Line #49 Characters/CrueltySquad


1	!!The Protagonist / "Empty Fuck" / "Freak Shit" / [[VideoGame/{{Brigador}} MT Foxtrot]] / Jeremy Coomer / "John Cruelty"
2	[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/cruelty_guy.png]]
3
4	The unnamed protagonist of ''Cruelty Squad.'' Formerly a soldier of the "SEC Death Unit," the game opens with him being offered a job with the titular gig assassin agency.
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6	* AmbiguouslyBrown: He seems to be dark-skinned based on his character model, but the game's low-resolution graphics makes it hard to tell.
7	* AmbiguouslyHuman: The degree of mutations he incurs throughout the game gradually devolves to an extent it’s not clear if he’s human on a genetic level any more.
8	* AnimeHair: He has what looks like a bright purple flattop.
9	* AntiVillain: A PunchClockVillain and TragicVillain. While he’s a brutal murderer, he only does it because he needs the money and he’s too depressed and traumatized to do anything else.
10	* AscendedToAHigherPlaneOfExistence: [[spoiler: Implied in the two of the endings, he ends up ascending to godhood and unmakes the universe. The GoldenEnding even has him outright destroy it, which restores the natural balance of life and death.]]
11	* AxCrazy: A downplayed example. While he doesn't enjoy gunning down scores of people, he never expresses any guilt over it either, simply viewing it with complete indifference.
12	* TheBlank: Comments and an NPC in the first level imply that Power In Misery mode literally removes his face due to the mutations it inflicts.
13	* ButtMonkey: Empty's life is full of misfortune and hardship. Even though he goes on dangerous combat missions as part of his dayjob, he's not paid very well for his work and his employers view him as expendable at best. His apartment even gets invaded by federal agents at one point because the company he works for made a filing error, after which he returns to work as if nothing happened.
14	* CopKiller: A number of missions have him mowing down legions of police officers with the same stoicism and ruthlessness he shows all his other opponents.
15	* DeconstructedCharacterArchetype:
16	** Mainly of the [[HeroicMime Silent]] ExperiencedProtagonist with [[AppliedPhlebotinum equippable powers and upgrades]] to make him an unstoppable killer. Where one would be expecting the perfect avatar for their power fantasy, the protagonist is instead a broken shell of a being that is simply far too apathetic to verbally communicate. Resigned in his depressing life experiences, he uses combat experience gained from his time at a death squadron he was just laid off from to be a contracted killer [[ThirtyMinutesOrItsFree treated the same way a pizza guy delivers food]]. Any moments of emotions he may feel are in the form of off-screen "freakouts" he's being conditioned to hide and lessen.
17	** There's also Deconstruction of the CorporateSamurai, as a reliable and deadly button man under the employ of a megacorporation is ''not'' something worth striving to be: He's expected to follow through with his dodgy company's high demands and standards even if he isn't sufficiently equipped to face the brutality of each level. Since it's only through their OffscreenVillainDarkMatter that they can respawn and try again, they're at Cruelty Squad's mercy and should be careful if they die one too many times for "hogging" the recombinator. He's such a doormat that [[spoiler:after HQ ''accidentally sends a hit'' on him due to negligent dialing]], they expect him to simply shrug it off and go back to work the next day like they do. And he's so entrenched in his apathy that this is exactly what he does.
18	* EmptyShell: As his fan nicknames would suggest, he's so beaten down by the dismal state of his life that he responds to every situation he encounters with apathetic silence.
19	* FromNobodyToNightmare: An apathetic loser assassin who ends up [[spoiler: ascending to Godhood and ''unmakes the universe'']].
20	* GuestFighter: Shows up as a pilot in ''VideoGame/{{Brigador}}'' under the codename MT Foxtrot (a play on the nickname Empty Fuck).
21	* HiddenDepths: He's a broken down shell of a man, but he turns out to be a pretty good fisherman.
22	* LoserProtagonist: The game itself describes him as a depressed loser with nothing going on in his life outside of the wetwork he does for marginal pay.
23	* LovecraftianSuperpower: A lot of his modifications come across this way.
24	* MegatonPunch: Most FPS melee attacks are an instant kill. Empty Fuck, however, takes it above and beyond with his kick attack. PunchedAcrossTheRoom doesn't even begin to describe it.
25	* MysteriousPast: The game doesn't reveal a lot about his past outside of the fact that he's deeply depressed by [[DarkAndTroubledPast his bad life experiences.]]
26	* OneManArmy: For all his failings, he's very, ''very'' good at his job. [[TheManyDeathsOfYou Or not.]]
27	** [[spoiler: He's capable of fending off an attack from Cruelty Squad itself and manages to kill several members of the task force.]]
28	* PunchClockVillain: There’s no indication he takes any pleasure in what he does for a living. But then there’s no indication he takes any pleasure in ''anything''.
29	* ScaryBlackMan: He appears to be black and he's a contract killer who slays hundreds of people over the course of the game. It's somewhat downplayed since he’s a very sad figure in a lot of ways. There isn't really anything cool or intimidating about him, given that he goes through life apathetically following other people's orders and never speaking up for himself.
30	* SeenItAll: He has extensive combat experience and he never seems to be surprised or shocked at any of the bizarre situations he stumbles on during his job. Then again, he may just be so completely emotionally and mentally broken that he just doesn't (or can't) care.
31	* ShellShockedVeteran: It's implied he's troubled from his time with the SEC Death Unit.
32	* SociopathicSoldier: Heavily implied to have been a variant of "The Broken Soldier", resigned to severe depression after working the day-today in a government death squad. Now he takes any combat experience he earned from that time into his new trade of corporate murder-for-hire.
33	* TheSoulless: Implied if you [[spoiler:die enough times to]] enable the Flesh Automaton difficulty, as it's said that the protagonist's "divine link" is severed and he is described as a [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin flesh automaton]] controlled by neurotransmitters, giving the impression that whatever made him ''alive'' was just cut off from him.
34	* TheStoic: PlayedWith. He basically never says anything, nor displays any emotional response to just about anything, but it doesn't come from a place of discipline or stoicism, but rather because he's extremely depressed and also on a "Special" cocktail of combat drugs. Some of it also comes from a mental conditioning app as required for his job, and his handler comments that he can't have "{{freakout}}s", [[NotSoStoic implying that's an issue Empty has]].
35	* SunglassesAtNight: He always has his shades on, even when he's showering.
36	* ThisLoserIsYou: Despite being a killing machine, he's an unstable and miserable sad sack who is completely apathetic towards his life, works a job he doesn't like, and feels like he wasted his youth.
37	* TragicVillain: Ultimately, Empty is a severely traumatized and depressed person who has consigned himself to his line of work because he believes there’s no where else he can go.
38	* TheUnsmile: His default expression could be interpreted as a sort of mirthless non-smile.
39	* TheVoiceless: He's presumably capable of speech given that other characters in the world converse with him but he's never shown speaking outside of grunting or making a distinct "Mmmm" sound when he eats food (or corpses) for health.
40	* VillainProtagonist: Over the course of the game he kills dozens of targets, many of them innocent, along with almost certainly getting hundreds of civilians killed in the cross-fire, doing so for money from his deranged evil MegaCorp employers.
41	* WhyAmITicking: If his health drops below 0, instead of dying right away, a chip embedded into his brain activates a self-destruction mechanism which explodes his body after a few seconds.
42	* WorkingClassHero: Well, more like Working Class VillainProtagonist. His employment in Cruelty Squad is coded to be a lot like being a gig economy assassin: paid measly wages for each kill, having limited human interaction for his job, and his employment being apparently very easy to obtain.
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44	!!The Handler
45	[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/handler_6.png]]
46
47	->''"Hey, it's me. Did I wake you up from your depression nap?"''
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49	The protagonist's employer. He's the one who offers the protagonist a job with the Cruelty Squad. They have some sort of prior working relationship that isn't elaborated on.
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51	* AmbiguouslyHuman: It’s unclear if he’s just a badly deformed/mutated human or something entirely different.
52	* AxCrazy: Towards the end game [[spoiler:he starts directing you to murder the elites of the world outside of anything contracted for you just because [[ForTheEvulz he thinks it would be funny]]]]. [[spoiler:It escalates to him higher-ups of your own organization and reaches its worst point when he encourages you to face "the ULTIMATE PUNISHMENT"]].
53	* FaceHeelTurn: He unexpectedly and without warning [[spoiler:turns on you, sending a group of Cruelty Squad members to kill you in one mission]]. [[spoiler:In the next mission he briefly apologizes, stating that it was due to an error at HQ.]]
54	* FatBastard: He is a morbidly obese pig-man and a generally unpleasant person.
55	* ForTheEvulz: [[spoiler:When he starts having Empty gunning for the higher-ups]] in the final acts of the game, he seems to mostly be doing it for a laugh.
56	* HumanoidAbomination: It's never explained why he looks like a horrible pig monster rather than a normal human being.
57	* JerkWithAHeartOfGold: Well, as gold as a heart can be in this universe. While he’s initially aloof and installs weird bodily mutations into you, he gradually shows that he does actually like you in later levels.
58	* MissionControl: His main function in-game is to provide you with information about the people you're going to assassinate.
59	* MissionControlIsOffItsMeds: His messages get very deranged at certain points throughout the game, especially near the end.
60	* MysteriousPast: What relationship he had with Empty Fuck in the past isn't clear, but what's obvious is that there is a relationship. He's introduced by mockingly asking if he's woken up Empty from his depression nap and calling him a "fucked up detached loser", while also giving him a needed job offer that he thinks Empty can enjoy: VitriolicBestBuds, or just [[JerkAss vitriolic]]?

Context Characters / CrueltySquad