Prototype (video game)/Characters

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Characters from Prototype (video game) include:

Alexander J. Mercer/ZEUS

"They call me a killer. A monster. A terrorist... I am all of these things."

The protagonist, a man who wakes up in the GENTEK morgue with bizarre and horrifying powers and no knowledge of events prior to that point, aside from his name and that he was once a scientist. Confused, enraged, and determined to reclaim his past, he sets out to do so by hunting down his old colleagues.

In truth, the creature acting as the protagonist is not Mercer but the Blacklight virus, which was released by the real Alex Mercer moments before he was shot dead and infected. The virus animated his corpse and came to believe it was him; however, evidence suggests that their personalities differ quite sharply. Voiced by Barry Pepper in the first game and Darryl Kurylo in the sequel.

  • Aloof Big Brother: The real Alex only cared Dana as a tool for his purposes.
  • Amnesiac Dissonance: No matter how much of a monster you play Alex as, the man whose form he took was worse.
  • Anti-Hero: Initially a type V, but is a type IV by the end of the first game due to Character Development.
  • Badass Bookworm: In addition to being a former scientist, he absorbs the knowledge of anyone he consumes, and he'll consume upwards of thirty scientists completing the Web of Intrigue - though he doesn't exercise it much.
  • Becoming the Mask: Played with. The real Alex died; the player character is just The Virus using him as a mask. But the virus has some redeeming qualities and is fiercely protective of Dana. The real Alex was definitely in Complete Monster territory.
  • Berserk Button: Lots of things, but especially don't hurt his sister or throw innocent people into his path to save yourself.
  • Big Bad: The real Alex is not only responsible for the outbreak, he created the virus.
  • Big Eater: Soldiers, civilians, infected, Hunters; he can and will absorb thousands of them alive (and in the humans' case, whole) throughout the game. One of the Achievements is even called Endless Hunger.
  • Blood Knight: He actually seems excited at the prospect of fighting a whole pack of car-sized flesh monsters. The player will likely disagree.
  • Body Surf: In his own way, it's entirely possible to go undetected in a military base or during a mission by stealthily consuming and stealing the identities of one soldier after another. This has nothing to do with the Body Surf power.
  • Civvie Spandex
  • Combat Pragmatist: Fighting fair is hard when you can kill a person with one negligent gesture, so he doesn't bother.
  • Cluster F-Bomb: Maybe it's a side-effect of eating all those soldiers.
  • Creepy Blue Eyes: His main distinguishing features are his unusually pale, creepy, reflective eyes.
  • Cursed with Awesome
  • Dead All Along: The shapeshifter tearing up Manhattan searching for his memories is just the sentient Blacklight virus wearing Alex Mercer's corpse.
  • Dead Person Impersonation: Courtesy of eating them and taking their form.
  • Despair Event Horizon: The prequel comics reveal the reason for his Face Heel Turn in Prototype 2 is because he lost all faith in humanity.
  • Determinator: The Blackwatch only ever manage to slow him down, even once he becomes their biggest threat and they throw everything they've got at him. Not because of his powers; he's just straight up too angry to quit. Although being able to tear steel with his bare hands and survive rockets to the face doesn't hurt.
  • Driven to Villainy: Nobody ever asked him whether he wanted the powers he has, or whether he wanted to be a monster. That he acts like one is in some sense a function of his circumstances, at least at first. The trope is ultimately played straight, subverted, and inverted.
  • Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette: The only colours in his face are the red circles under his eyes; even his lips are pale. He looks like he last slept when he was dead.
  • The Empath: In a very messed up way, he absorbs so many people that their screaming in his head forces him to develop a conscience. He is extremely unhappy about that.
  • Even Anti Heroes Have Standards: As ruthless and violent as ZEUS is, even he was disgusted when he learned what his creator did.
  • Extreme Melee Revenge: The default animation for consuming a Web of Intrigue Target sees Alex knock his victim to the ground, pin them, and then just punch them viciously, over and over until their faces cave in. It's so brutal it even sprays blood on the camera.
  • Face Stealer: The basis of his 'consume and become' abilities, along with Brain Food.
  • Four Eyes, Zero Soul: The real Alex sported glasses prior to his death; the virus doesn't need them.
  • Freudian Excuse: In his character profile (and hinted at very obliquely in the game) is the story of Alex Mercer's horrible, poverty-stricken childhood being shipped around foster homes until his mother was released from jail. He would have preferred the foster homes, and eventually made his escape through his gift for science, viewing the high-profile job and excellent paycheck he received at GENTEK as owed to him by the world after his crappy life. When he learned that Blackwatch was going to purge the project, that was the final straw.
  • From a Single Cell: Even after getting nuked, all he needs is a few scraps of his body and some biological matter and he's back in business.
  • Hates Being Touched: Quite minor, and for one scene, but Alex's reaction to Karen's welcoming embrace is to freeze uncomfortably and then shrug her off. Understandably, nobody else ever even tries to approach him with affection and he never approaches anyone likewise—except once, with Dana, trying to comfort her.
  • Hey, It's That Voice!: So Johnny "Goodboy" Tyler went from savior of the Man-Animals to devourer of the Man-Animals? Fair enough.
  • Humanoid Abomination
  • Hurting Hero: What's Dana's reaction upon seeing him killing a Blackwatch soldier, and then again to a greater (but more subtle) extent when he confesses that he can hear the voices of the people he's killed inside himself but believes that killing "feels right". He later apologises and she tentatively accepts him again right before a Leader Hunter bursts through her wall and kidnaps her.
  • Identity Absorption: His baseline and most useful ability, though it's not without side effects such as developing a conscience.
  • I'm a Humanitarian: He gains health, knowledge, powers, skills, disguises, and pieces of the Jigsaw Puzzle Plot by absorbing people.
  • Immune to Bullets: Functionally if not completely. Unless you're playing on Hard, it takes a lot of massed gunfire to even come close to damaging him. In cutscenes, he's able to get up from being shot by five guys armed with assault rifles and doesn't appear to be any worse off for the favor.
  • In the Hood
  • Jerkass: Selfish, vicious, violent, devoid of tact, almost hilariously bad at showing or receiving affection, and either borders on or is actively sadistic depending on the player. The original Mercer went beyond "just" being a jerk, but his influence is likely at work.
  • Kill and Replace: Or Consume And Become, same difference.
  • Knight Templar Big Brother: Mess with Dana and you better have a way out of Manhattan, because no place on the island is safe. You're not even guaranteed safety if you escape.
  • Lack of Empathy: The original Mercer "wasn't paid to feel." He didn't.
  • Lightning Bruiser: The only thing in the game that can keep up with him is an attack helicopter, which he can kill in two hits. On the Infected side of things, Hunters and Leader Hunters are technically faster, but suffer in manoeuvrability.
  • Mad Scientist: Dr. Alex Mercer, at your service.
  • Mind Hive: He keeps every one of his consumed victims' memories inside his head, and he says he can still hear them all screaming as he relives their deaths over and over and over.
  • Morally-Ambiguous Doctorate: The certificate is on the wall of his apartment. And boy was he evil. Good thing we don't play as the guy who earned the doctorate.
  • Oh Crap: Seeing the two pathologists who were examining him get executed by Blackwatch, getting his cover blown infiltrating a Blackwatch announcement, and an unexpected Infected attack disrupting his plan to "interrogate" McMullen. Although, being Alex, his version of that last one is a little more M-Rated: "SON OF A BITCH!"
  • One-Man Army
  • Person of Mass Destruction
  • Plaguemaster
  • Present Absence: Doctor Alexander Mercer's actions kick off the entire main plot and provide the motivations for at least two major characters, despite him being dead before the opening cutscene.
  • Psychotic Smirk: Alex never really smiles, but he's prone to these from time to time. Specific (and creepy) examples are after he thinks he's beaten Cross and when he gets the drop on McMullen.
  • Quest for Identity: His goal is to find out who he was before he lost his memory. Once he finds the truth, he immediately wishes he'd never learned it.
  • Roaring Rampage of Revenge: His other goal.
  • Rogue Protagonist: In the sequel.
  • Roof Hopping: Due to a combo of Le Parkour and In a Single Bound.
  • Shapeshifting: The entire basis of his powers that don't revolve around eating people.
  • Shapeshifter Weapon: In multiple flavors!
  • The Sociopath: Mercer is diagnosed a narcissist and a sociopath in one Web of Intrigue cutscene and the lack of a Karma Meter - along with the sheer scope for destruction that his powers have and the way they're fuelled - means he'll be doing some awful things in the name of his goals. He rarely displays so much as a flicker of regret for the murder, mass-murder, mass-cannibalism, all kinds of destruction, collateral damage... However, Subverted in that he does have regrets, even if only Dana and Cross ever see them. That diagnosis was more likely for the original Mercer.
  • Spanner in the Works: It turns out that a super-strong shape-shifting man-eating psychopath with an intense hatred for Blackwatch tends to screw up their plans. Funny how that works.
  • The Stoic
    • Not So Stoic: During his confrontation with Colonel Taggart.

Alex: COME BACK HERE, YOU FUCKING BASTARD!!

  • Super Senses: Infected vision and Infrared vision.
  • Super Strength: Alex at a base level will kill humans in one hit and can lift cars. If you stack Musclemass on top of that, Alex can pitch cars over a city block and gib people in one hit.
  • Taking You with Me: The original Alex released Blacklight when he was cornered by the Blackwatch. it seems he didn't believe in half-measures - if he was going down, he was taking potentially the entire human race with him.
  • There Is No Kill Like Overkill: Alex is a guy who believes in being thorough. To the point of coating the ground, walls, and scenery with viscera in his, uh, enthusiasm.
  • Tomato in the Mirror: Alex Mercer is hunting down the scientists behind the virus, including whoever caused the Penn Station outbreak. As it turns out, he's The Virus. And the man who designed it and caused the outbreak? Alex Mercer.
  • Unstoppable Rage: His ground state of being. He's an angry, angry abomination against God, man, and nature.
  • Unwitting Pawn: Just about every bad guy manipulates him for their own gain at one point or another. He doesn't like it.
  • What Have I Become?: Word for word in his closing narration. His conclusion is that he is "less than human... but also something more."
  • Wrestler in All of Us: Several of his normal moves. One of the default consume animations is a chokeslam.
  • The Virus: Quite literally.
  • Younger Than They Look: Alex looks to be in his late twenties and indeed, the original Mercer was 29, but the viral copy is only 18 days old by the end of the game. He is, however, also ageless; he'll never look any older, either. As long as he keeps fed and whole, he could conceivably live forever.


Alex in Prototype 2

In the sequel, Alex is no longer the protagonist and differs a great deal in characterisation, stemming from some bad experiences in between the games recounted in The Anchor. Spoilers ahead.

  • A God Am I: Debatable in the sequel in accordance with his plan. He even tells his sister that the viral monsters are "beyond death", and his Motive Rant includes a proclamation that he will create a perfect "new world".
  • Affably Evil: In the sequel toward Heller. He even tries to recruit him and teaches him how to absorb memories from his consumption targets. Testimony from his Evolved indicates he's genuinely fond of Heller, and he claims he's disappointed in him for disrupting his plans. Even when he makes the decision to kill Heller off, he tries to give him a quick, clean, merciful death. It's only when that fails that the claws come out, and he never stops trying to convince Heller to join him.
  • Bad Boss: Berates his underlings during Web of Intrigue segments and consumes them all to boost his own powers.
  • Blacklight Apocalypse: His goal, expanded worldwide.
  • Blue and Orange Morality: His goal borders on it, if not Insane Troll Logic. Heller is...unconvinced by his arguments.
  • Dark Messiah: Has shades, given the reverence most of the evolved seem to hold him in. Many of them act honestly shocked that Heller is attacking them.
  • Devour the Dragon: Before throwing down with Heller, he consumes all the Evolved present to boost his own power and go One-Winged Angel.
  • Expy: In the sequel, the similarities to long-standing Resident Evil villain Albert Wesker are too numerous to ignore. Both are intellectual, with scientific backgrounds (though Mercer's are borrowed), who started an endemic with a weaponized virus, who wish to wipe the scourge of humanity with a bioweapon of mass destruction, are extremely dangerous warriors augmented with organic weapons, are infected with and gain power from the same virus they plan to use to wipe out the planet, and all of the aforementioned viruses result in veiny, bulbous, tendrily, organic shapeshifting monsters. They even have a similar mode of speech and a tendency to keep their red eyes hidden.
  • Face Heel Turn
  • Famous Last Words/Facing the Bullets One-Liner: "Huh. Welcome to the top of the food chain."
  • Graceful Loser: Though he throws everything he's got at Heller in the final battle, he faces death congratulating Heller for becoming the strongest of all the Evolved.
  • Hive King: In Prototype 2, he has taken Elizabeth Greene's place as the leader of the Infected.
  • Kick the Dog: Hoo, boy.
  • Killed Off for Real: Is consumed by James Heller in the final mission.
  • Large Ham: He is much more animated this time around - gesturing grandly and making more of a meal out of his lines than his actual meals (which he seems to have given up).
  • Manipulative Bastard: He has infected numerous individuals, called Evolved, with his strain of the Blacklight Virus and planted them in high-ranking positions in Blackwatch and Gentek to serve as spies. He also tries to manipulate James Heller into helping him out, but makes a crucial mistake that clues Heller into his real motives - mentioning that together they will destroy Gentek and Blackwatch...but not the virus.
  • Motive Rant: Has one. Heller doesn't really care.
  • Not So Different: Remember his disgust with Greene and his original incarnation? His actions in the sequel are near-identical to theirs. He even returns to Penn Station where the original Mercer was shot dead to release the virus a second time, apparently in the name of drama.
  • No Plans, No Prototype, No Backup: Heller, he teaches him the ropes of his new powers and pretty much expects him to join the other Evolved. It seems he didn't even factor in what would happen if Heller, or any other Evolved went rogue and fought against him.
  • No Sense of Personal Space: In his cutscenes with Heller (and in contrast with the first game), he has a habit of putting his hands on Heller's shoulders or chest as a means of seeming more sincere.
  • One-Winged Angel: He spends most of the game appearing outwardly human, but when push comes to shove and after consuming the Evolved, his body becomes significantly more monstrous. Along with his old Shapeshifter Weapons distorting his form, his limbs become bloated and discoloured, spines erupt from his back, he's covered in blood, and his eyes glow red.
  • Pet the Dog: Quite nice to Heller, at first - teaching him how to consume targets and gain memories from them and informing him that consuming the more monstrous Infected will give him new powers. He also never actually goes so far as to kill Dana even when she's trying to disrupt his plans wherever possible. Before his final fight with Heller, he hides both Dana and Amaya safely out of the crossfire.
  • Red Eyes, Take Warning: His eyes turn red during his fight with James Heller.
  • Social Darwinist: He believes the "Evolved", especially himself and Heller, are at the top of the food chain.
  • Sudden Sequel Heel Syndrome: Went from a conflicted, guilt-ridden Anti-Hero at the end of Prototype to a megalomaniacal supervillain just in time for the next game.
  • Snark-to-Snark Combat: In the final battle, Mercer and Heller hurl insults back and forth.

Alex: "Hey! I'm using that!" (said if Heller uses the same weapon as him)

Dana A. Mercer

"Someone's gotta know what the fuck is going on here."

Alex's younger sister and the first person he remembers after he awakes. A journalism student and spitfire with a sharp tongue and an inquisitive mind, she loves and idolises her older brother, despite not having seen him in five years, and acts as his intelligence gatherer and data analyst. Voiced by Lake Bell.

  • Blue Eyes: She is Alex's sister, although hers aren't as... creepy.
  • Code Name: "Athena" in Prototype 2.
  • Damsel in Distress: A few missions revolve around rescuing her from peril. Pretty understandable, since she's not the one with superpowers.
  • Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette: But only because she's always in the dark. She'd probably look normal in good light.
    • In 2, she takes issue with being called "pasty".
  • I Have No Brother: Tells Heller to kill Alex after finding out he had Galloway kidnap Amaya, as he is no longer her brother.
  • Intrepid Reporter: Only a student, but according to her character profile, she's naturally inclined this way.
  • Lady Swears-A-Lot: Though the entire game is hardly stingy with the F-bombs, she swears as often as the soldiers do.
  • Mission Control: You get most of the story missions for the first part of the game from her. Continues this tradition with Heller in the sequel after Guerra dies, for approximately the second half of the game.
  • Morality Pet: Pretty much the only living being that Alex gives a damn about aside from himself. Also one of very few people in the game on speaking terms with stuff like ethics and sanity. Likewise, She is Heller's only friend and the only person he makes an effort to be nice to.
  • Now What?: How she ends the second game. "What do we do now?"
  • Parental Substitute: Her character profile explains that this is the reason she trusts her older brother so absolutely; never knowing her father, Alex was the closest thing she had to a stable parental figure. Knowing this makes everything revealed about her brother roughly a bazillion times more depressing.
    • Heller tries to convince her to take Amaya in if Heller is somehow not around. Though Dana's flustered as all hell, she and Amaya get along very well, and Amaya runs towards Dana when Heller's infection freaks the hell out of Amaya.
  • Plucky Girl: Not that it does her any good given the setting, but this college-age girl with no combat training and no superpowers insults the Blackwatch to their faces and actually headbutts one who put his hands on her. That Alex splatted the guy a second later in no way lessens her sheer chutzpah. On the optimism count, she never turns her back on her brother, always helping him even when he's just gotten through explaining that he eats people, in the sincere belief that he's still in there somewhere and knows what's right. She's wrong on both counts -- about her real brother. Her fake one, oddly enough, is less of a bastard and genuinely cares.
    • Far less optimistic in the sequel, considering what her fake brother becomes. Still ends up relatively okay, though.
  • What Happened to the Mouse?: Rescued while unconscious, not seen again for the rest of the game.
    • She does show up in the sequel, however, as "Athena", Heller's contact and second Mission Control.

Karen Parker

Alex's ex-girlfriend and a scientist like him; her picture still hangs on the wall of his apartment. She helps him create a cure for the virus ravaging Manhattan. One of the viruses, anyway. Specifically, Alex himself; Karen was (possibly) forced into working for Blackwatch and the "cure" turns out to be a parasite designed to kill him. Voiced by Vanessa Marshall.

Doctor Bradley Ragland

"My medical opinion's not for sale."

A pathologist who knows some uncomfortable secrets, content to run the morgue in a teaching hospital in New York. He once worked for GENTEK, but quit on ethical grounds some time ago. Dana sends Alex to him in the hopes that he can cure the parasite. Voiced by Phil LaMarr.

Director Raymond McMullen

"I want it on a slab. I need to know what makes it tick."

The Director of Research at GENTEK; Alex's ex-boss, who knows more of Blackwatch's secrets than is healthy due to his insatiable scientific curiosity. This fascination extends to Alex's abilities and eventually leads to his death. Voiced by Paul Guilfoyle.

Captain Robert Cross

Soldier: Is it true that he caught the last Runner on his own?

Randall: Not caught. Killed.
—Discussing Cross

A highly skilled and dedicated member of Blackwatch who believes wholeheartedly in what they claim to fight for: protecting the American people from the threat presented by the virus, whatever it takes. He has a reputation for surviving and winning battles with even the most powerful infected creatures. Voiced by Jeffrey Pierce.

General Peter Randall

Alex: Even Randall's not crazy enough to nuke Manhattan.

Cross: You're wrong.

The current leader of Blackwatch, directing their movements in Manhattan. He has been in the organisation long enough to remember Hope, Idaho, and the methods used to contain it. Voiced Gordon Clapp.

  • Armies Are Evil
  • Authority Equals Asskicking: Not really. It's expected, since he's been fighting the virus virtually for his entire career and it was because of his orders and determination that Hope's infection didn't spread, but that was forty years ago when he had both arms. And indeed, when Alex finds him, he doesn't even go down with a fight.
  • Big Bad
    • Cutscene Boss: When Alex finally catches the bastard, he grabs Randall, yells at him, and throws him down before casually eating him in a cutscene. Considering Alex's power by that point, the alternative was probably a Zero Effort Boss.
  • General Ripper: Randall wants to fight the virus however he can. If that means shooting innocent people, sending his men to die in a hopeless war, slicing his own infected arm off with a butcher's knife, nuking Manhattan and blaming the United States Marine Corps, or putting the virus in a position where it would do a huge amount of damage when it escaped to learn how to engage it properly, he will do it.
  • Knight Templar
  • Well-Intentioned Extremist: He says outright that he believes all casualties of any outbreak and resultant purge are "sacrificial lambs" necessary to learn how to fight the infection and "save the world" and may or may not have deliberately engineered the catastrophe that was the Manhattan outbreak, just to learn how to fight the virus on a larger scale. That this outlook and method are balls crazy and result in things like nuking Manhattan only after Greene is dead and the infection is weakening (because she couldn't then be retrieved for further study) seems not to occur to him.

Colonel Ian Taggart

The leader of the Marines in Manhattan and Randall's second-in-command. Voiced by Richard McGonagle.

Elizabeth Greene/MOTHER

Alex: What are you?
Greene: The reason.
Alex: For what?
Greene: Everything!

The last surviving inhabitant of Hope, Idaho, a town that was destroyed after being used as a testing ground for a biological weapon, to prevent the disease from spreading. She appears 'burnt out' and catatonic after forty years of experimentation by GENTEK. There is almost certainly no remnant of 'Elizabeth Greene' left; all that remains is the virus in an empty human host. Unfortunately, it is both intelligent and very patient. Voiced by Kari Wahlgren.

  • Ax Crazy: There's nothing human left in her any more. We hope.
  • Big Bad
    • Disc One Final Boss: Her death doesn't end the game or the infection, though it does slow the infection quite a lot.
  • Brown Eyes: A subversion of the usual symbolism. Greene is not in the least bit down-to-earth or stable.
  • Cute Bruiser: Though the 'cute' part is up for debate, she hits Alex once and he's smashed across the room. This is a guy who weighs hundreds of pounds slapped aside like a cardboard cutout.
  • Decoy Damsel: GENTEK thinks they've contained her, and they're wrong. She's just waiting patiently to unleash the Zombie Apocalypse.
  • Evil Matriarch
  • Hive Queen: Without a Runner like Greene or other directing force such as the Supreme Hunter or Alex, the lesser Infected remain basically mindless shambling zombies. However, with a Runner, It Can Think...
  • Humanoid Abomination: She still looks like a nineteen-year-old girl. She and Alex share many similarities (strong, fast, resilient, power over the virus) but aren't quite the same. Only Greene was once human.
  • It Can Think: And it is patient. If it's four years or forty years, the virus will wait in dormancy as long as it takes an opportunity to present itself, and during all that time, it plans. One mission revolves around Greene using infected people who haven't started showing symptoms as unwitting spies, their connection to the Hive Mind allowing her to receive information from them. After she dies, the outbreak loses its momentum almost completely.
  • Latex Space Suit: Her clothing is outright modelled on fetish clothing and wet-suits, resulting in a skin-tight latex body suit with a lot of straps in weird places.
  • Make Me Wanna Shout: In her boss fight, one of her attacks is a scream that sucks the colour from the screen and sends shockwaves over the battlefield that will knock you down to critical health if you don't move your butt.
  • Not So Different: From Alex. This is especially played up when Alex takes her place in the sequel.
  • Older Than They Look: She looks nineteen. She's actually over fifty.
  • One-Winged Angel Powered Armor: Though it's possible she could have taken Alex in melee given the strength she demonstrates in the cutscenes, instead she dons a giant fleshy mass as armor and starts tearing everything around her apart. It takes a lot to bring her down.
  • Plaguemaster: The virus spreads on everything she touches, and the Hunters, Leader Hunters, and Hydras are her creations.
  • Sealed Evil in a Can: Or an observation cell. Then Alex accidentally lets her out. To be fair, she clearly could have left at any time, given the state of the room.
  • Walking Wasteland: Everywhere she goes, the infection emerges, and her children follow.
  • The Virus: By some quirk of biology, her body was mutated by the original strain to create viruses; hundreds of them. Every single one displays very strange properties. Gentek's reason for holding her is to examine and try to manipulate the strains into doing useful things, such as enhancing human attributes, killing people in specific ways very very rapidly, strengthening immune systems, or eradicating cancer, among other purposes. She's insanely valuable to Blackwatch because she is the only living subject to display the ability.
  • Voice of the Legion: After she speaks, her words are repeated in multiple whispers.

The Supreme Hunter

After Alex removes the parasite, he attempts to kill Greene by using it on her, but her body rejects it. The result combines Mercer's and Greene's DNA and becomes something new: a creature with characteristics of both the Redlight and Blacklight viruses. It is not happy with its 'father' for attempting to destroy it.

  • The Dragon: To Greene.
  • Evil Counterpart: To Alex - roughly humanoid, just as smart (or smarter), same powers, and an independent entity, born from the virus and Elizabeth Greene but not under her thrall, just like Alex. Unlike him, it wants to control and spread the disease and it isn't even a little bit human.
  • Kill and Replace: Cross.
  • Self-Made Orphan: First, it doesn't seem terribly distressed about Alex killing and absorbing Greene, its genetic 'mother'. Second, its purpose in life is to kill and devour Alex -- implied to be at least in part because it resents him for not letting himself be eaten alive.

PARIAH

Of all the children born during Hope, Idaho's infection, only one did not suffer fatal defects within months of birth. Codenamed PARIAH by the military, the surviving child was forcibly separated from his mother, Elizabeth Greene, and moved to a secure facility for study and containment. He never appears in the game, but plays a fairly large part in the Web of Intrigue.

  • Bishonen Line: PARIAH shows no sign at all of infection with the virus, and yet McMullen theorises that he could bring about the end of life as we know it.
  • Blessed with Suck: Seems to kill anything he touches. As a result, he is kept either in a sealed cell or a courtyard surrounded by snipers and barbed wire.
  • Creepy Child: There are three pictures of him. One is him playing with a ball, one is him playing with blocks, and the third is him standing beside a mutilated corpse with a handful of blood. What is this kid?
  • Person of Mass Destruction: It's theorized by NPCs that if Alex Mercer and PARIAH ever came in contact with each other, the results could be beyond catastrophic.
  • Super Prototype: In a way, Alex is the production model of what PARIAH is naturally, and probably isn't even as good. His powers were artificially activated, whereas PARIAH's are natural; PARIAH is everything the virus is meant to be.
  • Older Than They Look: He must be at least forty, but he looks no older than six or seven.
  • Sequel Hook: Averted in the second game; the sequel doesn't involve Alex looking for him. He is mentioned once as the assignment of Agent Barnes Griffin, and otherwise seems to have no bearing on events. But he's still out there...
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