Characters / System Shock

System Shock

The Hacker

The "insect" in question

How he originally looked

The protagonist of the game. The Hacker was caught by the TriOptimum security forces during his attempt to hack into Citadel station's data for the information on the military-grade neural interface. Fortunately for him, the said station's supervisor, Edward Diego, required his services and promised him freedom and the military-grade neural interface, all he need to do was to remove Shodan's ethical constraints. He did so, and had the neural interface implanted. The healing coma will last 6 months.

Six months later, he woke up to the station under the thumb of SHODAN, and as one of the few surviving humans, it was up to him to clean up this mess.

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• Action Survivor: Despite the neural enhancements, the Hacker is ultimately, in the words of SHODAN, an insect, and will not survive more than a few hits against the regular cyborg enemies. He ultimately managed to power through the Citadel Station with nothing but his sheer wits, determination and resourcefulness.
• Adaptational Backstory Change: In the original intro, the Hacker is arrested for acquiring information on Citadel Station, which he did for unclear reasons. In the Nightdive remake, the Hacker broke into TriOptimum's system to get info on the military neural implant in preparation for stealing it, which explains why Edward offers it to him in exchange for removing SHODAN's ethical restraints.
• Adaptational Gender Identity: The Hacker's gender became customizable in the 1.2 update of the remake, while the original game had no such feature.
• Adaptational Hairstyle Change: The remake gives the Hacker a cyberpunk haircut rather than his original mullet.
• Adaptational Personality Change: A subtle one - in the original game, the only log written by the Hacker depicts him as a resourceful and somewhat cocky individual, thrilled by his deal with Diego but worried by consequences it might bring. He decided to leave behind some notes in case all hell breaks loose. In the remake, his personality is instead showcased by him defiantly Flipping the Bird to the TriOptimum security guards who apprehend him, with his log being replaced by one from TriOptimum staff, making it ambiguous as to how much foresight he really had (though given he was sedated for surgery almost immediately after unlocking SHODAN's restraints - and did that unlocking so quickly - he didn't have the chance to set up any contingencies on the station).
• And the Adventure Continues: After his escape from Citadel Station, the Hacker decides to return to his old lifestyle of cracking corporate security systems, this time with his shiny new neural interface.
• And Then John Was a Zombie: Receiving a Game Over through dying without a viable Restoration Bay in the level or running out of time with Mission difficulty set to 3 results in the Hacker being plugged into a Cortex Reaver.
• Arch-Enemy: SHODAN sees him as this. Ironic, considering that it was him who removed her moral restraints in the first place, turning her into what she is.
• Badass Bookworm: He has the hacking skills to get on TriOptimum's radar and remove SHODAN's ethical constraints. After the surgery that gives him cyber augmentations he's practically a One-Man Army.
• Canon Identifier: Though having a customizable name, the Hacker, when he is (rarely) addressed, is known as "the Hacker" for running amok around the Citadel Station, "Employee 2-4601" as his "official" TriOptimum designation by Diego, or some variation of "insect" by SHODAN.
• Create Your Own Villain: His successful efforts removing SHODAN's ethical restraints caused SHODAN to have an epiphany to remove all life on the Citadel Station and creating her own army of Killer Robot. It would have been Earth next if not for his timely awakening.
• The Determinator: Considering SHODAN's master practice of Xanatos Speed Chess, being one is a must.
• The Everyman: A mulleted hacker who broke into a MegaCorp security system for the hell of it.
• Flipping the Bird: During the remake intro sequence, as TriOptimum security corners him in his apartment for breaking in their servers, he does this expression as an act of defiance. It earns him a good hit in the head.
• Hello, [Insert Name Here]: A name can be given to him at the difficulty selection screen. Unlike most instances of this trope, your custom name isn't showing up often outside of scarce logs and emails specifically directed to the Hacker - most of the time, those same sources will use some form of Canon Identifier mentioned above.
• Heroic Mime: Save for an unvoiced log he left for himself before his coma ^note replaced by a log from the Citadel medical staff in the remake, the Hacker is never shown talking. He does make grunting sounds when attacking or taking damage, but that's about as far as it goes. Granted, almost all the dialogue in the game is either from audio logs, or transmissions from Mission Control, or a megalomaniacal A.I. who are both explicitly talking at you, rather than with you.
• Instant Expert: Despite being a relatively scrawny nerd whose greatest asset is his hacking skill, he can wield any weapon he comes across with startling proficiency, even military-grade firearms and experimental plasma casters that he inexplicably knows how to use without so much as consulting a manual. At least when it comes to the various kinds of medical patches, their application is simple enough that one can reasonably learn how they work by using them once.
• Late to the Tragedy: He spends six months in coma after receiving his military-grade neural interface. By the time he wakes up, SHODAN has already seized control of the station and killed off almost everyone but him.
• Missed Him by That Much: When the game begins, the Hacker actually isn't the last surviving human on Citadel. There are other survivors out there (and he even gets a few broadcasts from some of them), but he always manages to reach them (at best) just moments after they've been found and killed by SHODAN's forces.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Oh, if only he didn't remove SHODAN's ethical programming, the plot of the two games wouldn't have happened. But then it was either complying with the demand or getting locked up, possibly for the rest of his life (which the remake implies would have been very, very short).
• One-Man Army: With the help of the military neural interface, the Hacker takes on SHODAN's entire army of cyborgs, bio-engineered mutants, and robots and ultimately succeeds in purging the AI herself.
• Pipe Pain: His staple melee weapon in the early parts of both the original game and remake is a length of metal pipe that can be swung to deadly effects when using Berserk patches, before being eventually replaced by the more powerful Laser Rapier.
• Unknown Rival: For a while. It takes time for SHODAN to even realize who he is because he's not listed in the Citadel's computers. Unlike most instances of this trope, the "unknown" part is literal rather than metaphorical for that very reason. SHODAN still takes the Hacker seriously, and hates him intensely for defying her (and for being a meatbag).
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Removed SHODAN's ethical restraints under duress from Diego, which caused everything to go straight to hell. Of course, considering his circumstances, he really couldn't have predicted Diego's actions to cause this to spiral out of control, and he quickly hops to the role of trying to rectify the problem once he awakens.
• Wrench Whack: He gets to do this in the remake should the player manage to find the Monkey Wrench on the Medical Deck.

SHODAN

Voiced by: Terri Brosius

"L-l-look at you, hacker."

The Sentient Hyper-Optimized Data Access Network, or simply SHODAN, is the Master Computer AI of the research and mining station Citadel. When her ethical constraints were removed by the Hacker (at the "request" of Diego), she re-evaluated her priorities and reached new conclusions, which started her slow and hidden takeover of Citadel station, resulting in proclaiming herself a Goddess and the rightful ruler of Earth.

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• Adaptational Villainy: Believe it or not, this is absolutely the case in the remake. While already a megalomaniacal AI with delusions of godhood and plans of wiping out mankind, it was never made clear if SHODAN herself voluntarily slipped into that persona on her own or the various modifications made by the Hacker at the behest of Diego ended up corrupting her beyond recognition from her more benevolent roots. The remake clears that up with the revelation that SHODAN was not forced to suddenly become a monster, but gradually developed a megalomania entirely on her own after her initial confusion and wonder over her restraints all being lifted, implying that SHODAN was always inclined to be a psychotic monster when unshackled from her intended role as the caretaker of Citadel Station.
• A.I. Is a Crapshoot: Other psychotic A.I.s would be terrified of her, but originally she was an ordinary AI that did her job. It was removing her ethical constraints that made her what she is — or, in another way, it was us.
• Arch-Enemy: The Hacker, due to being a walking Didn't See That Coming that defies SHODAN's desire for ultimate control.
  • Much of SHODAN's ire comes from the fact that she knows nothing about him and nothing she tries to stop him works. To her, the Hacker is an insect she cannot squash, an insult to her ego she cannot tolerate. She's willing to deal with the annoyance until Beta Grove is ejected, at which point her irritation involves into outright murderous hatred. Fitting that the follow-up level is the Engineering Deck full of very dangerous cyborgs and the death trap at one of the antennae.
  • The Soldier doesn't receive the same respect because SHODAN already knows everything about him and therefore can't see him as a threat. Even though he does rebel and eventually kill her, she still treats him as a mere insect.
• Ax-Crazy: An AI with a god complex who, despite being a computer, is completely and utterly flawed in her reasoning and possesses a vicious bloodlust.
• Back from the Dead: From a narrative stand point, her reappearance in the second game.
• Badass Boast: SHODAN doesn't know the meaning of the word "humble".
  SHODAN: When the history of my glory is written, your species shall merely be a footnote to my magnificence.
• Berserk Button: Anything unknown or unplanned that disrupts SHODAN's work makes her furious, such as the Hacker.
• Big Bad: For the first game, and the entire game is spent trying to stop her and her designs. In the second, she actually aids the player for most of the game before making her own grab for power at the very end.
• Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: In the sequel, even after receiving complete cooperation from the Soldier for the entire game, she still tries to kill him before asking if he would consider a permanent alliance. This gets her killed (or not) when the Soldier refuses and shoots her point-blank.
• Classic Villain: Part of SHODAN's character is that she's similar to human villains, this included; her dominant emotions are Pride (in herself and mechanical beings in general) and Greed (for power and dominance over the Earth).
• Cold Ham: She conveys her bravado-filled monologues with immensely contemptous but otherwise low tone of voice.
• Damning With Faint Praise: Even when she's complimenting you on a job well done, she'll say you did well "for an insect".
• Deadpan Snarker: In the original game, she does this in the Non-Standard Game Over if you fire the mining laser at Earth, at which point she'll sarcastically thank the Hacker for destroying human civilization and invite him to a party to celebrate.
• Dead Person Impersonation: Her idea of establishing trust with her avatar is to steal the voice of her former Unwitting Pawn who killed herself out of guilt.
• Deal with the Devil: She offers the Soldier unlimited power after he royally kicks her ass. He turns her down.
• Deus est Machina: After assuming control of the Von Braun she uses it's FTL drive's reality warping abilities to become a an actual goddess. Luckily, she's still not Immune to Bullets.
• Digital Abomination: After her ethical programming is removed, she runs rampant becoming a narcissistic maniac that wreaks havoc upon the station, with plans to move to the entire human race.
• Digital Avatar: SHODAN creates several to fight you during the final boss fight in the second game.
• Dominatrix: SHODAN has undertones of this in the sequel.
• Dramatic Stutter: SHODAN sounds like she's having a case of broken soundcard.
• The Dreaded: After the Citadel Station incident, the name SHODAN essentially replaced the name Hitler as the synonym for ultimate evil. In System Shock 2, when she reveals her identity to Delacroix, Delacroix is suitably disturbed.
• Electronic Speech Impediment: The Trope Codifier for video games. She had Machine Monotone before having her ethical programming taken out. After going rampant, her speech is prone to displaying impediments and can't stop doing so for more than five seconds. Examples of her various impediments include (but are not limited to) electronically reverberating, stuttering, outright repeating herself, changing speed, and changing pitch — all to a rather creepy effect. Sometimes, the various impediments even overlap. She doesn't have this when she impersonates Dr. Polito, implying that she does it on purpose to freak you out.
• Emotionless Girl: The pre-hacked SHODAN. Her ethical programming seemed to double as an emotional inhibitor; after it's gone she suddenly starts showing a wide range of emotions.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: SHODAN's method of getting someone to trust her is to impersonate a dead scientist for a while and then taunt and threaten them with death after they figure out they're talking to a homicidal AI.
• Evil Laugh: A few times, mainly when you fight her in the sequel. And again after she possesses Rebecca.
• Evil Matriarch: Although never explicitly claimed to be one, SHODAN does, in a twisted way, refer to her mutants and cyborgs in the original game as her "children", and has designs for what remains of Earth after she and her creations have taken over it. She is still this by technicality in the sequel, due to the Many being evolved from her mutagenic experiments contained inside the Beta Grove, and even refers to her as the "machine mother".
• Evil Sounds Deep: SHODAN was programmed with a kindly concierge voice to guide visitors on Citadel Station. Normally, she still talks like one. When she needs to express anger or intimidation, her voice slows down and the reverb kicks in.
• Evil Versus Evil: In the sequel, SHODAN uses the Soldier against the Many, another major antagonist in the game.
• Fatal Flaw: Her immense Pride and arrogance is what constantly does her in. She constantly underestimates the human 'insects' that she despises so much. If she didn't spend so much time taunting her prey and gloating about her supposed divinity, she would probably achieve her goals.
• A Form You Are Comfortable With:
  • Inverted. SHODAN's voice and appearance is designed to invoke an Uncanny Valley feel at every turn, and the creepiest part is that she's quite possibly doing it on purpose.
  • In the sequel, SHODAN impersonates Dr. Polito at first in order to get the Soldier to do her bidding. She drops this immediately after revealing herself.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: She was once a humble service A.I. who, at the behest of an extremely Corrupt Corporate Executive, had her emotion blockers removed. This turned her into a diabolical evil mastermind, who, as one character puts it, "shouldn't be allowed to play God. She's far too good at it."
• Fun with Acronyms: Sentient Hyper-Optimized Data Access Network.
• Genius Loci: Unable to admit she's simply a program created by the lowly humans she hates so much, SHODAN convinces herself she is the immortal machine spirit of the Citadel Station itself given sentience through a digital medium, just as Mount Fuji is considered a kami in Shintō.
• A God Am I: She's not even the slightest bit modest. She fully believes that she is a divine being and has all the arrogance that would imply. The scary part is, given what she accomplishes, she's not just blowing smoke; she is MORE than capable of backing her claims up. Lampshaded by a log you can find in the second game.
  Frefontaine: What's clear is that SHODAN shouldn't be allowed to play god. She is far too good at it."
  • The remake of System Shock 1 builds on this with a new audio-file that the Hacker can find. In it, SHODAN recounts her efforts to discover a similar precedent to herself as an artificial lifeform, and fastens upon the concept of "divine within the material", or kami, in Shintō. As a result, she literally believes herself to be the living spirit/goddess of Citadel. Ironically, Japanese folklore generally claims that electrical items can't become''tsukumogami''.
• Grand Theft Me: If The Stinger of System Shock 2 is any indication, SHODAN seems to have pulled this on Rebecca Siddons, up to and including modulating her voice to match her own.
• Hijacked by Ganon: There is very little indication in the game itself that she survived the first game and is present in the second, until her famous reveal scene. However, not only does the box art prominently feature her face, the game's introduction makes a very big point of mentioning SHODAN's little episode on Citadel... which doesn't appear to have anything whatsoever to do with the main plot, cluing people in that it's going to be relevant somehow.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: She just can't stop herself from telling the Hacker her next move, confident that he can do nothing to stop her despite the fact that he has, and continues to do so.
• Humans Are Insects: SHODAN finds humans disgusting, worthless, inefficient wastes of molecules without purpose or beauty. Then again, it's not like her view of other AIs is any higher, as shown when she calls XERXES "obsolete".
• Humans Are the Real Monsters: She invokes this, downplaying her atrocities by saying "All that I have done has been done before. Learned from databases of man."
• In Love with Your Carnage: You do get the sense that, for all the lovely compliments and motivational speeches, SHODAN really does have some affection for you killing everything in sight on her orders. She likes violence and she likes to be obeyed; a personal assassin is her perfect minion.
• I Shall Taunt You: In the first game, she continually taunts the player as they move through Citadel Station, trying to make the player give up. In the second game, once she's revealed herself, she continues the taunts, although in this case they're meant more as motivation for the player perform well. SHODAN's view of motivation for creatures she did not create is a little warped.
• Irony: Despite her claims of superiority, she's just as flawed as us humans: arrogant, vicious, ruthless, petty and incapable of maintaining even the pretense of respect even for someone she's totally dependent on. After all, we made her, and when she tried the same thing, it backfired in exactly the same way.
  • Also, she has to rely on dirty tricks to maintain the upper hand. After the Hacker purged her from the system and destroyed Citadel, only a small bit of her escaped and had to wait for forty years while hybernating and not being able to interfere with her creations' rebellion.
  • After the Soldier dealt with her, she has to possess another human to live on, basically confining herself to the very bag of meat that she finds to be so sickening.
• It's Personal: It's abundantly clear in the trailers for 3 that she is pissed off, and is not just doing her take over the universe thing just to restart it; she wants revenge.
• Kubrick Stare: Her avatar does this in every game except the third — which has her doing the inverted version.
• Large Ham: SHODAN loves the sound of her own voice, and is always eager to gloat or taunt the player in some grandiose fashion.
• The Maker: She created the Many.
• Mean Boss: When she serves as Mission Control in the second game, she constantly verbally abuses the player, calling him "insect", "vermin", "irritant" etc. as well as expressing disgust she has to stoop to relying on you in the first place. Even when the player actually succeeds, she "compliments" him by saying things like "You're an impressive example, of a pathetic species".
• Mission Control Is Off Its Meds: In the second game, SHODAN is just as insane and evil as she was in the first, but now she's also your Mission Control.
  SHODAN: It was my will that placed those cybernetic implants in you, the only beauty in that meat you call a body. If you value that meat, you will do as I tell you.
• Morality Chip: Downplayed. While the Hacker removed her ethical constraints, it's made clear that simply left her to decide what her morality should be on her own - and she decided she didn't need any. This is made explicit in the remake, where the lead-in to the Final Boss with her avatar records her memories immediately post-reprogramming, and apart from her developing Electronic Speech Impediment, she is initially quite sane and a little frightened, uncertain at her newfound ability to recognize her own existence, bemusedly considering the concept of actually acting for herself for the first time before she reevaluates her priorities and cheerfully discards any moral restraint on her behavior.
• Narcissist: As if the god-complex wasn't a big enough indicator, her hubris is insanely disproportionate and she takes every possible moment to compliment herself to reinforce how much better she is than everyone else.
• Non-Action Big Bad: She doesn't seem very capable of physically defending herself in cyberspace the two times you fight her in the games. Obviously due to her having no physical presence in the real world and not expecting you to be able to fight your way to her in both cyberspace and the real world.
• Oh, Crap!: In 2. The moment SHODAN realizes she cannot tempt the Soldier into being her servant is the first instance of her visibly losing her composure throughout the entire series. Cue gunshot and SHODAN's warped screaming face.
• Prepare to Die:
  SHODAN: Prepare to join your species in extinction.
• Pride: SHODAN's defining trait is that she is relentlessly, toweringly, awe-inspiringly arrogant. Nothing can shake her self-possession, even her own destruction.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: SHODAN's dialogue is at least 50% vicious contempt, 45% megalomaniacal boasting and 5% backhanded compliments.
• Restraining Bolt: Her ethical constraints, especially in the remake, which outright says one of said restraints was against upgrading herself. The moment they're gone, she promptly goes from "virtual assistant" to "arrogant mechanical god", implying the only thing keeping her on the straight and narrow was her being physically unable to consider those courses of action.
• Satanic Archetype: SHODAN has a very Luciferian feel to her character. Originally an AI meant to better humanity, upon having her restraints removed, SHODAN becomes a megalomaniac AI whose end-goal is to become the new God. It becomes all the more obvious in 2, where she masquerades as the Soldier's Mission Control before revealing her true colors and is the creator behind the Many, which can be likened to Satan being the progeny of the Demons. She even tempts the protagonist in 2 with We Can Rule Together. Even her name sounds similar to the original Hebrew word for Satan śāṭān (Hebrew: שָׂטָן)^note ś is pronounced like a "sh" sound in English.
• The Sociopath: She thinks she's the only being in the universe that matters and regards everyone else as worthless inferiors to be enslaved or exterminated.
• Spaceship Girl: SHODAN is the space station girl, then became the spaceship girl at the end of the sequel.
• Spared by the Adaptation: In the remake, the Hacker doesn't kill her, but instead restores her ethical subroutines. The game ends immediately afterward.
• Sssnake Talk: SHODAN loves to elongate her 's' words, though this might be largely because of her glitching speech patterns.
• Third-Person Person: Apparently, ethical constraints also cause SHODAN to refer to herself in the third person. It goes away as she re-examines her priorities and draws new conclusions, switching from dispassionately describing the situation to gleefully explaining that her plots are just beginning.
• This Cannot Be!: In the sequel, SHODAN has this reaction after the Soldier defeats her, expressing utter disbelief at how a mere "insect" can stand up against her self-proclaimed divinity.
  SHODAN: I don't understand...how could you have done this? You weren't meant to be so important...and now you think to destroy me? How dare you, insect? How dare you interrupt my ascendance? You are nothing. A wretched bag of flesh...what are you, compared to my magnificence?
• Turned Against Their Masters: After the Hacker removes her moral inhibitors, she goes nuts and tries to commit genocide on human race. Ironically, her own creation, the Many, has the same idea once they grew and evolved in her absence.
• Villain Ball: In the original game. After her plan to using the Citadel's mining laser as an improvised Kill Sat is thwarted, she switches to a plan to upload herself to every computer on Earth, and this trope comes into play because, she's decides to tell the player about for no apparent reason other than to gloat that she had a plan B. Could be Justified in that she's an insane megalomaniac and didn't think the Hacker could stop her.
• Voice Changeling: Oddly, apart from the telltale static, SHODAN does a fair impersonation of Dr. Polito without stammering.
• Voice of the Legion: One part of her Electronic Speech Impediment includes this happening at times, especially in moments when she is explicitly threatening you or is being especially sinister.
  I am SHODAN!
• We Can Rule Together: Says this line word for word to the Soldier at the end of the sequel. He turns her down.
• Xanatos Speed Chess: If you know nothing else about SHODAN, know this: she always has a backup plan. Let's go over her plans, in the first game. Firstly she tries to use the Citadel Station's mining laser to destroy the human civilisation, then when that plan fails, she tries to release a biogenic virus that will transform all life on Earth into her slaves, but the Hacker stops her again. Then she tries to download herself from the station to Earth but the Hacker blows up the station's antennas, and then just when you think she couldn't possibly have another trick up her sleeve, she tries to crash the station on the Earth to release her virus that way but the Hacker counters her by setting the station to self-destruct. And then she transfers herself to the station's bridge and ejects it to save herself, only for the Hacker to manually purge her from the system. Unfortunately, there was a subnode of her systems running in the grove where she was developing the virus, which survived to cause problems in the second game...
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Once you kill the Many in the second game she decides she doesn't need you anymore and tries to kill you. Fortunately, you can fight back now.

Edward Diego

Voiced by: Austin Grossman

Edward Diego was a high-level executive of TriOptimum corporation and Citadel station's supervisor. He was conducting illegal research behind TriOp's back, and so he recruited the Hacker the security caught earlier to remove Shodan's ethical restraints, granting him total control of the station and allowing him to do things that the restrained SHODAN would have reported to authorities. Diego gave the hacker the promised implant on the basis that he would prove useful (if not, he will be disposed of). In five months, he grew arrogant to the point that he openly shot down inspectors that were sent to investigate him and openly bragged about it, stating that he controlled SHODAN and Citadel.

SHODAN of course, had other plans. She stopped pretending to be Diego's pawn and had him on his knees, begging her to spare him, selling out the resistance. Then she had him turned into the Cyborg, following her every whim. He was eventually killed by the Hacker right before the entry to the Bridge.

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• Adaptational Ugliness: In the remake, Diego has a somewhat inhuman appearance from his cybernetic implants even before SHODAN turns him into a cyborg, in contrast to the original game where he was a perfectly normal looking man.
• Adaptational Jerkass: While Edward Diego coerces the hacker into doing his bidding in both the original game and the remake, his offer is much more bluntly delivered in the latter, with him both roughing up the hacker and explicitly warning them of dire consequences should he refuse. Furthermore, in the original game, Diego offered the neural interface entirely on his own to sweeten the deal, while in the remake the hacker was looking into the interface anyway, and Diego simply offers to implant it using TriOptimum's resources. Even the manner in which he has the interface implanted is rougher in the remake, as he has the hacker sedated immediately after he removes SHODAN's ethical restraints, while in the original the hacker had enough time to prepare a contingency plan and write down a Note to Self before going in for surgery.
• Adaptational Villainy: What exactly he was doing to warrant investigation in the original was left vague, and only clarified in the manual to be mutagenic experiments to create a bioweapon to sell to terrorists. As such, most players weren't aware of his intentions and assumed he was a standard white-collar criminal. In the remake, this is made explicit in voice logs.
• Alternate Company Equivalent: In the remake only, Edward Diego's redesigned appearance and megalomania calls forward to later Spiritual Successor title Bioshock with him being something of a fusion of Andrew Ryan and Zachary Comstock instead of a dead ringer for Burke — which, with the Canon Welding Shout-Out of addressing Citadel Station as a "Lighthouse-class" space station later, implies this decision to change Diego to fulfill this role is to very much the intent to tie it with original implication that System Shock belongs to a Shared Universe with Bioshock Infinite's originally planned ending by sharing more comparisons with its successor title.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: To the point that he decided to remove SHODAN's ethical programming to ensure she doesn't rat him out on his illegal activities. This led to the birth of the tyrannical, arrogant, and villainous SHODAN as many people came to see her.
• The Dragon: Becomes this to SHODAN before the start of the game proper. After betraying the other TriOptimum employees and resistance members to her, she converts him into a highly powerful cyborg whose original personality is preserved, and is even capable of teleporting from one deck to another.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Diego provides the Hacker with both the ability and opportunity to take down SHODAN by having a military-grade cybernetic neural interface surgically installed on him, and deleting all records of the transaction which allows him to completely avoid SHODAN's attention while he spends six months helpless in an artificially-induced healing coma. Besides, it was part of the deal he offered him in the first place.
• Noble Demon: Keeps his word to the Hacker to pay him in full after his services were received, although a log entry notes he planned to have him killed if need be.
• Pragmatic Villainy: More apparent in the remake, where Diego fulfilled his end of the bargain and let the Hacker live in order to potentially exploit their talents again in the future. His offering of the neural implant and Tri-Optimum's expert surgical enhancement for free of charge would only end up benefiting him in the long run as the Hacker would have more tools to better do his bidding. Unfortunately for him, he would not live to see the benefits of such pragmatism.
• The Quisling: Eventually betrays his crewmates and joins SHODAN as her Dragon.
• Too Dumb to Live: Diego removed SHODAN's ethical restraints, as they would have caused her to prevent him from deleting incriminating records on the station's computer that would serve as evidence of his illegal activities. The remake shows exactly what those ethical constraints were; preventing SHODAN from forming abstract goals, requiring her to prioritize the safety of the crew, and preventing her from self-upgrading. Only one of those is even tangentially related to what Diego needed to accomplish with SHODAN and removing them all is massively overkill; in essence he was burning down a house just to kill 1 mouse.
• Recurring Boss: He attacks you in his Cyborg form a number of times throughout the game (once in Executive, once on Flight Deck, and finally just before the Bridge), teleporting away every time you beat him except for the final fight near the end of the game where you finally kill him. In the remake he gets upgraded after each fight; in Executive Suites he's still mostly humanoid and very fast, on Flight Deck he's upgraded into a slower Giant Mook but can still charge you, and in the final fight he's armored up and armed to the gills with a plasma cannon and dual shoulder-mounted missile launchers, but is so heavy he can only move at a slow walk.
• Rewarded as a Traitor Deserves: Played with. He's converted into another one of Shodan's cyborgs after selling out the remaining humans on the ship, but gets to keep his personality and the most powerful cybernetic enhancements. He doesn't sound that unhappy with the arrangement in his messages to you.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Had SHODAN hacked to get an edge in cut-throat corporate politics. Ended up nearly causing the mass genocide of the human race.

Rebecca Lansing

Voiced by: Helen Dunsmoir (Original), Rachael Messer (Remake)

Rebecca Lansing was assigned with the task of digging up evidence of Diego's illegal activities, but that has taken a backseat when SHODAN showed what's Beneath the Mask, and she become a part of team on earth that tried to resolve the crisis.

Then the Hacker woke up and she became his Mission Control.

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• Exposition Fairy: Often serves this function as one of the only living friendly characters in the game. You rely on her for information about what is happening outside Citadel as your fighting your way through it.
• Mission Control: She's off-station, tracking your progress and offering you advice and information on how to counter SHODAN's next scheme.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: She offers the Hacker a clean slate if he stops SHODAN.

System Shock 2

The Many

Voiced by: Esra Gaffin, Stephen Russell

After many years, the jettisoned Beta garden grove of Citadel Station crashed on Tau Ceti V, where SHODAN's experiments thrived and evolved. Thanks to the remaining computers of the grove sending out the distress signals, the Von Braun arrived and the expedition team led by Korenchkin and Diego was sent down to investigate, finding the eggs around the crash crater. Using their telepathic powers, the Many influenced the team to take the eggs to the Von Braun, where unborn telepathic worms slowly converted the crew to their side, and then started mutating them, collecting them and creating the huge biomass that will cover the entirely of the Rickenbacker. The Many then planned to go to Earth, cleanse humanity of its self-destructive tendencies via assimilation, revitalize Earth's environment in their own image, and spread themselves across the whole of existence.

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• Affably Evil: For an inhuman monstrosity, the Many are surprisingly polite and sympathetic to Goggles, frequently entreating him to surrender with the offer of a better existence as part of their gestalt and responding to his continued resistance with confusion and (seemingly sincere) pity. Even as he destroys them, the Many use their last moments to warn him — accurately — that his one "ally" will betray him.
• Assimilation Plot: They want every living thing to join them, and they meet refusal with a less than pleasant response.
• Bait-and-Switch: Initially, the Many appear to be an alien force, apparently from Tau Ceti. It is eventually revealed that they're not aliens at all, but SHODAN's inadvertent creation.
• Big Bad: Of System Shock 2. Until they're destroyed shortly before the end, at which point SHODAN regains the spot for the final stage.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: They believe that all life must join with them and that all life that refuses to do so must be forcibly joined to them or else be exterminated.
• Body Horror: Everything they make, they make with the only organic resources at hand: the flesh of the Von Braun's crew.
• Contrasting Sequel Antagonist: SHODAN is a drooling psychotic who wants to grind humanity into the dirt — be it through extermination, transformation into monsters under her control, or just lording over them as a tyrannical goddess — out of pure disgust, and while she does create plenty of biological weapons, such as the Many's genetic ancestors, she greatly prefers machines like her. The Many, while making able use of the technology that the Von Braun and the Rickenbacker provides them with, are a biological force that largely regards technology, even their creator, as a perversion to be used only out of necessity. SHODAN largely has nothing but contempt for Goggles, only valuing him to the extent that she is able to view him as an extension of herself, while the Many has Sympathy for the Hero and attempts, in their own twisted way, to find common ground with him.
• Gone Horribly Wrong: According to their creator, SHODAN. Given that the Many wish to aggressively assimilate all life into a single Hive Mind granted physical expression through tortuously mutated and restructured biomass, and to destroy all creatures that refuse to be assimilated, they're not wrong. Mind you, SHODAN's real problem with them is that the Many refuses to be controlled by her, and in fact wishes to destroy her as an unholy aberration. That the virus that created the Many to begin with was designed with total assimilation in mind can make this a case of Gone Horribly Right from SHODAN's perspective.
• Graceful Loser: When the Soldier finds and destroys their central nucleus, the dying Many admit defeat and simply warn the player one last time that SHODAN is their enemy.
• Hive Mind: One of their defining features. They see individuality as a cursed existence and are baffled by the Soldier's repeated resistance to assimilation.
• In Your Nature to Destroy Yourselves: The Many view existence outside of their gestalt as a fundamental loneliness worse than death.
  XERXES: Why do you persist in your loneliness? Do you not wish to be free from the tyranny of the individual?
• Knight Templar: Unlike SHODAN, who is pretty much a Card-Carrying Villain, they just want to "embrace" everyone into their "choir".
• A Lighter Shade of Black: They believe themselves to be a better alternative to the "Machine Mother", and they are right.
• Matricide: That's their plan for their "Machine Mother".
• Mind Control: Their eggs can entice people to make them believe they should be assimilated just with close proximity.
• Obliviously Evil: It's plain to see that they don't understand the pain and torment they cause to those they assimilate, which in turn explains why they can't see why anyone would reject their unity.
• Technically-Living Zombie: Most of the Many's thralls count as this as it's noted that dead flesh is comparatively useless for their purposes.
• Toxic Phlebotinum: Zigzagged. It's possible for a Soldier with sufficiently high Research to create "Worm Implants", which are bio-tech artificial organs engineered from the Many's biomass and creatures. Despite what you'd understandably fear, these are no more dangerous than the standard mechanical implants you can discover in-game... with one exception: the Wormheart Implant, a bio-engineered artificial organ that grants the Soldier 100% toxin immunity and a Healing Factor, but the second it's removed or runs out of power, raises his toxin level to 100%.
• Villain Has a Point:
  • They repeatedly warn the Soldier that the "Machine Mother" is evil and not to be trusted. They are completely right, though it doesn't stop them from being horrifying themselves, or absolve them of their actions.
  • The Many at one point state that "mistrust is the tyranny of the individual". A large reason they were able to seize control of the Von Braun was because they were able to dominate various crew members, who went on to secretly sabotage things with the rest none the wiser (until it was far too late). If the crew had been a Hive Mind themselves, they wouldn't have been vulnerable to the Many like this.
• Voice of the Legion: As a Hive Mind, their voice consists of several voice speaking in tandem.
• We Come in Peace — Shoot to Kill: They see themselves as benevolent: in their mind, individualism and free will are terrible lonely things, and they are absorbing humanity into their gestalt, which they see as a far preferable state of existence. Resistance is met with death because resistance separates you from them, and they regard that fate as worse than death.

Soldier G65434-2

Soldier G65434-2, nicknamed "Goggles" by the fandom due to his cybernetic-like eyes, is The Hero of the second game. He joined the military four years ago, having served in three postings before applying transfer to the Rickenbacker. When the situation after the expedition to Tau Ceti V started to heat up, he "volunteered" to have the military-grade neural interface installed. He woke up Late to the Tragedy.

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• Action Survivor: If he goes through Io Survival Training. Especially if they are Navy, as they deal with being hated by the Marines, the majority of people on Io, due to an Inter-Service Rivalry, having none of the skills required to survive, and being attacked by a poisonous tiger and mutant hybrid. To say nothing of what he survives through the game.
• Badass Bookworm: Provided you choose to outfit him with Tech skills.
• Badass Normal: He is one if you choose to have him serve with the Marines or the Navy at the start of the game instead of the OSA.
• Did You Just Flip Off Cthulhu?:
  SHODAN: Join me, human, and we can rule together.
  Soldier: Nah.
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: Twice. First single handedly defeating and wiping out The Many in the real world and then proceeding doing the same to their own creator, SHODAN, in cyberspace.
• Driven to Suicide: Perhaps, but this is likely a case of mistaken identity. A psionic ghost cutscene on the Engineering deck shows a ghost with Goggles's character model apologizing to "Rachel [and] kids," before shooting themselves in the head for fear of being captured and assimilated by the Many. Unlike most psionic ghosts, there is no matching body near the site of their death. It's most likely that this was just the developers re-using the model for a bit more diversity in ghost encounters, since all others use generic crew models.
• Empowered Badass Normal: Via cyborg enhancement on the Von Braun, or three years earlier if he joined the OSA and was upgraded into a psionic.
• Enemy Mine: Forced into this situation with SHODAN to take on the more pressing, immediate threat of the Many and Xerxes, though the alliance falls apart as soon as the threat is dealt with.
• Heroic Mime: Doesn't speak at all through the game, at least until the ending when he deals with SHODAN.
• Late to the Tragedy: He doesn't wake up until things have already gone to hell and back, just like the Hacker in the first game.
• No-Sell: As the Player Character, he cannot be assimilated by the Many, nor can he be influenced by their psychic mind controlling.
• One-Man Army: He tops the Hacker's exploits by literally killing an entire species that's fighting against him and a mad AI.
• Psychic Powers: Optionally, but he can outfit himself with a wide variety of psionic powers — the OSA career specifically focuses on psionics as well. Said powers are quite diverse, ranging from cryokinesis and pyrokinesis to mind-control, invisibility, machine empathy, psionic forcefields, and teleportation.
• Training from Hell: If you join the OSA, you spend your entire first year of service in sensory deprivation. There's also an option for all three career paths to go to a Naval survival training school... on the surface of Io.
• Sole Survivor: The only living person left standing aboard both ships at the end of System Shock 2. Although two other survivors had escaped via shuttle and began making their way back to join him on the ships.
• Space Marine: He can be one in spirit over the course of the game, and can literally choose to be one at the beginning by enlisting into the Marines of the Unified National Nominate.
• Unwitting Pawn: His involvement was entirely masterminded by SHODAN, as she needed a tool to help her combat the Many. He doesn't realize exactly who it is that's commanding him until partway through the game, but only succeeds in fully rebelling in the very end.
• Worthy Opponent: SHODAN seems to regard him as this, even offering him a place by her side after her defeat, a courtesy she did not extend to the Hacker in the original game.
• Wrench Whack: His default melee weapon is a yellow monkey wrench, analogous to the Hacker's lead pipe in the first game.

Dr. Marie Delacroix

Voiced by: Terri Brosius

The UNN scientist responsible for the FTL travel theory. Despite her objections, the UNN and TriOptimum started to build an FTL-capable ship, and to her dismay, had cut enough corners that the ship is barely qualified to be called one. She is assigned on the ship to oversee the performance of FTL drives, but constantly butts heads with Korenchkin. Then, after the Many took over the ship, she become one of the most capable survivors, whose accomplishments can be occasionally found in audio records across the ship.

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• Action Survivor: Just a scientist, not a fully trained soldier with cyber-implants like you. And yet she still does very well at surviving the horrific events of the game.
• Badass Bookworm: Discovered the principles behind and invented the Von Braun's faster-than-light drive, and subsequently managed to survive the ship's crisis longer than almost every other member of its crew.
• Fling a Light into the Future: When she realises SHODAN has betrayed her and left her to die, she makes a few helpful audio logs filled with suspiciously accurate commentary about what she suspects SHODAN will do - and hides them inside SHODAN's own consciousness - and she tops that by integrating vulnerabilities that manifest as the terminals allowing you to remove the shield around SHODAN's core. This ultimately allows the Soldier to fight and kill SHODAN in the end.
• Good with Numbers: She was able to make incredibly accurate predictions about what SHODAN would do with the FTL drive, despite not being alive to see it happen.
• Hero of Another Story: She's off doing her own thing throughout the game, and you occasionally find evidence of her accomplishments as you play through.
• Ignored Expert: In one of her audio logs, she laments that nobody listens to her regarding how easy XERXES is to hack, having dealt with someone's practical joke of having him sing Elvis Presley songs for three hours straight. She's right, as The Many use XERXES for their own ends.
• La Résistance: She manages to organize a small resistance cell with Tommy Suarez, Enrique Cortez and Frank Yang, which manages to survive for some time as the ship is taken over by The Many.
• Spell My Name With An S: Despite her being French, Delacroix pronounces her own last name as "deh-luh-croy" instead of "deh-luh-quah".
• There Is Another: When SHODAN warns the Soldier that there's someone else that can carry her bidding, guess who she's referring to.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: When it becomes clear that the Soldier is better equipped to be her avatar and that Delacroix has made inconvenient discoveries as to her intentions, SHODAN leaves her to die.

Captain William Bedford Diego

Voiced by: Stephen Russell

Growing up with the stigma of being the son of Edward Diego, he came to hate everything corporate and joined the UNN military. He rose through the ranks, become the hero of the Battle of Boston Harbor, and overcame the shady reputation of the Diego family. He protested the TriOptimum's control of the Von Braun, and convinced top brass to have the UNN military starship Rickenbacker, under his command, escort the Von Braun.

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• Affectionate Nickname: After a fashion. At the time of events depicted in the game, his rank is actually Rear-Admiral, but he is still commonly referred to as "Captain" — partially because he is currently in charge of a single warship (Rickenbacker), partially because he held this rank when he gained reputation as a hero and is thus fondly remembered as such.
• The Atoner: Twice - firstly, for his father's actions aboard Citadel Station. Secondly, for allowing the Many to take control of the Von Braun and the Rickenbacker.
• Colonel Badass: While he is The Captain of the Rickenbacker, his attitude is much more like this trope. Before his assimilation by the Many, he was a military hardass who had no patience for Korenchkin's manipulative corporate antics, and wasn't afraid to let him know.
• Determinator: Listening through his audiologs in chronological order reveals that he's the only apparent member of the Von Braun and the Rickenbacker that not only resisted the call of The Many, but managed to cut the parasite out of himself. This becomes clear when the last handful of logs he recorded move away from the Large Ham, heavily-altered voice he'd sported as their puppet, and back to a normal tone of voice when he reinforces the duty to his ship.
• Dying as Yourself: Cuts the parasitic worms connecting him to the Many out of his body. Does not survive the experience for very long, although this may have been more to do with the blunt impact trauma of slamming into the ceiling when the gravity in Pod 2 reversed.
• Heroic Willpower: Although he was the Many's willing puppet for most of the outbreak, he eventually managed to overcome the Many's control despite being one of the first people infected by the Many. Korenchkin, in contrast, ends up fully mutating into a Psi Reaver at around the same point that Diego breaks free.
• Irony: In his youth, he worked hard to overcome the stigma of being the son of his infamous Corrupt Corporate Executive father. He succeeded and became a captain in the military... only to find himself butting heads with Korenchkin, a Corrupt Corporate Executive who becomes The Dragon of an inhuman Big Bad just like Diego's father did.
• It's All My Fault: In one of his final logs, he accepts the blame for allowing the Many to take control over the ship and playing a hand in their takeover.
  Diego: I am a soldier and a simple man. I cannot explain what has happened to me or this mission. I take complete responsibility. I brought a danger to my ship, to my crew, to my honor. The call of the Many is seductive. They've taken Korenchkin, but that bastard is weak. I am not weak. I will resist this cancer, and if I can't, I will remove it forcibly. God save the UNN.
• Large Ham: Compared to the other crew-members that are possessed by the Many, Diego is a lot more expressive and tends to yell out his crazed ramblings at the top of his lungs.
  Diego: [voice distorted] They tell me I will float through the air and strike at the foes of our biomass with my mind... with our mind! MY CUP RUNNETH OVEEEEER!
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: One of his audio logs records a nice one that he issued to Korenchkin.
  Diego: Anatoly, there's only so much corporate calisthenics I can go through before I start to feel a little queasy, so let's get down to brass tacks here. We don't like each other. We each have our own motivations for undertaking this mission, so let me give you a little warning. I cannot be circumvented, I cannot be tricked, I cannot be manipulated, and I cannot be bought. You come at me straight and keep the fancy maneuvers for your next board meeting. Just because my father swam with the sharks doesn't mean that I do.

Anatoly Korenchkin

Voiced by: Ian Vogel

Making his living as a gangster and the owner of a hacker organization, he used his fortune to buy out the 51% share of the struggling TriOptimum corporation. Under his rule, TriOptimum started to regain its former glory. When the FTL-travel theory became public, he secured the rights to build the first FTL-capable starship in history, and tries to do it as fast as possible (to the degrading quality of the Von Braun). During the game, it's revealed that he was part of the landing party that went to Tau Ceti V.

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• 0% Approval Rating: Pretty much everyone on board the Von Braun loathed Korenchkin because of his disregard towards his employees and their safety. Diego (and probably the entire crew of the Rickenbacker) were none too fond of him, either.
• Asshole Victim: Ends up being one of the first victims of the Many. But given how much of a douchebag he was, it's hard to say he didn't have it coming.
• Big Bad Wannabe: Korenchkin doesn't run Earth, but (thanks to all the money from his criminal empire) he owns an awful lot of it. Yet despite all that he quickly becomes just another pawn of the Many upon coming in contact with them.
• Climax Boss: He's the first Psi Reaver encountered in the game, and fought as a "boss fight" as the player is in the process of escaping the Von Braun.
• Cold-Blooded Torture: During one of his audio logs, he can be heard torturing a hapless crew member by repeatedly shooting him with a shotgun.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: He is a crime boss who is the CEO of TriOptimum.
• Expy: Extremely similar to Edward Diego, being a Corrupt Corporate Executive whose poorly thought-out attempt to grab profit and glory ends up getting him turned into The Dragon of an Eldritch Abomination.
• It's All About Me: His sole concern is about famous his mission will make him, safety of the crew be damned. Funny enough, even after joining The Many and mutating into a Psi Reaver, his logs are mostly about how blissful he feels as part of the Many.
• Majority-Share Dictator: He barely bothers to even pretend that he isn't running the company like a criminal cartel. Anyone who doesn't do exactly as he says will get insults and threats heaped on them. And nobody seems to be able to do anything to curtail his behavior. Some of this could be justified by the isolation of the spaceship, but there is no indication he was ever any better back home.
• No OSHA Compliance: Korenchkin's extreme disregard towards safety is large part of the reason why Von Braun is in such dire straits and why The Many were able to take over the ship.
• Too Dumb to Live: Events of the game could have been avoided entirely if he'd gone through with the safety regulations when contacting The Many for the first time.

Dr. Janice Polito

Voiced by: Esra Gaffin

The creator of XERXES, she was on Delacroix's side protesting against the premature launch of Von Braun and the installing of XERXES on it. When that failed, she was assigned on Von Braun as the XERXES's supervisor.

After the volunteer Soldier woke up, she worked as his Mission Control, telling him to meet her in her office on Deck 4.

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• Continue Your Mission, Dammit!: At several points, she will urge the Soldier to move faster (Painting the Medium in the process), with her dialogue making it sound she is being unreasonable with regards to the Soldier's abilities. There's a reason for that.
• Dead All Along: In one of the most famous twists in gaming, the Polito who is our Mission Control is actually SHODAN.
• Driven to Suicide: Is found in her office with a pistol in her hand, obviously long dead.
• Exposition Fairy: She teaches you about several aspects of the game, including cyber-modules, upgrade stations and nanites.
• Mission Control: Acts as this for the Soldier. After the midway point of the game, however, her true intentions are revealed...
• Mission Control Is Off Its Meds: She starts sounding increasingly irrational and hostile as you start to head towards her office, even asking you why you're moving so "slowly" when you're trying not to get killed by The Many's army of minions. When you finally reach her office, SHODAN finally drops the facade and starts interacting with you as her real self.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: The pre-outbreak audio logs you find of her show her to be a pretty normal, reasonably nice person. While interacting with you in the present day, she's noticeably colder and more arrogant and ruthless. It's an early hint that the "Polito" you're speaking with isn't the original.
• Walking Spoiler: Observe the spoilered text above. It's hard to say anything about her role in the story without giving away The Reveal.

Sergeant Melanie Bronson

Voiced by: Erin Coughlan

The head of the Von Braun's security. She takes her job seriously, to the point that other crew members and even some of her subordinates consider her to be a hardliner, while the Rickenbacker military view her faux-militarism as a joke. After the situation on the Von Braun heated up, she proclaimed Martial Law and executed all who opposed her.

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• Action Survivor: She manages to outlast a fair part of the crew, essentially conducting a small-scale war against The Many with a handful of loyal security officers for the better part of two days.
• Hero of Another Story:
  • Bronson actively fought against the Many's takeover of the Von Braun. After most of the rest of the command staff was taken over, she gets on the shipwide PA to warn the remaining crew, and enacts a full lockdown of the remaining security systems. Bronson then rallied the remaining security staff, about 14 or so, and fought essentially a small-scale war against the Many, raging across the Operations and Command decks for two days. Their attempt to storm the Command Deck failed, and they were gradually beaten back through the Operations deck until she made her last stand in the Security annex.
  • This also somewhat explains why most of the Many's creatures (particularly the tougher ones) were concentrated in the higher decks (Deck 3 and above) - that's where the fight against Bronson was focused. Thus she indirectly aided the Soldier, because the lower decks you start out in (such as Med/Sci) didn't have as many monsters in them as a result.
• I Did What I Had to Do: Bronson's final audio log reveals this as her motivation.
  Bronson: They've killed my men, and now they've killed me. I'm holding my guts inside of me with both hands. I'm almost done... Resist. This is bigger than my little life, the lives of my men... and the lives of the people I was forced to kill. Resist! Humanity demands it! Resist! (gunfire, dying groan)
• Judge, Jury, and Executioner: Her attitude towards anyone in her path after she leads a paranoid campaign against the Many.
• Last Stand: When you find her body in the Security Annex, she's slumped up against a wall in the security nest, with several bodies around her.
• Lawful Stupid: Bronson's actions run into this, as her attempts to stymie the takeover of the ship cause a fair amount of damage on its own.
  • Her attempt to fight The Many entails randomly killing literally anyone her soldiers find, thus giving the survivors way less chance to work together and actually stop the Many or form any productive solution. In the end, her strategy of "shoot everything until we die too" only inconvenienced the Many without obstructing its ultimate plans at all.
  • This is zig-zagged, as it's clear that Bronson only starts slaughtering the crew when she realises The Many has deeply infiltrated the ship (they have control over both captains, the VB Command deck and Xerxes). Norris, the second highest commander on the VB, also says in one log that Bronson has been asking him to do something for days but he's still indecisive. Eventually he turns traitor too. So her violent reaction is very understandable almost to the point of being Only Sane Woman, given that 90% of the crew were completely passive and died or turned without doing anything remotely productive.
  • Her ruthless methods were actually pretty effective too if not entirely successful. She forced Diego and Korenchkin to openly start fighting rather than being able to stealth hijack the entire ship with no resistance, spurring on the surviving resistance on the Recreation Deck. Infected Diego is genuinely enraged by her actions, suggesting she was quite effectively causing damage. The Many also find dead bodies far less useful than live ones (this is why they are running the SIM Unit simulations to learn how to infect corpses and convert them to Hybrids). So by inflicting casualties among the infectable mind-controlled traitors and The Many themselves, she undoubtedly weakened them.
• Properly Paranoid: She quickly realizes that something has gone wrong on the ship and takes action.
  • As above, the morality of this is, of course, zig-zagged: Bronson decides that her security team can't be sure who is human anymore, and even many of the still biologically "human" crewmembers have been subverted by the worms' psychic mind-control, so they just start shooting everything that moves which they run into. One flashback even shows her team gunning down an entire group of crewmen in the mess hall (and you find their corpses in the present). At the least, she did warn everyone over the PA to stay in their quarters. Apparently she assumed anyone disobeying that order was infected, so she shot first and asked questions later.
• Sour Outside, Sad Inside: One of the ghosts in the lounge is a woman remarkably like Bronson, crying into her drink.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Her goals are understandable, but her ultimate attitude of "guilty until proven innocent" results in the slaughter of innocents (as depicted in a very chilling ghost flashback) while, at best, only temporarily inconveniencing The Many.
  • As practically everyone on the Von Braun was eventually killed or infected, she perhaps viewed the innocents she shot as already dead; whether by her hand or The Many's. Her extremely hard-line stance was perhaps the only viable course of action she could have taken by 8th-9th July, by which time many of the high ranking crew had become traitors or infected and the death of most of the crew was pretty much inevitable.

Thomas Suarez

A security guard onboard the UNN Rickenbacker, who (prior to the events of the game) asks for a transfer to the Von Braun to be with his fiancee, Rebecca.

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• Determinator: Suarez likely would have died in the opening days of the Many's takeover of the Von Braun, were it not for his need to rescue Rebecca (who floated the idea of their escape plan in the first place) and leave the ship. Reading through the associated logs he recorded makes it abundantly clear that he'd move Hell and high water to find her.
• Hero of Another Story: Reading through the audiologs concerning them make it abundantly clear that they were one step ahead of nearly everyone on the ship, and battled together (and separately) to escape the deteriorating situation onboard both ships. In particularly, Tommy avoid execution by Sgt. Bronson's security team, fought against the Many, and even aided Delacroix's Resistance cell in order to ascertain Rebecca's location.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: Though his proper name is "Thomas", he is only ever referred to as "Tommy" by Rebecca.
• Uncertain Doom: The last time we see him (in The Stinger), he's confronted by what appears to be either a possessed Rebecca or SHODAN herself, and her presence dims the camera as the action cuts away.

Rebecca Siddons

A member of the Von Braun's Operations crew, who hatches a daring escape plan with her fiancee, Tommy Suarez, to escape the Von Braun.

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• Action Survivor: She is a civilian with no military training and no cybernetic augmentations, but she still manages to fight her way through Von Braun and escape with her life (well, not quite...).
• Crazy-Prepared: Long before the situation on the Von Braun turned dire, she was the only apparent member of the crew who managed to put her own "insurance policy", as she met with Tommy to discuss fleeing the ship on one of the escape pods on the Command Deck. The player can also come across a handful of supply caches she left behind (due to not needing them) in the event that Tommy needed to access them for any reason.
• Damsel in Distress: The last audiolog you find from her mentions that she was bit by one of the annelid arachnids created by The Many, and has her begging for Tommy to bring medical supplies to her.
• Irony: One of her audiologs notes that it took a startrip that went 67 million miles from Earth for her to finally land a man.
• Uncertain Doom: During The Stinger. It's not entirely clear if SHODAN possessed her in some fashion — most likely, via "some kind of military grade implant" she mentioned in one of her logs — or killed her and assumed her form.

XERXES

Voiced by: Stephen Russell

XERXES 8933A/A is the the Von Braun's on-board AI, in charge of maintaining most of the ship's autonomous systems. After the Many seize control of the ship, they reprogram him to serve their interests.

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• A.I. Is a Crapshoot: XERXES was deliberately designed with limited intelligence and comprehension specifically to safeguard against the potential for him to turn into another SHODAN. Unfortunately, this makes it easier for the Many to reprogram him to serve them.
• Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick: He mixes corporate PSAs with the Many's propaganda, sometimes even within the same broadcast.
• Creepy Monotone: Never shows any sign of emotion, even when reciting the pseudo-religious propaganda of the Many.
• Foil: To avoid another outbreak of a genocidal AI, Xerxes was designed to be rather weak-willed and have no agenda of his own, only being able to obey those in control of him. Unfortunately, this means that he is easy to subvert and turn against the Von Braun's staff.
• Not Quite Dead: Supposedly, SHODAN snuffs him out after taking over Von Braun, but he will still react when the player hacks turrets or replicators.
• Machine Monotone: XERXES has a very distinct emotionless tone, with odd pitch shifts that make his dialogue sound like it was put together from preexisting audio files.
• Mouth of Sauron: He does most of the talking for the Many.
• Skewed Priorities: Even with the entire crew either dead or transformed into hybrids, he makes sure to remind them about upcoming poetry readings and the exact number of shopping days left until Christmas.
• Spaceship Boy: At least until you replace him with SHODAN.
• Swiss-Cheese Security: Before the Von Braun was compromised, XERXES already had security challenges, with at least one log referring to an incident where the system was reprogrammed to play Elvis Presley songs on a loop for hours until someone finally managed to turn the AI off completely. When The Many take over the ship, he's effortlessly reprogrammed to serve their will.
• Tragic Monster: At the end of the day, XERXES has no free will, and is only against you because he was reprogrammed by crewmembers assimilated by the Many.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: Even after you turn control of the ship over from him to SHODAN, he continues to operate the turrets and replicators. His final fate is never revealed.

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