Mass Effect 2/Characters/Antagonists and NPCs: Difference between revisions

* [[Evil Is Not a Toy]]: {{spoiler|As [[Magnificent Bastard|magnificent]] as he was, he was still way out of his league attempting to take control of the Reapers.}}

* [[Evil Mentor]]: Tries to be one to Shepard in ''Mass Effect 2'', though it's entirely up to the player whether or not Shepard actually follows him.

* [[Expy]]: The Illusive Man's development in ''3'' is rather parallel to Saren's from the first game: they both are [[Well-Intentioned Extremist|Well Intentioned Extremists]] who crosses the [[Moral Event Horizon]] to deal with the reaper threat. {{spoiler|While Saren feels that he can work with the reapers to save all organic, TIM decides to try to find a way to control them. They both even justify their actions with the '''exact same''' argument; "the reapers never truly wiped out all of organics. Both of their paths leads to them getting reaper implants, making them easier to be indoctrinated. In the end, they both can also die in the same exact way, committing suicide if Shepard manages to convince them that the reapers are controlling them.}}

* [[Face Framed in Shadow]]: Although his facial features can occasionally be seen.

* [[Gameplay and Story Segregation]]: {{spoiler|Even if you've finished the game depriving him of Reaper tech, he'll still go out of his way to get Kasumi in your team even though they've already finished their mission. The same goes for the Overlord mission, begging the question of why he'd request your aid in stopping his project after you blew up the Collector Base. In addition, you still get Cerberus funding when completing missions.}}

* [[Glowing Mechanical Eyes]]: Bizarrely, almost ''nobody'' comments on them.

* {{spoiler|[[Heel Realization]]: Like Saren before him, can be talked into having one, both into realizing that he's indoctrinated and how much his actions have hurt humanity.}}

* {{spoiler|[[He Who Fights Monsters]]: How did he raise such a huge army in ''[[Mass Effect 3]]''? Indoctrination. Unfortunately, indoctrination based on Reaper tech. He wasn't just playing with fire, he was playing with randomly spontaneously combusting thermite. And naturally, he succumbed himself.}}

* [[Red Right Hand]]: Creepy, synthetic, glowing eyeballs.

* [[Shut UP, Hannibal]]: {{spoiler|What Paragon Shepard does to him after destroying the Collector base. Bonus points for Miranda doing it too, when asked to convince him/her not to do it. Extra bonus points for "Shut up" being the actual dialogue option that shows up on screen.}}

* [[Slouch of Villainy]]: He sits rather casually in his lounge chair most of the time.

* [[Smug Snake]]: {{spoiler|If you refuse to give him the Collector's base at the end, his unflappable demeanor...flaps a bit.}}

* [[Spanner in the Works]]: Part of how Cerberus operates in ''3''. {{spoiler|Attacking Sur'Kesh to kill the fertile females, and attempting to set off a Turian bomb on Tuchanka in order to prevent races from uniting.}}

* [[Start of Darkness]]: ''Mass Effect: Evolution''

* [[Suspiciously Similar Substitute]]: To {{spoiler|Saren}} in ''Mass Effect 3''. {{spoiler|Both seek to use the Reapers as a means to secure the dominance of their race, and end up indoctrinated and implanted with Reaper tech for their efforts. Shepard can even talk the Illusive Man into suicide in an almost exact replication of Saren. According to a Prothean VI, every cycle has groups like these that emerge.}}

* {{spoiler|[[Talking the Monster to Death]]}}: {{spoiler|You can convince him to kill himself at the end of ''Mass Effect 3''. However, unlike with the encounter with Saren in the first game, which just requires a bunch of points in the Charm or Intimidate skills, the dialogue option to do this with the Illusive Man is ''very'' [[Guide Dang It|difficult to unlock]]; you have to have near-max EMS, a completely full Reputation bar, ''and'' have to have taken all of the Persuade options in ''every conversation you have with him during the game''.}}

* [[Tom the Dark Lord]]: His [[Fan Nickname]] is essentially TIM, while his real name is {{spoiler|Jack}}. Go figure.

* [[Totalitarian Utilitarian]]: It's quite telling how he tends to refer to his employees as "resources".

* [[Tragic Hero]] / [[Tragic Villain]]: He needs quite a bit of whitewashing to be considered a 'hero', but the fact remains that he had the power, knowledge (his information network nearly rivals the Shadow Broker's), and charisma to stand a significant chance of defeating the Reapers. {{spoiler|Too bad his [[Pride]] led to him getting too close to Reaper tech and becoming one of their biggest assets against Shepard. It's hard to argue that, had the Illusive Man sided with Shepard when they encountered one another on Mars, the fight could have been won much sooner and more easily.}}

* [[The Unfettered]]: Is willing to allow any manner of ''horrible'' experiments happen to people in order to secure human dominance, even if those experiments are on other humans.

* [[Ungrateful Bastard]]: Cerberus will oppose Shepard in ''Mass Effect 3'' regardless of whether s/he {{spoiler|decided to destroy the Collector base or not}}, {{spoiler|though it later becomes clear that this largely due to indoctrination.}}

* [[Utopia Justifies the Means]]: See the above quote. In this case, utopia = human dominance.

* [[Anti-Hero]]: Somewhere between a Type III and IV.

* [[Canada, Eh?]]: Michael Hogan's northern Ontario accent comes through pretty strongly.

* [[Commanding Coolness]]: Gets promoted to this by the time you meet him in ''3''.

* [[Da Chief]]: For Zakera Ward in ''Mass Effect 2'', then moves up into even higher echelons in ''Mass Effect 3''.

* [[Dirty Cop]]: A [[Zig-Zagging Trope]]. Bailey is obviously crooked, as he's willing to torture suspects and makes under the table deals with thugs, but at the same time he's actually a good person and acts as a [[Reasonable Authority Figure]] towards Shepard.

* [[Foil]]: Towards Executive Pallin. Unlike Pallin, who was a by-the-book cop, Bailey is willing and able to bend the rules if he feels it gets the job done.

* [[Hidden Heart of Gold]]: Willing to engage in dirty business to keep the peace, but he's anything but a thug - see below.

* [[Knight in Sour Armor]]: His divorce, estrangement from his children, and the things he's seen on the job have made him pretty sour. Still does his best on the job though.

* [[Noble Bigot]]: Subverted. Although this trope often goes hand in hand with [[Old-Fashioned Copper]], Bailey is one of the few NPC's in the series to avoid this. During Thane's quest he shows empathy towards the alien population's fear of humans, observing that many of them have lived on the station since before humanity discovered space travel. All the more impressive given that many of the C-Sec officers throughout the game are very openly speciesist, including (at first) Garrus.

* [[Parental Abandonment]]: "You think [Thane's] the only man who ever screwed up raising a son?"

* [[Reasonable Authority Figure]]: Perfectly willing to help Shepard out, even when it involves breaking the law.

{{quote|"You put Darius in power, but he was getting greedy. You wanted me to kill him."

"The Alliance does not condone assassination. We would never give that order. Killing Darius was your decision alone - and because you're a Spectre, we couldn't reprimand you if we wanted to." }}

* [[Ink Suit Actor]]: Preview pics for ''The Arrival'' DLC indicate [[BioWare]] decided to model Hackett's face off Lance Henriksen's.

* [[Ironic Echo]] / [[Meaningful Echo]]: "You've done a hell of a thing." <ref>What Hackett tells Shepard in the first game if s/he manages to save everyone in the Paragon-exclusive mission. Also what he says after Shepard [[Shoot the Dog|buys the galaxy some time]] in ''Arrival''.</ref>