Animorphs/Characters

This is the character sheet for the Animorphs series.

Animorphs
My name is...

Jake


"Jake is one of those people who are natural leaders. If you were ever trapped in a burning building, you would turn to Jake and ask "What do we do?" And he would have an answer, too."

"Big Jake, Fearless Leader" of the Animorphs; not because he wanted to be, but because his friends look to him for guidance. While saving the world is nice, what he really wants most is to save his brother Tom, a Controller. Known as an open and friendly guy at the beginning of the series, the constant pressures of having to act as leader and manipulate his friends for strategic ends gradually cause him to become more ruthless.


 * Achilles in His Tent: For a short time in The Ultimate
 * Alternate Self: In the third Megamorphs book, an alternate Jake is seen having grown up in a totalitarian society. He's a junior Nazi and wannabe dictator.
 * Animorphism
 * Big Friendly Dog: Jake's first morph is his pet golden retriever, Homer. Homer later appears as Jake's cover morph in The Threat.
 * Cain and Abel: Played with. Jake and his older brother Tom are enemies, but it's not Tom's fault.
 * The Call Knows Where You Live: Jake didn't get really determined to fight the Yeerks until he found out about his brother being a Controller.
 * Cannot Tell a Joke: Jake can snark with the best of them, but when it comes to telling outright jokes, he inevitably summons the crickets. Even Ax, at one point, gets a big laugh just by repeating a joke that Jake had told earlier. Nobody laughed the first time.
 * The Chains of Commanding
 * The Chessmaster: As the series reaches it's climax, Jake resorts to increasingly more amoral actions to win the war.
 * Comes Great Responsibility: "Power enough to win? No. Power enough to fight? Ah, yes. Just enough, little Jake, here is just enough power to imprison you in a cage of duty, to make you fight."
 * Did You Just Scam Cthulhu: Magnificently played out in The Attack.
 * Don't Call Me Sir / They Call Me Mister Tibbs: A Running Gag between him and Ax.
 * Don't You Dare Pity Me
 * Dreaming of Things to Come: In The Capture.
 * The Dutiful Son
 * Fighting From the Inside: In The Capture Jake becomes a Controller. He never stops fighting the Yeerk in his head.
 * First Name Basis: For fifty-two books. His full name is finally revealed in The Answer as Jake Berenson.
 * Fly Crazy: This is his cover morph in The Capture.
 * Fragile Speedster: His flight morph, a peregrine falcon. It's not a Big Badass Bird of Prey, but it's by far the fastest bird any of them have. It's his cover morph in The Conspiracy.
 * Future Badass: In the Bad Future of The Familiar, Jake is a huge guy who looks like he's worked out since adolescence.
 * Good Is Not Nice: Not after three years of leading a guerilla army, anyway.
 * Got Volunteered: This is how he became the leader of the Animorphs.
 * The Hero: Jake is the only character with preexisting ties to each of the other Animorphs and since he is one of those people who are natural leaders it only made sense.
 * Heroic BSOD: In The Ultimate and The Beginning.
 * Humble Hero
 * I Have Many Names: A complete list of Jake's nicknames: Big Jake, Fearless Leader, Jake the Mighty, Prince Jake, Jake the Yeerk-Killer (sometimes Big Jake the Yeerk-Killer, used mockingly), Jake the Ellimist's Tool, and (in the alternate timeline from Megamorphs #03) Supreme Leader
 * I Just Want to Be Normal
 * Informed Judaism: Jake is identified at one point as Jewish, but it never figures into the overall story.
 * Its All My Fault: As the team's leader, Jake blames himself often.
 * The Leader: Type II meets Type IV
 * Lovable Jock
 * Lightning Bruiser: When he's in his tiger morph.
 * Living With the Villain
 * The Magnificent: Jake the Yeerk-Killer.
 * Manipulative Bastard: Not at first, but as the series goes on Jake slowly evolves into one.
 * Military Brat: Neither of Jake's parents are military, but his great-grandfather fought in World War II and he has a relative who fought in the Civil War.
 * My Greatest Failure: He feels this way about the David incident
 * Nice Job Breaking It Hero: Jake makes some pretty epic screw-ups in The Threat.
 * Panthera Awesome: Siberian tiger, his favorite morph. He also has a jaguar as his cover morph in The Forgotten.
 * Reunion Kiss: After twenty-six books, Jake's first kiss with Cassie ends up being this.
 * Reptiles Are Abhorrent: One of Jake's first morphs was a green anole lizard. The experience he had with it seems to have scared him off reptile morphs in general. The only other reptiles he ever morphs are the Tyrannosaurus Rex in Megamorphs #02 and an anaconda in The Answer
 * Rhino Rampage: His secondary battle morph is a rhinoceros.
 * Rodents of Unusual Size: Jake, along with the rest of the team, morphs a beaver in The Resistance. It's his cover morph for that book.
 * Scaled Up: His final book, The Answer, sees him morphing an anaconda on the cover.
 * Standardized Leader: He actually doesn't enjoy it too much, though, and he does have depth.
 * Team Dad
 * That's an Order: Jake doesn't assert his authority often over the others, but when he does they know it's time to listen.
 * Vetinari Job Security: In The Weakness Jake goes out of town for a week and Rachel becomes leader in his absence. The consequences aren't pretty.
 * The Worf Effect: subjects him to this in The Threat.
 * Young and In Charge
 * Young Conqueror
 * Vetinari Job Security: In The Weakness Jake goes out of town for a week and Rachel becomes leader in his absence. The consequences aren't pretty.
 * The Worf Effect: subjects him to this in The Threat.
 * Young and In Charge
 * Young Conqueror
 * Young and In Charge
 * Young Conqueror

Rachel


"I should have never suggested to Rachel that she's weak or helpless. Rachel may look like Little Miss Teen Model or whatever, but she thinks she's Storm from the X-Men."

The beautiful and bold cousin of Jake. She looks like a teen fashion model, but is no ditz. Don't make the mistake of calling her one, either. She would love an excuse to send you flying through a wall. Unlike the others, Rachel loves the thrill and adrenaline surge of combat, and she becomes more and more unstable as the series progresses. Not helping is the fact that her friends, particularly Jake, implicitly encourage this by using her for her "unique talents".


 * Action Fashionista
 * Action Girl: Awesomely so. Has some character traits of the Dark Action Girl, but not to a serious degree.
 * Action Girlfriend
 * Animorphism
 * Attack Attack Attack: Unsurprisingly, this is her battle strategy when she temporarily becomes leader of the Animorphs in The Weakness
 * Bat Out of Hell: In The Underground her cover morph is a brown bat.
 * Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Outside of battle, according to the others. Averted in battle -- she is just as likely to get hurt as the guys.
 * The Berserker
 * Big Badass Bird of Prey: Her avian morph is a bald eagle. It's the second-largest bird any of them have.
 * The Big Guy: Jake: "I think in a bad fight, I'd rather have you with me than anyone else."
 * Blondes Are Violent: She does grow to enjoy the fighting way too much.
 * Blood Knight: Tries not to fall into this, but fails more and more as the series goes on, ending in.
 * Bullet Proof Fashion Plate
 * Catch Phrase: "Let's do it!"
 * Challenging the Chief: Her and Jake butt heads a few times.
 * Cool Cat: Her first cover morph is Fluffer Mckitty, her best friend Melissa's pet cat.
 * Cute Bruiser: Blonde beauty in her regular form. Elephant or grizzly bear when fighting.
 * Dirt Forcefield: This is a bit of a Running Gag between her and Cassie.
 * : Is it ever.
 * Everything Is Worse With Bears: Grizzly bears, to be precise.
 * Evil Me Scares Me
 * The Fashionista
 * First Name Basis: Throughout the series. Her last name might be Berenson, but that's never confirmed.
 * Fragile Speedster: In The Weakness her and the rest of the team morph cheetahs. It's her cover morph for that book.
 * Futureshadowing:
 * Giant Squid: The whole team morphs one, but Rachel gets it as her cover morph in The Exposed.
 * Grievous Harm With a Body: She's been known to use her own severed limbs as weapons in battle if need be.
 * In Harms Way
 * Helpless Good Side: Nice Rachel from The Separation.
 * Hero With an F In Good
 * Informed Judaism: Rachel, like Jake, is Jewish, but it doesn't play into her story much either.
 * Jumped At the Call: It's often said that she is the only one in the group that actually enjoys fighting the Yeerks. However, in rare moments even Rachel has expressed her desire to be a just a regular girl rather than the warrior her friends see her as.
 * The Lancer: The challenger part of Rachel. At times she's almost closer to the Evil Counterpart of this trope. For much of the series, and especially near the end, she's effectively The Dragon to Jake, while Marco and Tobias fullfill the more traditional Lancer roles.
 * Laser Guided Amnesia: She suffers from this in the first Megamorphs book.
 * Life or Limb Decision: Forced to make one in The Solution.
 * Lovable Alpha Bitch
 * The Magnificent: "Xena: Warrior Princess."
 * More Deadly Than the Male
 * My Future Self and Me: In The Stranger Rachel meets her counterpart from a Bad Future.
 * Never Smile At a Crocodile: Rachel morphs one in The Reaction.
 * One of the Boys: Her father tells her mother in The Stranger that Rachel is as good as a son because she's a tough as a boy. They go hiking, watch ball games and go to gymnastic events together. Double subverted, though, since Rachel is also characterized as The Fashionista who insists on hiding outfits (not clothes, outfits) in Cassie's barn just because she wants to look immaculate at all times.
 * Power Blonde: Don't mistake her for just a pretty face. She's called "Xena: Warrior Princess." for a reason.
 * Psycho Sidekick: Arguably to Jake
 * Smarter Than You Look
 * Starfish Character: In The Separation.
 * Stranger in A Familiar Land: In her last book, Rachel notes that she feels like a stranger in her own school.
 * Super Powered Evil Side: It's her cover morph in The Return.
 * Mean Rachel from The Separation also qualifies.
 * Superpower Meltdown: In The Reaction. Her.
 * Token Evil Teammate: She admits as much herself: "They needed me to be the bad guy. And I needed them to be the good guys."
 * Violently Protective Girlfriend: As Taylor finds out the hard way.
 * War Elephant: Her first morph is an elephant and it sees regular use in battle until she swaps it in favor of the grizzly bear.
 * You Dirty Rat: A heroic example. She and Cassie morph rats in The Secret and it's her cover morph in The Solution.
 * War Elephant: Her first morph is an elephant and it sees regular use in battle until she swaps it in favor of the grizzly bear.
 * You Dirty Rat: A heroic example. She and Cassie morph rats in The Secret and it's her cover morph in The Solution.

Tobias


"He was a sweet, poetic kind of guy. The kind bullies love to pick on. He used to have messy, out-of-control hair and dreamy eyes that always seemed to be looking at something no one else could see. Used to... Now he has fierce, angry eyes that look through you like laser beams."

The quiet and thoughtful loner. Neglected at home and bullied at school, the morphing ability provided him with an escape. Finding freedom as a red-tailed hawk, he soon broke the two hour limit and trapped himself in the bird body for keeps (he later regains his morphing ability, but with the hawk as his normal form). As you'd expect, flying aside, living as a hawk is not always fun, and the harsh realities of living as a part of nature (such as starving when hunting is bad and having to fight for territory) are piled on top of Tobias' increasing inability to function as a human and the fact that he's a major component of Earth's defense.


 * Airborne Aircraft Carrier: Interestingly, he serves as a living version of this on more than one occasion, carrying the rest of the team to and from missions when they're in bug morph.
 * Animorphism
 * Badass Bookworm: It's mentioned that he spends some of his time reading books over people's shoulders.
 * Big Badass Bird of Prey: Red-tailed hawk, the morph he is stuck in.
 * Big Creepy Crawlies: Taxxons. Invoked because Tobias has dubious honor of morphing one in The Test
 * Body Double: In The Illusion Tobias acquires and morphs Ax to convince the Yeerks he's an Andalite.
 * Bully Hunter: Seen most notably in The Android, where he's more than happy to give a few bullies chasing Erek a talon haircut.
 * Butterfly of Doom:
 * Changeling Fantasy
 * The Chick: A lot of debate on this one.
 * Death From Above: To small mammals and Yeerks.
 * Drives Like Crazy: He's an even worse driver than Marco. This is to be expected, though.
 * Dog Walks You: Unintentionally evoked by Tobias in his last book, The Diversion. He has to morph Champ, his mother's seeing-eye dog, to rescue her.
 * Double Consciousness
 * Fan Nickname: Emohawk
 * First Name Basis: Lampshaded in The Pretender. His last name might be Fangor, but that's never confirmed.
 * Flowers for Algernon Syndrome:
 * Friendless Background
 * Future Badass: In The Familiar, Tobias has trapped himself in Ax's morph permanently and is ten years older, giving him the appearance of the second coming of Elfangor. He is also the hidden mastermind behind the EF.
 * Go for The Eye: Seeing as how he fights most battles in his hawk form, this is one of his favored tactics.
 * Hair Raising Hare: Tobias morphs a rabbit in The Pretender to experience what it feels like to be prey.
 * Half Human Hybrid:
 * Herald: In two senses. He's the one who pushes Jake into accepting what they saw was real, and he's also the Ellimist's favored Animorph.
 * Heroic Safe Mode: He resorts to this in The Illusion to keep from going insane from being tortured.
 * I Did What I Had to Do: He hauls this one out in the second Megamorphs book after
 * I Just Want to Be Normal: Complicated by the fact that there is much evidence that Tobias prefers being a hawk. This doesn't stop the angst though.
 * Jumped At the Call: Even more so than Rachel. He was the first of the Animorphs to try morphing, and pretty much dragooned Jake into admitting it was real.
 * Luke I Am Your Father:
 * The Messiah: The free Hork-Bajir see him as one.
 * My Future Self and Me: Exploited by the Ellimist to.
 * Non Human Sidekick: Sort of. He ended up playing this role in the games straight, though.
 * Non Sequitur Thud: In The Discovery Tobias accidentally knocks himself silly against David's window and starts rambling about Clue.
 * Number Two: Jake appoints him leader of the Marco/Tobias/Ax sub-team, which ended up carrying the end of the war.
 * Out of Character Moment: Infamously done in Megamorphs #02, to the point of most fans treating that book as Fanon Discontinuity.
 * Parental Abandonment
 * Predators Are Mean: Subverted - Tobias regularly kills and eats small animals to survive, but he's actually one of the kinder, gentler members of the team.
 * Red Pill B Lue Pill: In The Change, the Ellimist gives Tobias the chance to turn back into a human, but only if he gives up his morphing power and abandons the fight against the Yeerks.
 * Shapeshifter Default Form:
 * Shapeshifter Mode Lock
 * The Smart Guy: Jake's "go-to" guy, as his "personal Air Force," who acts as the team scout before they go out on a mission will know what they can expect.
 * The Stoic: Not really, but in his human form he comes across as such. He's been a hawk so long he forgets to make facial expressions, you see.
 * Stockholm Syndrome: Courtesy of Taylor. See below for more on her.
 * Super Senses: As a hawk he has amazing sight and hearing.
 * The Chosen One: The Ellimist flat-out tells him as such in The Change.
 * Unable to Cry: And it ends up saving his life. Definitely a case of Blessed With Suck.
 * Why Did It Have To Be Water?: He hates water missions. It's a bird thing.
 * Yank the Dogs Chain:
 * Super Senses: As a hawk he has amazing sight and hearing.
 * The Chosen One: The Ellimist flat-out tells him as such in The Change.
 * Unable to Cry: And it ends up saving his life. Definitely a case of Blessed With Suck.
 * Why Did It Have To Be Water?: He hates water missions. It's a bird thing.
 * Yank the Dogs Chain:

Cassie


"If you want to picture Cassie, think of a short, cute girl with very short black hair, wearing overalls and big muddy boots and looking totally capable of giving a tetanus shot to an angry bear."

The kind and compassionate member of the group, a young animal lover who helps her parents at their Wildlife Rehabilitation Clinic. She often serves as the group's "moral compass". Initially a moral absolutist, the things she's forced to do cause her to re-evaluate her ethics.


 * Action Girl: Not to the degree Rachel is, but she's still a more than competent fighter.
 * All Up to You: In The Sickness.
 * Animorphism
 * Bad Liar: It isn't that Cassie gives herself away when she tries to lie or fast talk, it's more that she just can't think of anything to say. (For example, when asked to give her phone number, she said it was 12345678.) This is usually played for laughs by stacking her up against Marco.
 * Beautiful All Along: Invoked in one of her books. Rachel gets her to dress up in designer clothes and suddenly guys everywhere are noticing her.
 * Beware the Nice Ones
 * Big Badass Wolf: Her main battle morph. It's her cover morph in The Secret.
 * Body Horror: Notably averted - Cassie is an estreen, meaning that she can control the way she morphs. The only other character seen with this ability is the Andalite prodigy Estrid.
 * Bourgeois Bohemian: She's very idealistic and comes from a decidedly upper middle class background.
 * Color Me Black: Inverted in Megamorphs #03 - confronted with a racist in 1934's Princeton University, Cassie opts to turn herself white. Namely, into a polar bear.
 * The Face: Neither fighting nor scouting etc is her speciality. Her domain is being The Empath.
 * The Chick: arguably the most tradtionally feminine since Rachel is a Blood Knight.
 * The Heart: The "moral compass" of the group. Deconstructed in later books -- her natural empathy may torture her, but her insight into the feelings and motivations of others allows her to become the most successfully manipulative Animorph.
 * The Conscience
 * Farmers Daughter: Maybe. It's not clear if either of her parents were farmers before becoming vets, or if they still are, but she lives on a farm.
 * First Name Basis
 * Forgot I Could Fly: Infamously done with her alternate counterpart in The Familiar.
 * Friend to All Living Things: Including, in at least one case, a Yeerk.
 * Future Badass: Subverted -
 * Gambit Roulette
 * Girl Next Door
 * Heroic BSOD: In The Departure.
 * Heroic Dolphin: Her first cover morph, seen in The Message.
 * Horn Attack: In The Hidden Cassie morphs an African cape buffalo aptly dubbed Aka the Widow-Maker. It's her cover morph for that book.
 * Identity Impersonator: In The Reaction Cassie acquires and morphs Rachel to throw a suspicious Yeerk off her trail.
 * I Just Want to Be Normal
 * Incorruptible Pure Pureness: She's really the only main character who never changes or grows in any way.
 * In Harmony With Nature: Subverted in The Secret but played depressingly straight in The Message.
 * Kangaroos Represent Australia: Presumably the reason why The Unexpected exists.
 * Living Weapon: Cassie's plan to get rid of the Helmacrons in The Suspicion is to acquire and morph anteaters, the one animal in the world specially designed to see, attack, and destroy creatures like them. It works.
 * Manipulative Bitch: She's the most compassionate, but she also gets people very well, which means that she can manipulate people if she feels like she has to--and given the circumstances she's put in, this naturally comes up.
 * The Messiah
 * Morality Pet: She becomes this to.
 * Nutty Squirrel: Cassie's the first Animorph to acquire a squirrel, as seen in The Message. Eventually the rest of the team follow in The Proposal.
 * The Owl Knowing One: Her last cover morph, seen in The Ultimate, is a great horned owl. Ironically, she acquires this morph pretty early in the series.
 * Pretty Butterflies: Brutally subverted in The Departure. It's her cover morph for that book.
 * Puppeteer Parasite: In The Sickness Cassie becomes the only Animorph to ever morph a Yeerk.
 * Real Women Don't Wear Dresses
 * Reluctant Warrior
 * The Smart Guy: Her parents are both vets, so she knows a lot about animals.
 * Sapient Cetaceans: She morphs one, a humpback whale, in Megamorphs #01. It sees fairly regular use in later books.
 * Sapient Steed: Her first morph is a horse. In The Unknown, she becomes a literal sapient steed for a jockey thinking he's riding a famous racehorse.
 * Screw This I'm Outta Here: In The Departure.
 * Sharing a Body: With Aldrea in The Prophecy.
 * Smelly Skunk: Obtains this morph in The Secret. Visser Three finds out not to mess with one the hard way.
 * Soapbox Sadie
 * Superpower Lottery: As if being an estreen wasn't enough,
 * Team Mom
 * Technical Pacifist
 * Termite Trouble: Cassie's Heroic BSOD in The Secret happens because she's forced to kill a termite queen.
 * Tomboy and Girly Girl: With Rachel, but which is which depends on the situation.
 * Unresolved Sexual Tension: With Jake at the start of the series.
 * Termite Trouble: Cassie's Heroic BSOD in The Secret happens because she's forced to kill a termite queen.
 * Tomboy and Girly Girl: With Rachel, but which is which depends on the situation.
 * Unresolved Sexual Tension: With Jake at the start of the series.

Marco


"Marco thinks the whole world is just a setup for a joke. Marco will tell a joke while he's bleeding and terrified and in pain. But there are times when his eyes lose their skeptical expression and grow glittery and dangerous."

Jake's best bud since infancy, the comedian of the group, as well as most cynical, ruthless and practical. He was against fighting the Yeerks at the beginning, but soon changed his resolve when it became personal. Described as a "paranoid nutcase" with a "Hamlet complex", Marco's knack for strategic and critical thinking was instrumental when it came to missions and the security for the group, but his tendency to hold efficiency and pragmatism above all else would cause him to have personal conflicts.

"Jake: Do you hate trash cans? Is that it? Do you just HATE TRASH CANS?"
 * Affectionate Nickname: Often calls Rachel "Xena: Warrior Princess."
 * Animorphism
 * The Call Knows Where You Live
 * Catch Phrase: "Are you insane!?" and variants thereof.
 * Class Clown
 * Commander Contrarian: For good reason. Marco deliberately points out flaws in plans so that they can be eliminated or at least acknowledged before they go into action, making the plan as good as is reasonably possible.
 * Cool Loser
 * Creepy Cockroach: They all have cockroach morphs, but Marco's the one who gets to have one as his cover morph in The Reunion.
 * The Cynic
 * Dark and Troubled Past: Had an idyllic childhood until the sudden disappearance of his mother caused his family to break down, making him much more cynical and scornful of idealistic beliefs, regarding expedience and pragmatism as of prime importance.
 * Deadpan Snarker
 * Devils Advocate: Tends to present this view when the group debates something, acting as a foil for Cassie's more idealistic leanings.
 * Don't You Dare Pity Me
 * The Drag Along: At first.
 * Drives Like Crazy: A Running Gag.

"Rachel: Kinda the perfect morph for Marco, when you thought about it."
 * Everythings Better With Llamas: Invoked by him in The Reaction.
 * Everything Is Better With Monkeys: Or, as Marco would probably specify, gorillas.
 * Everythings Worse With Bees: It's his cover morph and hinted at in The Other.
 * Everythings Even Worse With Sharks: Marco feels this way, but it's justified - one almost bit him in half in The Message. Ironically, he ends up with a hammerhead shark as his cover morph in The Escape.
 * First Name Basis
 * Good Is Not Nice: Marco is sarcastic, condescending, and a borderline Smug Snake at times. He's also firmly one of the good guys.
 * Genre Savvy
 * The Hyena: Ironically, he never actually morphs a hyena.
 * I Did What I Had to Do: How he defends some of his more morally dubious actions.
 * If You Die I Call Your Stuff: To Jake in The Answer.
 * I Just Want to Be Normal
 * I Know Mortal Kombat: He never said he knew how to drive, just that he had the high score on a driving game called Wipeout.
 * I'm Not Doing That Again: Spoken word-for-word in The Reunion.
 * Insistent Terminology: He morphs a gorilla, not a monkey.
 * Killer Gorilla: His main battle morph.
 * The Lancer: Jake's other go-to guy and best friend, for his strategic abilities. He's probably the closest to being a traditional Lancer: The Hero's best friend, has a contrasting personality, second-guesses all orders (albeit for good reason),etc, etc. Also plays this role consistently, automatically assuming the role of Commander Contrarian and second-in-command to whoever's giving orders, whether it's Jake, Rachel, or even Tobias.
 * Luke I Am Your Father:
 * Manipulative Bastard: Of the aggravating variety, as opposed to Cassie's more empathic one. She predicts emotional reactions; Marco screws with you to get the one he wants.
 * Meta Guy
 * Missing Mom
 * Mister Muffykins: His dad's new beau, Nora, has a poodle named Euclid. He morphs it to harass the Yeerk self-help guru William Roger Tennant and it's his cover morph in The Proposal.
 * Mommy Issues
 * Morally Ambiguous Ducktorate: His last book, The Absolute, sees him morphing a mallard duck alongside Tobias and Ax.
 * Polar Bear: He, along with the rest of the team, gets a polar bear morph in The Extreme. It's his cover morph for that book.
 * Promoted to Parent: In the early books, he was basically the responsible one compared to his father, who fell apart after Eva's disappearance. Fortunately, he eventually gets over this.
 * Properly Paranoid
 * Refusal of the Call: He was the one most against fighting the Yeerks in the beginning.
 * Running Gag: His inability to drive, "Are you INSANE?!"
 * Sad Clown: He had psychological/emotional issues even before the series started, due to the disappearance of his mother. He often jokes to hide his fears and insecurities.
 * Scaled Up: A rare heroic example. In The Discovery he morphs David's pet cobra Spawn. It's even Lampshaded by Rachel.


 * Screw This I'm Outta Here: In The Predator. He changes his mind after
 * Shapeshifter Identity Crisis: In The Proposal.
 * Shape Shifter Mashup : The Proposal again.
 * Silly Rabbit Idealism Is for Kids: Often tells Cassie this.
 * Spiders Are Scary: In The Android, Marco has to morph a wolf spider. He really, really doesn't want to.
 * The Smart Guy: Strategy. "Sees the line" from point A to point B.
 * Amusing in that his grades are alluded to be the worst before the series begins, but he's far, far smarter than he lets on.
 * Smug Snake: Can approach being an antiheroic version of this, and it's certainly how Rachel and later David see him. He's very good at manipulating people, but his paranoia and arrogance can, and sometimes do, get in the way. And then there's the sarcastic personality, and the tendency towards smirking, and advocating the Shooting of Dogs. Still a good guy, and high-functioning enough to be very useful.
 * Sour Supporter: Again, at first.
 * Stepford Snarker
 * Swallowed Whole: Marco (in spider morph) gets eaten by a bird in The Android.
 * This Is Gonna Suck: It's pretty much his job to say this.

Aximili-Esgarrouth-Isthill (Ax)


"You are now the eldest child. Do you, Aximili, take on the burden of avenging your brother's death?"

Elfangor's younger brother, Aximili joined the group when he was rescued by the kids from the wreckage of Elfangor's Dome ship, which fell into the Pacific Ocean. Initially considering himself an outsider, Aximili, or "Ax" as he came to be known, retained many of the traits and values of his people (which ranged from loyalty and discipline to outright ruthlessness and xenophobia), and the distinctions led to both comedic and insightful critiques on Earth customs. As the series progressed, it became apparent that he and the kids were more alike than different, and as he adapted to life on Earth Ax was forced, like his Earth counterparts, to question the principles that he had hitherto taken for granted.

"Ax: We have seventeen minutes left.
 * Affectionate Nickname: Aside from "Ax", the others sometimes call him Ax-man.
 * Alien Among Us
 * Alien Arts Are Appreciated: Has a great appreciation for many human inventions. He even wonders why humans use computers when they have books. He considers the cinnamon bun to be our greatest achievement, however.
 * Aliens Steal Cable: He loves television.
 * Almighty Janitor: He is an aristh, the equivalent of a cadet, and yet he manages to fight and hinder the Yeerks alongside five human teenagers.
 * Animorphism
 * Awesome Moment of Crowning: He was an "aristh" (cadet) at the time he was marooned on Earth, . Even Elfangor hadn't accomplished that.
 * Beware My Stinger Tail
 * Big Badass Bird of Prey: Not as big or as badass as the others, but Ax has a northern harrier morph. It's his cover morph in The Arrival.
 * Big Eater / Extreme Omnivore: Because Andalites don't have mouths, they eat through their hooves. When he becomes human, he experiences taste for the first time. Hilarity Ensues, especially since he can't tell the difference between things that are edible and things like cigarette butts.
 * Bug Buzz: He, along with the rest of the team, morphs a mosquito in The Decision. It's his cover morph for that book.
 * Blunt Metaphors Trauma
 * Catch Phrase: "We have x of your minutes left."
 * Cloudcuckoolander: Comes across as one when he's in human morph, between his imperfect grasp of human customs, his bizarre eating habits, and his Verbal Tic of playing with the sounds of spoken English at every possible opportunity. On at least one occasion the other Animorphs passed him off as a Funny Foreigner.
 * The Comically Serious
 * Cryptically Unhelpful Answer: When Tobias asks him how he eats in The Alien.
 * Daytime Drama Queen: Spends his free time watching human soap operas.
 * Delicious Distraction
 * Does Not Understand Sarcasm: He gets better about it as the series progresses.
 * Everythings Better With Cows: Decidedly not the case in The Experiment. Not only is it Ax's worst-written book, but in the context of the narrative he and Tobias morph cows to infiltrate a slaughterhouse.
 * Exact Time to Failure: Has an amazing ability to keep time in his head. He acts as a timer during missions to make sure the group doesn't spend more than two hours in morph.
 * Extreme Omnivore: Ax has been known to eat everything from nachos to paper cups to cigarette butts.
 * Fantastic Anthropologist
 * Going Native
 * Honor Before Reason: At first. It's kind of an Andalite thing.
 * Humanshifting: Ax is unique for morphing more humans than any other Animorph.
 * Humanity Ensues
 * Humans Are Bastards: He becomes disgusted with humans during the third Megamorhs book, when he sees the nature of human wars. He claims that though the Andalites had their own wars, they were never as pointless or sadistic as human wars were. He also claims that Andalites never deliberately killed children or committed genocide to other Andalites. He gets over it afterwards, though.
 * Humans Through Alien Eyes
 * Humorless Alien: At first, though he gets better as the series progresses.
 * Hugh Mann
 * I Just Like Saying the Word
 * Klingons Love Shakespeare
 * The Magnificent:.
 * Mix and Match Man: His human morph is made from Jake, Marco, Rachel and Cassie's DNA.
 * Mundane Object Amazement
 * My Friends and Zoidberg: All of the blurbs on the back cover described the adventures of "X (the main character of that particular installment), the Animorphs, and Ax," with the subtle implication that, being an alien, Ax doesn't count as a true Animorph.
 * No Mouth
 * No Nudity Taboo: Since his species never wears clothes, he frequently wonders aloud why humans even bother with them. He also feels no embarrassment when the other team members morph nude in front of him.
 * Our Centaurs Are Different
 * Pretty Boy: In human morph, which is attributed in part to having two girls' DNA.
 * Proud Warrior Race Guy
 * Running Gag: Aside from his food obsession and bluntness, there's the way he always calls Jake "Prince Jake", only for Jake to say "Don't call me Prince", and repeats himself when in human morph. Morph. Mor-phhh... As the series progresses, it evolves from a Verbal Tic into playful team banter.
 * It's eventually noted that if Jake doesn't say "Don't call me prince", it's a sign of how serious the situation is.
 * Rascally Raccoon: His last book, The Sacrifice, sees him morph a raccoon to
 * Scaled Up: In The Alien he morphs a rattlesnake in an attempt to assassinate Visser Three.
 * Sense Freak: See Big Eater above.
 * Sixth Ranger
 * The Smart Guy: Knows about alien things. You know, being an alien and all.
 * Some Call Me Ax: Or occasionally, Phillip.
 * Spock Speak
 * Token Non Human
 * Trademark Favorite Food: Cinnabons
 * Two of Your Earth Minutes: Very much a deliberate Running Gag on his part, practically serving as his Catch Phrase:
 * Two of Your Earth Minutes: Very much a deliberate Running Gag on his part, practically serving as his Catch Phrase:

Marco: (after a pause) Seventeen *minutes*?

Ax: (correcting himself) Seventeen of your Earth minutes."


 * Verbal Tic: As an Andalite, he has no mouth and communicates with thought-speak. Whenever he holds a conversation while morphed into a human, he can never go very long without repeating individual parts of words, often but not always drawing out their component sounds. SOU-nds. Sauw-nnnn-dss.
 * You Can't Go Home Again

David
"Smirking, pouting, easily offended David. David, who half the time seemed to be reckless, but other times had been cowardly and quickly panicked. David, the new Animorph."

After finding the Morphing Cube and subsequently revealing its location, David became target number one for Yeerk forces who were searching to gain the morphing power. After a battle that destroyed his house, David's parents were taken by Yeerk forces. Frightened, alone and unable to trust anyone, David was given the morphing power by the others as part of an attempt to recruit him, but his growing resentment for them strained relationships within the group.


 * Ambition Is Evil: David's self-serving nature is played in stark contrast to his heroic and selfless teammates.
 * Animorphism
 * Better Living Through Evil: He proposes using the morphing power to get rich.
 * Big Badass Bird of Prey: His first morph is a golden eagle, by far the largest raptor any of the Animorphs have morphed thus far.
 * Blond Guys Are Evil
 * Choose Your Own Adventure: In Alternamorphs #02, the reader is cast as a thinly veiled Expy of David, to the point of paragraphs in the first three chapters being lifted verbatim from The Discovery. It's the closest thing David gets to a narrated book.
 * Cowardly Lion: Both figuratively in #20 and literally in #21.
 * Divide and Conquer:
 * Even Evil Has Loved Ones: For all his faults, David seems to have genuinely loved his parents, going so far as planning to ransom the blue box in exchange for their safe return. He only abandons this plan when Cassie makes it clear it won't work.
 * First Name Basis
 * Flaw Exploitation: He rivals Marco in how good he is at this.
 * Grail in The Garbage: He was about to sell the morphing cube online before the Animorphs caught wind of it. Worse, he was about to unwittingly sell it to Visser Three.
 * Hallucinations: Blink and you'll miss it:
 * He Knows Too Much
 * Identity Impersonator: In The Threat he acquires and morphs a Controller briefly.
 * Kick the Dog: Killing a random bird the instant he gets his golden eagle morph. He tries to pass it off as being taken over by the morph. Some of the Animorphs buy it, Marco does not.
 * King of Beasts: His lion morph.
 * Lightning Bruiser: Definitely favors these. His battle morphs for land, sea, and air - lion, orca and golden eagle respectively - all count.
 * Manipulative Bastard
 * Military Brat: His father was an NSA agent and he had to move around frequently throughout his life.
 * New Transfer Student
 * Nobody Calls Me Coward: One of his main character flaws. He does stupid things to show off and look good, and totally loses his cool when Rachel calls him a coward.
 * Panthera Awesome: His main battle morph is a lion.
 * Plug N Play Friends: A deconstruction.
 * Recurring Character:.
 * Rule of Pool: His house has a pool and Marco is envious of his good fortune. The pool comes into play again a book later, when Ax tricks a trio of Hork-Bajir into throwing themselves into it.
 * Screw This I'm Outta Here: When he sees Jake morph a dragonfly in The Threat he says this, though he doesn't go anywhere.
 * Scaled Up: He morphs a rattlesnake in The Solution.
 * Screw the Rules I Have Supernatural Powers: David's unique among the Animorphs in that he sees nothing wrong with using his powers for selfish ends. Ironically, he gets this idea from them in the first place.
 * Sixth Ranger
 * Smug Snake: Like Marco, he can be interpreted as this.
 * Surrounded By Idiots: In The Return.
 * Take a Third Option:
 * Took a Level In Badass
 * Ungrateful Bastard: He's not too thankful to the Animorphs for saving his life. Whether this is just straight-out ingratitude or bitterness that they left his parents behind is never made clear.
 * The Unchosen One: Both literally and figuratively.
 * Unnamed Parents
 * Verbal Tic: David has a tendency to say the name of the person he's talking to several times in a single conversation, usually when he's trying to be threatening. In one occasion in The Solution, he says Rachel's name six times in one page.
 * Xanatos Speed Chess:
 * You Dirty Rat
 * Sixth Ranger
 * Smug Snake: Like Marco, he can be interpreted as this.
 * Surrounded By Idiots: In The Return.
 * Take a Third Option:
 * Took a Level In Badass
 * Ungrateful Bastard: He's not too thankful to the Animorphs for saving his life. Whether this is just straight-out ingratitude or bitterness that they left his parents behind is never made clear.
 * The Unchosen One: Both literally and figuratively.
 * Unnamed Parents
 * Verbal Tic: David has a tendency to say the name of the person he's talking to several times in a single conversation, usually when he's trying to be threatening. In one occasion in The Solution, he says Rachel's name six times in one page.
 * Xanatos Speed Chess:
 * You Dirty Rat
 * Unnamed Parents
 * Verbal Tic: David has a tendency to say the name of the person he's talking to several times in a single conversation, usually when he's trying to be threatening. In one occasion in The Solution, he says Rachel's name six times in one page.
 * Xanatos Speed Chess:
 * You Dirty Rat
 * Xanatos Speed Chess:
 * You Dirty Rat

The Auxiliary Animorphs
"We trusted them and they did us proud."

When the Animorphs are finally uncovered and forced to go on the run, they decide to recruit some fresh blood in case they are killed. Rationalizing that the Yeerks would have no use for handicapped hosts, they do their recruiting at a children's hospital. Enter the Auxiliary Animorphs.


 * Action Girl: Collete, Kelly and Erica.
 * Animorphism
 * Cool Cat: Timmy's battle morph is a bobcat.
 * Continuity Drift: One of them, Timmy, is referred to as Tuan in a later book.
 * Cute Bruiser: Collete
 * Disability Superpower: They master morphing a lot faster than the kids originally did. Cassie theorizes this is because, while their bodies are weaker, their minds are stronger.
 * First Name Basis: All of them.
 * Fragile Speedster: James, like Jake, has a peregrine falcon flight morph.
 * Handicapped Badass
 * The Leader: James, like Jake, is a Type II personality with a Type IV style of leadership.
 * Mauve Shirt
 * Never Smile At a Crocodile: Collete's battle morph is a crocodile.
 * Opt Out - Right before the final battle, a lot of the Auxiliary Animorphs decide that they want to sit it out, due to the fact that their friend Ray was recently killed. Jake doesn't really care and makes them go anyway. ("We didn't give them morphing power so they could have fun flying around. This is when we need them. All of them. You're their leader, James, so lead.")
 * Panthera Awesome: James's battle morph is a lion.
 * Recurring Character: They appear in The Ultimate, The Absolute, The Sacrifice and The Answer.
 * Sacrificial Lion
 * Supporting Leader: James, the leader of the Auxiliary Animorphs, is this to Jake.
 * Throwing Off the Disability: James was injured in an accident, so he is healed by the morphing power. Most of the other auxiliaries aren't so lucky.
 * Supporting Leader: James, the leader of the Auxiliary Animorphs, is this to Jake.
 * Throwing Off the Disability: James was injured in an accident, so he is healed by the morphing power. Most of the other auxiliaries aren't so lucky.

Visser Three (Esplin 9466 the primary), later,


"He looked so much like Ax. So much like Prince Elfangor. And yet, so totally different. The difference wasn't something you saw. It was something you felt. A shadow on your soul. A darkness that blotted out the light of the sun. Evil. Destruction. His body was an Andalite. He was the only Andalite-Controller in existence. The only Yeerk ever to infest an Andalite body. The only Yeerk with the Andalite power to morph. Visser Three."

The only Yeerk to ever infest an Andalite, Esplin 9466 Primary, in his time as Visser Three, was put in charge of operations on Earth. Though he carried out the orders of his superiors and employed the strategy of infiltration and subversion suggested by his rival Visser One, his violent and impulsive personality lent itself more brutal tactics. A long-time proponent of a strategy of open war, his efforts to be promoted to Visser One were stymied by his inability to capture or kill what he believed to be "Andalite bandits", and his growing obsession with the Animorphs paved the way for his descent into insanity and paranoia.


 * Zero Percent Approval Rating: He is universally hated and feared among his fellow Yeerks. Not that he needs their approval.
 * Aliens Are Bastards: Boy is he ever!
 * Animorphism
 * Asskicking Equals Authority
 * Authority Equals Asskicking: One of the reasons he's still in power.
 * Ax Crazy
 * Bad Boss: He could well be the Trope Namer. Not only does he sarcastically mock his subordinates, but he kills them for little-to-no reason. Didn't kill the Animorphs? Decapitated. Made a mistake? Decapitated. Interrupted the Visser? Decapitated. Closed a door too slowly? De-fucking-capitated. You can't win with this guy, to the point where Yeerks pass over promotions because it means having to work with Visser Three, and therefore probably being decapi-SLASH- *thud*. Lampshaded: Jake points out that Visser Three's tendencies to kill his subordinates make them hate and fear him, making him (and them) less effective. He also says that that gives the Animorphs an advantage over him.
 * Big Bad: Played with in that, while he is the primary antagonist of the series and is quite high up in the Yeerk hierarchy, there are still two Vissers and the Council of Thirteen above him.
 * Big Damn Villains: In The Mutation.
 * Bigger Is Better: A philosophy he subscribes to wholeheartedly. Subverted in The Arrival, when he finally realizes bigger is not always better and morphs a small creature to avoid being assassinated.
 * Blob Monster: One of his morphs in The Return. Rachel aptly describes it as 'Killer Jell-O'.
 * Bond One Liner: He gets a few good ones.
 * Breath Weapon: His most powerful and only recurring morph, the eight-everythinged creature seen in The Invasion and The Resistance, breathes fireballs from each of its eight heads.
 * The Brute: He only knows one tactic -- Hit the enemy with everything you've got until it's dead.
 * The Caligula
 * Card Carrying Villain: He got this way when handled by the ghostwriters. See The Extreme and The Illusion for good examples.
 * Combat Tentacles: More than a few of his morphs feature them, most notably the Lerdethak from The Forgotten and the unnamed monster he morphs in The Ultimate.
 * Curb Stomp Battle: Most of his fights with the Animorphs end up like this.
 * Cyclops: In The Sickness he morphs a creature that's basically a giant, tentacled eyeball.
 * Dishing Out Dirt: In The Visitor he morphs a three-legged, twenty-foot tall creature that's strong enough to rip up chunks of cement from the ground and throw them.
 * Enemy Mine: Teams up with the Animorphs to escape The Nartec in The Mutation.
 * Don't forget when he (however briefly) teams up with the Animorphs against the Aliens With Big Egos. I am, of course, referring to the Helmacrons.
 * Dragon in Chief: Sort of; he is subserviant to the Council of Thirteen, but is much more "hands-on" and thus threatening. He's also in charge of the invasion of Earth, so he is the main enemy.
 * Evil Gloating: He's a master of this. Read The Threat for the most triumphant example.
 * Evil Overlord
 * Evil Tastes Good: He has two morphs, the Anatarean Bogg and Vanarx, specifically devoted to this.
 * Feathered Fiend: In The Decision he attacks Ax as a kafit bird, a Big Badass Bird of Prey from the Andalite home world.
 * Giant Enemy Crab: In The Reunion he morphs an alien chameleon crab.
 * Giant Flyer: He's got two known morphs that fall under this banner: the Bievilerd from The Revelation and an unnamed monster described as something like a giant winged porcupine pterodactyl in The Underground.
 * Giant Squid: The last morph he ever uses is one of these, seen in The Sacrifice. He may have used it before in The Mutation.
 * General Failure: When it comes to the "Andalite bandits", anyway. That said, don't attack him head on, as you will die a very painful and horrific death.
 * Hollywood Acid: Two of his morphs have been known to use it: the Kaftid he morphs in The Pretender and an unnamed morph from The Return that's described as a giant alien alligator gorilla.
 * The Juggernaut: In The Message he chases the kids as a giant, untiring Sea Monster called a Mardrut. They're only saved by the fortuitous arrival of magic talking whales.
 * Kill It With Fire: He's fond of this. In the first book he morphs a monstrous, unnamed eight-headed creature and in The Mutation he morphs the Luminar, a blazing creature that can flash-fry its enemies by pointing a finger. Hasbro must have caught on to it, because the first Visser Three toy transformed into a form never seen in the books dubbed the Inferno Beast.
 * Large Ham / Chewing the Scenery / No Indoor Voice: Something of a Running Gag; every time it is explained that thought-speak can be sent to one person or a few, that's when the Visser ANNOUNCES HIS PRESENCE TO EVERY PERSON IN RANGE!
 * The Leader: Type III.
 * Muck Monster: He's got two known morphs like this, one seen in The Weakness and the other in The Hidden.
 * Multi Armed and Dangerous: The unnamed creature he morphs in The Threat. All we know about it is that it is 'dark and large and has more arms than it should'.
 * Names to Run Away From Really Fast: Among Andalites, he is known as 'The Abomination'.
 * No One Could Survive That: The actual Yeerk Esplin 9466 has made a shtick out of surviving against impossible odds. See The Andalite Chronicles, The Hork-Bajir Chronicles, and The Alien.
 * Off With His Head: His preferred method of execution.
 * One Winged Angel: He has a menagerie of monstrous morphs he's acquired from across the galaxy.
 * Plant Aliens: His Lerdethak morph from The Forgotten.
 * Prehensile Hair: In The Suspicion he morphs a Medusa-like creature with scythe-tentacles for hair.
 * Puppeteer Parasite
 * Sea Monster: In The Escape he morphs a bright yellow alien sea serpent. His Lebtin Javelin Fish from The Reaction and and Mardrut from The Message also count.
 * Shoot the Messenger: All the goddamn time.
 * Spike Shooter: In The Reaction he morphs a Lebtin Javelin Fish, a kind of manta ray that fires spears from its mouth. His Dule Fansa also shoots spikes from its four arms.
 * The Starscream: To Visser One.
 * Start of Darkness: The Hork-Bajir Chronicles probably counts, since aside from Dak and Alrea's story, about a third of the novel is spent exploring his own back story.
 * Stronger Sibling: Labeled as such at birth, hence his 'primary' designation.
 * Stupid Evil: It's only most of the way through the series when he even begins to suspect that the Animorphs are human.
 * Torture Technician: In The Extreme it's revealed that he collects torture devices from around the universe.
 * Vertebrate With Extra Limbs: In The Discovery he morphs a purple four-armed beast called a Dule Fansa, variously described as an 'evil Barney' and 'Hitmonchan with traffic-cone arms'.
 * Villain Decay: Suffers from it, due to being the main villain for the entire series. Even more extreme if you read the Hork-Bajir or Andalite Chronicles, in which we see his beginnings as a very capable Manipulative Bastard, and long before his degeneration into the General Failure he is now. Despite this, fighting him head-on is still not a good idea.
 * Villainous Breakdown: His repeated defeats and humiliations at the hands of the Animorphs take their toll.
 * Villainous Rescue: Without him those kids would have been screwed by the Nartec.
 * With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: And how!
 * You Have Failed Me: A lot. Visser One notes that he's executed subordinates "by the poolful," which basically means thousands or more. He does this so reliably that Marco's able to bluff his way out of a situation where three flunkies were expected by saying, "I think Visser Three killed them for doing something wrong". He chastises himself for this, calling it the worse lie he's ever told, only for it to be believed.
 * You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: He has a form devoted to this, a Vanarx, which can suck the Yeerk out of its host and eat it.
 * Villainous Breakdown: His repeated defeats and humiliations at the hands of the Animorphs take their toll.
 * Villainous Rescue: Without him those kids would have been screwed by the Nartec.
 * With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: And how!
 * You Have Failed Me: A lot. Visser One notes that he's executed subordinates "by the poolful," which basically means thousands or more. He does this so reliably that Marco's able to bluff his way out of a situation where three flunkies were expected by saying, "I think Visser Three killed them for doing something wrong". He chastises himself for this, calling it the worse lie he's ever told, only for it to be believed.
 * You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: He has a form devoted to this, a Vanarx, which can suck the Yeerk out of its host and eat it.

Visser One (Edriss-Five-Six-Two)
"I took a human host and learned about the planet and humans, and because of that I was able to begin the invasion that you have now endangered with your criminal incompetence! ...You want to be Visser One? You want to take my title? We shall see."

Cold and calculating, it was Edriss 562 who suggested the strategy of infiltration that defined the war for the majority of the series, after years of living amongst her enemies. Though she punished failure harshly, she also rewarded well for success, and her calm and collected tactical abilities made her a star in the eyes of the Council.


 * Affably Evil
 * Bigger Bad:
 * Body Surf: In a sense during Visser. Over the course of the narrative she moves through seven different hosts.
 * Deliver Us From Evil: Ultimately subverted.
 * Don't You Dare Pity Me: She hides the truth about her past from her host because she'd rather have Eva's hate than her pity.
 * Enemy Mine:
 * Even Evil Has Loved Ones
 * Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: Seen at the end of Visser. She muses about finding Madra and how she'll love her when she does - and if Madra doesn't, she'll just infest her with a Yeerk and then she'll have to love her. The monologue proves that, in spite of everything she's seen and learned, Edriss doesn't understand the concept of love any more than she did before she experienced humanity.
 * Evil Overlord
 * Evil Versus Evil: She is a heated rival of Visser Three.
 * Faking the Dead
 * From Nobody to Nightmare
 * Going Native:
 * Humanity Is Infectious: She and her assistant Essam were the first long-term Human-Controllers, and found the experience much more addicting than any other Yeerk host species.
 * Hidden Agenda Villain: We learn early on that she's the one pushing for the steady infiltration strategy of the invasion, but we never really learn why until Visser.
 * Hot Mom
 * Humans Through Alien Eyes
 * Ignored Epiphany:
 * It Doesn't Mean Anything: In Visser, between her and Essam.
 * The Leader: Type I.
 * Love Is a Weakness: She comes to feel this way.
 * Morality Pet: Darwin and Madra, her.
 * Never Found the Body
 * No One Could Survive That: In The Escape and The Reunion.
 * Path of Inspiration: She uses a charismatic host, Lore David Altman, to create this ideology in the form of The Sharing.
 * Pragmatic Villainy
 * Psychotic Smirk
 * Puppeteer Parasite: Edriss
 * Reasonable Authority Figure: She presents herself as this to her underlings. She harshly punishes failure, but she also rewards well underlings who fulfill her expectations.
 * Secret Keeper:
 * Take a Third Option: In Visser she's presented with a Sadistic Choice by Visser Three. She finds a way out.
 * Unexpected Successor: Before Visser, Edriss held the lowly rank of Sub-Visser Four-hundred-nine.
 * Villain Episode: She (and Visser Three) have a starring role in Visser.
 * Villain With Good Publicity: In stark contrast to Visser Three.
 * Unexpected Successor: Before Visser, Edriss held the lowly rank of Sub-Visser Four-hundred-nine.
 * Villain Episode: She (and Visser Three) have a starring role in Visser.
 * Villain With Good Publicity: In stark contrast to Visser Three.

Hedrick Chapman (Iniss-Two-Two-Six)
"Sorry I skipped class, Mr. Chapman, but I've been in this lizard body, watching you because I know you're a Controller and part of a giant alien conspiracy to take over the earth."

Assistant principal at the school attended by the Animorphs and a prominent Human-Controller, he and his wife became Controllers to protect his daughter Melissa from infestation. One of the more frequently-recurring antagonists, he has a prominent role in The Andalite Chronicles as a villain, contradicting everything about him learned up to that point.


 * Asshole Victim: If you take The Andalite Chronicles as fact, it's really hard to feel sorry for Chapman in the main series.
 * Butt Monkey: His later appearances in the series tended to consist of this.
 * Evil Teacher
 * Fighting From the Inside: He and his wife in The Visitor. It's notable as the greatest act of resistance an infested human in the series ever puts up.
 * Hostage Situation: Twice the Animorphs make him victim of it, in The Conspiracy and The Answer.
 * Laser Guided Amnesia: In The Andalite Chronicles Elfangor meets him on Earth and he remembers nothing of their encounters in space. This is revealed to be the Ellimist's doing.
 * Last Name Basis
 * Middle Management Mook
 * Mook Lieutenant
 * No One Could Survive That: Midway through The Andalite Chronicles he falls into a frigging black hole. He shows up in the third arc none the worse for wear.
 * Out of Character Moment: The entirety of his role in The Andalite Chronicles. It's so extreme that fans have suggested the Chapman seen there is actually a different guy with the same name.
 * Papa Wolf: "If you harm my daughter I will fight you. I will fight you forever."
 * Puppeteer Parasite: Iniss
 * Recurring Character
 * The Quisling: In The Andalite Chronicles.
 * Rewarded As a Traitor Deserves: When he tries to cut a deal with the Yeerks in The Andalite Chronicles.
 * Starter Villain: For the first five books the Animorphs encountered him pretty regularly and then he faded into the background as more formidable threats began to make themselves known.

Joe Bob Fenestre ()
"My brother, my twin, is the prime. To him go the best assignments, the best hosts, the rank, the power, the glory. And to me, only what I can take. Well, that wasn't good enough. I wanted more. And if I couldn't have it as a Yeerk, I'd have it as a human."

The billionaire owner of Web Access America and mastermind behind a web site devoted to exposing Yeerks, the Animorphs seek him out to learn if he is friend or foe. It turns out he's a Controller, but no ordinary Controller -


 * Affably Evil: He takes a page out of Visser One's book.
 * Big Fancy House: And it's virtually impregnable to boot!
 * Corrupt Corporate Executive
 * Deal With the Devil: The real Fenestre makes one with his Yeerk to get rich.
 * Eccentric Millionaire: He's got extraordinary defenses around his mansion to keep any animal out and his guards see him as a paranoid eccentric in the vein of Howard Hughes.
 * Evil Genius
 * Evil Twin:
 * Fiction 500: He's identified as the second wealthiest man in the world. Net worth? 24.9 billion dollars.
 * Fictional Counterpart: Of Bill Gates. Interestingly, The Andalite Chronicles hints at the real Bill Gates being around in the Animorphs verse. He's also got shades of to him.
 * Friend or Foe
 * Last Name Basis
 * Man of Wealth and Taste
 * Meaningful Name: 'Fenestre' is the Latin word for 'window'.
 * Non Idle Rich: He secretly runs a website that gathers humans who suspect the truth about the Yeerk invasion.
 * Nouveau Riche: Joe Bob Fenestre was a lowly programmer working in the bowels of a telephone company before building Web Access America.
 * Puppeteer Parasite
 * Rags to Riches: Fenestre's backstory, which his company plays up for the public.
 * Screw the Rules I Have Money: He's able to circumvent a death sentence from the Yeerk Empire using his vast fortune.
 * Self Made Man: Subverted - Fenestre allied with his Yeerk to transcend poverty and become what he is today.
 * Technology Marches On: His company, Web Access America, is a thinly-veiled take on America Online.
 * Villain of the Week: In The Warning.
 * Screw the Rules I Have Money: He's able to circumvent a death sentence from the Yeerk Empire using his vast fortune.
 * Self Made Man: Subverted - Fenestre allied with his Yeerk to transcend poverty and become what he is today.
 * Technology Marches On: His company, Web Access America, is a thinly-veiled take on America Online.
 * Villain of the Week: In The Warning.
 * Villain of the Week: In The Warning.

Karen (Aftran-Nine-Four-Two)
"You tell me what you think I should do. Andalites, humans, there's no difference: You're both smug, moralizing, superior races. You both live in beautiful worlds. You have hands and eyes and the freedom to move about wherever you like. And you hate us for wanting all those same things."

A low-ranking Yeerk assigned to the daughter of a billionaire banker. By chance she observes Cassie leaving a battle and begins to follow her, convinced she has some connection to the Andalite bandits. Due to a series of unfortunate circumstances, they get stranded together in the woods and Aftran learns Cassie's secret, forcing Cassie to face the other side of the war head on.


 * Creepy Child: In her first few appearances, before Cassie figures out what she is.
 * Dead Little Brother: Her pool-brother, Estril-Seven-Three-One. He's killed by Cassie at the beginning of The Departure.
 * Even Mooks Have Loved Ones
 * First Name Basis: Karen's last name is never revealed.
 * Minion With an F In Evil
 * Mook Face Turn
 * Not So Different
 * Punch Clock Villain
 * Puppeteer Parasite: Aftran
 * Recurring Character: Appears in The Departure and The Sickness.
 * Redemption Earns Life
 * Sapient Cetaceans: At the end of The Sickness she willingly becomes a humpback whale nothlit.
 * Secret Keeper
 * Shapeshifter Mode Lock
 * Super Persistent Predator: Throughout The Departure she is stalked by a leopard.
 * The Reason You Suck Speech: She gives Cassie a few in The Departure.

John Berryman Jr. (Visser Four)
"One doesn't want mere baboons blundering about with Time Matrices, does one? Who knows what damage a fool with such power may do?"

The commander of the Yeerk invasion of Leera, Visser Four is demoted and assigned lowly actor John Berryman as punishment after the Animorphs thwart his plans in The Decision. While on Earth he finds the Time Matrix and attempts to use it to alter history in his favor. He's the main villain of Megamorphs #03: Elfangor's Secret.


 * Big Bad Wannabe: After getting the Time Matrix, his goal is to rewrite all of history to favor the Yeerks. In practice, what he achieves is decidedly less impressive. He screws up history and makes an annoyance of himself, but never really accomplishes anything. Lampshaded by the Drode, who refers to him disparagingly as a 'mere baboon' with no idea what he's doing.
 * Butterfly of Doom
 * Conflict Killer: Visser Four is unique in being the only threat in the series that forces Crayak and the Ellimist to agree to a truce, however temporary.
 * Dirty Coward: He spends the whole book basically running from the heroes and flees his host after he's crippled.
 * Drunk On the Dark Side
 * Early Bird Cameo: He's first mentioned (though not seen) in The Decision.
 * Evil Gloating: When Rachel's shot to pieces in front of him in the Battle of Trafalgar. It doesn't stick.
 * Godwins Law of Time Travel
 * Hitlers Time Travel Exemption Act
 * Kill It With Fire: After the Yeerk crawls out of his crippled host, Marco grabs him and throws him into the wreckage of a burning tank, saying his only choices are to starve or burn.
 * Powder Trail: He uses this to blow a hole in HMS Victory.
 * The Power of Acting: Aside from the Psychic Static John Berryman uses it for, Visser Four uses his host's experience to more effectively disguise himself. He blends in well at Agincourt and Traflagar, but abandons disguise after that as the Animorphs already know what he looks like.
 * Psychic Static: John Berryman Jr. thinks Henry V at Visser Four so much so that the very first thing he does when he finds the Time Matrix is try to change the result of the Battle of Agincourt so that Shakespeare would never be inspired to write it.
 * Puppeteer Parasite: Visser Four.
 * Ret Gone: John Berryman Jr's final fate.
 * Time Machine: The Time Matrix
 * Villain of the Week
 * Villainous Friendship: The Andalite traitor in The Decision says Visser Four and Visser Three are 'such good friends'. If that's true, Esplin's influence wasn't enough to keep him from being demoted after losing Leera.
 * What Happened to The Mouse: When the Animorphs erase Berryman from history, Visser Four is spared - all that changes in his history is that Berryman never becomes his host and he never gets the Time Matrix. Despite this, he never appears again.

Taylor (Sub-Visser Fifty-one)
"Join me in my madness, Andalite."

A sadistic Yeerk sub-visser responsible for capturing and torturing Tobias. Later gets the kids involved in a plot to murder Visser Three in revenge for her demotion. It.


 * Alternate Character Interpretation: In-universe. Tobias sees her as a badly, badly Broken Bird, and feels a lot of pity for her, even empathising to a degree, despite being absolutely terrified of her. Rachel, on the other hand, sees the girl as a Complete Monster who made her choices and deserves to burn for them. The truth is somewhere in the middle.
 * Arch Enemy: To Tobias.
 * Agony Beam: Uses one on Tobias.
 * Ambition Is Evil: Even more than Visser Three.
 * Arm Cannon: Not quite, but her prosthetic arm does fire darts and emit gasses that are capable of paralysing the target. And she may have an actual cannon or grenade launcher in there; it's.
 * Artificial Limbs: One of Taylor's arms is a prosthetic, as is one of her legs.
 * Axe Crazy: Makes Visser Three, Crayak, and a whole host of alien monsters look stable by comparison.
 * Blondes Are Evil: Are they ever!
 * Cold Blooded Torture: Tortures Tobias.
 * Dark Action Girl: Taylor would rather manipulate than fight; she's nowhere near the Badass that Rachel can become, and maybe not even at Cassie's level. But the girl can still take and dish our far more damage than you would expect her to be able to, and seems to be one of the few Yeerks who didn't get her training at the Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy. In Book 43 . Not bad for a (relatively) normal girl.
 * Deal With the Devil: Taylor the Girl made one with the Yeerks in order to be pretty again. It involved selling out herself and her mom. Taylor the Yeerk makes another one with . And the Animorphs make one with her in order to try and assassinate Visser Three.
 * Don't You Dare Pity Me: Can verge on this, when she's not using her situation to her advantage.
 * Double Consciousness: Literally, sort of; see Humanity Is Infectious below.
 * The Dragon: To Visser Three, apparently.
 * Electronic Eyes: Her entire skull has been replaced, bone by bone with steel. I think we can safely assume her eyes have been as well.
 * Evil Counterpart:
 * Tobias sees her as his. Like him, she's a damaged person from a lousy background, who became involved in the war due to alien intervention in her life. Like him, she has a lot of insecurites that prevent her from dealing with life, and Tobias frequently compares her decision to become a Controller to his own entrapment in hawk morph. Tobias, of course, is still a hero, whereas Taylor...well just look at the list of tropes she's associated with.
 * Also somewhat to Rachel, since both are blonde, immaculate-looking valley girl types capable of violence and associated with Tobias.
 * Femme Fatale
 * First Name Basis: Taylor's last name is never revealed.
 * Foe Yay: Largely averted. It is possible to read her obsession with capturing and breaking Tobias (and some of the lines she says to him) as rather Foe Yay-y, but it requires you to ignore her personality. She's described as so cold, nasty, and downright insane that most of it comes off exactly the way it's supposed to: as the behaviour of an insecure, sadistic bullying bitch who doesn't like letting her victims get away. Yandere she ain't.
 * Hollywood Cyborg: She was healed by advanced alien technology.
 * Heel Face Turn:.
 * Humanity Is Infectious: Taylor's human and Yeerk personalities seem to be closer than in most Controllers, making Yeerk!Taylor somewhat unable to differentiate herself from her host. Whether this is the cause or effect of her insanity (or both) is hard to determine.
 * Magic Plastic Surgery: Yeerk cybernetics were used in reconstructing her arm and face.
 * Manipulative Bastard: Plays mindgames with Tobias, tricks the kids into helping her plot to attack the Yeerk pool, and generally manipulates everyone's emotions for kicks and profit. She's good at it too, to the point where Tobias cannot get her out of his head.
 * Not So Different: Claims she and Tobias aren't in order to screw with his mind. On some level, he seems to believe her.
 * Specifically Tobias thinks about this in her first appearance, when it becomes clear that her perception of the human-Yeerk relationship is similar to Tobias' Double Consciousness about being a hawk.
 * Psycho for Hire: Or whatever the "gainfully employed by a megalomaniacal alien empire" equivalent is.
 * Puppeteer Parasite - Sub-Visser Fifty-one, who's actual Yeerk name is never revealed.
 * The Quisling
 * Recurring Character: Appears in The Illusion and The Test.
 * Self Made Orphan: Spiritually at least. Part of Taylor's deal with the Yeerks involved allowing not only her own infestation, but that of her mother as well.
 * Sociopathic Soldier: Even for a member of the Yeerk military she's a twisted bitch.
 * Stockholm Syndrome: Causes it in Tobias.
 * The Only One Allowed to Defeat You: In The Test, Tobias is obsessed with proving that he is stronger than she is, and refuses to allow anyone else to kill or restrain her.
 * The Revolution Will Not Be Civilised: Subverted. She pretends to be a member of a Yeerk resistance movement in order to gain the kids' assitance in Book 43.
 * Robotic Torture Device: To which the Agony Beam is attached.
 * Torture Technician: Mentally, physically and emotionally.
 * Villain of the Week: Twice.
 * We Can Rule Together: Offers Tobias this deal in The Test. He turns her down.
 * Why Did It Have to Be Snakes: Tobias almost shuts down when he runs into her again in The Test.

The Inspector
"That's where this thing belonged. In a cartoon. Where the impossible is possible."

A candidate member for The Council of Thirteen, sent to investigate Visser Three's progress on earth. Is hosted by a Garatron, one of the Yeerk's "Newest and most capable host species." A real problem in The Weakness.


 * Bigger Bad: Represents one: The Council of Thirteen.
 * Cruel and Unusual Death:.
 * Curb Stomp Battle: Any physical confrontation with the Inspector's ungodly fast host tends to end this way for the heroes.
 * The Dog Bites Back: He spends the whole issue mocking and humiliating Visser Three.
 * Evil Counterpart: His host species, the Garatron, looks suspiciously like an Andalite.
 * Eviler Than Thou: With Visser Three, on a political, though not physical basis.
 * Foil: See Monster of the Aesop below. He's a nice foil for that particular aspect of Rachel's personality.
 * Fragile Speedster
 * Insistent Terminology: "You will address me as Councillor Thirteen, Visser."
 * Jerkass: Consistently.
 * Jerkass Dissonance: He's doing it to Visser Three though, so really, who cares?
 * Kick the Son of A Bitch: He regularly mocks, taunts, threatens, and otherwise humiliates...Visser Three. It's kind of fun to watch.
 * Large Ham: On par with the Visser. When the two of them are together, it's like a pork convention.
 * Monster of the Aesop: In a book about Rachel learning to deal with her own hubris, who should show up? A villain who's overconfidence enables his defeat.
 * Not Worth Killing: The Animorphs. At least, not when he'd rather see them humiliate Visser Three.
 * Pride: Even as Yeerks go, he's pretty stuck-up.
 * Puppeteer Parasite
 * Required Secondary Powers: Instant acceleration and deceleration.
 * Smug Snake
 * Smug Super: Jeez, a little overconfident, aren't we Inspector?
 * Super Speed: To cartoon levels. He runs down several cheetahs with ease.
 * Villain of the Week: And an extremely successful one. In the one book he appears in he nicely upstages Visser Three as the biggest threat to the cast.
 * Villain of the Week: And an extremely successful one. In the one book he appears in he nicely upstages Visser Three as the biggest threat to the cast.

Tom Berenson (and his Yeerks)
"I had to rein in a powerful desire to go after him. It's hard to conceive of the impotent rage you feel watching someone you love be reduced to a mindless puppet."

The real Thomas Berenson was the eldest son of Jean and Steven Berenson, and Jake's brother. Although three years older, Tom is described as almost identical to Jake in looks, though different in temperament. Growing up, Jake and Tom were extremely close, but Tom became more distant due to his infestation (prior to Elfangor's crash). His status as a Controller caused Jake a great deal of emotional suffering, as the latter saw it as his duty to rescue him.

Though he may have been infested by several Yeerks, the reader only meets two. The first was an overly-ambitious low-level grunt (Temrash 114) who was starved to death by the group after managing to infest Jake. The second was a much more dangerous and capable enemy who rose to minor success by becoming one of Visser Three's most capable lieutenants. After Visser Three refused to promote him past the rank of chief of security (a position he achieved despite a stunning failure to notice what might be the single biggest security breach in the war for months) Tom's Yeerk became sick of taking orders from superiors he percieved to be incompetent failures, and began scheming for ways to amass greater power for himself.

"Tom: Oh, you're a surly bunch, aren't you? No one talks to me. No one but Rachel, who told me to... well, you can guess what Rachel told me to do.
 * Ascended Extra: In the final five books.
 * Animorphism
 * Bastard Understudy: Tom's second Yeerk falls under this.
 * Big Brother Worship: Jake had this for Tom, until he learned he was a Yeerk.
 * Bond Villain Stupidity: Tom's first Yeerk had this in spades. For better or worse, his second Yeerk was much more cunning.
 * Cain and Abel: With his, or more specifically his host's, brother Jake.
 * The Dog Bites Back
 * Evil Gloating: He indulges in The Answer.
 * If I Wanted You Dead
 * Informed Ability: He claims he's acquired the morphing power for his own Yeerk body. We never really learn if this is true or not.
 * Mook Promotion
 * No Name Given: Tom's second Yeerk. Even among fellow Yeerks, he is referred to simply as Tom.
 * Panthera Awesome: He's acquired a jaguar battle morph, though we never get to see it.
 * Polite Villains Rude Heroes: Deliberately invoked in The Answer:
 * Polite Villains Rude Heroes: Deliberately invoked in The Answer:

Jake: Whatever she said goes for all of us.

Tom: Surly and unpleasant. Oh well."


 * Puppeteer Parasite
 * Reliable Traitor:
 * Replacement Goldfish: His original Yeerk gets killed early in the series and a new Yeerk quickly infests him.
 * Rewarded As a Traitor Deserves
 * Scaled Up
 * Smug Snake
 * The Starscream
 * Strange Bedfellows: In The Answer it's revealed that he's allied himself with.
 * Treacherous Advisor
 * Tom the Dark Lord: Played with - Tom is hardly all-powerful, but he's more or less the final series antagonist and we never learn his Yeerk's name.

Prince Elfangor-Sirinial-Shamtul


An Andalite general, military genius and war hero, Elfangor was made a household name for his contributions to the Andalite-Yeerk war effort. Though this was not generally known amongst his own people, he spent a great deal of time on Earth permanently morphed as a human: a sort of self-imposed exile after a miscalculation led to the infestation of his superior officer, Alloran. His longstanding and well-known subsequent rivalry with Visser Three ended with his death at the hands of the latter after a battle in Earth's orbit, though not before he was able to give the morphing power to Jake and his friends.


 * Always Someone Better: From Ax's perspective.
 * Aloof Big Brother: Wasn't around for much of Ax's childhood, as he was making a name for himself in the war.
 * Animorphism
 * Beware My Stinger Tail
 * Broken Pedestal: Elfangor's reputation precedes him, even after death, and it's initially believed by everyone that Elfangor was the perfect warrior and, from Jake's perspective, the perfect leader, someone to emulate. It becomes apparent, though, that his reputation is the result of misplaced idolization and Andalite propaganda, and that, like the kids, he made mistakes while doing the best he could. He was however an exceptional Badass and a War Hero, Visser One later states that no other singular Andalite hurt the Yeerks as much as he did. His name has practically become a curse word to the Yeerks.
 * Going Native: With humans.
 * The Gump: In the third half of The Andalite Chronicles he mentions giving some programming tips to his human friends Bill and Steve.
 * Heroic Sacrifice
 * Honor Before Reason: In The Andalite Chronicles.
 * Humans Through Alien Eyes
 * I Am Dying Please Take My Macguffin
 * Interspecies Romance: With Loren.
 * Luke I Am Your Father: is actually his son.
 * Nice Job Breaking It Hero
 * Names to Run Away From Really Fast: The Yeerks come to know him as 'Beast Elfangor'.
 * No Mouth
 * Our Centaurs Are Different
 * Posthumous Character
 * Pursued Protagonist
 * Royals Who Actually Do Something: Sort of. In Andalite culture, 'Prince' is a military rank and not a title.
 * Shapeshifter Mode Lock: Eventually reversed by the Ellimist.
 * Sue Donym: While on Earth, he takes the name of Alan Fangor.
 * Super Empowering: He gave the Animorphs their powers.
 * Telepathic Spacemen
 * Take Up My Sword
 * Wide Eyed Idealist: At the beginning of The Andalite Chronicles.
 * Worthy Opponent: It's revealed in The Pretender that Visser Three eventually came to regard him this way.
 * Worthy Opponent: It's revealed in The Pretender that Visser Three eventually came to regard him this way.

Arbron
"Aristh...I mean, Warrior Arbron is a casualty of war."

One of Elfangor's fellow cadets from his days with Alloran. Gets trapped in Taxxon morph partway through The Andalite Chronicles.


 * And I Must Scream
 * Animorphism
 * Back for The Finale: First appears in The Andalite Chronicles (which is set before the series and was released early on in the series), then reappears in the second-to-last book, The Answer.
 * Beware My Stinger Tail
 * Big Creepy Crawlies: Trapped in Taxxon morph.
 * Dark Is Not Evil: A pretty striking example. He's trapped as a giant, cannibalistic centipede. He's one of the good guys.
 * Deadpan Snarker: A rarity among the Andalites.
 * Extreme Omnivore: Taxxons can eat and digest pretty much anything.
 * Fire Forged Friends: With Elfangor.
 * First Name Basis: Arbron is the only Andalite character whose full name is never revealed.
 * Foil: To Elfangor; he'll crack jokes and is pretty easy-going, in contrast to Elfangor's more serious nature.
 * Going Native: Although he retains his sense of morality.
 * Hive Mind: He joins forces with the Living Hive, a kind of Taxxon queen.
 * Horror Hunger
 * La Résistance: Joins, of all things, the Taxxon resistance in order to get back at the Yeerks.
 * No Mouth: Not until he gets trapped in Taxxon morph.
 * No One Gets Left Behind: Elfangor tries desperately to get him to come along with he and Alloran when they leave the Taxxon planet. Arbron refuses.
 * Our Centaurs Are Different
 * Pet the Dog: Alloran's promotion of him is pretty touching.
 * Shapeshifter Mode Lock
 * Telepathic Spacemen
 * Telepathic Spacemen

War-Prince Alloran-Semitur-Corass


"I will forever be Alloran, Butcher of the Hork-Bajir. Alloran, the only Andalite to ever be taken alive by Yeerks. But disgraced, even despised, for whatever I am worth, I am yours to command."

Visser Three's host, and formerly Elfangor's commanding officer. Perhaps the best example of the ruthless mentality of the Andalite military, Alloran was infamous even before becoming the only Andalite to ever be taken by a Yeerk. Disgraced and despised by even his own people, he becomes more humble and pacifistic during his time as Visser Three's slave.


 * The Atoner: After he's freed, the sheer melancholy as he flatly states that he'll have to live with what he's done and being forever known as the only Andalite ever taken as a Controller makes it very likely he'll become one of these.
 * Animorphism
 * Beware My Stinger Tail
 * Cynical Mentor: To Elfangor and Arbron in The Andalite Chronicles.
 * Death Seeker: In The Alien he begs Ax to kill him.
 * Destructive Savior: Aldrea lampshades it. "Will you save the Hork-Bajir by destroying them?"
 * Fate Worse Than Death: He's a Controller. Even worse, he's got Visser Three controlling him, one of the most evil Yeerks of them all.
 * General Ripper: In The Hork-Bajir Chronicles. He tried to wipe out the Hork-Bajir once he realized they couldn't be saved from the Yeerks.
 * Heel Face Turn: When  Not bad for an ex-General Ripper.
 * I Call It Vera: He calls his beautifully-designed personal ship the Jahar, after his wife.
 * I Cannot Self Terminate: See Death Seeker above.
 * Motive Rant: He gives Elfangor one in The Andalite Chronicles.
 * No Mouth
 * One Man Army: He still has all of the morphs he acquired while infested by Visser Three. You want to throw down with him? Be our guest.
 * Our Centaurs Are Different
 * Pet the Dog: With Arbron and Loren at various points.
 * Proud Warrior Race Guy
 * Royals Who Actually Do Something: Sort of. In Andalite culture, 'Prince' is a military rank and not a title.
 * Synthetic Plague: In The Hork-Bajir Chronicles this is his secret weapon.
 * Telepathic Spacemen
 * Well Intentioned Extremist

Aldrea-Iskillion-Falan
"No, I won't help you to understand. But I will help you kill Yeerks. That, I will do. I will help you kill them. And kill them. And kill them! And kill them all!"

The daughter of the infamous Prince Seerow and heroine of the Hork-Bajir Chronicles. She makes a guest reappearance in The Prophecy.


 * Acceptable Feminine Goals: Subverted - Andalite women are traditionally expected to be artists or scientists, but Aldrea wants to be a warrior. She gets her wish.
 * Action Girl
 * Animorphism
 * Back From the Dead: In The Prophecy.
 * Break the Cutie: In the first fifty pages of The Hork-Bajir Chronicles she loses her pride, her home, and her entire family.
 * Bratty Teenage Daughter: At first.
 * Beware My Stinger Tail: Subverted - Andalite females have shorter, blunter tail blades than Andalite males.
 * Dead Man Writing
 * Embarrassing Nickname: Her peers on the Andalite world nickname her 'Seerow's Unkindness'.
 * Entitled Bitch: She comes across like this in her treatment of Dak Hamee.
 * Extraordinarily Empowered Girl: She's a morpher at the time when the morphing technology was still brand new.
 * Going Native: A major theme of The Hork-Bajir Chronicles. During The Prophecy she demands to be referred to as a Hork-Bajir.
 * Guest Star Party Member: In The Prophecy.
 * Identity Impersonator: She acquires and impersonates Alloran to get access to his database.
 * Killed Off for Real: Sometime after The Hork-Bajir Chronicles.
 * No Mouth
 * Our Centaurs Are Different
 * Revenge Before Reason
 * Roaring Rampage of Revenge
 * Shapeshifter Mode Lock: At the end of The Hork-Bajir Chronicles she willingly allows herself to be trapped in Hork-Bajir morph.
 * Sharing a Body: With Cassie in The Prophecy.
 * Telepathic Spacemen

Arbat-Elivat-Estoni
"The people must be led by the few who are willing to make the very hard choices. The people are happy in their ignorance. But we in the Apex Level cannot allow ourselves to be sentimental."

An Apex Level Intelligence Advisor and the biological brother of Alloran-Semitur-Corass. Veteran of over twenty conflicts, Arbat is assigned to the Andalite task force Unit 0, ostensibly tasked with the assassination of Visser Three. The true mission of Unit 0, known only to Arbat himself, is to unleash a deadly new biological weapon against the Yeerks. He appears only in The Arrival.


 * Animorphism
 * Anti-Villain
 * Badass Bookworm
 * Beware My Stinger Tail
 * Chekhov's Gunman
 * Broken Pedestal: To Estrid.
 * Cain and Abel: Him and Alloran. He's the Abel, Alloran's the Cain.
 * Cruel and Unusual Death. Maybe.
 * Eaten Alive: By Taxxons.
 * The Chessmaster
 * Left Hanging: He's last seen Left for Dead by the heroes, wounded and facing an army of Taxxons.
 * Knight Templar
 * The Leader: Type I, though he uses Gonrod as a decoy leader.
 * The Man Behind the Man: Of Unit 0.
 * No Mouth
 * Not So Different: Him and Alloran.
 * Our Centaurs Are Different
 * The Strategist: Apex Level Intelligence is the highest level of advisory to the Andalite War Council. They plot. They plan. And they know everything.
 * The Stoic
 * Synthetic Plague: He plans to wipe out the Yeerks using one. Sound familiar?
 * Telepathic Spacemen
 * Well Intentioned Extremist
 * Utopia Justifies the Means
 * Villain of the Week: And an extremely successful one. In the one book he appears in he nicely upstages Visser Three as the biggest threat to the cast.

The Ellimist


"We watched the rise of other species throughout the galaxy. Helped at times, when we could. We wanted companions. We wanted to learn. We imagined a galaxy filled with millions of sentient species, each with its own science and art, its own beauty."

An All Powerful Bystander introduced in the seventh book, the Ellimist is a being so powerful he can directly manipulate the fabric of spacetime, rewrite history, travel through time, and cross between dimensions. He ultimately wants the Animorphs to prevail and save Earth, but he is bound by the rules of the nebulous Game, which prevents him from offering direct assistance unless it's in a Deal With the Devil.


 * All Powerful Bystander: Not technically all powerful, but so close as to make little difference from human perspectives.
 * Ascended to A Higher Plane of Existence:
 * Balance of Good and Evil
 * Big Good
 * The Chessmaster
 * Complete Immortality
 * Cosmic Entity
 * Eldritch Abomination
 * A Form You Are Comfortable With
 * I Am Legion: Throughout most of his appearances he refers to himself in the plural, making it unclear if he is a singular entity or part of a collective, or even a race of creatures like him.
 * Leave Your Quest Test: He gives one to the Animorphs in The Stranger.
 * Little Miss Almighty: One of the forms he appeared before the group in.
 * Living Ship: During his Third Life.
 * Loophole Abuse: He's forbidden to interfere directly except when he makes a deal with Crayak, but gets around it by sneakily arranging for them to realize things on their own that they wouldn't have without him. This is actually the defining trait of him in his first appearance, where he shows the Animorphs a vision of a Bad Future, and a background event clues them in to the location of the Yeerk Kandrona in the present.
 * Manipulative Bastard
 * Million to One Chance:
 * Mysterious Backer: He tries to help the heroes, but he is either too roundabout in his methods to really gain their trust or too caught up in his game with Crayak to help at all.
 * Pointy Ears: In his favored form.
 * Reality Warper
 * Recurring Character: He appears in a handful of books, but his influence is felt in many more.
 * Sufficiently Advanced Aliens
 * Time Stands Still
 * What If God Was One of Us: In the Ellimist Chronicles he places part of his essence into the body of an Andalite and lives among early Andalites in order to reconnect with his sense of mortality.
 * Wizard Beard
 * You Cannot Grasp the True Form
 * Time Stands Still
 * What If God Was One of Us: In the Ellimist Chronicles he places part of his essence into the body of an Andalite and lives among early Andalites in order to reconnect with his sense of mortality.
 * Wizard Beard
 * You Cannot Grasp the True Form

Crayak
"I will cleanse this galaxy of all life. Then, when no sentient thing is left alive, I will kill you, Ellimist. That's my game. Shall we play?"

Foreshadowed early on, the Crayak remains a mystery until halfway through the series, when the Ellimist reveals his story. A being of power equal to the Ellimist but with very different goals, the Crayak is a malevolent being chased from his home galaxy by the one power in the universe that can defeat him. He seeks extinction on a galactic scale, and eventually the ability to control all of space-time as his own.


 * All Powerful Bystander: Like the Ellimist, he is not truly all powerful, but he is so close it makes little difference from a human perspective.
 * Bad Boss: Towards the Drode. Though he serves loyally, Crayak is fully prepared to let Rachel annihilate him if it means securing her loyalty.
 * Bigger Bad: The war against the Yeerks, it's just a move in his game.
 * The Chessmaster
 * Complete Immortality
 * The Corrupter: He plays this role to Rachel, tempting her with godlike power in exchange for murdering Jake.
 * Cosmic Entity
 * Cyclops: Even before ascending, Crayak's original form was a monstrous, one-eyed creature.
 * Early Bird Cameo: Shows up with no explanation as the Yeerk dies in Jake's brain in The Capture.
 * Eldritch Abomination
 * Evil Counterpart: To the Ellimist.
 * Evil Is Petty: After The Attack he spends most of his time coming up with ways to punish Jake for what he did to the Howlers.
 * Faceless Eye
 * For the Evulz: He massacres entire species and enjoys the suffering and torment of others... because hey, it's something to do. When he and the Ellimist first acquire their near-omnipotent powers, the Ellimist suggests that since they're incapable of killing each other now and can just undo any damage the other does to the galaxy, they could call a truce and just watch the advance of evolution. Crayak refuses because he finds the idea boring.
 * Giant Eye of Doom
 * God of Evil: He comes across as this, especially since unlike the Ellimist his backstory is never revealed. Additionally, the author admitted to modeling him after personifications of 'pure evil' such as Sauron from Lord of the Rings.
 * I Lied: To . He promises him revenge against Rachel, but merely uses him as a tool against her.
 * Leave Your Quest Test: Playing up his role as the Ellimist's Evil Counterpart, Crayak extends Jake an offer to alter history so he never met Elfangor.
 * Living Ship: He first appears to the Ellimist as this.
 * No Indoor Voice: Similar to Visser Three, he communicates with a form of thought-speech. Jake describes it as sounding like he's screaming at the top of his lungs.
 * Omnicidal Maniac: "I play the game of genocide..."
 * Reality Warper
 * Recurring Character: Though his presence is often felt, the Crayak himself only personally appears in The Attack and The Return.
 * The Social Darwinist: His goal is to pit race against race, the winner growing stronger with each engagement, until only one species is left, which will then revere him as a god.
 * Someone Has to Die: He agrees to help the Animorphs follow Visser Four through time in Megamorphs #03. In return, he demands that one of their number must die.
 * Sore Loser
 * Sufficiently Advanced Aliens
 * Talking in Your Dreams: He appears to both Jake and Rachel in dreams.
 * Talking in Your Dreams: He appears to both Jake and Rachel in dreams.

The Drode
"Yes, yes, oh yes. Mustn't upset the balance. Not directly, anyway. But! Create problems? Yes. Create opportunities? Yes. Play the wild card? Of course."

An alien being who resembles a humanoid dinosaur, he serves Crayak and acts as his representative. He has incredible powers, presumably a gift from his master.


 * Deal With the Devil:
 * The Dragon: To Crayak.
 * Everythings Better With Dinosaurs: Decidedly averted. He's basically an evil space dinosaur.
 * Evil Has a Bad Sense of Humor
 * From a Single Cell: He can regenerate, possibly from any wound.
 * Giggling Villain
 * Hannibal Lecture: His first appears in The Exposed has him pop out of nowhere and snarkily pick the Animorphs apart one by one.
 * In Love With Your Carnage: Enjoys Rachel's penchant for violence.
 * Last of His Kind:
 * Loophole Abuse: Like his master, he is bound by the rules of The Game. That doesn't stop him from bending the rules to achieve the outcome he desires.
 * Manipulative Bastard
 * Out Gambitted:
 * Reality Warper
 * Recurring Character: He appears in The Exposed, the last two Megamorphs books, and The Return.
 * Smug Snake
 * Teleporters and Transporters
 * Terms of Endangerment: He refers to Rachel as "Rachel of the dark heart".
 * The Trickster: His name means "wild card" to his species.
 * Wild Card: See above. His name literally means wild card.

The One
"You have done well to come this far. You have come to find your friend. But is part of me now. As you will soon be."

A Giant Space Flea From Nowhere that shows up in the epilogue of the final book. He gathers the remnants of the shattered Yeerk Empire under his aegis and plots to assimilate the Animorphs into his being. The book ends with the Animorphs ramming his ship and the outcome of the conflict is never revealed.


 * A God Am I
 * The Assimilator
 * Bigger Bad: The leader of the Yeerk survivors and the final enemy faced by the Animorphs.
 * Body Horror: It's revealed he's inflicted it on his captive,.
 * Bolivian Army Ending
 * Cybernetics Eat Your Soul: Implied. Two of the four forms he shows the Animorphs are mechanical creatures.
 * For the Evulz
 * Giant Space Flea From Nowhere
 * Light Is Not Good: He appears to the Animorphs heralded by searing light.
 * Minor Major Character: His only appearance covers all of four pages.
 * No Mouth: Subverted in nightmarish fashion. See Body Horror above.
 * One Shot Character: Appears only in The Beginning. Fans theorized he was the being behind Jake's trip to the future in The Familiar but this was Jossed by Applegate in an interview.
 * Path of Inspiration: Hinted at. The Yeerk remnants he leads worship him as a god and his lieutenant, Efflit One-Three-One-Eight, carries himself in a manner more befitting a high priest than a ship's captain.
 * The Remnant: He leads it.
 * Space Elves: One of his forms is described as a 'sweet, feminine, almost elfin visage'.
 * Psychic Powers
 * Mind Probe
 * Telepathy
 * Too Many Mouths: One too many, given that he gives a horrifying, red-rimmed mouth to.
 * Ultimate Evil: We never see his true face and he is described by Marco as 'every corruption and every evil'.
 * Unrobotic Reveal

Erek King
"This will be a meeting of allies, Marco. You see, we, too, fight the Yeerks."

Erek King was a member of the Chee, a race of ancient androids that had been living in secret on Earth for thousands of years. He revealed the existence of his people to Marco after it became apparent that they were both secretly fighting for the same cause. Though he was at heart a pacifist and found physical violence abhorrent, he and other Chee helped Animorphs in their missions by gathering information and providing alibis.


 * The Ageless
 * Android Among Us
 * Ascended Extra: The Erek character was the result of a Contest Winner Cameo and was only going to appear once. He ended up being one of the most important secondary characters.
 * Actual Pacifist: Thanks to his programming; the one time he was reprogrammed, he was so sickened by what he was capable of that he immediately rewired the violence prohibition back in.
 * Badass Automaton
 * Badass Pacifist: Seriously, check out some of the stuff he pulls in The Attack.
 * Beware the Nice Ones
 * Contest Winner Cameo: Named after a real-life Animorphs fan.
 * Curb Stomp Battle: In The Android.
 * Deadpan Snarker: "I gotta stop hanging around with you people. You people are just plain strange."
 * Deceptively Human Robots: He appears human as long as he can project his hologram.
 * Do Anything Robot: To some degree in The Attack.
 * Drop in Character
 * Foreign Language Tirade: In The Answer. See What the Hell Hero below.
 * The Gump: Franklin Roosevelt got the name for the "New Deal" from Erek during a game of poker. Erek was Louis Pasteur's lab assistant and gave him the idea to try killing bacteria with heat.
 * Heavyworlder: The Pemalite home world's gravity was four times stronger than Earth's, accounting for Erek's obscene strength.
 * Historical in Joke: Five thousand years of possibilities!
 * Hologram: His human form is one, and he can project basically whatever he wants - boulders, dump trucks, and so on.
 * Holographic Disguise
 * Hologram Projection Imperfection: In The Exposed.
 * If I Wanted You Dead: At first Marco thinks he's working for the Yeerks. Erek shoots him down pretty quick with this.
 * Immortality: Type II
 * Ignored Epiphany: He learns the truth about the Howlers in The Attack after uploading their memories. He doesn't care.
 * I Will Punish Your Friend for Your Failure: Inflicted on Erek by Jake in The Answer. He forces Erek to help the group by threatening Chapman's life - while Chapman is no friend of Erek's, his programming forces him to comply to save his life.
 * Just a Machine: In The Exposed, the Drode is able to justify setting the Chee to self-destruct by invoking this.
 * Manipulative Bastard: In The Attack.
 * Mechanical Lifeforms
 * Mission Control: He evolved into this in later books.
 * Mr. Exposition: Lampshaded - Applegate herself admitted she got too reliant on using Erek as an expository device.
 * The Mole: Pretends to be a Controller in order to get information to the main characters.
 * Moral Dissonance: He's forbidden to harm living creatures but keeps a Yeerk captive in his head, bound by wires and effectively as helpless as a Yeerk host would be.
 * Morality Chip
 * My God What Have I Done
 * Non Action Guy: From the end of The Android on up.
 * Nigh Invulnerability: He and the other Chee can tank Dracon beam shots, though he admits a full power blast, sustained for long enough, would destroy him.
 * Older Than They Look
 * One Man Army: Very briefly.
 * Person of Mass Destruction: If he and the Chee had joined the war in earnest, the Yeerks would have been defeated in a week.
 * Really Five Thousand Years Old: At least.
 * Renaissance Man: Five thousand years is a long time to pick up skills. He's been a politician, a hairdresser and a valet - and that's just the tip of the iceberg.
 * Revenge Before Reason:
 * Robot Buddy
 * Robot Names: In The Android we learn all Chee have their own names, such as Chee-Ionos. Curiously, we never learn Erek's.
 * Robotic Reveal
 * Self Destruct Mechanism: Built into all Chee. We never see it in action, but they're threatened with it in The Exposed.
 * Sixth Ranger: During The Attack.
 * Super Speed
 * Super Strength
 * Technical Pacifist: Despite finding violence abhorrent, Erek has no problem manipulating people to get the results he wants, as in The Attack.
 * Time Abyss
 * Tuckerization
 * What the Hell Hero: "This is so low. This is so far beneath you, Jake ...I was offering my opinion on your morals and your ethics and your sense of decency. I chose an ancient Mesopotamian dialect well-known for its variety of curse words."

Loren
"She's a million light-years from her home, Arbron. Confronting species she never knew existed. Suddenly thrust into the middle of an intergalactic war. I think she is very brave."

The heroine of The Andalite Chronicles and Elfangor's love interest.


 * Action Girl
 * Animorphism: From The Diversion on up.
 * Back for The Finale: First appears in The Andalite Chronicles (which is set before the series and was released early on in the series), then reappears in The Diversion, The Ultimate and The Sacrifice, three of the last six books in the series.
 * Badass Normal: In The Andalite Chronicles.
 * Batter Up: She takes on Esplin's Mortrons with nothing but a baseball bat.
 * Disability Superpower: In The Diversion she is able to master morphing very quickly. The Auxiliary Animorphs later exhibit this same knack, and the Animorphs speculate it may be because they are physically disabled, forcing their minds to become stronger.
 * Foot Focus: In The Andalite Chronicles. Justified, since the Andalites are a hoofed species and have never seen bare feet before.
 * First Name Basis
 * Laser Guided Amnesia: Averted, but not completely.
 * Little Miss Badass
 * Plot Relevant Age Up: Messing around with the Time Matrix causes her to age a few years prematurely, from 13 to 18.
 * Plucky Girl: She's more or less Rachel lite.
 * Throwing Off the Disability: She's blind and crippled in The Diversion, but is healed by morphing.
 * What Happened to The Mouse: She's curiously absent from the last book.
 * Throwing Off the Disability: She's blind and crippled in The Diversion, but is healed by morphing.
 * What Happened to The Mouse: She's curiously absent from the last book.

Toby Hamee
"A fool is strong so that others will see. A wise person is strong for himself. The Hork-Bajir will be strong for the Hork-Bajir. That way, when the Yeerks are all gone, we will still be strong."

The daughter of the first two free Hork-Bajir in generations, Toby Hamee is a seer, a rare anomaly among Hork-Bajir born with genius-level intelligence. Her keen mind and charisma quickly elevate her to leader of the free Hork-Bajir.


 * A Child Shall Lead Them
 * Ambadassador: After the war's end Toby becomes the official liaison between her people and the United States government.
 * Ascended Extra: As leader of the free Hork-Bajir, Toby becomes one of the most important secondary characters.
 * Battle Cry: Her and her Hork-Bajir have one - "Free or dead!"
 * Blade Below the Shoulder
 * Child Prodigy
 * Generation Xerox: She's basically a female version of her grandfather, Dak Hamee.
 * Genius Bruiser
 * Herbivores Are Friendly
 * La Résistance: The free Hork-Bajir, which she leads.
 * The Leader: Type I meets Type IV.
 * Line in The Sand: Literally. After the Yeerks find out where the Hork-Bajir valley is located, they plan to storm it and kill everyone. Jake and his friends attempt to explain to Toby that going into battle is suicidal, and to demonstrate his point Jake draws a line in the sand and asks the Hork-Bajir to vote on which course of action is the smartest. Jake's point backfires when every Hork-Bajir votes to fight back.
 * Noble Savage
 * Rebel Leader
 * Redshirt Army: In the last few books, though Toby herself survives.
 * Superpowerful Genetics: And they're accidental at that!
 * Younger Than They Look: During the events of the series she is only a year or two old.

Queen Soco
"I will discover the truth, Surface-Dwellers. Have no doubt of that. But I am also a magnanimous queen. Feel free to further explore the Nartec world. We will meet again later. Perhaps."

Queen of the Nartec, a villainous group of merpeople encountered in The Mutation. She plots to take her people into a war with the surface world, but hasn't reckoned on the Animorphs... or Visser Three.


 * Atlantis: Queen of it.
 * The Butcher: Marco dubs her "Queen Psycho".
 * The Caligula
 * Conflict Killer: She and her people are enough of a problem to force a temporary alliance between the Animorphs and Visser Three.
 * Cruel and Unusual Death: Likes having survivors of shipwrecks vivisected and stuffed.
 * Evil Versus Evil: She's ambitious, but she really wasn't ready to go up against likes of Visser Three.
 * Eviler Than Thou: See above. They never directly encounter one another, but boy does he flash-fry a bunch of her troops.
 * God Save Us From the Queen: Blood-thirsty ruler of a dying civilisation, she's enough of a problem to force an alliance between the Animorphs and the Visser.
 * Green Rocks
 * I Love Nuclear Power: The Nartec don't have it, thankfully, but it's implied their mutation came out because of radiation exposure.
 * Karma Houdini: She's never mentioned again after The Mutation so we never learn if she got her comeuppance or not.
 * Mutants: Her and the rest of the Nartec are all mutated humans.
 * Omniglot: Possibly. At the least she speaks English, German, French, Chinese, one of the Scandanavian tongues and (probably) Japanese.
 * Our Mermaids Are Different: More amphibious. And totally nuts.
 * Royal We: Averted, surprisingly enough.
 * Royally Screwed Up
 * Take Over the World: Has delusions of doing this.
 * Unscaled Merfolk
 * Villain of the Week: In The Mutation.
 * Wicked Cultured

General Sam Doubleday
"See the stars on my shoulder there, son? I'm a major general, U.S. Army. You're a kid who can turn into a bug. I take my orders from the chain of command, and that ain't you."

A three star-general and the leader of ATF-1 (Alien Task Force One), the U.S. Army's answer to the Yeerk invasion. He doesn't take kindly to Jake and the kids at first, but agrees to help them after he's been brought up to speed.


 * Aggressive Negotiations: He has Jake arrested four times before he starts listening to him.
 * Badass Normal
 * Four Star Badass: Well, Three Star Badass, but still counts.
 * Last Stand: He leads it.
 * The Leader: Type II.
 * Old Soldier: His age is stated as fifty-four years old. It's safe to say he counts.
 * Recurring Character: He appears in the last two books.
 * Redshirt Army
 * Supporting Leader
 * The War Room: He runs his campaign against the Yeerks out of one. Jake notes that it seems an awful like what you'd see in a movie; old guys chomping cigars, guys in suits and a big map (that has his hometown crossed out, ).
 * The War Room: He runs his campaign against the Yeerks out of one. Jake notes that it seems an awful like what you'd see in a movie; old guys chomping cigars, guys in suits and a big map (that has his hometown crossed out, ).