Dead Island/Characters

Xian Mei
Xian Mei was born and raised in China by her father, a Hong Kong police force chief inspector who taught Xian martial arts from a young age, and was murdered by a Triad enforcer. She decided to follow in her father's footsteps and joined the Hong Kong police force, where she was selected to join the first all-female anti-organised crime unit. However, the team and its members were commissioned by the police force for the PR boost rather than their skill. Xian was soon planted undercover at Royal Palms Resort as a receptionist, mostly because they had nothing better to do with her, and feels shame and disappointment that her potential is being wasted.


 * Action Girl: Her bio describes her as "a passionate sportswoman" who is "quick on her feet."
 * And then there's her in-game biography, which is totally different. The website and manual make her sound like an idealistic young girl who wants to travel the world. If you pick her off the character selection screen, you get the real story, told to you by Xian Mei herself.
 * Unintentional edit, or Fridge Brilliance?
 * Anime Chinese Girl
 * Badass
 * Badass Bookworm: She is university educated, and scored the highest in her class.
 * Clothing Damage: Though it's a FPS game, cutscenes and artwork showcase that her skirt has pretty much been ripped to shreds due to the zombie event.
 * Combat Medic: Her three major Survival skill tree abilities focus on using medkits more effectively.
 * Combat Stilettos: Xian can actually learn a move that involves driving her high heels into a zombie's head.
 * Fragile Speedster/Glass Cannon: Xian has no damage reduction talents and her health pool grows more slowly than anyone else's. It is not unusual for even a high-level Xian to go down after two or three hits from a Thug or an infected with a weapon, which makes her the single worst character to play in single-player mode. You generally want to focus on evasion and jump attacks with her, and pop a medkit any time she's taken any real damage. On the plus side, her specialization in bladed weapons lets her attack quickly for high damage with very little drain in stamina, and in the late game she's absolutely devastating with a katana or Zed's Demise.
 * Fridge Brilliance: Okay, so she's a Hong Kong policewoman who knows martial arts; how does that translate into being good with knives? The game never specifies what style her father taught her, and silat is a style practiced all over Asia that specifically emphasizes training with knives, sickles, and machetes, the three most common kinds of bladed weapon in the game.
 * Going Commando: Not entirely sure how someone found the time to discover it in-game, but apparently Xian isn't a fan of underwear. Needless to say, the link is NSFW.
 * Knife Nut: Her Rage attack has her pulling out a knife to carve zombies up.
 * No Respect Gal: Her back-story.
 * Only Sane Woman/Token Good Teammate: In the cutscenes, Xian Mei comes across as the sanest and most idealistic of the four heroes. She disagrees with the other three's suggestions to abandon the other survivors and save themselves, agrees with Jin's desire to help everybody, and is the only person to sensibly point out that they have no reason not to trust The Voice, who's been completely helpful and non-threatening, while the others start screaming at the guy because he's an authority figure (Purna) or because they want to make their own way out (Logan). In the beginning of Act III she even gives a Rousing Speech to the other 3 characters to convince them to search for the vaccine and save the world instead of heading straight for the extraction point and just saving themselves.
 * Of course, any Genre Savvy fan of the zombie genre can guess how that turns out...
 * Overt Operative: Xian's cover is basically transparent. The rest of the survivors figure out something's up when they revisit the hotel in Act 2, although it's never followed up on.
 * In the Dead Island eight-page promotional comic, Roger Howard discovers the hotel staff knew she was a cop from the moment she landed. In the novelization, Purna figures out Xian can't be an ordinary desk clerk pretty much immediately upon meeting her.

Logan
Logan is an ex-football star whose life was destroyed after he got into a nasty crash while street racing, killing his passenger and fracturing his knee. The combination of his crippling injury and the public turning on him ended his career and sent him on a downward spiral into depression. In an attempt to escape his personal demons and get away from the hell of his life back home, he took an endorsement job at the Royal Palms Resort.


 * The Alcoholic: The only hero to gain buffs from drinking whatever whiskey can be found around the island. Side-effects include booze induced strength and more health recovered.
 * The Atoner
 * Badass
 * Broken Pedestal: His street racing accident did this for most of his fans, on account of killing some innocent woman, and violating his contract's morals clause.
 * Career-Ending Injury: in the backstory.
 * Celebrity Survivor
 * Fridge Brilliance: It at first seems odd that anyone, especially an American Football player, would be proficient in using thrown weapons, unless he's a (formerly) famous quarterback. It also explains why he's not necessarily as tough as you would think as Q Bs in American Football are, for the most part, prohibited from being hit and heavily protected in the instances they can be, making it rare.
 * It's still pretty odd given that throwing a knife or club is done completely differently than throwing a football and takes huge amounts of constant practice to do so accurately. Maybe he took it up as a hobby?
 * Hand-eye coordination is a transferable skill. Along with a good throwing arm, it gives him a lot of advantages in the field of thrown weapons that other characters wouldn't have. If he spends a lot of time in a bar, then playing darts might be just the kind of practice he needs.
 * Logan's spoken introduction on the character select screen confirms he was a quarterback.
 * Human Pack Mule: The backpack should clue you in. As such, he's the only character who in cutscenes can pull plot important items out of somewhere without looking ridiculous. And of course, one can only imagine that a Hyperspace Backpack must exponentially more spacious than the Hyperspace Arsenal everyone else totes (hint: it's actually not).
 * Knife Nut: Pulls out a set of throwing knives for his Rage attack.
 * Jack of All Stats/Master of None: Logan's skill tree consists largely of the lower-tier skills of the other 3 main characters. This makes him very well-rounded, but he doesn't have access to any of the higher-tier skills.
 * Jerk Jock: To the point where it wound up destroying his career.
 * Jerk With a Heart of Gold: Heavily implied when
 * Painting the Fourth Wall: His narration in his bio sounds like he's the guy on the next barstool from the player, which is appropriate, given his substance abuse.
 * Token White: Logan is the only Caucasian character of the four playables.
 * Too Dumb to Live: Only in the novel. Novel!Logan habitually mixes painkillers, antidepressants, and hard liquor, to the point where his being alive at all is a minor miracle. (It's amazing that he was allowed to donate blood.)
 * Unfazed Everyman/Cowardly Lion: In the cutscenes Logan is by far the least confident, least experienced, and most "everyman" of the 4 survivors.

Sam B
Sam B is a rap star born and raised in New Orleans, growing up in a childhood racked with violence and poverty. Sam B wanted to be a rap artist since he was a small boy, but always remained small-time due to poor fortune. This all changed when he wrote a song as a joke one Halloween entitled "Who Do You Voodoo, Bitch?", and the song subsequently shot him into stardom after a surge of unexpected popularity. However, he is resentful that all of his other works are ignored and "Who Do You Voodoo, Bitch?" is all anyone remembers him for. This, combined with drugs, alcohol, bad business decisions, and his "friends" and advisors taking advantage of him, bruising his self-confidence and causing his career and personal life to fall apart. He booked a gig to play at a party at the Royal Palms Resort, seeing it as his last chance to rebuild his life and career.


 * Angry Black Man: His rage skill tree heavily focuses on him drawing aggro from enemies and decreasing the amount of rage it takes for him to enter fury mode. He also has a few special abilities to support his rage skill, such as damage reduction or restored health per kill while in fury mode.
 * Badass
 * The Big Easy: According to his in-game bio, he was born and raised in New Orleans, and you can hear it in his accent.
 * Celebrity Survivor
 * Drop the Hammer: His specialty is blunt weapons. On the character selection screen, he is depicted holding a sledgehammer.
 * Ear Worm / Memetic Mutation: In-universe example with "Who Do You Voodoo, Bitch?"
 * Good Old Fisticuffs: His Rage attack has him beating the undead up with his bare hands.
 * Horrorcore: Though it's never outright stated, it's pretty clear that his One Hit Wonder falls squarely under this genre.
 * Mighty Glacier/Stone Wall: His skill tree focuses heavily on health regeneration, damage reduction, and even drawing aggro from enemies, making it clear he's intended to be the Tank/Meatshield of the group. His focus on blunt weapons means he swings slower and drains stamina more quickly, but he also hits hard and has long reach.
 * Nice Hat: The "bayou witch doctor" top hat he wears while performing.
 * One Hit Wonder
 * Punny Name: Sam B. Zombie. Get it?
 * Regenerating Health: He's the only character that has this, via his skill tree.
 * Scary Black Man: Sam is easily the most aggressive of the four survivors, and the most inclined to leave others to their fate.
 * Sex, Drugs, and Rap
 * World of Cardboard Speech: Some TXT files have a good one that could have been his closing dialogue. It's essentially his musing over how extreme conditions bring out the integrity and strength of the best of people, and that seeing those gave him inspiration. Once he punches his way out of the zombie apocalypse, he'll have a song to sing.

Purna
Purna is a former Sydney police officer. Embittered by harsh racism, sexism and rampant corruption in the force that prevented her from advancing her career and doing her job, she one day decided to take the law into her own hands, confronting a child molester who had used his wealth and connections to escape prosecution. The man laughed at her and pulled a gun on her, which she turned on him and shot him with. While it was correctly argued to be an act of legitimate self-defence, she was fired regardless. Bitter and cynical, and with no clear future left for her in Australia, she turned to working as a Bodyguard Babes for VIPs in dangerous places all over the world. She is hired as much for her looks as her skill with firearms.


 * Action Girl
 * Angry Black Woman: Although a somewhat nuanced and not extremely egregious example. She shows an extremely poor attitude towards authority figures, but is reasonably tolerant of her three companions and is quite tender towards Jin.
 * That's putting it lightly. She outright says to omit the people holed up with the mayor from their aid run for no reason other than her hating rich people. They're no better off than any other group, save for a concentration of police officers, but they're clearly short on supplies.
 * To be fair, by the time you've triggered that cutscene, you've met the mayor, and he's an enormous Jerkass.
 * All he really says is that he won't share any supplies with them and given the aforementioned state of the place that's somewhat understandable. He's rude but then it's the zombie apocalypse, rudeness is permissable.
 * Australian Aborigines: She's half Koori on her mom's side.
 * No Respect Gal: This is part of the reason why she was disrespected by other people on the force.
 * Badass
 * Bodyguard Babes: Her current job.
 * Combat and Support: Purna's not bad in a fight, although the scarcity of guns and ammunition in Act 1 means she develops slowly. When playing co-op, however, you can spec into her support auras, which provides her teammates with stat bonuses and free healing.
 * Cowgirl Cop: The reason she was fired from the Sydney PD.
 * Groin Attack: She didn't kill the child molester she shot. She gelded him.
 * Purna's in-game bio has her say specifically that she "just" blew the guy's balls off. In the novel, however, she killed him, and tells Logan and Sam without any hesitation that she enjoyed doing it.
 * Also, she treats a drunk to this when he gropes her breasts in the intro sequence.
 * The Gunslinger: Of the four, she's the most proficient with guns, and her Rage attack has her pulling out her gun (a Revolvers Are Just Better, of course) and firing on all zombies in sight, ammo not being an issue.
 * Linear Warriors Quadratic Wizards: Purna has a reputation as being an under-powered character because there's one gun and two ammo drops in the entirety of the resort in Act 1. After you visit the city in Act 2, where you can find blueprints for pistol and shotgun ammunition, and once she has the chance to get a couple of decent handguns, Purna can stack her auras, damage multipliers, and rage mode together to become a one-woman apocalypse. The other characters have substantial advantages of their own, but as firearms and ammunition take more precedence in the late game, no one else can match Purna's sheer damage output.
 * Mini Dress of Power: Judging by her pic in the bio.
 * More Dakka: Her Rage attack.
 * The Musketeer: While her main skill is with firearms, she also has some skills that boost her ability with melee weapons. At least one is specifically for blades, so it fits this trope.
 * Pet the Dog: Some of her actions and attitudes through the storyline are quite questionable (to say the least), but she shows a soft spot when she comforts Jin after
 * Reality Is Unrealistic: A lot of people complain about how fake Purna's Australian accent sounds, but her voice actress, Peta Johnson, is actually from Queensland.
 * Stripperiffic: She doesn't wear much, really.

The Voice/Colonel Ryder White
The first person you "meet" in the game, The Voice contacts you through the hotel's intercom system and guides you to safety through the prologue level. Throughout the game, it's mentioned that he has been contacting the various groups of island survivors (most prominently John Sinamoi's group) in an attempt to coordinate a response to the zombie outbreak. When the players eventually succeed in making radio contact with him, he reveals his identity as Colonel Ryder White of the Banoi Island Defense Force, the leader of the military contingent sent to contain the outbreak on the island. He requests that they help him by retrieving a vaccine for the zombie infection before meeting him in person to escape the island. His primary motivation is to save his wife Emily, who has been infected by the zombie virus and is slowly turning into one of them.

Ryder White serves as the protagonist of Dead Island: Ryder White, the second DLC for the game, which sheds new light on many aspects of the main campaign's plot.


 * Badass
 * Badass Normal: Ryder White does not have the immunity to infection that the 4 heroes do, yet the DLC campaign shows that he managed to fight his way across the entire island alone without getting infected.
 * Colonel Badass: Being the task force commander, Ryder could have easily tried to evacuate himself after his helicopter crashed. Instead, upon learning that contact with one of his teams was lost, he singlehandedly proceeds on foot through the heavily zombie-infected city to complete their mission objectives himself.
 * Bullet Time: His Rage ability triggers this, and also gives him an infinite ammo super-pistol, similar to Purna's Rage ability.
 * Elites Are More Glamorous: Ryder's profile mentions that he was a member of the SASR, a.k.a. the Aussie version of the British SAS, and even fought in Iraq, East Timor, and Afghanistan.
 * Mission Control
 * This is done interestingly in Ryder White's campaign. Mission Control gives Ryder objectives over the radio, but Ryder is clearly the one in charge and issuing orders. It's an unusual dynamic that doesn't seem to have been done before in another game.
 * Poor Communication Kills:
 * Voice With an Internet Connection: He's the first (living) contact encountered in the game, and he communicates to the survivors through radios on the island while they try to reach him for salvation.
 * Voice With an Internet Connection: He's the first (living) contact encountered in the game, and he communicates to the survivors through radios on the island while they try to reach him for salvation.
 * Voice With an Internet Connection: He's the first (living) contact encountered in the game, and he communicates to the survivors through radios on the island while they try to reach him for salvation.
 * Voice With an Internet Connection: He's the first (living) contact encountered in the game, and he communicates to the survivors through radios on the island while they try to reach him for salvation.
 * Voice With an Internet Connection: He's the first (living) contact encountered in the game, and he communicates to the survivors through radios on the island while they try to reach him for salvation.

Jin
A mechanic's daughter first encountered at the end of Act I while the heroes are looking for a mechanic to help them modify their armored truck so it will be capable of safely punching through the barricade blocking the way into town. She accompanies the four heroes for most of the game and serves as their sidekick of sorts. The players can store their excess inventory with her while she hangs around at the various game safehouses.


 * Break the Cutie:
 * Too Dumb to Live: Jin makes several inexcusably stupid decisions, like bringing supplies to the police station that is overrun with criminals, despite the main characters and even the criminals themselves warning everyone to stay away.
 * Wrench Wench: Her outfit and the fact she's the daughter of a mechanic heavily imply this, although she doesn't do any repair work during the story itself.
 * Wrench Wench: Her outfit and the fact she's the daughter of a mechanic heavily imply this, although she doesn't do any repair work during the story itself.

John Sinamoi
A hotel lifeguard who took charge during the crisis and brought together all the survivors he could find in an attempt to save them from the zombie outbreak. Besides keeping his group of survivors alive, his main goal is to make contact with The Voice, who has promised to provide a means of escape from the island. He gives you the majority of the main quests for the first half of the game.


 * Badass Normal: His opening scene has him fighting a half a dozen zombies, and save you from the last one with a very accurate knife throw. And he doesn't have the fancy viral immunity the protagonists have, so a single bite would have resulted in his death.
 * Gentle Giant: He's muscular, imposing, and sports rather intimidating tattoos. One survivor even says that he was afraid of going to the lifeguard tower because of Sinamoi's facial tattoos.
 * Hey It's That Voice: Voiced by none other than Steve Blum.
 * What Happened to The Mouse?: Despite being by far the most prominent quest giver in the first half of the game, after Act III he completely disappears from the plot (you can go back to the starting map and revisit him, but he has nothing to say).

Mother Helen
A nun in the city of Moresby, she and several other survivors have taken refuge in the church. Throughout the second act, she gives out several missions.


 * As the Good Book Says: Less in her dialogue and more in the missions. Practically every mission from around the church has some form of religious pun in it.
 * Good Shepherd
 * Horsemen of the Apocalypse: Compares the crew to the horsemen.
 * Never Mess With Granny: Sure, she doesn't actually perform combat within the story, but considering the large amount of very dangerous weapons she hands out for doing chores, you have to figure that she hasn't survived on luck.

Yerema
A member of one of the native tribes of Banoi, Yerema ran away from her village to attend school in Moresby, and has since returned home in the wake of the outbreak. She's crucial to the attempts to cure the disease that's turning people into zombies, as by the time you run into her, she's one of the only living uninfected members of her tribe.


 * Doom Magnet: People tend to die around her. A lot.
 * Kick the Dog: Yerema's entire life sucks. Women in her tribe are considered possessions, to the point where her father traded her away to another man in order to settle a bet. She apparently bonds with Jin almost immediately,
 * MacGuffin Girl/Sealed Inside a Person Shaped Can: It's heavily implied that Yerema is "special" and closely tied to the virus, with the possible implication she's a Typhoid Mary carrier of the virus (this is made explicit in the novelization of the game, ).
 * Stripperiffic: Yerema's wearing face paint, jewelry, and a brown bikini. To be fair, every member of her tribe that we see is wearing the same thing, including her father.

Kevin
One of the inmates on the island prison, incarcerated for an unknown crime.


 * Badass Bookworm: Sure, he literally writes himself off as not being one of "the badasses" at the endgame, but he managed to escape alive from the three-way battle between.
 * In Ryder White's campaign, it's heavily implied that he.
 * Fridge Brilliance: He looks reasonably fit, but he still seems out of place among the dozens of hitmen, terrorists, and general psychotics that make up the prison.
 * Regarding Charon:
 * Sequel Hook:
 * The Smart Guy: He's all right with hacking doors that use electronic locks, but considering that the only two groups he spent any visible length of time with were maximum-security prison inmates and the four protagonists, he's basically the tech-savvy one by default.
 * Regarding Charon:
 * Sequel Hook:
 * The Smart Guy: He's all right with hacking doors that use electronic locks, but considering that the only two groups he spent any visible length of time with were maximum-security prison inmates and the four protagonists, he's basically the tech-savvy one by default.
 * Sequel Hook:
 * The Smart Guy: He's all right with hacking doors that use electronic locks, but considering that the only two groups he spent any visible length of time with were maximum-security prison inmates and the four protagonists, he's basically the tech-savvy one by default.

Roger Howard
A reporter who came to Banoi to investigate illegal logging, and ended up getting a lot more than he expected. He has a wife and son (Karen and Jakob), and the recordings he leaves that the protagonists can find are often addressed to them as a last will and testament.


 * Badass Normal: He manages to travel virtually the same path as the protagonists, without their immunity.
 * Hope Spot: One recording is made as he is holed up in a small store, with the undead swarming outside. He knows that the door won't hold, and says goodbye to his wife and son, apologizing that he wasn't home as much as he ought to have been. And then... they leave, apparently having detected better prey. In fact, he escapes his apparent death in virtually all the logs, which tend to end in curses or screams of the undead.

Walker
The most common as well as the weakest type of zombie. They movie slow and don't deal as much damage as the other zombies, but often appear in large groups that can overwhelm their prey more easily.


 * Fan Disservice: They tend to be dressed in revealing swimwear... and are also missing large chunks of flesh in various places... one wonders how some of them can even manage to stay standing...

Infected
The least durible type of zombie, but also the fastest. They deal high damage and often attack in groups similar to Walkers.


 * Fragile Speedster: A couple hits will put one down... if they don't kill you first.

Thug
Tall musculer zombies that can send survivours flying with a single punch. They move extremely slow and rely solely on brute strangth.


 * Battle Cry: If you hear a really loud roar... keep moving.
 * Mighty Glacier: They move slow, but can deal a lot of damage with just a single hit.
 * Punched Across the Room: Any blow they land will send you flying.

Suicider
Painfully self-aware zombies whose only form of attack is to blow themselves up next to a survivour and kill them with the resulting blast. Luckily, they can also harm other zombies this way.


 * Action Bomb: The only way they can attack is with a self-destructive explosion.
 * And I Must Scream: Making them quite possibly the most tragic type of zombie in the game.
 * Body Horror: Probably the worst case out of all the zombies...
 * Glass Cannon: Is the only zombie who can one shot the players, but a couple decent attacks from a distance will easily dispose of them
 * Hoist By His Own Petard: If the survivour has a gun they basically serve as a "wipe out this zombie horde" button. Boom.
 * One-Hit Kill: If a survivour is too close when one goes off it kills them instantly.

Ram
Huge zombies strapped inside straightjackets. As their name implies they attempt to rush the player with a powerful charging attack.


 * Attack Its Weak Point: It only takes 1 point of damage unless you attack its exposed flesh.
 * Bullfight Boss: Dodge. Attack. Dodge. Repeat until it goes down.
 * Foe-Tossing Charge: Any survivour hit by its charge is knocked off their feet, which makes them a huge pain to deal with when there are large groups of other zombies nearby.

Floater
Bloated zombies found near water that can spit a strange type of slime at enemies to damage them from afar.


 * Dead Weight: Much like a Boomer. They even use similer attacks!
 * Fan Disservice: Maybe even worse than the Walkers. This thing is almost naked like most of the other zombies, but as its name implies is fat and bloated. Also, its skin is transparent and its guts spill out when it dies. Lovely.

Butcher
One of the strongest types of zombies in the game. Butchers move fast and deal heavy damage with their arm stumps, which can make them a pain to deal with when other zombies are nearby.


 * Improbable Weapon User: Uses its own arm bones as weapons.
 * Lightning Bruiser: They move fast, deal high damage, and have a decent amount of health, unlike Infected.