Alex Rider/Characters

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Alex Rider

• Anti-Hero: Type I -> Type II or III.
• Badass
• Brown Eyes: Described as having "serious, dark brown eyes".
• Expy: The author wrote him as a teenage James Bond.
• Gallows Humor: All the time. It would be easier to count the times where he hasn't cracked a joke in the face of terrible events.
• Hair of Gold
• Heel Face Revolving Door
• I Just Want to Be Normal
• Heroic Blue Screen of Death: Suffers one when Jack is killed.
• In the Blood: His father, his uncle and his godfather were all spies before him.
• Knight in Sour Armour
• Kung Fu Kid
• Master of Disguise
• Punch Clock Hero: He admits as such in Scorpia, but this had been clear from Stormbreaker.
• Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right: In Eagle Strike.
• Shell-Shocked Veteran: Losing all of his family and then having the only real adult he can trust killed really takes his toll on him by the end.
• Technical Pacifist
• Teen Superspy
• Thou Shalt Not Kill: Averted hard. He is often responsible for the deaths of a Big Bad or their lieutenants at least once in each novel.
• Trauma Conga Line: This is his life in a nutshell.

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
  • Good Is Not Nice
• 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

• Ascended Extra: Plays a considerably more active role in Eagle Strike, only to be Demoted to Extra in Scorpia.
  • And then she ascends back up in Scorpia Rising.
• Cool Big Sis: How Alex thinks of her, anyway.
• Fiery Redhead
• Killed Off for Real
• Kindly Housekeeper
• Stuffed in The Fridge: Her death happens entirely because Razim wants to see how much emotional pain it will cause Alex.

Smithers

• Big Fun
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: You think his weight problems hinder him? You'd be right, but he's surprisingly effective at getting rid of the Scorpia team that come his way. And then he's revealed to not even be fat.
• Dark Secret: To be revealed in Scorpia Rising as per Word of God.
  • And the revelation is... Smithers is actually a thin man wearing a special suit that only makes him look fat.
• Fake Brit: In-universe example, as after removing his Fat Suit it turns out the "real" Smithers is Irish, rather than the "public school" accent he affects.
• Fat Suit
• Gadgeteer Genius
• Gadget Watch: He gives Alex one in Snakehead that can send out a distress signal.
• Incredibly Lame Pun: A lot of his gadget names, including the 'fan club' and the 'Chamber of Secrets'.
• Sacrificial Lion: Subverted. He's set up to die, but manages to dispose of most of the Scorpia agents sent after him and escapes.
• Shoe Phone: Every single one of his gadgets. He never actually invented a shoe that works as a phone, though.

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

• Love Interest: Of Alex.
• Punny Name: "It's been a pleasure." Word of God states that this was a play on the innuendo-laden names of Bond girls.

Joe Byrne

• CIA

Fox/Ben Daniels

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

Wolf

• Training from Hell: Subjects Alex to this, to a degree.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: He's wounded in the raid in Point Blanc, and never heard from again.

Ian Rider

• Posthumous Character
• Wide-Eyed Idealist: Smithers implies this in Scorpia Rising.

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

• The Ace: Frequently described as one of the best agents MI 6 ever had. Even Alan Blunt is described as having a soft spot for him.
• Deep-Cover Agent: That jail sentence was faked; MI 6 made the story up so that they could get him into Scorpia, making him a...
  • Reverse Mole
• Posthumous Character

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.

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

• All a Part of the Job
• It's Personal: For Alex, since Yassen killed his uncle.
• Professional Killer
• Redemption Equals Death
• Wouldn't Hurt a Child: He has no qualms about working for an employer intending to kill millions of children, but objects to directly killing Alex.

Dr. Grief

• Car Fu: Killed by a flying snowmobile that blows up his helicopter.
  • Hellish Copter
• Politically-Incorrect Villain: Is a shameless white supremicist.
• Mad Scientist

Mrs Stellenbosch

• Brawn Hilda
• Politically-Incorrect Villain: Just like her boss.

General Alexei Sarov

• Driven to Suicide: By Alex's rejection of him, and the failure of his plan.
• Monster Sob Story
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: The Blue to Conrad's Red.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: An interpretation of him.
• Why We're Bummed Communism Fell: Played for Drama, he wants to engineer a Nuclear Accident in Russia to restore Communism.

Conrad

• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: His badly damaged body is good for throwing people off and making them assume he's not a capable combatant. They're very wrong.
• Disproportionate Retribution: Blew up his school for getting a detention.
• No One Should Survive That: He was blown up by a bomb. Whilst he was carrying it.
• Two-Faced: As a result of the above.

Damian Cray

• Affably Evil
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing
• Drugs Are Bad:
• Expy: He's an evil Elton John.
• Nuke'Em
• Piano Drop: How his parents die.
• Pink Mist: This is all that is left of him after he gets sucked into a Turbine Blender.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: One way of looking at his ideals. He launches a nuclear strike on several countries to stop productions of illegal drugs.
• Would Hurt a Child

Julia Rothman

• Death by Looking Up
• Little Black Dress: In Scorpia.
• Shiny Midnight Black
• Would Hurt a Child

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

• I Just Shot Marvin in the Face: Manages to pull this on himself. He lives through it, though.
• Pillow Pistol: Until it goes off.
• Too Dumb to Live: Wow, Levi. Did you really expect to get away with pulling a gun on Zeljan of all people?

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

• Affably Evil
• Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas
• Death by Irony: He's killed by the bomb that he would have destroyed Reef Island with.
• In the Blood: His mother worked with the snakeheads.
• Wicked Cultured

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

• Back for the Finale
• Cloning Blues: Averted twice. He knows his genetic material is the same as his father's, but he doesn't mind, and when neither Julius nor his "father" knew who Alex really was, he was OK with becoming a clone of Alex Friend. But then once he figured out Alex's true identity...
• Demoted to Dragon: If one takes the view that the clones are Grief, which is mentioned several times in Point Blanc.
• Look Both Ways: Subverted. Getting hit by a car doesn't outright kill him, but it does leave him wounded for Alex to finish off.
• Not Quite Dead: Remember the fire in Point Blanc? Yeah, he survived that.