History Characters / EndersGame

* StarfishAliens: They look vaguely like humanoid pigs as juveniles... but upon reaching full adulthood they are ritually vivisected and transform into a tree.

** Taken UpToEleven after [[spoiler:he wins the bugger war. He spends several days in an AngstComa, not caring when Graff has his ''only'' PetTheDog moment by telling Ender he doesn't want the kid to be killed by Russian soldiers]]. Ender just doesn't care and explicitly says he was trying to waste away or wait for death to come. [[spoiler:His friends manage to coax him to talk at least, but he's still depressed and traumatized, understandably. Valentine outright admits she's manipulating Ender to become governor of the Formics colony but points out this time it's their choice and she does care about him. Ender agrees while admitting he isn't one hundred percent fixed]]. He seems to be haunted for the rest of the books, even as he becomes TheAtoner.

->'''Played By''': Moises Arias

* KnifeNut: Skilled enough to kill at least two armed soldiers alone with only a knife. He's also incredibly insane.

%% * BaldOfAwesome

* RememberTheNewGuy: ''Shadows In Flight'' introduces a new type of male drone that's never been mentioned before despite their breeding previously being discussed in detail.

* ItIsPronouncedTroPAY: He makes a point of his name being pronounced the Spanish way (bone-so), not the clown way (bahn-zo).

* ItIsPronouncedTroPAY: His name isn't pronounced "Uh-Kill-Eez" but "Ah-Sheel", because his native language is French.

* HiveQueen: The only true individuals among their race, and the only ones considered to be "people". The race is often referred to as "the Hive Queens" in later books because of this, since the Queens are the only intelligent members of the species. [[spoiler:Or at least, that's how they explain things to Ender. The drones actually are intelligent but are functionally slaves to the Queens. It's a necessary part of their biology but they don't tell Ender since it looks bad.]]

* ZergRush: They fight their battles by spamming the enemy with nearly limitless numbers of expendable drones.

* FacialMarkings: In the movie, Mazer Rackham's face is covered in [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ta_moko Maori ta moko markings]]. He didn't have them during his military career, but got them after the war in honor of his father, who was killed by the Formics.

[[folder: Andrew "Ender" Wiggin]]

[[folder: Bean]]

[[folder: Shen]]

[[folder: Alai]]

[[folder: Petra Arkanian]]

[[folder: Bonzo Madrid]]

[[folder: Colonel Hyrum Graff]]

[[folder: Major Anderson]]

[[folder: Mazer Rackham]]

[[folder: Valentine Wiggin]]

[[folder: Peter Wiggin]]

[[folder: John Paul Wiggin]]

[[folder: The Formics]]

[[folder: The Pequeninos]]

[[folder: The Descolodores]]

* TheAtoner: By the conclusion of the first novel.

* BlessedWithSuck: Ender's ability to empathize with his enemy gives him what he needs to destroy them.

But surely the love and fame that will come from saving humanity will make his ordeal worth it, right? Well... [[spoiler:it turns out Ender was being bred not merely to defend humanity, but to ''commit xenocide'' on its attackers. Ender was "the chosen one" solely to be a scapegoat so Graff and Rackham could keep their hands clean. On top of that, Earth wasn't even in danger because the Formics had decided they weren't going to attack again. So much for being "the chosen one".]]

* CardCarryingVillain: When speaking to Anderson in private, he sometimes puts on an obvious act of being a wicked villain. It seems to be a way of coping with his actions; they seem less real if he's pretending they're an act.

* PetTheDog: Subverted for the most part. Ender and Valentine recognize that any kindness on his part are carefully calculated acts to motivate and shape Ender to be mankind's ultimate military commander. He does show a softer side once the Third Invasion is over when he admits to Mazer Rackham that he does care for Ender, but only when he thinks Ender can't hear him.

* BlackBestFriend: In the film. In the book he's Dutch.

* BigBrotherBully: Oh so very much.

The smallest soldier in Dragon Army. He grew up on the streets of Rotterdam, Germany, until aid from the nun Sister Carlotta helped him get into Battle School.

* HollywoodTactics: They colonised dozens of planets, each with it's own HiveQueen. All their spare Queens went to the homeworld with a massive fleet protecting the planet, but it's still putting all their eggs in one basket after all the colonies were wiped out. [[spoiler:Eventually subverted: They gave this impression on purpose, but actually evacuated multiple younger queens and left one in stasis for Ender to find to act a diplomat while pretending to be the only queen.]]

* TooSpicyForYoggSothoth: Subverted. He's told that he can't go to battle school because he's too aggressive, but is later informed that this is nonsense: The more aggressive and ambitious battle school students are, the better they do. The actual problem is that he has no ''charisma'', meaning soldiers will not follow him. He can only speak to peoples' logic, not their hearts.

An unseen species which create the descolada, leading to the evolution of the pequeninos.

* AmbiguouslyEvil: They are the creators of the descolada, an incredibly destructive virus that rewrites genetic information and causes mass extinction events on whatever planet they release it on, completely altering the global ecosystem. Why they made such a virus is unknown. When a first contact team approaches their planet, they seem intent on capturing the team. All of this seems to point to a species that doesn't care to get along peacefully, but by this point the human race has learned not to assume hostile intent when dealing with alien morality systems.

* HiveQueen: The only true individuals among their race, and the only ones considered to be "people". The race is often referred to as "the Hive Queens" in later books because of this, since the Queens are the only intelligent members of the species.
* HollywoodTactics: They colonised dozens of planets, each with it's own HiveQueen. They then spent decades bringing all the queens to their homeworks, turning them into a...

* LastOfHisKind: The final queen [[spoiler: Ender brings with him in his travels. However, their race begins to rebuild on Lusitania.]]

* StarfishLanguage: Their hive mind operates on "philotic" communication, using images, not words. [[spoiler: They eventually overcome this and can communicate in English, though still telepathically.]]

OnlyKnownByTheirNickname: He never got a name, having never met his parents. He's dubbed "Bean" by a gang because he isn't worth one bean to them because of his size.

* EmbarrassingNickname / OnlyKnownByTheirNickname: He never got a name, having never met his parents. He's dubbed "Bean" by a gang because he isn't worth one bean to them because of his size. He doesn't like the name but figures it's better than nothing. [[spoiler:After being adopted by his biological parents, he gets the name they intended for him: Julian Delphiki II.]]

* ProperlyParanoid: Having grown up on the streets where every scrap and alley could mean the difference between life and death, Bean applies the same experience to being at Battle School. Within a day he's already learned to go naked to the bathroom (they track you through your clothes), to not play computer games (they give the teachers psychological insight), where to hide and spy on teachers (the air vents), and how the students' social hierarchy works.\\
\\
This paranoia continues to save him even after he graduates. Several times he exits a building while dragging his incredulous friends along because he's certain he's too vulnerable there... and the building is bombed each time.

** He also can't get it into his head that Ender is ''just that good'', after Ender destroys one army after another, thinking that the teachers are rigging things in Ender's favor, when it's clearly the other way around. Even after Bonzo's own Salamander army gets a 20-minute head start to pre-position their forces for an ambush, Ender, once again, destroys them. Unfortunately, Bean makes it worse by telling Bonzo that the teachers have chosen Ender and not Bonzo as their commander. Bonzo goes ballistic and tries to attack Ender.

* ButWhatAboutTheAstronauts: ''Shadows In Flight'' reveals there were Formic Queens still on early exploration ships but the one we see is dead.