Alex Rider/Characters

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Protagonists and MI 6 Members

Alex Rider

Mrs. Tulip Jones

  • Adaptational Attractiveness: It is outright stated in Snakehead that Mrs Jones is "not attractive". Compare her appearance in the movie and the graphic novels. Even in earlier novels she was described as "a head shaped like a potato".
  • Embarrassing First Name: "It made sense. He wouldn't have used that name either."
  • The Un-Reveal: What did happen to her husband and children?

Alan Blunt

  • Anti-Hero: Type 3
  • Cool Old Guy
  • Karma Houdini: And how. For arranging a school shooting and taking Alex to Egypt for another mission, he gets a knighthood and to retire and take a vacation with his wife.
  • Jerkass
  • Out-Gambitted: Despite believing himself to be one step ahead of Scorpia in Scorpia Rising, he is in fact walking into their trap.
  • Pet the Dog: He shows a surprising amount of concern for Alex in the meeting with the Prime Minister in Crocodile Tears.
  • The Spymaster
  • The Stoic: He's often described as seeming completely emotionless.
    • Not So Stoic: On the rare occasions he does show emotion, you know it's serious. When he's telling Alex the truth about how his parents really died in Scorpia, there's "a little pain" in his voice.
  • Would Hurt a Child: Arranges a school shooting to force Alex to work for him again.

Jack Starbright

Smithers

John Crawley

  • Chuck Cunningham Syndrome / Demoted to Extra: He disappears after Skeleton Key. He shows up very briefly in Ark Angel and Crocodile Tears, but in both cases he does very little (his involvement in the latter is about half a page that could have been served by another generic MI 6 character).

Sabina Pleasure

Joe Byrne

Fox/Ben Daniels

  • Ascended Extra: He was a background character in Stormbreaker but then played a much larger role in Snakehead.

Wolf

Ian Rider

People think that being a spy is fun and exciting. Your uncle was a bit like that. It was all a big adventure as far as he was concerned - and look what happened to him.

John Rider

Tom Harris

  • Secret Keeper: For the most part, although he does casually blurt out that Alex is a spy to his older brother.
  • What Happened to the Mouse?: He's heard from only once after he's shot in Scorpia Rising, and it's a passing mention. The final chapter never bothers to mention if Alex ever talks to him once he returns from Cairo or meets him ever again, despite Alex having agonised over leaving him to go to America in an earlier chapter.


Antagonists (Big Bads and Dragons)

Herod Sayle

  • Disproportionate Retribution: Prime Minister and friends insult you as a schoolboy? Kill all the schoolchildren in Britain.
  • Meaningful Name: Shares his with the biblical king who practised infanticide.
  • Piano Drop: Him saving tourists from one is what enables him to move to Britain.

Yassen Gregorovich

Dr. Grief

Mrs Stellenbosch

General Alexei Sarov

Conrad

Damian Cray

Julia Rothman

Nile

  • Death by Irony: He has a fear of heights, and ends up being knocked off a hot air balloon from a height of 100 metres. To add insult to injury, he gets knocked off by a fireball that Alex sets off by severing the balloon's propane burner. How did he do that? By cutting through it with a sword Nile had thrown at him.
  • Throwing Your Sword Always Works: Used twice, first to kill a researcher (which works) and later to kill Alex (which doesn't). More of an aversion as these are swords you can throw, not normal swords.

Levi Kroll

Nikolei Drevin

  • Man Behind the Man: For the first half of Ark Angel, Kaspar is made out to be the Big Bad. Guess who it really is?
  • Villainous Breakdown: After his son is shot. (He lives, though.)
  • Would Hurt a Child: He arranged for his own son to be kidnapped as a Force Three stunt, and even arranged for them to cut his finger off just so the threat would seem credible. He shoots him later, but that is an accident (he's aiming for Alex). Still doesn't change anything, though.

Kaspar/Magnus Payne

  • Awesome McCoolname: MAGNUS PAYNE.
  • Badass
  • Body Horror: Kind of. Having the Earth tattooed onto his face seems to repulse everybody that he meets.
  • In the Back: An odd variant. Alex kicks him in the chest in the Ark Angel station, and his knife stabs into his back as he hits it.

Zeljan Kurst

  • Karma Houdini: Mercifully averted.
  • Man Behind the Man: In Snakehead and Scorpia Rising, for Winston and Razim respectively. He comes up with plans, the other Scorpia executives carry them out.

Major Winston Yu

Ash

  • Big Bad Friend: He murders his best friend, to whose son he is godfather, along with his wife, to prove he's loyal to Scorpia. He goes on to more or less ensure his godson will be killed by telling Major Yu about ASIS' plot and removing the battery from the homing device MI 6 gives him.
  • Co-Dragons: Him and Bill to Winston. Ash plays a much larger role, however.
  • Expy: In many ways, he's a lot like Peter Pettigrew
  • Et Tu, Brute?
  • The Mole
  • Only Known by Their Nickname: "Ash" are his initials, his full name being Anthony Sean Howell.

Dr. Bill Tanner

  • Co-Dragons: See above.
  • Driven to Suicide: Possibly; it's known that he kills himself, but why he does is never explained (it's suggested that he was following orders from Yu after Alex escaped, which given the fate of de Wynter earlier seems likely).
  • Mad Scientist

Desmond McCain

  • Bald of Evil
  • Line-of-Sight Name: His name comes from the bag of oven chips he was found wrapped in as an abandoned baby.
  • Scary Black Man
  • We Care: His charity exists purely to gain whatever profit it can from the disasters by keeping as much of the donation money as it can. Perhaps taken to its extreme when he starts engineering disasters to get people to donate.

Razim

  • Alliterative Name: His real name; Abdul-Aziz Al-Rahim.
  • The Chessmaster
  • For Science!: Takes no pleasure in his experiments.
  • Karmic Death: Yes.
  • Kick the Dog: Or rather, strangle the dog.
  • Only Known by Their Nickname
  • Self-Made Orphan: Indirectly; he rats his parents out to Hussein, but doesn't do anything to them himself.
  • Spanner in the Works: He expects Jack to steal a knife when she and Alex are dining with him, as it's part of his plan to cause Alex emotional pain. Alex stealing a cigarette packet at the same meal is not part of his plan.
  • The Sociopath: He is characterized by a complete lack of emotions or empathy.
  • The Un-Smile: At the end when he's fallen into the pile of salt and is pleading with Alex to throw him a rope. It's described as looking more like a hideous grimace than anything.

Erik Gunter

  • Face Heel Turn: He's suspected to have gone through this after leaving his hospital treatment. The suspicions are true.
  • Failed a Spot Check: Alex's plan to escape would have failed if he hadn't noticed the cigarette packet hadn't been there before Alex got into the van.

Julius Grief

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