medium Armor out of all the GIGN members.
• La Résistance: Her Maquis elite set is based off of French Resistance and Free French uniforms.
• Lame Pun Reaction: Her response to Harry's attempt at a pun in the Device Evaluation for Lion's EE-ONE-D indicates that she didn't find it funny.
  My upgrades don't end here. Further improvements will be necessary as the field continues to outpace Moore's Law.
  (Comment_H. Pandey: "Moore's" the pity, right? :D)
  (Comment_E. Pichon: No. E.)
• Meaningful Name: The "twitch" in her callsign was derived from the body's muscle spasms when subjected to an electric shock, like the one her drone was originally made to deliver. It's become somewhat of an Artifact Title after the drone's multiple reworks, as Twitch is no longer capable of applying any kind of tasing to the Defender side now that the RSD has been changed to firing lasers instead.
• Nerf: Her RSD drone once had 15 shots, meaning that it could destroy almost every camera on the map and any Defender gadgets. They were reduced to five and then three. In the beginning, her F2 had almost no recoil. Now, her F2 has heavier recoil and five less rounds per magazine.
  • In patch 5.1.0, the drone's damage was reduced from 10 to 1 and capacity to 3 shots, though they recharge over time.
• The Smart Guy: Twitch is perhaps the smartest out of all the GIGN members. Along with being the youngest operator ever accepted into GIGN at 20 years of age, she was a self-taught child prodigy who excelled at engineering and computer programming from early youth. She eventually joined the French Army cadets as a 16-year-old. With Team Rainbow, she is apparently the go-to expert for anything remote-controlled and is responsible for many of their newest toys, like Lion's EE-ONE-D aerial drone and Maestro's "Evil Eye" camera. She is currently researching how to make A.I.s more empathic, possibly to also teach other humans the same.
• Weak, but Skilled: Her Shock Drones aren't all that impressive, but they're a more strategic, remote-controlled alternative to Thatcher's EMPs.
• Weaksauce Weakness: Her drones used to be unable to jump. At all. Blocking a room off with a deployable shield would completely deny their entry. This has since been corrected in Crystal Shield, which finally gave her drones the ability to jump.
• Youthful Freckles: Her Elite Skin reveals that she has them, which serve to accentuate her brainy and outgoing nature.

Montagne

Gilles "Montagne" Touré

"Every conflict is an iteration upon the last. Every scar, a victory."

^{Click here to see Montagne's Elite Skin MTG MK.II}

Voiced By: Louis–Philipe Dandenault (EN); Yasuhiro Mamiya (JP)
Date of Birth: October 11
Age: 48
Team: Attackers
Squad: Wolfguard

A Gentle Giant and long-serving member of the GIGN, Montagne uses an Extendable Shield known as "Le Roc" that expands from normal size to offer full-body frontal protection, making him impervious to bullets and highly resistant to explosive damage.

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• Achilles' Heel:
  • Shields do not turn to face as far up or down as the first-person camera would suggest, so having the high ground gives a clear shot on an unextended Montagne's head. Fully extended, Montagne's shield offers protection from above, but still has a few gaps.
  • A Montagne in a corner seems near impossible to kill, but the shield does not cover the full 90 degree arc. Working with a teammate is essential to expose that gap more by meleeing his shield.
  • Ever since the Y9S1 rework, shield operators can no longer hipfire, and thus must expose their heads to fire their pistols. They are far less vulnerable with their melee attacks, however.
• Advancing Wall of Doom: In this case, a moving metal wall with a gun sticking out of it.
• Badass Teacher: When not on duty as a Rainbow operative, Montagne serves as a highly-respected instructor for GIGN cadets.
• The Big Guy: One of the tallest members of Team Rainbow, and is a highly defense-oriented Attacker.
• Break Out the Museum Piece: In-universe. Le Roc is stated to be a model of shield that was first issued in the early 1980's and is no longer issued in frontline GIGN service. Le Roc is the last of these shields still seeing use.
• Close-Range Combatant: Despite looking like an all-out support, he handles surprisingly well in zero-range combat and melee. His shield can close the distance quickly and safely, maneuvering around enemies to take aim or go for a bash. A good Montagne is effectively unbeatable in one-on-one situations where he doesn't need to lower his shield until he wants to, such as in a post-plant.
• Fashionable Asymmetry: Montagne's right arm is covered in armor, while his left hand is busy carrying his shield.
• Gentle Giant: Everything about him - his body, his shield, his armor - is huge and somewhat menacing, but he lives to protect his teammates and wouldn't hesitate to take the bullet for them.
• Irony: Despite his huge size and equally-big equipment, one of Montagne's noted fields of expertise is reconaissance.
• Immune to Flinching: Normally, a shield will be knocked away when meleed from the front, giving you a chance to follow up with a bodyshot kill. Montagne is however mostly immune to it if his shield is extended, and his guard break animation barely moves his shield out of the way. Unfortunately for him, the same can't be said for Oryx's Remah Dash.
• Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me: His Extendable Shield is this trope, protecting him from head to toe and a few degrees to the side when extended. Other shields, while still offering protection, still leaves quite a few areas unprotected like the top and sides, and cannot protect teammates behind them very well.
• Meaningful Name:
  • "Montagne" means "mountain" in French.
  • Montagne's first name, Gilles, means "shield-bearer" in Greek.
  • His last name, Touré, is derived from the Soninke word for "elephant".
• Mighty Glacier: His revolver does massive damage per hit, and can pummel an enemy to death with one swing of his shield. However, he's extremely loud and very, very slow.
• No-Sell: Montagne's extended shield blocks bullets in a wide angle and takes even less explosive damage compared to other shields, making him a good choice for pushing the objective in Bomb mode and giving his teammates some breathing room to plant. Le Roc is also sturdier than the typical Ballistic Shield when extended, where melee strikes to the surface will only cause Montagne to slightly flinch, though being rushed by Oryx will still knock him down as usual.
• Not the Intended Use: As shields reduce incoming explosive damage and Le Roc even more so, Montagne can be used to bait Defenders into claymores and even set off Kapkan traps with Defenders right next to them.
• Odd Friendship: The gentle, all-loving Montagne is actually good friends with the cynical, morally-questionable Lion.
• Old Soldier: Montagne is up there with Thatcher in terms of years served. He's a veteran GIGN member, and was an active participant in many historic GIGN missions of the later half of the 20th century, including the famous Air France Flight 8969 siege. His shield, Le Roc, bears many dings, pockmarks and other scars to showcase this.
• Powered Armor: Montagne's Elite Skin is a futuristic combat exoskeleton encased in heavy armor plating, which visually makes him look more machine than man.
• Stone Wall: Like Blitz, his gadget is his Extendable Shield, "Le Roc", which can protect his entire body from the front, top and sides. He is also a Heavy Armored Operator, and he can only carry a pistol and some grenades. Good luck taking him down from the front, though, as short of spamming explosives at him, or if your name is Oryx, Montagne is bar none the worst Attacker any lone Defender will ever have to deal with in Bomb mode if you lack a reliable way of throwing his shield aside, since he can just stand in a doorway or on the defuser with his back to the wall and wait out the timer as you helplessly wail on his nigh-impenetrable defenses, while he can smack you with his weapon for an easy kill.
• We Need a Distraction: While extending his shield prevents him from doing anything else, his presence makes him very threatening especially when a Defender has to choose to focus on a different operator to fight instead of Montagne, leaving them vulnerable to Monty dropping his shield and taking aim.
• With Catlike Tread: Understandably, having a large shield with moving parts will not only make Montagne the slowest operator in the game, but also makes his movement the loudest of them all as well. But then again, an extended Montagne is not exactly a priority threat, and can easily slip around occupied Defenders..

Doc

Gustave "Doc" Kateb

"I've learned from experience that the place to save lives is in the field, not an office. And sometimes the only way to save a life is to take one."

^{Click here to see Doc's Elite Skin Trench Medic}

Voiced By: Alex Ivanovici (EN); Kanehira Yamamoto (JP)
Date of Birth: September 16
Age: 39
Team: Defenders
Squad: Wolfguard

A genuine altruist and prominent field medic, Doc uses an MPD-0 Stim Pistol to heal or revive teammates from afar or use it on himself. Each shot can heal up to 200 health limited by an overheal of 20 health over maximum.

For tropes applicable to his counterpart in Rainbow Six Extraction, see Rainbow Six Extraction REACT.

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• All-Loving Hero: His psychological profile describes him as a "genuine altruist and a true believer in making the world a safer place for his fellow man".
• Artistic License – Medicine: Played With. Stimming a wounded person with adrenaline without patching them up would cause them to bleed out faster due to the heart's increased blood circulation. However, it is handwaved that Doc's stims have micro-pellets that coagulate and seal internal bleeding and other wounds, thus removing the need to actually patch up his patients.
• Auto-Revive: Doc can use his Stim Pistol while DBNO to instantly revive himself.
• Balance Buff: The Y7S3.3 Patch added a massive buff to Doc's heals, from 40HP to 200, meaning any injured teammate will always be healed to over 100. Alongside that, the Baliff Hand Cannon was added to his list of available secondaries.
• Combat Medic: Don't let his idealism and Stim Pistol fool you; he still carries a shotgun and/or submachine gun and has no problem using them.
• Conspicuous Gloves: While military gloves do exist (and pretty much everyone in the game uses a pair), Doc's gloves are white latex medical gloves.
• A Day in the Limelight: He's a key figure in the "Outbreak" Event. He's also responsible for the rescue of Doctor Mackintosh, who was caught within the center of the virus, yet managed to survive.
• Exactly What It Says on the Tin: Doc heals people. What else is there to it?
• Guest Fighter: He appears in Arknights as a playable Guard operator.
• Healing Shiv: He carries the MPD-0 Stim Pistol which revives and heals wounded teammates at a range. It heals back more health than reviving manually and can be shot at any range at anyone, including himself. And Attackers.
• Heroic Second Wind: His gadget is basically this as a gun. Justified in this case, considering the solution allows the person to last for a small period of time until proper medical treatment can be done, which is a pretty long time in a game with rounds that last for 4 minutes at most.
• Hollywood Healing: Played straight with his Stim Pistol which can be shot at players (even enemy ones, mind you) to heal their health, give them temporary health over their maximum, or revive them while in an incapacitated state. Granted, background material clearly states it is a temporary solution to tide them over to further medical treatment.
• Hope Spot: Downed operators are often still in their enemies' sights, leading to them dying before they can even stand up. Doc players can even revive downed attackers just to knife them immediately afterwards, though this can backfire.
• The Medic: The good doctor is not only a medical officer for the Brigade des Forces Speciales Terre, he also volunteers for Doctors Without Borders.
• Mechanically Unusual Fighter: After Withstand as a mechanic was removed from the operators who had it, Doc was the only operator who can do anything other than bleed on the floor when downed, being able to pick himself up with a shot from his stim pistol. Finka would later join him when she received a tweak in High Caliber that lets her use Adrenal Surge when in DBNO and pick herself up off the ground.
• Mighty Glacier: A Heavy Armored Operator, but shares Rook's choice of weapons. Unlike him, he's a more Support-orientated Defender.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Doc can shoot his Stim Pistol at Attackers, accidentally or incidentally. Given that he is also one of the few characters whose function requires him to aim at teammates, he could also end up misclicking and attempting to heal his teammates with a bullet.
• Non-Idle Rich: Doc is said to have grown up in an affluent family of doctors. But rather than live comfortably as a private medical practitioner, he became a public servant by joining the French Defense Health Service, which eventually led him to the GIGN.
• One Dose Fits All: The Stim Pistol gives the same amount of health to operators regardless of size. You got to question what sort of drugs has the same effect on the 115lb Ying and the 209lb Sledge.
• Secret-Keeper: Doc acts as one for Finka and her resurfacing neuropathy, monitoring her in case it starts affecting her performance.
• Token Minority: His last name is common amongst French Algerians, and his face reveal in Outbreak makes hit clear that he's of North African or Middle Eastern descent.

Rook

Julien "Rook" Nizan

"I trust that the ceramic trauma plate I'm wearing will stop a .357 Magnum round traveling at four-hundred and ninety meters per second. I trust myself not to move, not to flinch. I trust my teammates and they trust me."

^{Click here to see Rook's Elite Skin Gendarmerie}

Voiced By: Marc-André Brunet (EN); Kazuhiro Sunseki (JP)
Date of Birth: January 6
Age: 27
Team: Defenders
Squad: Viperstrike

An idealist and highly focused individual, Rook sets down a pack of R1N Rhino Armor, five special plates that increase the health of anyone who wears it by 20 HP and the ability to self-revive when downed. Best do it at the beginning of the round when everyone has the time to get one.

For tropes applicable to his counterpart in Rainbow Six Extraction, see Rainbow Six Extraction REACT.

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• Anti-Frustration Features: When deploying his armor pack, Rook automatically grabs a plate for himself as long as the deploy button is held.
• Achilles' Heel: Rook's armor plates offer no protection against melee attacks, and DBNO is bypassed in such situations, so getting knifed or a Caber to the face will still be instantly lethal.
• Ascended Meme: His Gendarmerie Elite set includes a folder for Operation Rook Mine in the armor plate bag.
• Balance Buff: The Y7S3.3 patch added the Withstand mechanic back in for anyone wearing Rook's armor, granting them one self-revive from a downed state, depicted as them picking the flattened bullets out of their armor.
• Body Armor as Hit Points: A worn armor plate adds 20 static health on top of your operator's HP.
• Boring, but Practical: His gadget is nothing special. It's just extra body armor for a few more bullets — but just one more shot can be the difference between life and death, and in a game where glancing shots can easily rip away about a third of your total health and people dying in an instant when exposed to gunfire, having a safety net in the form of his armor inserts can be a literal lifesaver. The "boring" part is really emphasized in his Device Evaluation, where Doc is extremely exasperated by how Rainbow logistics kept brushing off Rook's armor inserts as being too mundane to be worth analyzing, despite their potentially lifesaving qualities.
• Bulletproof Vest: His special gadget allows him to deploy a pack of wearable plates that confer 20 additional health, akin to being beefed up an armor grade. In addition, a Defender wearing an Armor Plate will be guaranteed to be put into DBNO the first time they are downed, provided that the damage that depleted their HP was not a headshot or a melee hit. The plate will also double their bleedout timer to a maximum of 120 seconds.
• Fashionable Asymmetry: Rook wears a huge protective pad on his left arm that covers the entire forearm and his left hand, while his right-hand wears a normal military glove.
• Hidden Depths: Rook is also noted to be very proficient in architecture, a profession that he inherited from his father and was studying for in university before dropping out and enlisting in the National Gendarmerie.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Rook's armor plates can be worn by operators of either side, meaning if an Attacker can work their way up to the pouch and there are still charges left in it, they can then employ his utility against him and his team. It's one of the reasons why Rook should destroy the plate satchel once everyone's had their chance to equip them, even if there are still plates in the bag.
• Logical Weakness: Since the armor inserts are only worn on the body, they won't do anything to protect the user from headshots.
• Meaningful Name: A rook is a chess piece traditionally shaped like a tower with strong offensive and defensive capabilities. Rook's hometown also contributes to this, as Tours means "Towers" in French, and also refers to the rook piece on the chess board.
• Mighty Glacier: The GIGN's third Heavy Armored Operator, with low speed but powerful equipment. Compared to Doc, he's a more combat orientated Defender.
• Nice Guy: He really likes protecting and being reliable for his teammates.
• Not the Intended Use: Although he's built up to be an anchor, Rook can also be surprisingly effective as a roamer in the right hands. Although his slow speed and noisiness can be a deterrent to this strategy, his greater health and set-and-forget utility means he can take more risks compared to his fellow three armors.
• Skill Gate Characters: Rook is very easy to use, having good weapons and a gadget that is literally just a one-piece place and forget that does its job well. But theoretically, in a perfect situation where all players are trained to be able to headshot anyone with the first shot, Rook's gadget is useless, because, armor or not, everyone still goes down in one hit to the head. Nevertheless, Rook is still a solid operator for beginners and has good pick rates in high-rank games, simply because reality isn't as perfect as the paper says, and his gadgets are still very practical.
• Wide-Eyed Idealist: Harry's psychological analysis of Rook notes that he's one of the more consistently-optimistic members of his group, if not of Rainbow in general. Rook is altruistic, quick to trust, and is always looking out for his team.

Spetsnaz

Glaz

Timur "Glaz" Glazkov

"Do you know what an artist and a sniper have in common? Details. Like when a touch of color is out of place. When a shadow does not match with its surroundings. Or when a shape is not where it is supposed to be. The only difference is the stakes. Mine are higher."

^{Click here to see Glaz's Elite Skin Lethal Citizen}

Voiced By: Stan Demidoff (EN); Hiroaki Ichinowatari (JP)
Date of Birth: July 2
Age: 28
Team: Attackers
Squad: Ghosteyes

A patient and introspective sniper with a vibrant background as an artist, Glaz uses a HDS Flip Sight outfitted with a Thermal Feedback System, which allows him to both adapt for different range engagements and highlight his targets through smoke. The gadget is mounted on his special armor-penetrating, semi-auto marksman rifle, the OTs-03 (a Dragunov SVU), which can punch through barricades, walls, and hatches with ease.

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• Armor-Piercing Attack: Glaz's OTs-03 can penetrate 2 breakable surfaces at once. It was also the only gun in the entire game that can penetrate the otherwise bulletproof plane windows on the Presidential Plane map before the introduction of a fellow sniper operator, Kali.
• Balance Buff: You'll be surprised that his flip sight's thermal imaging wasn't something included at the game's launch but instead was actually introduced a few seasons later to increase his overall performance.
• Cold Sniper: Prefers being alone, and his Flip Sight gadget allows him to swap between long-range and mid-range sights.
• Character Tics: Harry's psychological evaluation of Glaz notes that he tends to rub the scar around his right eye with his fingers whenever he's stressed. He's frequently seen doing this when playing poker with the FBI operators.
• Do Not Run with a Gun: Sprinting aside, Glaz needs to stand still for a few seconds in order for his Thermal Feedback system to work properly. Movement diminishes its ability to highlight enemies and filter out smoke.
• Hidden Depths: Glaz's paintings are bright and colorful, which makes for a stark contrast to his gruff military life. He also has a morbid sense of humor, according to Harry.
• Improbable Aiming Skills: In his Elite Skin's victory animation, Glaz tosses a Ruble coin into the air and shoots it. The coin then lands near the camera in dramatic slow motion, revealing a clean bullet hole right in the center.
• Infrared X-Ray Camera: His Flip Sight's Thermal Feedback System can allow him to easily pick out other Operators from a distance and through smoke, though it doesn't see through walls.
• Long-Range Fighter: His Flip Sight and Thermal Feedback System attached to his powerful marksman rifle make him a beast at long range. While he's not terrible mid-range, and can still hit hard at close-range, his gun's small magazine and semi-automatic nature will be outpaced by faster-firing automatic weapons.
• Meaningful Name: Glaz means "eye" in Russian, it's in his surname.
• Mundane Solution: To avoid getting shot by Glaz, all that Defenders have to do is hunker down and wait for the smoke to clear, or shoot him if he rushes.
• Nerf: Glaz's OTs-03 had its fire rate and damage lowered, its recoil increased, and other things done to keep him a Long-Range Fighter.
• Not the Intended Use: Enemy highlighting and smoke filtering made Glaz an exceptional close-range entry fragger due to the one-sided nature of his ability. Later nerfs reduced his ability to run-and-gun.
• Punny Name: His full name, Timur Glazkov, literally means 'Iron of Eye'. If it reminds you of anything, it's basically "iron sights".
• Reclusive Artist: An idiosyncrasy of his character is his background as an artist, which helps him spot details as a sniper. Apparently, he makes surprisingly expressive and colorful art (according to his Psychological Profile) At the same time, it's noted that, while he dislikes large groups, he's quite engaging and expressive in one-on-one conversation.
• Significant Birth Date: Glaz was born on July 2, the same day as the founding of his home city of Vladivostok in 1860.
• Smoke Out: Can equip smoke grenades and this is very notable since Glaz can lay out a smokescreen that only he can see through and kill any Defender on the other side of the smoke in thanks to his special gadget.
• Warrior Poet: He was an art student before joining the military and continues to paint as a hobby. His Operator video has him point out the similarities between painting and sniping which leads his past experience to aid in his current line of work.

Fuze

Shuhrat "Fuze" Kessikbayev

"Chaos is only an enemy if you're unable to adapt."

^{Click here to see Fuze's Elite Skin 2nd Shock Army}

Voiced By: Gabriel Furman (EN); Osamu Kaneko (JP)
Date of Birth: October 12
Age: 33
Team: Attackers
Squad: Redhammer

An expert tinkerer and craftsman with a gruff but strongly moral personality, Fuze can deploy APM-9 "Matryoshkas", remotely detonated Cluster Charges that pierces soft and reinforced surfaces to release five sub-grenades on the other side. Not recommended in Hostage Situations.

For tropes applicable to his counterpart in Rainbow Six Extraction, see Rainbow Six Extraction REACT.

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• Achilles' Heel:
  • Shields do not turn to face as far up or down as the first-person camera would suggest, so having the high ground gives a clear shot on an unextended Fuze's head.
  • Ever since the Y9S1 rework, shield operators can no longer hipfire, and thus must expose their heads to fire their pistols. They are far less vulnerable with their melee attacks, however.
• Ascended Fanon: In Fuze's Bio, he is listed as having a strong moral compass. However, in the hands of new players he so easily massacres the hostage and teamkills that it became fan theory that he was a psychopathic murderer. Later official operator bios note that he is difficult to work with due to a disregard for human life, with Ying even calling him out on it, and his elite skin includes the words "Fuze the Hostage" written all over the inside of his LMG.
• The Artifact: His ballistic shield could be considered this due to not providing him any special abilities if equipped, unlike his fellow base game shield operators, Blitz and Montagne, and also he's the only attacking operator since the game's launch to even have this as a one of his primary options.
• Balance Buff: In Crystal Guard, his Cluster Charge was given the ability to punch through reinforced surfaces, increasing his viability.
• Bizarre and Improbable Ballistics: Before Ubisoft reworked the physics of the pucks, it seems that the cluster charges bounce with a mix of normal physics, randomized bounces, and improbably targeted bouncing. The unpredictable homing aspects are later completely removed.
• But Not Too Foreign: Fuze stands out among the Spetsnaz bunch for being a Token Minority. As an Uzbek, he's ethnically neither Slavic nor European, but his family emigrated to Russia when he was young, and thus both he and his brother were encouraged to embrace their new Russian cultural identity growing up. It wasn't until he was in his teens that Fuze even learned of his Uzbek heritage and began to integrate it into his own life. As a result, Fuze is a Russian in all but name, literally.
• Deadpan Snarker: As indicated by the bio and in-game quotes, Fuze is focused on his job and is kinda curt when talking with others, and some of his round start "react" quotes consists of him shutting up others with deadpan sarcasm.
  Fuze: Focus on the task at hand.
• Death from Above: While cluster charges can be placed on breakable walls and barricades, they are most commonly placed on the floor above the intended target.
• Demolitions Expert: He's great at breaching like Ash and Thermite, although he has an unconventional idea of "breaching" (place a Cluster Charge, trigger it, wait for the explosions to stop, then continue).
• The Faceless: Fuze's face is hidden beneath his helmet almost all the time. It wasn't until the release of the Six Invitational comics that we get to see what he looks like underneath his gear◊.
• Firing in the Air a Lot: The win animation for his 2nd Shock Army Elite Uniform starts off with him firing his pistol in the air.
• Friend or Foe?:
  • Fuze was formerly infamous for players placing and detonating his cluster charges into a hostage's room and killing the hostage... or for unexpected physics to occur with aggressively-bouncing cluster charges and kill the hostage, allied players or even himself while not being in the same room as the cluster charge at all. While he can still kill the hostage, the weird cluster charge paths have been mostly fixed.
  • A running joke is the concept of the "Fuze Ace", whereby Fuze kills both teams, the hostage, and the announcer. His Elite shield skin has eleven notches, as an allusion to this.
• Gadgeteer Genius: Fuze showed an aptitude for tinkering and mechanical engineering since an early age, and was trained to be a mechanist. He is legendary among recruits for his ingenuity in the field, being capable of cobbling together useful gadgets from mere scrap with little in the way of tools. His Cluster Charges were one such inventions, created when he needed a better way to breach a room. It works almost too well; it can kill anyone on the other side, including hostages and teammates. Handle with care.
• Game-Breaking Bug: His cluster charge can (rarely) encounter a glitch where the grenades get stuck in the tube as they spawn, causing them to ricochet off the doorway he's attempting to breach and causing all the grenades to drop at the foot of the doorway, killing him and everyone waiting to breach behind him.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: Some artwork and the like shows him carrying his AK-12 alongside his shield, which in actual gameplay is impossible since they're both primary weapons.
• Good Is Not Nice: He has a rather apathetic attitude to his peers, and the combination of his "strong moral compass" mentioned in his Bio and "disregard for human life" mentioned in Ying's history implies that while he means good, he will often do things in the most ruthlessly efficient way.
• Green-Eyed Redhead: Headgear which reveals his eyes and brows show that he has reddish eyebrows and green eyes set in a permanent Clint Squint.
• Grenade Spam: Fuze comes equipped with four deployable Cluster Charges, each carrying five mini-grenades that they spit out in rapid succession when triggered. Never for one second stop worrying about grenades when he's around, even if you're Jäger (and especially if you're Jäger, as he only brings a maximum of 3 ADSes, not nearly enough to fully nullify even one Cluster Charge that's shot into a room, while Fuze has four of his).
• Guest Fighter: He appears in Arknights as a Guard operator.
• Hell Is That Noise: The noticeable sequential "Pop! Pop! Pop!" sound of the Cluster Charges firing off. To hear it loudly and clearly is to know fear of being exploded, unless an ADS is in the vicinity.
• Homing Boulders: Before getting reworked, Cluster Charges could bounce in extremely weird angles to home in on their targets. The effectiveness of the homing was seemingly random and could have gotten downright ridiculous. Even when they were reworked to deploy in fixed patterns and don't home, they can still bounce off of map geometry in weird ways.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: While he's more comfortable with machines than people and tends to be somewhat rude, he still means well.
• Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me: He has a Ballistic Shield, the size of Blitz's, with no special gimmicks, but it's of secondary importance to his Cluster Charges and rarely taken over his other primaries.
• Mighty Glacier: He is one of a few Heavy Armor Attackers that aren't restricted to a Ballistic Shield and can bring a lot more firepower. His arsenal consists of a Ballistic Shield, a light machine gun, an AK-pattern assault rifle and three Cluster Charges that can shoot up to five grenades.
• No Ontological Inertia: Shooting directly at an active Cluster Charge will also make it disappear and render its remaining rounds inert.
• Not the Intended Use: The Fuze charges can be deployed on Castle barricades, where they will punch a circular hole that can be seen through. Some Fuzes will deliberately use one on them to open a tiny peeking angle for them to use.
• Omniglot: According to his in-game bio, Fuze is fluent in Uzbek, Russian, Ukrainian, and English.
• Pinball Projectile: Before the pucks lost their Homing Boulders properties, it is easy to see that the Cluster Charges have a tendency to bounce in very strange and improbable ways on kill replays.
• The Quiet One: Harry's dossier on him describes Fuze as not being particularly talkative, which makes team coordination a challenge when he's involved, due to his tendency to clam up during operations and not communicate with his allies. It usually takes a concentrated effort to make him open up about his thoughts and personal life, and even then he's still not very chatty except when hanging out around Glaz.
• Recognizable by Sound: The "Donk" sound that a Cluster Charge makes when it shoots a charge is a loud and distinct sound that can warn other players that a Fuze is attacking and things are about to explode.
• Skill Gate Characters: Fuze used to be a very big example of this, being very powerful in early metagame but very ineffective in later metagame when players are getting more experienced to recognize the distinctive beep the cluster charge makes when it is deployed, making it very easy to avoid them; this is acknowledged as such with the "Starter Edition", which randomly unlocks two Operators identified as being good for early-game players, with Fuze being one of the possible options. With Fuze getting a massive buff early 2017 that practically doubles his kill radius and gave him more cluster charges, he gained new usefulness in crowd control and clearing utility.
• Stuff Blowing Up: His APM-6 "Matryoshka" Cluster Charges launch five separate grenades that obliterate anyone too stupid or unfortunate to escape...including hostages and teammates.
• Token Minority: Sort of. He's a Spetsnaz operator not born in Russia^note Neither was Finka, who is Belarusian, though she is Slavic, but rather Uzbekistan, making him neither Slavic nor European. He still identifies as Russian, however, due to having grown up in Russia and been encouraged by his parents to embrace his new national identity. It wasn't until he was a teenager that Fuze even learned of his Uzbek heritage.

Kapkan

Maxim "Kapkan" Basuda

"These soldiers think their training will keep them alive. They break down doors and come through windows, weapons drawn. But it's too late. They forgot the first rule of survival. A real hunter always watches where he steps."

^{Click here to see Kapkan's Elite Skin Vympel}

Voiced By: Victor Bevine (EN); Takuya Sato (JP)
Date of Birth: May 14
Age: 36
Team: Defenders
Squad: Redhammer

A pragmatic and avid hunter, Kapkan can mount EDD MK II Trip Wires or "Entry Denial Devices" on doorways and windows, which are laser tripwire mines that damage any Attacker coming through them. He can also mount multiple EDDs on the same entryway for an increased explosive effect.

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• Acceptable Breaks from Reality: Let's just be thankful his mines only detonate when an Attacker crosses it.
• Affectionate Nickname: Frost likes to call him 'Kap'.
• Balance Buff:
  • At launch, the EDDs used to extremely conspicuous, sporting a bright red laser and a massive red screw on the opposite side of the doorframe in exchange for being instant kills. In subsequent patches, the laser was made invisible and the screw removed. In Patch 2.3.2, Kapkan was buffed to his current form: he gained two more EDDs (from three to five) and buffed from 1-speed to 2-speed to cover more ground, while the EDD's damage was reduced to 60.
  • In patch 6.3.3, Kapkan gained the ability to mount multiple EDDs on the same door or window, allowing him to outright kill Attackers who trigger them once again.
• Bring It:
  Kapkan: EDD mounted, let them come.
• Booby Trap: Plenty of Operators have mines of some kind, but Kapkan takes it to a deadly art with his door and window-mounted Entry Denial Device tripwire mines.
• Difficult, but Awesome: Getting the most out of Kapkan requires having a good intuition of how Attackers might enter, move, and look around the map where it can greatly punish them for their lack of attention.
• Hunter Trapper: His way of life when he was stationed in western Siberia. He applies the same mentality and tactics to counter-terrorism.
• In the Hood: He wears a Viper Hood, which is used in real life to disguise a person in the wild similar to a Ghillie suit, fitting his hunter theme.
• Meaningful Name: "Kapkan" means "Trap" in Russian.
• Mighty Glacier: He used to be a Heavy Armored Operator with explosives and a good selection of very damaging guns but is now a Medium Armored operator for better mobility around the map.
• Pragmatic Hero: Having seen humanity and nature at their respective fiercest, Kapkan has a less-than-idealistic view of things and isn't afraid to fight dirty to do the job.
• Skill Gate Characters: There's nothing special about his gadget. It is easy to use for a beginner and relatively effective at lower level play where players are not observant enough to their surroundings. At higher level play, where Attackers are droning and looking out for traps, Kapkan has to get a lot more creative:
  • Trapping doorways the enemy doesn't expect to be trapped is fairly effective; whether they be out-of-the-way entrances, doorways on the opposite side of the map to the objective, or even randomly.
  • Placing traps at angles that are hard to see or could expose Attackers to ambush when trying to shoot them, or even at head height where no one would believe Kapkan would place one, are common tactics. Doorways where the trap clips into other objects are especially prized.
  • Planting traps on opposite sides of a door could fool Attackers that spotted and destroyed one to think it's clear and run into the other.
  • As well, his very presence on a team means that the Attackers have to check every window and doorway, which can greatly slow down a rush and opening them up to ambushes.
  • Even doors close to the objective room can be effective in the closing seconds of the round, as Attackers don't have the time to check them.
• Stuff Blowing Up: One of the most explosive-oriented Defenders, with five EDDs and either a nitro cell or a pair of impact grenades.
• Trap Master: He has five Entry Denial Devices that explode when any poor shmuck on the Attacking Side isn't wary of their surroundings.

Tachanka

Alexsandr "Tachanka" Senaviev

"They told me I’d died. They were wrong. I was reborn."

^{Click here to see Tachanka's Elite Skin Slava Korolyu}

Voiced By: Anatoly Zinoviev (EN, Y1-4), Vlado Stokanic (Y5 onwards); Minoru Hirota (JP)
Date of Birth: November 3
Age: 48
Team: Defenders
Squad: Redhammer

A joyous, if acerbic son of a Red Army family with a preference for Soviet-era weaponry, Tachanka wields his hard-hitting DP-28 Degtyarov Light Machine Gun and a Shumikha Launcher that fires incendiary grenades for area denial.

For tropes applicable to his counterpart in Rainbow Six Extraction, see Rainbow Six Extraction REACT.

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• Ace Custom: His iconic LMG was noted to be largely hand-built by Tachanka himself, using vintage parts he found on the Internet or failing that, made in his own workshop. The specific gun model was a deliberate choice, due to Tachanka seeing it as a more veritable and robust weapon compared to the newer equipment used in modern day. The original mounting stand was his own handiwork, and he did his own modifications to make the LMG more portable when it no longer seemed practical to use it as an emplacement.
• Action Dad: In contrast to Lion, Tachanka has remained close to his kids even after his divorce.
• Armor-Piercing Attack: Notably, his LMG can pierce through two breakable surfaces at once. The only other Operator who can do that is Glaz.
• Artistic License – Military:
  • Just like everyone else in the game, Tachanka dies to a single headshot, despite his iconic Maska-1SCh helmet being designed specifically to protect its wearer against most lower-caliber (handgun) rounds. In reality, a sizable category of handgun calibers would just bounce off of the helmet harmlessly even when fired point-blank at it from a very short distance.
  • Tachanka's post-rework Shumikha launcher is based on the Kulakov, an experimental weapon that never went beyond trials due to the numerous shortcomings found during testing. Its in-game portrayal is rather bizarre, as the rifle part of the Shumikha operates as if it's semi-automatic. Ironically, Mira believes replacing the DP-28's stand with the Shumikha will lighten Tachanka's gear load, despite the fact that the Kulakov was rejected primarily because of how heavy it is (15kg unloaded, whereas a DP-28 weighs 11.5kg with a full magazine) and Tachanka can carry both.
• Boom, Headshot!: What used to be a weakness to those who were using the LMG before patch 5.2. They Defied this trope by adding a Bullet-proof shield to amp up Tachanka's pick rate while not ruining his identity as a Defender. It was subsequently lost when the LMG became a primary weapon in patch 5.3.1.
• Break Out the Museum Piece: Tachanka uses a DP-28 LMG, which dates back to World War II. Justified though in that Tachanka is stated to be an enthusiast of old Soviet weaponry, to the extent that he prefers the old but reliable weapons to the highly experimental modern ones, and even mills his own parts to make them if he can't find original Soviet-issue parts.
  • His Shumikha launcher is based off the World War II-era experimental Kulakov grenade launcher derived from the Mosin-Nagant.
  • This gets lampshaded in one of the trailers for the Outbreak co-op event:
  Soldier: Goddamn, Hoss. Where'd you dig that relic up?
  Tachanka: From under a lot of dead bodies. They all looked surprised.
  • He's also shown looking at old Russian guns for sale on an Website/eBay knockoff during one of the cutscenes.
• I Call It "Vera": He's really attached to his DP-28 LMG despite it being outdated for his time serving in the military and that other guns such as the PKM or RPK would have done the same thing. However, it also characterizes his seniority to the other Russian operators and as someone who pays the most amount of respect to the old Soviet Union.
• Cool Helmet: He uses the welding mask-like Maska-1SCh helmet, a real helmet that was used by Russian special forces in the past.
• Cutscene Power to the Max: His operator video shows him spinning 360 degrees and destroying concrete walls with his stationary LMG, things his original gadget could not do in-game.
• A Day in the Limelight: Tachanka has a notable presence in the "Outbreak" Event. He's involved particularly in "The Nest", where the Soviet-era capsule that carried the virus was for sale on a website he frequents.
• Fandom Nod: Tachanka's initial LMG turet was so situational that he has consistently had the lowest pickrate since the game's launch, and fans repeatedly speculate on ways to improve him or suggest dropping him from the game entirely. His bio claimed that his gadget could be improved, but that he resists doing so, and also that he worries that he is not a useful member of the team.
• Good Old Ways: His old-fashioned battledress, machine gun, helmet, and even codename are holdovers from Russia's past, and he's damned proud of them.
• Grenade Launcher: Tachanka's Shumikha Launcher fires grenades that cover swathes of rooms in fire, a proactive way to tell enemies to get out and stay out. Because they bounce multiple times, they can also be fired at odd angles to reach areas you don't have line of sight to.
• Guest Fighter: He appears in Arknights as a playable Guard operator.
• Iconic Item: His most recognisable item is his Maska-1SCh helmet. Its distinct and unmistakable shape makes Tachanka recognisable among fanart - a not-insignificant bit consisting of only his helmet. The DP-28/RP-46 has also achieved memetic association, with him being described as unable to part ways with it and preserving it as a main weapon once he dropped his turret in his 2020 rework.
• Informed Attribute: His initial psychological profile says that he's "Calm in crises." While he is pretty calm when speaking normally, when he really needs his teammates to listen, he will yell to his heart's content.
  "LMG! MOUNTED! AND LOADED!"
  "STAY WITH ME, BRATUKHA!"^note Slavic honorific meaning "brother" or "sibling"
  "TIME TO GET SERIOUS!"
• Large Ham: He is loud and fun-loving, especially when in combat. Some of his more notable quotes are when deploying his LMG or when helping up teammates.
• Meaningful Name: The Tachanka was a kind of horse-drawn machine gun platform used by Russian cavalry in World War I and the Russian Civil War.
• More Dakka: His LMG gives heavy firepower to fight back against the enemy. Also handy for blasting holes in walls. His SMG is almost a non-starter in comparison.
• Mighty Glacier: He's one of the biggest examples in the game, with a massively powerful LMG, heavy armor, and the speed of molasses. It was even worse prior to his October 2020 rework as his gadget was putting his LMG on an immobile turret that made him into a sitting duck, but he's since become more mobile, taking his LMG on the go while retaining more proactive area denial through incendiary grenades.
• Near-Death Experience: Supplemental materials reference that he was once declared medically dead on a operation due to the vulnerabilities of his turret, leading him to rework how he can contribute to his team.
• No Social Skills: His psychological profile says he has a "limited social filter which has gotten him into trouble in the past".
• Older Is Better: He uses an RP-46 that has been modified into a DP-28 (an earlier model). His Loadout Description also mentions that he collects old weapons and prefers to use original parts rather than modern variants from other nations to maintain his RP-46, though he does utilize the international collector’s market for replacements or mill his own components when parts cannot be located or are not cost-effective to acquire. During the fourth Outbreak video, he can be seen looking at old Soviet-era guns for sale online.
• Old Soldier: He served in the Red Army^note Going by his date of birth being November of 1967, and his profile saying he joined when he turned 18, he would probably have joined in late 1985, fought in the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan, and joined the Spetsnaz shortly before the USSR collapsed. At 48, he is only a year younger than Montagne, who is also noted as an old soldier. He is the eldest of the Spetsnaz operators by nearly a decade^note Kapkan is 39.
• Snark Knight: His psychological profile claims he has a "joyous, acerbic outlook".
• Stout Strength: His Slava Korolyu Elite set shows him with a rather sizable potbelly, all while also being impressively muscular. Being a physically huge man allows Tachanka to haul around much larger loads of gear than most of his allies and withstand more damage, but the trade-off to this is his less-than-desirable speed rating.
• Took a Level in Badass: For years, Tachanka was widely seen by players as a conceptually neat, but counter-intuitive and ridiculously impractical pick, with his gimmick being centered around an immobile turret that was good for being a roadblock in one direction and virtually nothing else (drawbacks including vulnerability to flanks, the fact his LMG could be hijacked by Attackers if he died, and did we mention the immobility?). In October 2020, he received a much-deserved rework that pulled out no stops: His turret's RP-46/DP-27 became his primary weapon and thus could be used on the go while losing none of its wall-busting power, and traded his gadget in with a Shumikha Grenade Launcher to scorch areas in fire. He's still quite slow, but at long last, his heavy focus on area denial finally became viable.
• They Don't Make Them Like They Used To: The reason he uses a machine gun based off of a design first introduced in the 1920s is that he is a firm believer that the older Soviet weaponry is more reliable than the more high-tech weaponry used today.
• The Turret Master: How he was originally designed, with his special ability being a light machinegun on a stand, before it was reworked due to being tactically dubious and detrimental to his contribution to the team.
• Walking Shirtless Scene: His elite skin ditches his shirt to show off his muscles and tattooed chest.
• Vodka Drunkenski: He canonically enjoys drinking large amounts of vodka and flirting with Finka. His appearance in a "road to SI" short has him sounding just like the Demoman, complete with slurring his words and firing his grenade launcher everywhere, many fans commented that he sounded completely plastered while doing so.

GSG 9

Blitz

Elias "Blitz" Kötz

"I don't like photos of myself. The lighting is always wrong."

^{Click here to see Blitz's Elite Skin Panzerstarke}

Voiced By: Christopher Domig (EN); Souya Kazuki (JP)
Date of Birth: April 2
Age: 37
Team: Attackers
Squad: Viperstrike

A rather jovial Operator, Blitz blinds opponents with his G52 Tactical Shield, a ballistic shield with a powerful flash on the front. He also is also faster than other shield operators due to his lighter armor class.

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• Achilles' Heel: For accurate shots, Blitz has to aim down sights and tilt his shield. Defenders can aim directly at his head or his body, forcing him to retreat or take his chances and risk getting headshotted.
  • Melee attacks will briefly knock Blitz's shield away, allowing for a Defender to attempt a hipfire kill or perform a second melee attack to finish him off.
  • As his shield does not extend to cover his whole body, Blitz is always vulnerable to shots to his feet and gun hand. His legs are also exposed when sprinting.
  • Shields do not turn to face as far up or down as the first-person camera would suggest, so having the high ground gives a clear shot on Blitz's head.
• Ask a Stupid Question...: He is prone to asking silly questions in the "statement" part of the round-start dialogue, and due to how the "reaction" lines are written to be able to accommodate for anything, he will never get a straight answer.
• Balance Buff: Gained the ability to sprint while holding his shield in front of him, allowing him to close the distance to opponents while keeping himself protected. He was further buffed in Operation Chimera from heavy to medium armor to make him faster.
• Blinded by the Light: His special Gadget, the G52 Tactical Shield, is essentially a Ballistic Shield with a powerful light charge that can temporarily blind Defenders similar to a Stun Grenade. According to the loadout description, the light on the shield isn't coming from a high-intensity strobe light, but three rows of flashbang grenades (a Balance Buff would later increase his charge count to four, without altering the shield's model). Notably, Blitz's shield is one of the small handful of flashbangs in the game that cannot be mitigated by looking away from it, as it deals the same debilitation effects regardless of camera orientation as long as the victim is within range.
• Beware the Silly Ones: His Operator video has him kill a bunch of terrorists while synced to dubstep music. He himself has flash charges and a very effective pistol.
• Close-Range Combatant: Being armed with only a handgun, Blitz is very ineffective at longer ranges. However, he excels at sprinting into a room, blinding his opponents and quickly dispatching them with a melee attack or a few point-blank shots.
• Cool, but Inefficient: His flash shield isn't really that good to forgo a primary weapon and a different gadget for. Unlike Montagne whose team support strength is unparalleled by being completely invulnerable from the front, Blitz's flash shield is mostly identical to the normal flash grenades yet lacks their flexibility of being throwable, and he only has a pistol to back up the flash. He is somewhat effective with rushing enemies and flashing them without delay, but his weak weapon and long cooldown means he struggles against more than one opponent without backup or chaos to exploit.
• Edgy Backwards Chair-Sitting: Shows this one when Harry interviewed him and Dokkaebi during the Tournament of Champions. He asks if the tournament will be shown on TV, to which Harry replied it is for "internal use only".
• Friend or Foe?: Similar to the garden variety Stun Grenades, his Flash Shield can stun operators of either team if they happen to be within its effective range. This can end up backfiring if Blitz was not the first entry during a breach, or if he's careless about where he's aiming at, since while he himself is immune to the stun effects, they are not.
• Guest Fighter: He appears in Arknights as a playable Defender operator. Rather unusually, he's the only one of the bunch to look basically nothing like his Siege counterpart, with him gaining platinum blonde hair, gold eyes, and a clean shave◊ when appearing in Arknights, whereas his companions were simply redrawn in an anime-esque style to fit the game's aesthetics.
• Humble Hero: Blitz intentionally avoids referring to himself as a hero, seeing his job as a duty rather than an exceptional trait.
• Meaningful Name: "Blitz" means "lightning" in German. It also evokes "Blitzkrieg", which is his intended role: strike hard and fast, using flashbangs to suppress counter attacks, the shield to draw fire, and his pistol and shield to eliminate opponents. This makes him more offensive than Montagne's more defensive gadget as he can still attack while using his shield's abilities.
  • His original ability was trading in a gadget in exchange for spawning during the defender's preparation phase, allowing him to "blitz" the enemy team before they could set up their gadgets and traps.
• Nerf: Blitz's cooldown time between flashes was increased from 2 seconds to 7 in Operation Burnt Horizon.
• Plucky Comic Relief: If only by comparison to his more strait-laced accomplices; he uses humor as a coping mechanism. The promotional material showed a smiley face and "Lächeln" ^note German for "Smile", both are absent in-game painted on his shield, and his in-game quips are more comical than you'd expect from a seasoned counter-terrorist.
  "Remember. Point your gun at the bad guys." - Beginning of a Terrorist Hunt match
  "Let's do something about that boo-boo!" - When reviving someone in the DBNO stage
• Perma-Stubble: The Tournament of Champions interview shows that he's got a five-o'clock shadow going on underneath his balaclava.
• Stone Wall: He's like Montagne, only he has a more offensive approach as a Shield Operator in comparison.

IQ

Monika "IQ" Weiss

"Life is the ultimate Rube Goldberg machine."

^{Click here to see IQ's Elite Skin Reunification}

Voiced By: Sandra Kawloski (EN, Y1-5), Kristina Klebe (Y6 onwards); Nao Takamori (JP)
Date of Birth: August 1
Age: 38
Team: Attackers
Squad: Nighthaven

An overachiever in both academia and law enforcement, IQ's gadget is the RED Mk III "Spectre", a special wrist-mounted scanner that can see electronic gadgets through solid surfaces and identify the operators who use them. She also brandishes her pistol while using her Electronics Detector, allowing her to destroy enemy gadgets behind soft surfaces.

As of the conclusion of the events of SIX Invitational 2022, IQ is officially a member of NIGHTHAVEN, and is no longer associated with either the GSG-9 or Rainbow.

For tropes applicable to her counterpart in Rainbow Six Extraction, see Rainbow Six Extraction REACT.

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• The '80s: Her Elite Set dresses her in a period tracksuit with a "Wassermann" music player, a Bilingual Bonus on the Sony Walkman.
• Academic Athlete: She apparently works out with some of the women in Team Rainbow, at least according to Finka’s profile. Also, IQ’s Reunification Elite Uniform is basically a set of 80's exercise clothes, with the victory animation has her doing some aerobic kickboxing.
• Achilles' Heel: As her job is to spot electronics for her team with her scanner, IQ will be spending much of her play time staring at its screen to sweep for traps and cameras, while being limited to a weak sidearm. This makes her exposed to being ambushed or snuck up on by roamers. She is also completely foiled by non-destructible walls and floors.
• Boring, but Practical: Even if the Defenders have wised up and brought no electronic gadgets into the match for IQ to spot, her scanner can still detect bombs and biohazard containers, and is not affected by Mute's jammer. Simply having IQ on your team can make your job a lot less difficult if you've not managed to locate the objective sites before the prep phase ended.
• Child Prodigy: Much like Mute, although she excelled more in practical concerns than in academia. She got an internship with a tech company in Leipzig at 16 and went abroad to MIT and CalTech. The RED Mk III “Spectre” electronic scanner gadget she uses was apparently made by herself.
• Cutscene Power to the Max: In-game, the display for the electronic detector simply gives electronics an outline, a distance, and creates circles originating from the electronics as some sort of "electric field glow". In her Operator video, however, the display highlights all the electrics with bright colors, which is much clearer.
• Everyone Has Standards: Even for a Child Prodigy such as she, apparently the rest of IQ's immediate family are even more obsessive overachievers, which makes her uncomfortable at gatherings.
• Germanic Depressives: IQ stands out among the GSG-9 lot for being always serious and rather humorless. She is an overachiever who's manically obsessive in her passion for electrical engineering, and refuses to accept failures lying down, enough to give Twitch a run for her money. According to Harry's dossier on her, this apparently runs in her family, who are even worse than she is, which makes her uncomfortable at gatherings. Regardless, or perhaps because of this, IQ doesn't have many friends, and only her family understands her.
• Glass Cannon: A Light Armored Operator with a decent set of primaries and used to have frag grenades. Despite this, she's a more skill orientated Attacker than the likes of Ash, and comparable to the likes of Twitch, Capitão and Hibana.
• Graceful Ladies Like Purple: She is the only female GSG-9 operator and wears purple sneakers and a hoodie with purple on the inside.
• Hidden Depths: Would you believe that a counter-terror operative such as her is also a sci-fi author?
• Insufferable Genius: Although most of her combat chatter is mission-focused, several of IQ's voice lines depict a rather sizable ego to her, which becomes even more bloated in Extraction. Unsurprising, given her nature as an academic overachiever.
  IQ: [Assault Phase starting] "Ultimately, it's up to me to save myself, and my team."
• The Little Detecto: Her Gadget can detect electronics, including Pulse's Heartbeat Sensor and whenever someone is using the CCTV system.
• Meaningful Name: IQ is one of the more tech-savvy and intelligent Operators.
• No Indoor Voice: Where she lacks in her fellow GSG-9 operators' levity, IQ makes up for it with her incredibly loud voice. Almost all of her voice lines have IQ shouting at the top of her lungs, even if the rest of the team are trying to keep a low profile.
• The Perfectionist: Her skill and intelligence do have a price; when presented with a challenge, IQ will focus on it with near-obsessive determination and believes failure is not an option.
• Super Wrist-Gadget: Her electronic detector is able to display and ping the silhouette of Defenders' electronics from 20 meters away, even through walls. She is very useful for quickly finding the Defenders' critical gadgets impeding the Attackers so she and her team can get rid of them with little fuss.
• Weak, but Skilled: Unlike Thatcher, she's relegated to her pistol and can't attack through hard walls. That being said, she can find Pulse whenever he's using his Heartbeat Sensor, hidden Valkyrie cameras or when Defender's are using their CCTVs.

Jäger

Marius "Jäger" Streicher

"You can stop worrying about grenades now."

^{Click here to see Jäger's Elite Skin Flying Ace}

Voiced By: Michael Sinterniklaas (EN); Masao Komaya (JP)
Date of Birth: March 9
Age: 39
Team: Defenders
Squad: Viperstrike

A creative, if arrogant, individual with a knack for complex machinery, Jäger deploys ADS-MKIV Magpies or "Active Defense Systems" where each ADS autonomously detects and destroys a single grenade-sized projectile mid-air before recharging.

For tropes applicable to his counterpart in Rainbow Six Extraction, see Rainbow Six Extraction REACT.

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• Arrogant Kung-Fu Guy: His In-game psychological profile says that he has a tendency to lack humility.
• Artistic License – Military: His ADS platforms take quite a few creative liberties with the Trophy system concept, even if the friend-or-foe discrimination and small size can be handwaved as being for the sake of gameplay.
  • The Device Evaluation reveals that the ADS relies on four high-definition cameras in its bases to spot projectiles that it will then neutralize, which helps explain why line-of-sight is needed, and why the platform will intercept projectiles that are non-explosive like ARGUS Cameras. A real Trophy system relies on radar for spotting instead, and will only intercept projectiles with a definable chemical signature.
  • Any projectile destroyed by the ADS will simply vanish into a harmless puff of smoke, whereas the explosives intercepted by Trophy systems will still detonate, the turret simply triggers the explosions at a distance far enough away from its point of defense to prevent damage from being done to the vehicle or emplacement it was mounted on. This is even present in his own Operator video, but was not implemented as an actual mechanic.
• Badass Boast: His Operator video quote regarding the ADS:
  "They said it could not be done. They said it was designed for tanks. They said I could not make it smaller and more accurate. They were wrong."
• Badass in Distress: His helicopter gets downed in the third mission in Outbreak and the players must rescue him from the wreck.
• Bottomless Magazines: Zig-zagged with his post-rework ADS platforms, which can neutralize a theoretically infinite amount of projectiles per round, but have to spend 10 seconds rearming after each shot.
• Cool Helmet: While other GSG 9 Operators use the already cool visor-and-earmuffs AM95 helmet, Jäger's helmet is an even cooler flight helmet, with rounded visors, headphones and a microphone, a reference to his days as a helicopter technician.
• Gadgeteer Genius: Inspired by anti-missile systems such as the TROPHY, he managed to take the same device and scale it down to make it an anti-grenade device meant to protect personnel as opposed to huge tanks. If his quote in Badass Boast is anything to go by, he proved some nay-sayers wrong.
  • He is even skilled enough to have repaired both of the World War II fighter planes in Hereford Base's courtyard, restoring them to vintage condition after they were found languishing in a warehouse.
• I'm a Doctor, Not a Placeholder: When reviving downed teammates, one of his quotes have him complain that he's "an engineer, not a medic!"
• Jack of All Stats: A two-armor with two powerful primaries and a universally useful gadget, it's a no-brainer why he's picked so often.
• Meaningful Name: "Jäger" means "hunter" in German. In gameplay terms, Jäger is a rather proficient roamer, meaning that he hunts Attackers.
• Nerf: Jäger's consistently high pick rate has made him the frequent target of performance tweaks to the point where he's become practically obselescent by Year 8.
  • In Operation Blood Orchid, his 416-C lost its ACOG due to its popularity for spawnpeeks. While not the first nor the last weapon to lose an ACOG, its removal from Jager was particularly memetic. It later had its recoil increased significantly and even bullets removed from its magazine.
  • In Operation Neon Dawn, his ADS received its first major change since launch: instead of stopping two grenades with no delay, each ADS can intercept one grenade every ten seconds with unlimited charges, making defenses centered around them easier to overwhelm at once.
• No Social Skills: Its mentioned in his profile that he cannot read social cues.
• Simple, yet Awesome: Sure, the active defense systems intercept one grenade every ten seconds and don't do much besides that, but they intercept grenades, which Attackers have plenty of and are a pain to deal with otherwise. Because of this, his gadget is one of the most powerful ones you can bring on defense.
• Smoking Barrel Blowout: Towards the end of his Flying Ace Elite Uniform's animation, he blows off a finger gun after his ADS takes out a grenade.
• The Turret Master: A very special type of turret. Jäger's ADS was designed as a point-defense measure against Attacker explosives, with the devices automatically tracking and destroying grenades or other such devices that are in their range, but can't harm human opponents.
• Unflinching Walk: In his operator video, he is so confident that his ADS can protect him that he walks with his back turned to a grenade launcher as it fires. He only briefly glances back to confirm the neutralized shell landing on the floor.

Bandit

Dominic "Bandit" Brunsmeier

"I used to be undercover. I did time. I had to deal drugs. I even had to kill. And I was so good at it that, it got me a promotion."

^{Click here to see Bandit's Elite Skin Axle 13}

Voiced By: Carl Bishop (EN); Kensuke Nishi (JP)
Date of Birth: August 13
Age: 42
Team: Defenders
Squad: Wolfguard

A former undercover in the Hannover Chapter of Hells Angels, Bandit can attach CED-1s (Crude Electrical Device) or "Shock Wires" to reinforcements, deployable shields, and barbed wire to electrify them, shocking enemies and destroying their drones and gadgets on contact.

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• Acceptable Breaks from Reality: Let's be honest, it would be really annoying if Bandit could damage his teammates passively as well (Friendly Fire is more Smoke's and Fuze's forte). Hell, a previous patch made him unable to hurt the Hostage anymore with his Shock Wires and a later one removed its ability to destroy friendly gadgets.
• Achilles' Heel: The batteries are always attached to the bottom of a reinforced wall, so it isn't hard to find and destroy them, especially through destructible floors.
• Cherry Tapping: The electrified gadgets can kill. It's just that since they only deal 3 damage per hit, one needs to be in some really unfortunate situation to be killed by them.
• Cool Uncle: To his brother's kids, whom he is noted to be quite fond of.
• Difficult, but Awesome: The "Bandit Trick" is a well-known hard breach-denial trick that takes significant risks and requires very good skill and awareness, but can bypass Thatcher’s EMP grenades and Kali's LVELs. The way to do this is to prepare a Shock Wire near a reinforced wall, listen to the sound of a breach charge being placed on the other side, and quickly place down the Shock Wire on the respective wall. If you succeed, it will destroy the thermite charge, denying the breach. If you fail, the Exothermic Charge blows up in your face. The addition of more hard breachers and evolving counterplay have made Bandit-tricking less viable as a tactic, but when a wall must not go down, there is no better solution.
• The Gadfly: He used his gadget to force his twin brother into earlier retirement.
• Glass Cannon: One of the few Light Armored Operators that has access to explosives, along with a powerful shotgun and SMG. He's a more active Defender than Jäger.
• Hammerspace: He can somehow fit four of the visibly-huge CED-1 devices into his back pocket, which look really heavy to carry just one on your person, let alone four.
• MacGyvering: His gadget, the Shock Wire, is clearly made from a car battery. The description states that it was created when he was cornered in an auto-shop one time in the past, and he used whatever he had to make the CED-1 (Crude Electrical Device), electrifying the metallic door and shocking his attackers when they tried to breach.
• Manly Facial Hair: His elite skin gives him a big beard befitting his biker background.
• Meaningful Name: Bandit references his time with Hells Angels.
• The Mole: This used to be his official job before joining Rainbow, where he would be installed as an undercover agent in problematic organizations to undermine their operations from the inside and help bring them down. His bio states that he was undercover for four years in the Hannover Chapter of Hells Angels. While his work was instrumental in putting the gang behind bars, it also soured his relationship with his girlfriend as seen here◊.
• Shock and Awe: His gadget, the Shock Wire, can be placed on any Shield, Reinforcement and Wire. It can destroy any Drone and Breaching Charge along with harming anyone unfortunate enough to touch the affected surface.
• Nerf: Along with Jager, Bandit lost his MP7's ACOG in Operation Blood Orchid.
• Walking Shirtless Scene: He wears a open leather motorcycle vest and nothing else on his chest in his Axle 13 Elite Set, showing off his extensive tattoos.

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