The Darkness (video game)/Characters

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Jackie Estacado

Jackie Estacado/The Darkness

  • Anti-Hero: Type IV
  • Badass in a Nice Suit
  • Badass Longcoat
  • Blue and Orange Morality: A hyper-exaggerated version of the mafia code. Jackie is okay with murdering anyone involved in organized crime by the hundreds, dealing drugs, prostitution, and collateral damage. However, if he kills a civilian he gets really disturbed by it.
  • But for Me It Was Tuesday: Deconstructed. Jackie finds out that one of his random hits was the fiance of an FBI agent and is horrified.
  • Can't Have Sex Ever: Jackie seems to think this, though this overlooks some obvious possibilities. He's really only forbidden sex which impregnates a woman..
    • In a bizarre aversion, he does attempt to solicit a Chinese prostitute to give him oral sex. It's interrupted.
  • Celibate Hero: Averted twice. Both times with nonhumans.
  • First-Person Smartass
  • Handsome Lech: Before the comics.
  • Deadly Change-of-Heart: At least on becoming a full-fledged hero.
  • Heel Face Revolving Door: Sarah Pezzini thinks he's this when it's more the fact Jackie has a very strange morality.
  • Hitman with a Heart
  • Hollywood Atheist: Averted. Jackie often debates the existence of God due to the horrible things he's seen but other times seems solidly Catholic.
    • In retrospect, Jackie seems more like a Nay Theist who is downright angry at God more than a disbeliever.
      • It's difficult to doubt God's existence when you may or may not be part of him.
  • Morality Chain: Jenny.
  • Morality Pet: Jenny again.
    • Deconstructed with the fact Jackie tries to make Jenny's sister and later, a rebel woman into his Morality Pet. He turns decides against it when he realizes it would only expose them to needless danger and/or corrupt them.
      • Sarah Pezzini and their daughter, Hope, in a bizarre way.
  • Necessarily Evil: In the game, quite a few of the less-than-pleasant things that Jackie does is to ensure the safety of his allies; Johnny Powell certainly concurs with this belief.
  • Noble Demon
  • Rape Is Love: Jackie once made an offer to a medical student to have sex with him in exchange for cancelling her debt to the mob (she was marked for termination). Jackie seemed unaware she could consider this a form of sexual assault and apologized afterward.
    • Which, in its own way, says everything you need to know about Jackie.
  • Tall, Dark and Snarky
  • Villain Protagonist


The Darkness

The Darkness

  • Casting a Shadow
  • Cloudcuckoolander: In the game, it's dialogue swings from eccentric to downright weird; at one point, it even lurches into Buffy-Speak by informing Jackie that it fixed his "broken head ball." However, it sobers very rapidly when it feels like making a point- or when its existence is threatened.
  • Combat Tentacles
  • Eldritch Abomination
  • God Is Evil: The Darkness may well be as close to God as anything in the setting, along with the Angelus.
    • Though the second game mentions God as a separate entity on multiple occasions. For instance, the origin of the universe as explained by Johnny:

Johnny Powell: In the beginning there wasn't shit. Literally! Nothing but void and darkness, and that's how the Darkness liked it. It wasn't until God decreed that: "Turn on the lights!", that things got nasty.


Comics and Game

The Brotherhood

  • Adaptation Distillation: The Brotherhood in the second game is much more menacing, powerful, and interesting than the one in the comics.
  • Composite Character: There's a similar Evil Army version of the Brotherhood in the comic, it just worships the Angelus.
    • Becomes Fridge Brilliance when you realize the Brotherhood has tried to use the Angelus in the games as well.
  • Deader Than Dead: The only sane member of the Brotherhood has his soul destroyed by the Angelus for freeing the Darkness after they capture it. Johnny says this is the only time in history it's happened and is a poor reward for saving the world.
  • Go Mad from the Revelation: In the game it's implied the Darkness slowly drove them mad when they managed to capture it. The first time.
  • Omnicidal Maniac: Pretty much the religion's M.O., either with The Darkness or, in the game at least, The Angelus.
  • Put on a Bus: Sonatine and Wenders were the only really notable members of the cult in the comic and they disappear after volume one.
  • Religion of Evil
  • Xanatos Gambit: The cult in the game attempts to determine whether Jackie is the Darkness' wielder by sending an army of goons to kill him... and then attempts to "persuade" him to give up the Darkness by threatening the lives of his friends and family.
    • The irony being that Jackie probably would have voluntarily surrendered the Darkness if not for this.

Paulie Franchetti

  • Big Bad: Of the first game.
  • Complete Monster: In both the game and the comics.
  • Dangerously Genre Savvy: In the game, Paulie has his safehouse equipped with several dozen floodlights once he learns of Jackie's weaknesses.
  • The Don
  • Entitled Bastard
  • Fat Bastard
  • It's All About Me: In the game, after he's called a hit on Jackie and tried to kill him with an explosive-rigged closet, he's inexplicably offended when Jackie retaliates by launching attacks on Paulie's various businesses.
  • Smug Snake: By and large, his comics incarnation is this; the game version's too grouchy to be even remotely smug.

Captain Eddie Shrote

  • Badass Grandpa: For a man his age, Shrote is a very fast runner.
  • Dangerously Genre Savvy: Even more so than Paulie; rather than just setting up some floodlights in front of his lair, he ambushes Jackie with several dozen spotlights and knocks him out with a flashbang. Then, while he's torturing Jackie, he keeps him under the beam of a floodlight at all times.
  • Dirty Cop
  • Surrounded by Idiots: Most of his fellow officers are just as crooked as he is; as much of his irritable grumbling indicates, they're nowhere near as savvy as him.
  • This Is a Drill: His torture device of choice... which breaks down halfway through the torture session.

Chinese piece of shit!

Comics Only

Frankie Franchetti

  • Affably Evil: Or so it seems.
  • Ax Crazy: To an extraordinary level.
    • He actually attacks Gotham City Police Department in broad daylight. Yes, THAT Gotham City.
  • Big Bad: Arguably, the one who hurt Jackie the most.
  • Complete Monster: Something Jackie is completely blind to.
  • Kick the Dog: Killed his wife's lover with a blow torch by slow torture. Only the fact he does much worse things keeps this from being his Moral Event Horizon.
  • Moral Event Horizon: Frankie's murder of Jenny
    • Even before that, there was hints he was molesting his own daughter while she was semi-comatose and possibly was doing so years earlier when she was a child.
  • Oh Crap: When he realizes Jackie has rigged the warehouse he's in to explode.
  • "Well Done, Son" Guy: Gives many of these to Jackie Estacado, thus increasing his loyalty.
  • Values Dissonance: Jackie knows better than to argue Frankie murdering his girlfriend justified his killing of him when talking with his Uncle Paulie. Instead, he points out Frankie worked with the Chinese and other non-Italians. Subverted when Paulie points out that none of that matters.
    • Double subverted when the mob forgives Jackie's murder of Frankie because Frankie was dipping into mob funds for himself.

Capris Castiglione

Sonatine

  • Bald of Evil: Basically looks like Lex Luthor.
  • Big Bad: Of the first volume of the comics.
  • Complete Monster: He once disables a pair of guards by using his telepathy to convince them they raped their mother.
  • Face Heel Turn: The last character in the world you'd expect for one.
  • Faux Affably Evil: Sonatine is hilarious, in a truly sick sick way.
  • Gone Horribly Right: Tries to put the Darkness in Ian Nottingham, ends up putting the Witchblade on him too.
  • Grand Theft Me: Wenders.
  • Narm: Says he has to stop Jackie Estacado from having sex with all the fury of Kirk's 'Khaaaan.' The cheese is deliberate, of course.
  • Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain: Deconstructed. Sonatine has nowhere near Jackie's level of power and often engages in quirky bizarre behavior, then he does something from behind the scenes that ruins people's lives.
  • Mind Rape: Sonatine's favorite form of humor.
  • Moral Event Horizon: See the Complete Monster bit.
  • Put on a Bus: Disappears completely after the first volume.

Nino Wenders

  • Depraved Homosexual: Not so much depraved as kind of pathetic.
  • Fate Worse Than Death: has his soul bound to Sonatine's body, which has been buried.
  • Grand Theft Me: Happens to him.
    • Retconned away.
  • Incompatible Orientation: How he sees his relationship with Jackie. To say Jackie wouldn't like Wenders even if he was gay is understating things.
  • Squick: Is made a eunuch by having one of the Darklings, well, uh...remove his package.
  • The Woobie: You wouldn't think he'd be one after all that's happened to him but he is.


Game Only

Brother Victor

  • Adaptation Distillation: Victor is arguably a much more menacing foe than Sonatine due to the fact he doesn't stop his evil schemes to engage in oddball humor.
  • Big Bad: Of The Darkness 2
  • Expy: Of Sonatine.
  • Evil Cripple: He's hunchbacked, wears braces on his legs, and walks with the aid of a cane.
  • Evil Sorcerer: His knowledge of magical artefacts and supernatural powers put him squarely in this category; doubly so when he manages to capture the Darkness.
  • Faux Affably Evil: Brother Victor can swing from insulting to condescendingly polite at the drop of a hat, all the while insisting that he's doing what he does for Jackie's own good; under this exterior, Victor is as sadistic and monstrous as they come.
  • Flash Step: His powers allow him to move in this manner, handily overcoming his disabilities in the process.
  • Good Scars, Evil Scars: Victor is a deformed hunchback covered in scars.
  • Handicapped Badass
  • Obviously Evil: BIG TIME.
  • Omnicidal Maniac: The implications of his speeches are that he intends to use the Darkness to bring about the end of the world.
    • Hilariously, it's implied by Johnny the Brotherhood's Omnicidal Maniac tendancies come from the Darkness.
  • Religion of Evil: He and his brotherhood worships the Darkness. Enough said.
  • Smug Snake: He might be a very successful one, but there's no denying that Vick is a smug snake to the core; always condescending, always certain of victory, and more than a little bit petulant when things don't go his way...
  • We Could Have Avoided All This: Victor doesn't mention he has a non-violent way to remove the Darkness from Jackie without killing him until he's well and truly pissed him off. It's possible Jackie would have volunteered to let the Darkness be removed if Victor was less of a psychopath.
  • Villain Teleportation

Johnny Powell

  • Admiring the Abomination: Johnny Powell can be surprisingly... aroused by many of the artifacts you bring him.
  • Cloudcuckoolander
  • Conspiracy Theorist
  • Crazy Homeless People: According to Vinnie, the "new guys" found him living under a bridge in a cardboard box. They didn't (seeing as finding him is a goal of the first mission of the "Vendettas" campaign), but he does say that he lives in such a situation.
  • Cunning Linguist: Johnny is implied to speak multiple dead languages.
  • The Extremist Was Right: Johnny comes off as a complete nut, and he is but he's arguably the most well-informed man on the planet regarding the supernatural.
  • Go Mad from the Revelation: Implied to be the reason for Johnny's insanity.
  • Gibbering Genius
  • Humans Are Morons: Grumbles that this is pretty much the case while explaining "the Fool's Phylactery."
  • Large Ham: And how!
  • Mismatched Eyes
  • Nightmare Fetishist: If he's not terrified out of his life by it, chances are that Johnny will be gushing over a lot of the Darkness relics that are brought to him. The multiplayer campaign features him being alternatively fascinated and horrified by the four character's weaponry, noting the history or the magical power behind it- and frequently asking why anyone would bother using it.
  • Only Sane Man: As the only character in the entire game with adequate knowledge as to what might be going on, this is a given- even if he spends most of the game talking to himself. The Asylum levels take this even further, in which he's one of the few patients that can help Jackie escape.
  • The Smart Guy: In the second game to Jackie's Five-Man Band.
  • Red Right Hand: Johnny's left eye.
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