Deus Ex/Characters

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


JC Denton

Voice: Jay Anthony Franke

The player character and main protagonist of the game, an augmented agent of UNATCO tasked with defeating the NSF, only to find out that the situation is considerably more complicated than it seems..

  • Badass
    • Badass Longcoat: Lampshaded when Anna tells you you will have to do more than just scare your enemies with a coat that makes you look bigger that you really are.
    • Badass Abnormal: His nano-augs grant him this status, but it take awhile ingame for the effects to show, but a fully tricked out nano augmented JC Denton can be pretty badass.
    • Badass Normal: Sans nano-augs, JC is still a trained government agent with all that implies.
    • One Man Army: To the point villains are deploying entire armies against you because you are just that dangerous.
  • Bio Augmentation: He has the latest technology by the time the game comes rolling by, leading to trust issues from his colleagues with older tech.
  • Combo-Platter Powers: The various augmentations available, from Super Speed to regeneration to bulletproof skin to completely silent movement and invisibility...
  • The Comically Serious
  • Cool Shades: He even wears them at night, although his augmented vision helps prevent the world being too shady. The shades are to hide his eyes.
  • Creepy Monotone: Intended to allow the player to insert their own emotion, though even divorced from its justification, it fits JC's character design.
  • Dark Is Not Evil: JC is as dark and serious as his brother, but he's good.
  • Deadpan Snarker: JC Denton has a few witty quotes in line with such.

"What a shame."

"A bomb's a bad choice for close range combat."

"You mechs may have copper wiring to reroute your fear of pain, but I've got nerves of steel."

"I was never properly trained in its operation."

  • Genius Bruiser: While possibly and at least built to be a killing machine, at more than a few points, such as with the bartender in China and with Morpheus, is quite able to sit down and talk philosophy.
  • A God Am I: In Invisible War, after merging with extremely powerful, omniscient AI Helios. Well, that was kinda sorta the plan in the original, but it didn;t take then, but you can make sure it sticks in the sequel.
  • Happily Adopted: Like Paul, he was fond of his adoptive parents.
  • Healing Factor: Regeneration is, unsurprisingly, the most popular augmentation amongst most players, especially since at full power, you regain health faster than a roomful of enemies with assault rifles going full auto can take it away.
  • Heroic Albino: JC Denton can be an albino. But then, he can also be black, white[1], vaguely Hispanic...
  • Hyperspace Arsenal: JC has a lot of space in that coat.
  • The Immune: JC is immune to the symptoms of Gray Death.
  • Immune to Bullets: Can be depending on your difficulty setting and augs selection.
  • Jumped At the Call: "This is why I exist? Alright. Let's do this."
  • Meaningful Name: He becomes a Messianic Archetype in one of the endings.
  • Naive Newcomer: At first...
  • Nakama: This is why when JC finally decides to jump ship from his traitorous employers, so many of his senior co workers join him.
  • Nanotechnology: Is a walking test bed for the technology. Intended to be this on purpose by Bob Page and Walton Simons so they can refine their own use of nanmachines for their own goals, though this comes back to bite them on the ass later.
  • Nigh Invulnerable: It's possible to make him this to pretty much anything, but long falls or explosions at point-blank range, even on realistic difficulty.
  • Phlebotinum Rebel: Oh yes, indeed. From expendable prototype testbed for the real deal to the head conspirators to bane of the head conspirators' existence.
  • Properly Paranoid: JC can be this.
  • Red Oni, Blue Oni: JC is potentially Red to his brother Paul's Blue. He can be played as someone who thinks before he shoots, but that still doesn't get around the fact that he usually still has a far higher propensity to shoot than his brother (unless you go full Pacifist).
    • It can also work the other way, since JC is stoic and dry while his brother is much more emotional and social.
  • Sealed Good in a Can: For Invisible War.
  • Significant Monogram
  • Stealth Expert: You can play him this way, and certain characters will encourage him to be this.
  • Technical Pacifist: It will be impossible to sneak past every enemy, but you can knock them out non-lethally or disable them if they are mechanical. Even bosses can be avoided if you don't want to kill them (they are nigh all immune to being taken out non-lethally), though to dodge killing them may require a bit of Sequence Breaking via glitches.
  • The Stoic
  • Sunglasses at Night: Lampshaded by Anna, and Handwaved via JC's 'My vision is augmented' explanation. In game terms, the reason probably has something to do with the fact that the glasses conceal one of the only visible signs that JC is a nano-aug.
  • Tyke Bomb
  • Weak but Skilled: On the "Realistic" difficulty setting. It's still possible to go through the game as an One-Man Army, but you have to be extra-careful.
  • Wide-Eyed Idealist: JC truly does believe he serves the law for good, even though early on he is quickly disabused of the notions he working for anyone in real authority who shares the sentiment. Regardless, he still believes such ideals should exist, and his naivety does not prevent him from doing what is pragmatically necessary to make sure that can reign supreme once more.
  • Villain Protagonist: One of the endings allows you to join the last remaining villain faction.

Paul Denton

Voice: Jay Anthony Franke

JC's brother and fellow augmented agent.

  • Badass:
  • Bio Augmentation
  • Conspiracy Theorist: Of course, in the Deus Ex universe, he is completely right.
  • Dark Is Not Evil
  • Face Heel Turn: Subverted. Turns out it was actually a Heel Face Turn.
  • Happily Adopted: Indicates he liked his parents, and JC mentions he and Paul realized they were not genetically related growing up.
  • Meaningful Name: Saul changed his name to Paul when he decided to switch sides from persecuting the early Christians to converting to Christianity. Paul Denton goes from persecuting the NSF to joining them.
  • Mission Control: Only a few times though.
  • The Mole: For the NSF.
  • Nanotechnology
  • One-Man Army: It is entirely possible for Paul to be this near the midpoint of the game.
  • Phlebotinum Rebel: Rebelled before little bro JC did. However, not as successful at it as JC was.
  • Red Oni, Blue Oni: Blue to his little bro JC's potential Red. He's the one who urges you basically to think before you shoot.
  • Sealed Good in a Can: For Invisible War.
  • Technical Pacifist: Will lecture the player on avoiding fatalities but put him in a room with a hostile, and he'll gib the poor guy with a plasma rifle.
    • Subverted. He's secretly a member of the NSF, so he's aiding them by making sure none of them die, which is why when JC joins him, he drops this line of thought entirely.

Bob Page

Voice: Cliff Stephens

The richest man in the world, head of Page Industries and member of the Illuminati.

  • Bald of Evil: At the end, as he's preparing for the merger.
  • Big Bad: Page is the leader of Majestic-12 and the mastermind behind the events of the game.
    • Bigger Bad: Used to be just a high ranking member of the Illuminati, who were the original Big Bad in the prequels. Then he decided to turn on them and do their job himself.
  • Bio Augmentation: He does have a very minor cyber augmentation on his skull though, but it seems to either be ornamental or a form of infolink lashup device, given he eventually contacts you at one point through yours. He had it in his younger days too when cyber-augs were cutting edge tech.
  • Card-Carrying Villain: In both a somewhat literal sense (he was an official member of one of the most villainous organizations in the Deus Ex universe at it's prime) and figurative sense, as he's more than happy to do evil, twisted things even his former Illuminati allies considered depraved and extreme.
  • Corrupt Corporate Executive: Though he does a great job playing as an Honest Corporate Executive to the unwashed.
  • Crazy Prepared: Unlike most villains, he does think far enough ahead to have a Plan B AND C.
  • Deceptive Disciple: Either this or A Pupil of Mine Until He Turned to Evil to Morgan Everett.
    • The prequels elaborate a bit further, explaining it was a bit of both mixed with Eviler Than Thou, as Everett's hands are and were far from clean both then and in the present.
  • Didn't See That Coming: Helios deciding that merging with JC is a better idea.
  • Evil Redhead: He was dark-haired in the prequels, the change in hair color is never explained.
  • A God Am I: His goal is to become one by merging with the Helio AI so he can rule the world.
  • It's All About Me
  • Lazy Bum: He's revealed to have cut corners doing the standard Illuminati rituals for advancement, mostly coasting by on Everett's recommendation until he backstabbed his former mentor.
  • Screw the Rules, I Have Connections: Reveals he engineered getting his top lieutenant the director of FEMA job in the intro by making a senator dance to his tune. Said senator was all too happy to dance when Bob dangled the (temporary) cure to Gray Death in front of him.
  • Screw the Rules, I Have Money: Page is not above throwing tons of money at problems to make them go away.
  • Villainous Breakdown: If you follow Everett's suggestion to kill him, he'll get increasingly unhinged and desperate. Amusingly, since his taunting messages to the player are scripted by location, he'll come across as bipolar, switching between pleading with JC and mocking him.
    • While it's not nearly as loud, he does this if JC is doing the steps to reach the Helios Ending as well. His final line, in this case, is an almost child-like "Helios? Icarus? Don't leave me..."
  • Villain with Good Publicity: And how. A newspaper you come across in the game discusses him donating oodles of money to health clinics, and in Missing Link, emails from him have a very friendly and casual nature. This is nothing to his true self.
  • Voice with an Internet Connection: Will try to taunt you via your infolink eventually.
  • Xanatos Gambit: Page is quite unconcerned about JC when you hear him discuss JC's actions against the conspiracy to Maggie Chow, even saying he had a plan for making JC irrelevant LONG-TERM. What he means is rather brilliant: One of the last pieces of the puzzle needed for Page's plans was the Daedelus AI, which had helped Paul and now was assisting JC. He let JC live long enough to use JC to unwittingly link Daedelus into the MILNET where Page could capture it. Later, he still manages to make use of JC by forcing JC to gather key schematics he needs to complete his plans, using a few innocent lives as a bargaining chip combined with the fact JC's own objectives meant the latter would have to obey regardless.
  • We Can Rule Together: Resorts to this in desperation when JC is getting close to stopping him.
    • Warren Spector confirmed he intended to add a "join Bob Page" ending, but was never able to do so.

Walton Simons

Voice: Tom Hall

The head of FEMA and Page's right-hand man.

"Denton? Walton Simons here. What an expensive mistake you turned out to be. I ordered the troops to kill you because frankly, I don't have the patience to wait for one of those damn killswitches to work."

Simons: "You take another step forward and here I am again, like your own reflection in a hall of mirrors."
JC: "Must make me one ugly son of a bitch."

ECHELON IV

Voice: Peter Marquardt

  • A.I. Is a Crapshoot: Daedalus turns against its creators when their methods technically classify them as a terrorist organization.
  • Big Brother Is Watching
  • Deus Est Machina
  • Evil Gloating: Icarus takes great sadistic joy in taunting you about how pathetic you are and how futile everything you do is at each step, plus going on about how much You Suck in response to any Video Game Cruelty Potential you take advantage of.
  • A God Am I: Helios.
  • Gone Horribly Right: The reason why Daedalus turns on its masters is drenched in irony. Echelon IV was designed to scour all telecommunications for subversive/terrorist activity and was given the sentience to assist in interdicting terrorist operations. MJ12 very stupidly used it to make their jobs easier as means of keeping tabs on UNATCO and the NSF, and Daedalus took one look at their activities, realized they were exactly what he was built to stop, and immediately sought to help JC out and his associates out, since they had the best shot at stopping MJ12's terrorism and subversion of international law.
  • Face Heel Turn: Artificially induced on Daedalus not long after the Versalife mission. Icarus was activated, compromised Daedalus, who starts giving your orders that would help compromise your goals, and eventually, Icarus takes full control. A conversation involving Bob Page can be overheard foreshadowing this shortly before it happens.
    • Which backfires later, though, as Helios ultimately winds up deciding you'd be better to work with than Page.
  • It's a Small Net After All: Daedalus is the Internet.
  • Mission Control: Daedalus and Helios.
  • Split Personality: Daedalus and Icarus.
  • Split Personality Merge: Helios.
  • Verbal Tic: The Helios AI, yes.
  • Voice with an Internet Connection: Icarus and Helios.

Anna Navarre and Gunther Hermann

Voice: Carolyn McCormick and Jeff Groteboer

  • Ax Crazy
  • Beta Test Baddie: Gunther especially so.
    • In the prequels, they would have been elite troops because cyber-augs were cutting edge tech back in their prime, but now are on the road to total obsoleteness.
  • Blood Knight: Anna's SOP for any hostile situation is kill everything!
  • Body Count Competition: Gunther Hermann and Anna Navarre seem to have such a competition. If the Player Character is killed by Anna, she'll sometimes say "Nine hundred and ten. I'm catching up, Gunther."
  • Butt Monkey: Gunther suffers quite a few indignities of varying degrees, from getting kidnapped, to getting phased out in favor of agents with newer augmentations, to being unable to get the soda he wants.
  • Cyborg: Per the universe. Of course, with Paul and JC on the scene, Gunther is going obsolete.
  • Honor Before Reason: Gunther cannot be talked down from fighting you in Paris.
  • Huge Guy, Tiny Girl: Tiny is pushing it, but Ann certainly is compared to Gunther.
  • Invisibility: Anna's augment of choice. She also runs the tutorial on stealth.
  • Jerkass: Anna. Unless you're a merciless killer, she treats you like crap. However, showing a little humility and deferring to her early on during the second mission will delay some of her more abrasive tendencies, but still, she'll wind up treating you like shit for not being a cold-blooded killer sooner or later.
  • Morality Pet: Gunther truly does feel sorrow and rage after Anna Navarre dies, and it is that which is driving him to want to kill JC Deader Than Dead. That said, this trope doesn't make him any less villainous, but at least his motives are a little more sympathetic.
  • Only Sane Man: Anna is very skeptical about Gunther's conspiracy theory that the maintenance man who stocks the drink machines at UNATCO is purposely trying to screw him over. Subverted in the sequel when you find out he was right.
  • Self-Destruct Mechanism: One mechanism kills them, the other takes care of the corpse.
  • Skippable Boss
  • Trademark Favorite Food: Gunther likes orange soda. He does not feel the same way about lemon-lime.
  • Verbal Tic: Gunther seems to have a lisping problem. Most likely, given his accent, English is not his first language.
    • The prequel novel Icarus Effect confirms he's from Germany and English is a language he picked up since he left their GSG-9 unit when he went to work for the Tyrants.

Sam Carter

Voice: Sean Hennigan

The quartermaster for UNATCO and a former general.

  • Artificial Limbs: One of his legs, according to the now defunct homepage. Not that you can tell by his character model...
  • Badass: He was one back in the day.
    • Handicapped Badass: Lost a leg, has an augment replacement.
    • Retired Badass: He's an ex-General working as a quartermaster. Though he's still respected enough JC makes a point of showing deference regardless in honor of his badass credentials.
  • Cool Old Guy
  • Don't You Dare Pity Me!: JC attempts to express sympathy to Sam for the loss of his family to terrorism. Sam doesn't want to hear it.
  • Internal Reformist: He eventually gives up though.
  • Jerk with a Heart of Gold: He comes off as very crotchety and hard-assed, but seriously, he's a stand-up guy, and if you keep picking non-lethal options and avoiding killing people, he even commends you on your humanity and restraint.
  • My Country, Right or Wrong: He refuses to leave UNATCO even after learning about the corruption, believing only by good individuals within can reform it. He is forced to leave and more fully help the player when MJ12 tightens their grip on UNATCO even more.
  • Noodle Incident: He memorably claims to have dispatched an entire platoon with a pocket knife. He also mentions taking out a group of Afghans in an unspecified war.

Jaime Reyes

Voice: Sean Hennigan

UNATCO's doctor and the one in charge of nanotechnology-related matters.

Alex Jacobson

Voice: Richard Zangrande Gaubert

Brian "Jock" Flanagan

Voice: John Gault

A helicopter pilot who works for UNATCO and later defects along with you.

  • Badass Driver: It takes some balls to fly into the epicenter of hostile enemy territory, which he does regularly throughout the game.
  • Drunk Driver: The only time you meet him outside of his ride, he's hanging out in a bar. You can buy him two beers. You can call him out on this, and he'll claim he can't fly the helicopter properly when he's sober.
  • Properly Paranoid: To the point he drops hefty foreshadowing on later events very early in the game.

Joseph Manderley

Voice: John Gault

  • Da Chief: Of UNATCO. Really just an MJ12 puppet, and as revealed in Human Revolution, was one for the Illuminati in general in his earlier days.
  • Obstructive Bureaucrat: He got his start as a tool of the conspiracy to suppress information.
  • Reasonable Authority Figure Seems to be at first.
  • Reassigned to Antarctica: Suffers this as a result of JC escaping... if you don't kill him yourself. If you don't, it's then later implied he's killed anyway.
  • Too Dumb to Live: After confronting him, he'll act nonchalant and let you leave. When your back is turned, he pulls a pistol on you. He's typically gibbed a few seconds later. Unless you're playing at the "Realistic" difficulty setting, where there's a 50% chance or so that he will shoot you in the back of the head, fatally.
  • Villain With Good Publicity: Is regarded as reasonable and well-liked as leader of UNATCO despite criticism of UNATCO's activities, as revealed via some news articles. Was intended to be such by Walton Simons to give UNATCO a respectable looking public face, though he eventually is considered expendable by the time JC breaks out of UNATCO HQ.
  • You Have Failed Me...: Listed as dead even if you don't kill him, and he may have been killed for his failure.

Tracer Tong

Voice: John Gault

  • Alliterative Name
  • Big Good: Has become one for the resistance due to his knowledge of nano-augs, computers, and has been looking into how to stop the Gray Death. The conspiracy considers him a high profile target as a result.
  • Meaningful Name: His name is an allusion to the common Win32 networking tool "tracert" for looking up the hosts that a packet visits on its way to another host.
  • Mission Control: After you defect from UNATCO, he takes up Alex's old role.
  • Nice Guy
  • The Triads and the Tongs: Not so much as his father was in Human Revolution from what we can see. He seems more interested in his lab than day-to-day gang activity.
    • The Triads return the favor, as he provides them cool toys to play with, they provide him a nice lab to work in, they both benefit.
  • Voice with an Internet Connection

Morgan Everett

Voice: Sean Hennigan

Currently the most influential of the remaining Illuminati, and is Page's former mentor.

  • Affably Evil: Albeit of the benevolent, or at least enlightened self-interested sort. Ultimately, he wants his old power back, but he's willing to be The Charmer in hopes of winning you over to acquire the chance.
  • Manipulative Bastard: Though what he is manipulating you towards is pretty obvious.
  • Scary Black Man: He's personally charming, but he's still Illuminati with all the negative connotations that imply.
    • His underling Toby Atanwe fits even better.
  • Voice with an Internet Connection
  • Wicked Cultured: He's a Illuminati leader who happens to live in one of the nicest looking homes in the game, which goes nicely with his extremely polished manner.

Gary Savage

Leader of a group of scientists who defected from Area 51 and set up in Vandenberg Air Force Base to oppose Page.

Jojo Fine

Voice: Khary Payton

A crime boss of New York who threatens to do things "lo bruto" when he doesn't get what he wants.

Smuggler

Voice: Khary Payton

As his name implies, a smuggler in Hell's Kitchen.


Gilbert Renton

Voice: Ron Tatar

Owner of the (Hil)Ton hotel, all he wants is to run a peaceful business and keep his daughter out of trouble.

  • I Just Want to Be Badass: Insofar as keeping his little girl safe anyway.
  • Overprotective Dad: Considering who his daughter is and the setting of the game, he has every right to be.
  • Papa Wolf: He becomes this if you arm him with a weapon.
    • The good resolution to his plot arc become available by not only letting him get a chance to prove this but also surviving to talk about it with his daughter as witness.

Maggie Chow

Voice: Carolyn McCormick

The main antagonist of the Hong Kong area, a former actress and current business executive who is in league with Bob Page.

  1. ↑ Well, he's a white guy helping the helpless black Morgan Everett, so with a little stretch...
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