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1%% %% Administrivia/ZeroContextExample entries are NOT allowed on wiki pages. All such entries have been commented out. Add context to the entries before uncommenting them. %%
2A CharacterSheet for the '''World War Z novel characters'''.
3[[foldercontrol]]
4
5!!Interviewed Characters
6[[folder:The Interviewer]]
7!!The Interviewer
8->'''Played By:''' Creator/MaxBrooks
9A fictional version of author Max Brooks, son of beloved actor Creator/MelBrooks, who is working on his ''magnum opus'', a compilation stories and intervews with survivors of the ZombieApocalypse a decade before.
10----
11* AsHimself: The audiobook, which features a full cast reading each role, specifically identifies the interviewer as Max Brooks, and Brooks reads the interviewer's part.
12* AuthorAvatar: For Max Brooks.
13* MrExposition: Understandable, as the interviewer.
14* NotSoAboveItAll: When interviewing Closure LTD., it's revealed he also there to use their service.
15* NotSoStoic: The Interviewer, for much of the book, is little more than a [[AudienceSurrogate passive listener]], only speaking to ask pertinent questions or request clarification of a technical term or piece of jargon. However, the inciting incident of the book- not the Zombie War, mind you, ''the book itself''- is the Interviewer's editor chopping up his "labor of love" to remove all the personal accounts, the "human factor", from what was supposed to be an after-action report of cold, hard data. During the ensuing argument, the Interviewer exclaims that "we can't let these stories ''die!''" and the editor tells him to write "your own [expletive deleted] book".
16** During the Breckinridge Scott interview, Brooks clearly gets heated about Phalanx and his greed-driven actions.
17[[/folder]]
18[[folder:The Zombies]]
19->'''Played by''': N/A
20Monstrous, undead cannibals who have been reanimated by the deadly ''Solanum'' virus, the zombies are arguably the greatest threat ever faced by humanity, driven by nothing except an insatiable hunger for living flesh.
21----
22* EliteZombie: Averted; there's stories about zombies showing intelligent behavior, being able to run and climb, or not dying from being shot in the head, but these are just panicked accounts of Quislings, human survivors and failed headshots. All zombies are the same, the only variations are those who have stumbled through some other event, like the zombies who survived the Iran/Pakistan nuclear war, leaving them highly radioactive.
23** Ironically, injured and mutilated zombies can be among the most dangerous, such as one who lost it's hands, and disembowled a soldier with it's sharp arm bones.
24* ItCanThink: Nope. This is one of the myths that Radio Free Earth had to deal with the most, as many survivors insisted that their undead loved ones still remembered who they were deep down. There's nothing left of the living person they were, the zombies are just the rotting, physical remains.
25* TheNeedless: They're already dead, so they no longer have any of the needs they did when they were alive. Their unrelenting desire to eat is only a side-effect of the virus.
26* OutsideContextProblem: One of the biggest mistakes humanity made was trying to fight the zombies as a conventional enemy, when in reality they were basically a humanoid plague. Unlike an enemy nation, zombies never need to resupply, can't be intimidated, starved or exhausted, have no leadership, noncombatants or civilians, their sheer numbers can overwhelm almost any defences, and they actually gain manpower while fighting since even a minor injury can result in infection. It wasn't until the Battle of Yonkers that this truly became apparent, and was a large contributor to the Great Panic. With the exception of Israel, most nations had to completely overhaul their militaries to begin fighting back.
27* RemovingTheHeadOrDestroyingTheBrain: The ''only'' way to permanently kill a zombie is to destroy the brain stem. Decapitation leaves them helpless, but the head will remain animated, even with no way of moving.
28* SealedEvilInACan: Heavily implied to be the case for North Korea; the entire population vanished shortly before the Great Panic, with later expeditions discovering that the government had everyone relocate into underground shelters that were sealed up afterwards. Even a decade after the war, there have been no signs of life from the shelters, and worst case scenario is that there are tens of millions of zombies trapped beneath the Earth, just waiting to be released...
29* TheVirus: The zombies are effectively just host bodies for the Solanum virus, which only works on humans.
30* ZombieApocalypse: Drove the human race close to extinction during "World War Z" ten years before the novel takes place. Even in the present, they still remain a constant threat, as there are millions of zombies wandering abandoned cities and the ocean floor.
31* ZombieGait: The zombies follow the standard Romero style of slow, shambling corpses. Problem is, they never ''stop'' moving until they're killed again.
32[[/folder]]
33
34[[folder:Ferals and Quislings]]
35->'''Played by''': N/A
36Human survivors who have been so mentally broken by the apocalypse they've psychologically regressed in two very different ways.
37----
38
39* AxCrazy: Quislings will attack and attempt to cannibalize any other survivors they come across, their deranged desire to survive by imitating the dead having permanently overridden any last semblance of sanity and humanity they had left.
40* BreakTheCutie: The Ferals are very young children who were abandoned or orphaned during the apocalypse, and regressed into animals to survive. Sharon, mentioned further down, is one of the luckier ones, as she at least retained the capacity for speech.
41* EliteZombie: Downplayed, but as mentioned by Todd Wanio, Quislings were- in practical terms- zombies that didn't freeze solid in colder environments like actual undead; and while they couldn't turn anyone with their bites, they could still cause lethal staph infections due to oral bacteria.
42* ImplacableMan: The only physical reaction a Quisling is reported to show outside of seeking prey is that their pupils still contract when light is shone into them. Beyond that, they simply don't react; not to harsh weather, not to their own pain or discomfort, and tragically not even to being devoured by actual zombies.
43* OrphansOrdeal: Doesn't get much worse than this - the Ferals were either orphaned, lost, or abandoned during the outbreaks, and had to survive on their own from a very young age in an apocalyptic wasteland filled with the undead.
44* TheQuisling: Even sharing the name, Quislings are survivors who have been DrivenToMadness by the horrors and constant danger around them that they're begun mimicking the zombies in some pathetic, last-ditch shot at survival, including attacking other survivors to eat them. This just served to get them killed faster, as zombies instinctively know the difference between living and dead.
45* TooDumbToLive: The Quislings are insane, so they're not exactly thinking rationally, but their act gets them killed by both humans, who shoot what they think is a zombie, and by actual zombies, who aren't fooled.
46* TechnicallyLivingZombie: While their behavior and appearance may make one think differently at first sight, Quislings are still living humans, albeit driven completely and irreversibly insane from the horrors of the outbreak, and in their madness having degraded mentally into the mindset of a zombie in one last, vain attempt to survive. Unlike Ferals, who at least have some hope of being rehabilitated, Quislings are broken to the core, with the only ways left to help them being either to institutionalise them for the rest of their days or [[MercyKill put them out of their misery]].
47* WildChild: An extremely dark example, though more realistic than most; the Ferals who survived the whole war are so mentally stunted that they'll never be able to rejoin society, being little more than animals in human bodies.
48
49[[/folder]]
50
51[[folder:Kwang Jingshu]]
52!!Kwang Jingshu
53->'''Played By:''' Creator/StevePark
54A Chinese doctor and war veteran who treated Patient Zero of the Solanum outbreak.
55----
56* ChummyCommies: He's an old-school Maoist through and through, even with the post-war development in democracy in China. He's also polite and genuinely cares about his patients.
57* CoolOldGuy: His age hasn't slowed him down. He was already a grandfather when he encountered one of the earliest cases of ThePlague, got a message to his daughter to get out of the country ASAP before being arrested by the Chinese government, ''escaped'' from prison, and is now chairman of the security council of Greater Chongqing. And he still makes house calls to all his patients.
58* CombatMedic: His former job.
59* TheMedic: His current job.
60* OutgrownSuchSillySuperstitions: When he made a house call to a remote village deep in the Chinese wilderness, he was deeply irritated at the time at how despite China's many advances forward, many people still lived primitively and believed in superstitious fears, especially out in the rural areas where living conditions could sometimes approach pre-Cultural Revolution levels in the worst cases.
61* RetiredBadass: He was an army doctor in his youth, and he mentions performing major surgery near the front lines of a "minor" [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Soviet_border_conflict border clash]] with the Soviet Union in the 1960s.
62[[/folder]]
63[[folder:Nury Televadi]]
64!!Nury Televadi
65->'''Played By:''' Creator/FrankKamai
66A criminal smuggler who helped get refugees out of China and into other parts of Asia to escape the infection.
67----
68* EvenEvilHasStandards: Once he figures out what he's actually smuggling out of China, he doesn't stay in business much longer.
69* HumanTraffickers: He specialized in smuggling homeless people out of China and into Central Asia.
70* NiceGuy: Despite being a smuggler, he's still nice to people and tries to do the right thing.
71* OnlyInItForTheMoney: And totally honest about it; he stayed in business right up until the danger outweighed the profits.
72* TheTriadsAndTheTongs: Implied to be connected with the Triads.
73[[/folder]]
74[[folder:Stanley [=MacDonald=]]]
75!!Stanley [=MacDonald=]
76->'''Played By:''' Creator/NathanFillion
77A Canadian soldier assigned to the NATO mission to Afghanistan, Stanley encounters an early and gruesome attack site where radical fighters were devoured by zombies...
78----
79* ForYourOwnGood: His 'debriefing and evaluation' by the Canadian Government, back when it seemed like he may have just imagined the attack. He compares it to torture, and laments that while he was trained to resist that, he wasn't trained to resist people who were trying to "help" him "see the truth".
80--> ''[[MoreThanMindControl "They didn't have to break me, I broke myself.]]''
81* ShellShockedVeteran: As if what he saw in combat wasn't enough, he had to deal with the government's 'debriefing' once he got home.
82[[/folder]]
83[[folder:Fernando Oliveira]]
84!!Fernando Oliveira
85->'''Played By:''' Creator/PaulSorvino
86A somewhat deranged, former black market surgeon operating out of Rio de Janerio
87----
88* AccidentalAimingSkills: Fernando Oliveira credits his killing of zombie Herr Mueller to this. He bought a large and showy Desert Eagle purely for intimidation and never practiced with it; he was aiming for the chest but was unprepared for the recoil. Luckily for him and everybody else present, his shot went wild and by pure chance hit Mueller in the head.
89* DrJerk: He's not in it for the patients, he's in it for the money.
90* GetAHoldOfYourselfMan: Slaps one of his nurses who is crying about his zombie patient. Later gets slapped by his receptionist after shooting said zombie patient.
91* HookersAndBlow: "I did what any good doctor should do when his patient is suffering, I hit the town."
92* {{Hypocrite}} He goes on about how arrogant Dr. Silva was, blithely ignoring his own towering arrogance.
93* NotSoWellIntentionedExtremist: He goes on and on about how his work in organ transplants was important and the "self-righteous" West, but it's pretty transparent that his only interest is himself, and the work he was so proud of was illegal organ trade.
94* OnlyInItForTheMoney: He purposefully picks rich clients.
95[[/folder]]
96[[folder:Jacob Nyathi]]
97!!Jacob Nyathi
98->'''Played By:''' Creator/AdeMcCormack
99A black South African who's family moved to Cape Town, South Africa at the end of apartheid.
100----
101* CollateralDamage: Ends up taking a bullet in the shoulder from police forces who arrive to contain the outbreak, and spends the rest of the initial panic in a hospital.
102* ComeWithMeIfYouWantToLive: Attempts this with a mother and her young children but gets stabbed in the hand for his trouble.
103* HadToBeSharp: Cape Town was dangerous enough before the zombies came; Jacob's body reacts to the danger before he is even consciously aware of it. He mentions hearing others shout alarmed cries of "They're coming!" Younger voices would ask ''who'' was coming, older people would [[DontAskJustRun just run]], because it didn't matter who ''"they"'' were, you ran or you died.
104* SelfMadeMan: Went from a poor waiter pre-war to the captain and owner of a high-tech ship called the Imfigo post-war.
105* SoleSurvivor: He's the only person to make it out of the Cape Town outbreak alive, including his family.
106* TheTeetotaler: Refused to adopt any of the bad habits that plagued the slums and took his father, not even a drink. However, once he is taken to the hospital to have his gunshot wound treated, he is [[IntoxicationEnsues drugged up to the gills on painkillers]] and left in a dazed stupor while the world ended around him.
107[[/folder]]
108[[folder:Jurgen Warmbrunn]]
109!!Jurgan Warmbrunn
110->'''Played By:''' Creator/CarlReiner
111A former spy and security expert, and co-author of the "Warmbrunn-Knight" report, detailing the earliest outbreaks of the zombie plague, and the recommended steps to prevent it from escalating.
112----
113* BunnyEarsLawyer: He's... unusual, to say the least. He comes across like a chatty grandfather, rather than a semi-retired spy.
114* CoolOldGuy: Sharp as a tack.
115* IgnoredExpert: His report on the zombie outbreak was very thorough. Pity nobody read it outside Jerusalem.
116[[/folder]]
117[[folder:Saladin Kader]]
118!!Saladin Kader
119->'''Played By:''' Creator/WaleedZuaiter
120A radicalized Muslim teenager originally from Kuwait City.
121----
122* CallingTheYoungManOut: Recounts that he himself was subjected to this very early in the war; when Israel began offering asylum to Palestinian refugees, he was seventeen and already radicalized - and didn't believe that an imminent ZombieApocalypse was prompting this offer. Though his father attempted to accept this, young Saladin refused, instead boasting that he would instead join a fundamentalist terrorist group, mocking his father for his supposed timidity, even referring to the poor man as "a whore of the yehud". Unknown to him, his normally-sedate father had actually seen the zombies during his work at the local hospital and for once was not in the mood for Saladin's attitude: slapping the crap out of his son, he made it clear in no uncertain fashion that they were all going to Jerusalem. As Saladin laughingly recounts in the present, he was left too scared to be his usual brash self, and meekly joined his father in accepting the offer of asylum.
123* DramaticallyMissingThePoint: Like most civilians, he thought Israel was outright lying about the zombie threat, and due to his previous radicalization, assumed it was all part of a ploy against their Muslim enemies. When he and his family are herded into a quarantine camp just like he'd expected, Kader believes he's been proven right, and while he never outright says IToldYouSo, he thinks his father still knew what he was thinking. That is, until the quarantine ''ends'', his family are given generous accommodations, and he gets a first-hand look at exactly what Israel is fighting against.
124* HeelRealization: Admits that he knew very little about Jewish people until his time in Israel, for instance, not knowing that black Jews existed.
125* HotTeacher: Post-war, he's a professor teaching at a university in Jerusalem, and is described as very good-looking, with many female students admiring him from afar.
126[[/folder]]
127[[folder:Bob Archer]]
128!!Bob Archer
129->'''Played By:''' Creator/JayOSanders
130Current head of the CIA, and at the time of the outbreak tried to warn his superiors about the zombies.
131----
132* HeroOfAnotherStory: Is sent to Buenos Aires, which is stated to have been overrun, but somehow survived, made his way back up to America, and eventually become the Director of the CIA. We never get to hear about how he accomplished any of this.
133* ReassignedToAntarctica: Gets transferred to Buenos Aires for making waves about the zombies.
134[[/folder]]
135[[folder:Gen. Travis D'Ambrosia]]
136!!Gen. Travis D'Ambrosia
137->'''Played By:''' Creator/DennisBoutsikaris
138A General in the United States Armed Forces.
139----
140* TheAtoner: Not necessarily for anything he did, but the awful decisions the military made leading to Yonkers and the Great Panic weigh on him hard.
141* GeneralRipper: Discussed, and averted; D'Ambosia bemoans the stereotype of the "dim-witted, hard-charging highschool football coach of a general officer". When war is declared against the zombies, his own reaction is one of intense apprehension.
142-->Attack. When I heard that order, I thought "oh, fuck".
143* OnlySaneMan: One of the few military leaders mentioned favorably by Sinclair, as all the others were usually too busy yelling at the head of [=DeStRes=] over mothballed stealth bombers and such.
144[[/folder]]
145[[folder:Grover Carlson]]
146!!Grover Carlson
147->'''Played By:''' Creator/SimonPegg
148The former Presidential Advisor for the unnamed administration responsible for completely mishandling the zombie outbreak.
149----
150* CorruptPolitician: Though he claims to just have done his job as part of the presidential administration.
151* HateSink: Just like Breckinridge Scott below, he's mainly here to be hated.
152* HowTheMightyHaveFallen: Has gone from Presidential Advisor to literal dung shoveler, having been reduced to gathering horse crap in Amarillo for fuel generation.
153* InherentInTheSystem: Blames all his failures on the political and economic system of the U.S..
154* NeverMyFault: Even after everything that's happened, he refuses to even consider himself or his former administration responsible for ignoring the zombie threat until it was too late and contributing to the Great Panic, instead blaming the ''concept of politics itself'' and that all he did was do his job as was required for re-election. He goes as far as to claim that since you cant "fix" social problems like poverty or homelessness, it's preferable to keep the public ignorant to ensure stability instead.
155* NoCelebritiesWereHarmed: He is a very-thinly fictionalized version of Karl Rove.
156[[/folder]]
157[[folder:Mary Jo Miller]]
158!!Mary Jo Miller
159->'''Played By:''' Creator/DeniseCrosby
160An average upper middle-class suburban wife and mother.
161----
162* MamaBear: She tells the interviewer about the first zombie attack she experienced, during which one of the zombies grabbed her daughter. Mary Jo admits that she really doesn't remember exactly what happened, but says that according to both of her children, she ripped the zombie's head off with her ''bare hands''.
163* TookALevelInBadass: Went from a typical California Phalanx-taking soccer mom to an engineer, city-planner, and mayor of her own town.
164* UnstoppableRage: Took a zombie's head off with only her bare hands in a moment of MamaBear-fuelled aggression when said zombie grabs her daughter.
165[[/folder]]
166[[folder:Gavin Blaire]]
167!!Gavin Blaire
168->'''Played By:''' Creator/BruceBoxleitner
169A pre-war pilot of a commercial advertisement blimp.
170----
171* ForcedToWatch: He could only watch from the sky during the Great Panic, watching people try desperately to get away, unaware they were only prolonging the inevitable, as they were merely headed to another infested zone.
172* TookALevelInBadass: Pre-war, blimps were little more than gimmicks or giant, floating ads. Post-war, they're part of the new U.S. Air Force, of which Blaire is also a member.
173[[/folder]]
174[[folder:Ajay Shah]]
175!!Ajay Shah
176->'''Played By:''' Creator/AjayNaidu
177An Indian office worker who survived by fleeing to the shipbreaker naval yards in Anang.
178----
179* DidNotThinkThisThrough: Shah, and many of the other survivors of the area, never thought about the fact that Anang was a naval yard for ''ship breaking'', and thus most of the ships there were long decommissioned and stripped for parts. The only reason they survived was because of the additional private ships and other small vessels in the area.
180* LifesavingMisfortune: Almost drowned trying to find safety, which ironically led to him being saved by one of the few ships owned by a decent human being. Many of the other ships demanded anything of value to take survivors, [[SexSlave would only take women and young girls]], or refused to save anyone of lower caste or darker skin color.
181[[/folder]]
182[[folder:Sharon]]
183!!Sharon
184->'''Played By:''' Creator/NickiClyne
185A now-adult "Feral", a child who survived the outbreak completely by herself from the age of four.
186----
187* BreakTheCutie: She saw parents kill their children, was almost killed by her own mother, and then saw her mother's death. Then she wound up living on her own. At ''four'' years old. She's now a Feral who may well never progress beyond the mental age at which she was broken.
188* DramaticallyMissingThePoint: There are several parts of her story which Sharon clearly doesn't grasp the significance of, due to her young age at the time they happened; the most glaring of which is her own mother's attempt to take Sharon's life.
189* FanDisservice: Sharon is initially described as very beautiful, with special emphasis given to her [[SignificantGreenEyedRedHead red hair and green eyes]], such that in prewar times she might've been a dancer or model. This is offset by the fact that she has the mind of a very young child and a penchant for vocal mimicry that includes a distressingly-accurate zombie moan.
190* InnocentlyInsensitive: Asked a woman in the church, Mrs. Randolf, where her daughter Ashley was, missing the (to us) obvious cues that Mrs. Randolf's daughter was dead, with a strong possibility that the poor girl reanimated and had to be put down.
191* NightmareFuelStationAttendant: Sharon describes her church being overrun by zombies, her fellow children being murdered by their parents, and her own mother almost successfully strangling her to death before being shot dead, with Sharon's rescuer Mrs. Randolf pushing her out a window and telling her to run before being swarmed and devoured in turn, and all of it with the gleeful enthusiasm of a little girl describing her favorite Saturday morning cartoon.
192* OnlyOneName: We never learn what her last name is; Sharon herself doesn't remember, and anyone who could have told us is long-since dead.
193* ShrinkingViolet: Described as initially shy, and unwilling to make eye contact nor shake the interviewer's hand
194* VoiceChangeling: She mimics several voices and sounds during her recollection, with special mention to her uncannily accurate recreation of a zombie moan. Her rendition is apparently ''so'' accurate that they've had to sound-proof her room at the rehabilitation center where she now lives.
195* WildChild: Sharon was a Feral; one of the children who were left to fend for themselves and became wild as a result. Now an adult, she's described as one of the luckier cases since she has retained a functioning mind and the capacity for language.
196[[/folder]]
197[[folder:Maria Zhuganova]]
198!!Maria Zhuganova
199->'''Played By:''' Creator/JeriRyan
200A former Russian soldier turned baby maker to help repopulate Russia.
201----
202* BabyFactory: At the time of her interview, she's pregnant for the ''eighth'' time. She doesn't even know the fathers of her children, but considers continuing to produce them her duty to her country.
203* BreakTheCutie: After she's forced to participate in a decimation, she gives up moral agency in favor of JustFollowingOrders. She also has her children taken away shortly after birth so she can get pregnant again as quickly as possible.
204* MyCountryRightOrWrong: She considers her role as BabyFactory her duty, and does not question orders any more. (She ''does'' snark a lot about the government, past and present; because they badly need her uterus, they won't do anything to her.)
205[[/folder]]
206[[folder:T. Sean Collins]]
207!!T. Sean Collins
208->'''Played By:''' Music/HenryRollins
209A former U.S. soldier turned mercenary, and one of the guards hired to protect the infamous celebrity compound.
210----
211* AxCrazy: He's on the verge of SerialKiller, and he knows it. He does retain enough conscience to take out his homicidal urges on zombies, not on the living, and plans to suicide after the zombies are gone specifically so he ''doesn't'' start killing living humans.
212* BloodKnight: Enjoys killing zombies a little too much, but is perceptive enough to realize that.
213* CrazyPrepared: An unintentional example; T. Sean's first hint that he had a problem was that he'd start sizing up people around him for the best way to kill them, even when he had no grievance with them.
214* MadHatter: For a blood-crazed psychopath, he is remarkably introspective and level-headed.
215* NotSoDifferentRemark: He muses towards the end of his first segment that maybe the reason the celebrities and other rich folk couldn't keep a low profile was biological inability, a "switch they just couldn't turn off". His second segment starts with him saying he's "addicted to murder" and concludes with him lamenting that if he's still addicted after there are no more zombies to kill, he may just have to kill himself.
216* PrivateMilitaryContractors: Defied before being played straight. He admits to holding a disdain for the stereotypical image of a mercenary as a traumatized vet unable to hack it in the real world, but confides by the end that he’s more or less evolved into just that. His prior military service, in conjunction with his addiction to killing zombies having ruined his chances of living a normal life and he knows it.
217* ReluctantPsycho: Is well aware of his psychological problems, but has enough of a conscience to actively direct his homicidal urges solely towards the infected, even planning to kill himself in the event that the crisis is fully resolved so that he doesn’t start taking his addiction to slaughter out on the living instead. When faced with the prospect of killing invading refugees just trying to seek shelter from the outbreak, he opts to abandon his post and let them have the place instead.
218* ScrewTheMoneyIHaveRules: When the compound of the man he's working for is overrun, he refuses to shoot civilians who are simply trying to find a safe place and instead leaves.
219* ScrewThisImOuttaHere: At the Long Island celebrity compound, when the alternative is to kill refugees who break in to find safety.
220[[/folder]]
221[[folder:Ahmed Farahnakian]]
222!!Ahmed Farahnakian
223->'''Played By:''' Creator/MazJobrani
224A former Iranian major living in exile in Greenland, because there's nowhere for him to return to.
225----
226* DyingRace: Is one of the few Iranian nationals that survived the zombies and the nuclear exchange.
227* EvilStoleMyFaith: A former member of the staunchly muslim Iranian Revolutionary Guard, Farahnakian mentions at the end of the interview that he's lost all faith in God as a result of the zombie outbreak and the ensuing consequences.
228* IDidWhatIHadToDo: Was part of the decision to destroy one of the major bridges connecting Iran and Pakistan to cut off the flow of refugees from India. Unfortunately, this decision ended up being the first in a series of disasters that culminated in nuclear war.
229* NukeEm: Escalating tensions between Pakistan and Iran (started by a refugee crisis and spiraling out of control from there) led to both sides destroying each other at the height of the zombie apocalypse.
230[[/folder]]
231[[folder:Todd Wainio]]
232!!Todd Wainio
233->'''Played By:''' Creator/MarkHamill
234One of the military survivors of the disastrous Yonkers battle.
235----
236* ArmorIsUseless: One of his many complaints about Yonkers was the MOPP 4 protective gear the rank and file soldiers were wearing, several layers of rubber, charcoal, and heavy body armor, on one of the hottest days of the year, while letting the many reporters and superiors wear normal clothing. Averted with the later battle dress uniforms, which actually were effective at preventing infection.
237* CigaretteOfAnxiety: He doesn't quite reach chain smoking in his first interview, but only just. Talking about Yonkers clearly stresses him out. He's not nearly as desperate later.
238* DadTheVeteran: A veteran of the Zombie War, and now a husband and father.
239* DeadpanSnarker: Most of his commentary on the mistakes and stupidity he saw, especially in his earlier segments.
240* MotorMouth: Once you get him going, he ''really'' gets going.
241* RuggedScar: Has clawmarks from an F-Lion (a Feral cat) across his face.
242* ShellShockedVeteran: Years after the war has ended, he is still haunted by what he witnessed during the war, from his fellow soldiers being eaten alive to the government incompetence that caused so many senseless deaths. According to his unit's psychologist, who he sees regularly, his reactions are still fairly healthy.
243* WhatWereYouThinking: His first interview section is spent chastising the poor planning of Yonkers, from the poor tactical decisions to the "Land Warrior" system that only served to incite further panic.
244* YoungerThanTheyLook: He's described as being old before his time, and that looking at him, you wouldn't be able to tell he's at the beginning of his life chronologically.
245[[/folder]]
246[[folder:Paul Redeker]]
247!!Paul Redeker
248->'''Played By:''' Creator/EamonnWalker
249The mind behind the infamous "Redeker Plan", originally designed for the potential overthrow of the Apartheid Government, that revolved around using safe zones with "useless" survivors as bait for the zombie hordes, while core government and military figures could re-organize and focus on fighting back.
250----
251* AmoralAfrikaner: Tried very hard to be heartless by design, and Plan Orange (later changed into the Redeker Plan) was notably both originally designed as an emergency plan in case of uprising during ''Apartheid-time Africa'' and takes belief in TheNeedsOfTheMany to the most logical extreme (those that the Plan considers "strategically useless" are placed on an Invoked SafeZoneHopeSpot (by comparison with the safe zones for the "strategically useful")).
252** Brooks discussed his idea for the character in interviews: white Afrikaners themselves were afflicted by apartheid, because they were indoctrinated from birth by their own parents and all authority figures into believing that apartheid was good. Brooks was fascinated by interviews with Afrikaners after the fall of apartheid who broke down saying "I didn't know what I was doing was wrong". Admitting that they were on the wrong side and everything they stood for was evil would have been so mind-breaking that many of them just shut off all emotions rather than GoMadFromTheRevelation.
253* BeneathTheMask: Xolelwa Azania believed that Redeker instead of being heartless, felt too much and that distancing himself from emotion was the only way he could protect himself in a cruel world. [[spoiler:Considering the fact that Xolelwa Azania is really the split personality of Paul Redeker this insight has a helluva lot of weight to it.]]
254* CrazyPrepared: Redeker prepared a plan that while many view as heartless and amoral, was so comprehensive it was said that it left out no detail from survival to rebuilding society afterwards.
255* HeroicBSOD: Implied to be what happened when Nelson Mandela showed Redeker what may have been the first true human warmth and compassion he ever felt in his life.
256* ItsTheOnlyWayToBeSure: He's firmly convinced that his plan is the only way for society to survive.
257* KnightTemplar: A particularly cold-blooded example, given how the Redeker Plan operates.
258* MeaningfulName: Xolelwa Azania? Azania is the ancient Greek name for southern Africa, and many black nationalists believe that the country should be renamed thus. Google Translate gives myriad answers for "Xolelwa"; In Zulu/Xhosa/etc. it can mean "Discarded", "Clemency", "Downloaded", "Forgiven"... [[spoiler:All of them hit the nail on the head pretty hard considering that he's actually what's left of Redeker when ''Nelson Mandela'' embraced him and told everyone present his plan would save the country, both black and white.]]
259* SanitySlippage: By the time of the events in the book, Paul is in a mental institution in South Africa.
260* SplitPersonalityTakeover: [[spoiler:Xolelwa Azania, the man talking about Redeker, is Redeker himself.]]
261* StrawVulcan: Redeker spent most of his life suppressing his natural intense emotional capacity as a useless distraction that interfered with doing what was needed. [[spoiler:Or so [[SplitPersonalityTakeover Xolelwa Azania, who's in a position to know]] Redeker ''very'' well believes.]]
262** EvenEvilHasStandards: An example being that Paul disagreed with the commonly held belief that he was a racist on the grounds that "to hate one race, you must first love another", and he believed that both hate and love were useless things that got in the way of progress.
263* TheStoic: Was said to be a man not only devoid of emotion but actively saw them as a nuisance at best and the root of all the world's problems at worst.
264** NotSoStoic: It seems that when Nelson Mandela showed Paul what might have been the first real act of emotion and empathy towards him, Paul was shaken so deeply that it destroyed the very foundations of everything he believed in.
265[[/folder]]
266[[folder:David Allen Forbes]]
267!!David Allen Forbes
268->'''Played By:''' Creator/EamonnWalker
269A British survivor who, similarly to Brooks, is working on a book about the zombie apocalypse; in his case, with a focus on the use of European castles by survivors.
270----
271* BadassAdorable: He carries a [[{{BFS}} claymore]] which he learned how to use to very good effect against zombies, but he is still an artist, and painfully shy when giving his interview.
272* {{BFS}}: A massive claymore almost as big as he is.
273* BreakOutTheMuseumPiece: In this case, the piece ''was'' the museum, as the majority of Europe's castles had been defunct for centuries and treated as historical landmarks and tourist spots. Forbes was among the thousands of survivors who once again found safety behind their walls.
274* NiceGuy: The horrors of the war haven't turned him at all bitter.
275* InsistentTerminology: He emphasizes that there's a difference between a ''castle'' and a ''palace'', since the latter were usually just huge, flashy mansions, rather than fortifications, and thus were utterly useless for actual defence.
276[[/folder]]
277[[folder:Philip Adler]]
278!!Philip Adler
279->'''Played By:''' Creator/JurgenProchnow
280A German soldier who's still haunted over having abandoned civilians to the zombies.
281----
282* AllGermansAreNazis: Averted. A west Berliner by birth, he was taught 'to always bear his grandfather's shame'.
283* TheAtoner: He not only carries his culturally-ingrained guilt over Germany's past, but the guilt of having been forced to abandon civilians to fend for themselves.
284* AFatherToHisMen
285* JustFollowingOrders: Defied. Although he complied with the order to withdraw and abandon the civilians his unit was protecting after his commanding officer threatened to enact decimations the way the Russian military did, he fully acknowledges and accepts responsibility for choosing to do so. [[spoiler:He planned to personally assassinate his commanding officer in retribution, and is bitterly disgusted that the general committed suicide before he could do so rather than accept responsibility for giving the order.]]
286[[/folder]]
287[[folder:Bohdan Taras Kondratiuk]]
288!!Bohdan Taras Kondratiuk
289->'''Played By:''' Creator/DavidOgdenStiers
290A Ukrainian soldier and formerly the commander of a tank platoon, assigned to cover a bridge leading into the Ukrainian safe zone. He and his men were at ground zero when their army dealt with the issue of infected survivors hiding their infection and attempting to enter the zone by dropping nerve gas on the entire fleeing throng, healthy or otherwise.
291----
292* TheAllegedCar: Ukraine's armor divisions apparently suffer the same problems of outdated equipment as their Russian counterparts; when the nerve gas is dropped, Bohdan isn't sure the pressure seals on the tank he dived into will even work. Considering the state he's in- alive, but bedridden and coughing up blood- the seals worked, but not perfectly.
293* BloodFromTheMouth: Bohdan's in bad shape by the time he gives his interview; he's shown coughing repeatedly into a handkerchief, and when his attempt to imitate the zombies' signature moan results in an especially bad coughing fit, the handkerchief comes away bloody.
294* EveryoneHasStandards: Is initially horrified at the thought that his own military is going to bomb the bridge to halt the spread of infection, survivors and friendly fire be damned. The realization that the ordinance is chemical rather than explosive merely turns that horror into blind panic.
295* KnightInSourArmor: His account is laced with exasperation, primarily at what was supposed to be a "safe zone" in Kiev, a chance to rest and resupply, but was now just a stop on the way to the new safe zone.
296-->"Why should things be as they should be? They never have been before."
297* ReasonableAuthorityFigure: By god he tried, but the game was stacked against him from the start; he and his company were supposed to be screening survivors for infection, but not only was his platoon of tanks ill-equipped for examinations (they had no medical personnel, no barricades to prevent traffic, nor even dogs to sniff out infected), but the survivors themselves were beyond reason, with imagined safety on one side of the bridge and certain death on the other. And yet he still tried to screen the survivors for infection, because those were his orders, which not only failed miserably but resulted in several casualties among his men.
298[[/folder]]
299[[folder:Jesika Hendricks]]
300!!Jesika Hendricks
301->'''Played By:''' Creator/MichelleKholos
302A former American refugee, now a naturalized Canadian, who's family were among the millions who tried to flee to Canada to escape the zombies.
303----
304* BreakTheCutie: She was just a child when she and her parents went through the living hell of zombie attacks and winter in a refugee camp.
305* IChooseToStay: She never returned to America, instead remaining behind as part of a group trying to repair some of the damage done to the Canadian wilderness, and destroy the remaining undead.
306* ImAHumanitarian: In the Canadian refugee camp as a child, she got very sick, both from starvation and illness, during the pitiless winter. Her parents got into a fight over what to feed her- eventually her father went out and came back with a bowl full of stew- which is strongly implied to have been made from human flesh.
307* FormerlyFat: Ironically, before the war, she was a rather heavyset child. Months of starvation changed that.
308* MustMakeAmends: Both for contributing to the destruction of Canada's ecosystem, and for resorting to cannibalism to survive.
309* StoicWoobie: Survived a frozen hell, along with the other refugees. And while she doesn't forgive the United States government for directing the lot of them to "go north", she doesn't blame them, either; her chiefest complaint is that Creator/HowardStern survived but her parents didn't.
310--> ''No, I try not to be bitter.''
311* WhatTheHellHero: Calls out the U.S. government not for abandoning everyone (since there really were no good options), but for not doing enough to inform of them of where to go and how to survive. Also calls out most of the people who fled North for being so short-sighted and unprepared, which led to the devastation of the Canadian wilderness.
312* WrongGenreSavvy: Her father thought he and his family would be better off surviving in the Canadian wilderness. To be fair he might have been right had several million Americans, Canadians, and Mexicans not had the same idea...
313[[/folder]]
314[[folder:Sardar Khan]]
315!!Sardar Khan
316->'''Played By:''' Creator/KalPenn
317An Indian soldier tasked with blocking off one of the roads leading to the Himalayan safe zone.
318----
319* CassandraTruth: People don't believe him when he tells this story. Not that General Raj-Singh was there, but that Khan himself was the last person who saw him alive.
320* ToiletHumor: His account ends with one of the monkeys that survived the explosion pissing on him.
321[[/folder]]
322[[folder:Arthur Sinclair Jr.]]
323!!Arthur Sinclair Jr.
324->'''Played By:''' Creator/AlanAlda
325A former stock trader turned military advisor who was part of the U.S. governments efforts to maximize the use of their remaining resources.
326----
327* CoolOldGuy: Highly competent and rather elderly.
328* NoInsideVoice: "I started my career trading on the floor of the NYSE, so I can yell as hard and long as any professional drill sergeant."
329* ReasonableAuthorityFigure: He can be persuaded to change his mind if the other party can present good reasons he should.
330[[/folder]]
331[[folder:"The Whacko"]]
332!!"The Whacko"
333->'''Played By:''' Creator/RobReiner
334A controversial political figure who became the Vice President for the new presidential administration.
335----
336* AppropriatedAppelation: Insists on being called "The Whacko" because "everyone else calls me that, why shouldn't you?".
337* ClassyCane: Averted. His wife (and doctor) gave him one for health reasons, but he mainly just uses it to stab at the air.
338* CloudCuckooLander: He leans into his reputation for being an oddball, and ends the interview by telling a tree that it's doing a good job.
339* CrypticBackgroundReference: He briefly refers to having nightmares about "places like Bolivar, and the Black Hills," but does not expand on why beside their nature as Secessionist Zones.
340* DentedIron: The enormous stress, responsibility and guilt of the job ended up physically depleting the President, who died shortly after the war, and The Whacko isn't too far behind. By the time of the novel, he has to use a cane to get around, and it's implied he's starting to go senile.
341* NoCelebritiesWereHarmed: The description of his background in the novel makes it quite clear that he is intended to be the Democratic politician Howard Dean.
342* NoInsideVoice: Fitting, given who's based on.
343[[/folder]]
344[[folder:Joe Muhammad]]
345!!Joe Muhammad
346->'''Played By:''' Creator/DeanEdwards
347A paraplegic who insisted on being part of the anti-zombie efforts despite his handicap.
348----
349* ComicallyMissingThePoint: During the epilogue, Joe and his buddies are watching a pornographic movie in a garage for a friend's bachelor party. The "scene" they're hooting and hollering over involves two people having sex on the hood of a car. All Joe can think of is what it took to ''make that car'' and how long it will be until the world is rebuilt and can make one like it again.
350* HandicappedBadass: He's a paraplegic in a wheelchair, but that didn't stop him from joining the neighborhood watch and protecting his neighborhood from zombies, killing more than a few. Being in a wheelchair isn't too much of an obstacle when fighting zombies, apparently, as their clumsiness and slowness makes up for his lack of mobility.
351* SuperWheelChair: Downplayed. He just uses a regular manual wheelchair. However that didn't stop it from saving his life at one point. A crawler managed to sneak up on his patrol and got tangled up in his wheels trying to bite him. He mentions that if he was walking, it would have been able to sink its teeth right through his shoe.
352[[/folder]]
353[[folder:Roy Elliot]]
354!!Roy Elliot
355->'''Played By:''' Creator/FrankDarabont
356A famous pre-war film maker, who resumed his work in the hopes of helping with the morale problems among the survivors.
357----
358* CoolOldGuy
359* [[EvilCounterpart Good Counterpart]]: Of Breckinridge "Breck" Scott. Both characters sold the lie of "hope". But while Breck sold a sham vaccine to make a quick buck, Elliot's films were meant to inspire people to keep surviving, and to stop people from dying of despair. Notably, both characters are honest about "selling lies".
360* MotivationalLie: He freely admits that several of his movies don't necessarily bear a lot of relation to reality, but considers that justified by the results he gets - helping others to keep going and not cross the DespairEventHorizon by simply never waking up.
361* NoCelebritiesWereHarmed: A clear {{Expy}} of Creator/StevenSpielberg
362* RuleOfCool: Explains the importance of AwesomeButImpractical as a psychological need for the American movie-goer.
363[[/folder]]
364[[folder:Christina Eliopolis]]
365!!Christina Eliopolis
366->'''Played By:''' Creator/BeckyAnnBaker
367A military pilot who became stranded in the middle of a hot zone.
368----
369* ActionGirl: Military pilot doing airdrops in zombie-infested regions.
370* HearingVoices: While the evidence strongly implies that Christina was hearing a voice in her head, it was definitely not a malicious one and may have been created by her mind as a way to cope and stay sane.
371* HelpfulHallucination: "Mets Fan" probably doesn't exist and may just be a voice in Christina's head, but she saves her life multiple times nonetheless.
372* MaybeMagicMaybeMundane: Mets Fan was too symbolic and knew things that she didn't to be completely explained away by her just hearing voices. (For example, directing Christina to a rescue that Christina herself could not possibly have known was arriving, or where, or when.)
373* MommyIssues: More implied than directly stated - when Christina is on the brink of crossing the DespairEventHorizon and is seriously considering [[BetterToDieThanBeKilled shooting herself before the zombies can get her]], Mets Fan galvanizes her into action by demanding, "Who are you, your ''mother''?".
374* SanitySlippage: After she survives and gets back to her people, it is revealed that her radio had been broken and no one used the call sign "Mets Fan". This leads people to think she was hearing the voice in her head.
375** SanityStrengthening: Despite the fact that the voice may have been conjured from Christina's mind due to stress, the voice is positive and encouraging. At times when she feels hopeless, the voice reminds her to only think about what she needs to do next and actively pushes her to keep going and survive. It essentially keeps her from breaking under the pressure from the severe and dangerous circumstances surrounding her escape from zombie infested territories.
376* TalkingToThemself: It's heavily implied that Mets Fan doesn't actually exist, and was actually the result of some kind of dissociative episode brought on by the intense stress Christina was subjected to.
377[[/folder]]
378[[folder:Barati Palshigar]]
379!!Barati Palshigar
380->'''Played By:''' Creator/ParminderNagra
381
382An Indian member of the Radio Free Earth project, who helped to combat misinformation during the early and middle stages of the war.
383----
384* CulturalPosturing: Inverted. Barati calls out aspects of her own culture that turned destructive in the face of the Z War [[note]]Barati specifically refers to how Hindu pilgrimages to Varanasi and the Ganges turned the whole place into one of the worst White Zones on Earth, particularly when these journeys continued after 90% of the country was deemed overrun[[/note]], though she's careful not to condemn any specific culture and generally views such occurrences as tragic rather than CulturalCringe.
385--> ''Every country had a similar story. Every one of our international crew had at least one moment when they were forced to confront an example of suicidal ignorance.''
386* HeroicSelfDeprecation: Despite being one of two people responsible for battling misinformation across the entire Indian subcontinent, she downplays her role somewhat, particularly next to the IR department's.
387* PoorCommunicationKills: She notes a large part of Radio Free Earth's purpose was to prevent this by combating misinformation, translating basic survival tips from ''lingua franca'' into local languages, and adjusting advice to fit the differences of individual cultures.
388* VoiceOfTheResistance: She was one half of this for the Indian subcontinent, translating numerous dispatches on basic survival and transmitting them across the subcontinent in as many languages as possible.
389[[/folder]]
390[[folder:Hyungchol Choi]]
391!!Hyungchol Choi
392->'''Played By:'''
393The Deputy Director of the Korean Central Intelligence Agency, who speculates on the fate of North Korea and describes that of South Korea.
394----
395* CrypticBackgroundReference: He briefly alludes to several difficulties that South Korea faced during the Z War, such as the evacuation of Mokpo, the isolation of Kangnun, and "our version of [[CurbStompBattle Yonkers]] at Inchon."
396* MisterExposition: Much of his interview is spent informing the Interviewer about how North and South Korea reacted to the war.
397
398[[/folder]]
399[[folder:Kondo Tatsumi]]
400!!Kondo Tatsumi
401->'''Played By:''' Creator/MasiOka
402A japanese ''otaku'' who spent the early outbreak completely isolated in his room.
403----
404* AscendedFanboy: As the outbreak progressed, he stayed in his room and on the internet poring over discussions of the war right up until the power went out and he realized he had no actual skills, experience, or support to make use of his information. Only through luck did he manage to escape and meet his Sensei, who would teach him true badassery.
405* FreakOut: His reaction once the Internet goes down.
406* {{Hikikomori}}: At first.
407* IgnorantOfTheirOwnIgnorance: Despite his obsessive collecting of fact and statistics relating to the zombie war, he didn't actually process what the data meant. It wasn't until he was cut off from the internet and dealing with the threat first hand that he realized how much he didn't know about anything beyond his computer, and vow to change for the better.
408* KatanasAreJustBetter: The most important thing Tatsumi is not able to salvage during his escape from the apartment building is a weapon, as almost no civilian Japanese own guns, and he can't find anything sharp and sturdy enough to use as a proper weapon. By pure luck, he ends up in the apartment of a [=WW2=] veteran who saved the military-produced sword he had been issued during his service; a hand-made katana made in the traditional way, that could split a human skull open like a grapefruit. Ironically, the veteran, who's undead corpse Tatsumi is forced to put down before he flees, is heavily implied to have been the estranged brother of Tomonaga Ijiro, Tatsumi's eventual sensei, though neither of them ever realizes this.
409* MasturbationMeansSexualFrustration: He offhandedly mentions that he began every day by masturbating, but to him, it was nothing different from dealing with hunger or tiredness, an annoying reminder of his physical needs he wanted to ignore as much as possible.
410* ParentalAbandonment: His parents disappeared at some point during the outbreak, and Kondo didn't even notice until his mother stopped leaving food outside his door for him. To this day, he still doesn't know what happened to them, though he's quite certain they didn't willingly abandon him, despite their distant relationship.
411* SleptThroughTheApocalypse: His only exposure to the deteriorating situation worldwide was through online information, which by his own admission didn't really register as "real" to him since he subconsciously saw himself as part of cyberspace rather than the real world. As such, he woke up one day with the power and internet out, his parents gone, the entire city in chaos, and zombies literally beating down the door.
412* TookALevelInBadass: Went from a scrawny hikikomori otaku teenager to hardened warrior. Fittingly, he's voiced in the audiobook by Creator/MasiOka, a.k.a. [[Series/{{Heroes}} Hiro Nakamura]].
413[[/folder]]
414[[folder:Tomonaga Ijiro]]
415!!Tomonaga Ijiro
416->'''Played By:''' Parminder Nagra
417An elderly, blind ''hibakusha'', or ''survivor of the bomb'', one of the survivors of the nuclear bombing of Nagasaki in World War 2.
418----
419* AllTheOtherReindeer: Like other Japanese outcasts, Tomonaga had little chance for a normal life, and even less of a chance for marriage or a family. While his brother wanted to take him in, he didn't want to be a burden for his family, and disappeared without a word, never seeing them again.
420* DeathSeeker: He spent much of the decades between the war and the outbreak wanting to die, but was never able to bring himself to commit suicide. In the present, he believes the Japanese ''kami'' (gods) may have had a purpose in mind for him after all, thanks to his actions helping to preserve Japan.
421* EyeScream: Lost his eyesight at age 11 when he looked into the nuclear blast that destroyed Nagasaki.
422* FamilyOfChoice: While he did love his brother, as mentioned above he left him and his other family behind as to not burden them. Eventually, he was taken in by an older ''Ainu'' man, a member of the outcast indigenous people of Hokkaido, who taught him gardening, and even paid him out of his own pocket when the hotel they worked for didn't want to pay for a second worker. These skills would be a great help for Tomonaga in the future.
423* HandicappedBadass: Having spent almost his entire life blind, Tomonaga honed his other senses just to survive, which he later used to fight the zombies.
424* KillItWithFire: His preferred method of dealing with zombies was [[OffWithHisHead decapitation]], followed by disposing the still-animated heads in a nearby volcano, since the bodies died, but the heads kept moving.
425* LockedOutOfTheLoop: Due to isolating himself in the wilderness during the early days of the outbreak, he never realized the extent of the outbreak, only killing the occasional zombie that wandered into the woods, until Kondo Tatsumi accidentally stumbled across him and revealed that Japan had essentially been abandoned to the undead.
426* OurFounder: The co-founder of the Shield Society alongside Kondo, an organization who fought against the undead overrunning Japan while the majority of the other survivors were gone.
427[[/folder]]
428[[folder:Seryosha Garcia Alvarez]]
429!!Seryosha Garcia Alvarez
430->'''Played By:''' Creator/JohnTurturro
431[[/folder]]
432[[folder:Adm. Xu Zhicai]]
433!!Adm. Xu Zhicai
434->'''Played By:''' Ric Young
435A member of the Chinese navy and part of a submarine crew that went AWOL in response to the Chinese governments colossal incompetence during the war.
436----
437* AntiMutiny: "We were not traitors" is his opening statement. The sub's captain went rogue because they realized the dangers of relying on WeHaveReserves against a zombie attack.
438* NumberTwo: The XO of the Chinese Sub that went rogue during the war.
439* NukeEm: Alongside the captain, Xu made the decision to launch a nuke at the bunker where the Chinese government sheltered, wiping them out and ending the civil war.
440[[/folder]]
441[[folder:Terry Knox]]
442!!Terry Knox
443->'''Played By:''' Creator/AlfredMolina
444An Austrialian astronaut and the sole survivor of the crew from the International Space Station.
445----
446* ButWhatAboutTheAstronauts: They monitor from space and provide all the help to the people of Earth.
447* HeroicSacrifice: He chooses to stay in space for ''years'' to keep communication satellites going so that humanity can get information spread around they need in order to survive. He does this knowing he has inadequate supplies and is getting a lot of radiation in the process.
448* HeroicWillpower: Works through the ravages of cosmic radiation and prolonged zero-G, and finally while on his deathbed manages to live long enough to tell his part of the story. He is in pain the whole time, and occasionally has to self-medicate with painkillers.
449* HumbleHero: How does Knox appraise his time in space, despite the physical toll it took on him, and the lavish medical treatment he now receives as a result, hailed as a national hero? "Not bad for the son of an Andamooka opal miner."
450** He even [[DownplayedTrope downplays]] his and his colleagues' HeroicSacrifice; there was no arguing or fighting over who would be left behind or similar drama; they just kept working, long past the point a sane person would abandon their post, and when an opportunity presented itself to return to Earth, they just didn't take it. Simple as that.
451* RagsToRiches: But not in the monetary way. He came from a working class background, only to become an Astronaut. One which becomes an international Hero for keeping the world's vital satellites working at the cost of his health.
452* YourDaysAreNumbered: Is interviewed while in hospice care. The amount of cosmic radiation and time spent in space gave him a rather aggressive form of cancer. It's mentioned that he's the last of his crew, as the other two astronauts with him died a while ago. Knox himself dies only a week after giving the interview.
453[[/folder]]
454[[folder:Ernesto Olguin]]
455!!Ernesto Olguin
456->'''Played By:''' John [=McElroy=]
457[[/folder]]
458[[folder:Darnell Hackworth]]
459!!Darnell Hackworth
460->'''Played By:''' Music/{{Common}}
461A member of the K9 Corps, soldiers working alongside combat dogs to help fight the undead.
462----
463* BecameTheirOwnAntithesis: A positive example, Darnell admits toward the end that he used to hate dogs with a passion until he had to listen to a nearby pet stores puppies die slowly after the owner ran off. He then became a dedicated handler to a HeroicDog, and now runs a farm for retired military dogs and dotes on his now elderly partner.
464* BerserkButton: Encounters two men who were abusing a dog and beats both of them nearly to death with a baseball bat.
465* HeroicDog: A retired K9 handler, he describes the role dogs had during the war.
466* OldDog: his former partner, a dachshund mix, Maisie, makes an appearance during the interview, now retired and elderly. Darnell dotes on her.
467* RageBreakingPoint: When he encountered a pair of survivors who had abused a small dog, Hackworth nearly beat both men to death despite being in terrible shape and ill. He notes it took a group of soldiers wrestling him off them, cuffing him to a car hulk, and [[GetAHoldOfYourselfMan slapping him repeatedly]] to get him to focus.
468[[/folder]]
469[[folder:Father Sergei Ryzhkov]]
470!!Father Sergei Ryzhkov
471->'''Played By:''' Creator/FMurrayAbraham
472A former Russian army priest and the man who unwittingly caused the creation of the Holy Russian Empire.
473----
474* BadassPreacher: Spends a lot of time at the front, comforting the dying.
475* ReligiousBruiser: He's a preacher with a gun, and willing to use it in what he sees as a righteous cause.
476* TheToothHurts: The narrator describes his teeth as being either visibly decayed or outright missing.
477* WellIntentionedExtremist: He certainly means well, in keeping infected soldiers from the "sin" of suicide. Pity what it lead to...
478* YouHaveOutlivedYourUsefulness: Non-lethal version; while he wasn't killed, he was exiled to a remote village deep in Siberia once the Russian government established itself and no longer needed him as a figurehead. The other Russian POV character, Maria Zhuganova, calls him the only person in Russia who actually believes in Russia's religious epiphany.
479[[/folder]]
480[[folder:Andre Renard]]
481!!Andre Renard
482->'''Played By:''' Creator/ReneAuberjonois
483A french soldier and one of the surviving participants of the battles in the catacombs beneath Paris.
484----
485* CheeseEatingSurrenderMonkeys: Discussed and defied. The French were tired of their legacy of loss and humiliation, and so embarked on an unimaginably difficult and dangerous clearing of the Paris Catacombs, pushing ahead at a time when other nations were taking it slow.
486* HeartbrokenBadass: He's experienced so many terrible things that he makes no effort to protect himself from zombies, just other people.
487* TheHermit: Lives in an isolated cabin in Canada. "I don't care if the dead find me, but I care very little for the living."
488* RetiredBadass: A war hero, he retired and retreated to the Canadian wilderness.
489[[/folder]]
490[[folder:Breckinridge 'Breck' Scott]]
491!!Breckinridge 'Breck' Scott
492->'''Played By:''' Creator/MartinScorsese
493A former drug manufacturer and the man behind the fake anti-zombie vaccine "Phalanx".
494----
495* CorruptCorporateExecutive: And unapologetically so. He freely admits that he made a lot of money peddling a 'vaccine' that he knew was useless.
496* EvilCounterpart: To filmmaker Roy Elliot. Both characters sold the lie of "hope", but while Elliot sold it to save people from dying of despair and to give them a reason to keep surviving, Breck did it simply to make a quick buck. Notably, both characters are entirely honest about "selling lies".
497* ExactWords: This is essentially how he lied. TheVirus was called "African Rabies", so he made a vaccine for ''rabies''. He just let people ''think'' it was a cure for the zombie virus due to what it was being called.
498* FalseReassurance: Phalanx works perfectly as a rabies vaccine, just as advertised. He knew damn well the virus wasn't actually rabies despite it being known as "African Rabies" at the time.
499* GildedCage: He's holed up in an Antarctica-based, zombie-proof compound that he'll never be able to leave because he'll (at best) be arrested if he does.
500* {{Greed}}
501* HateSink: He is pretty much there just to be hated.
502* {{Jerkass}}: Scams countless people out of millions of dollars, laughs his head off when most of his buyers ended up infected, brags about scamming people out of their money, and taunts people about the fact that in his safety dome, he is protected against zombies, and because he's in a leased Russian research base in the Antarctic, the police can never arrest him.
503** JerkassHasAPoint: He notes that what happened is partly the government's fault, since they could have checked to see if any of his vaccines had actually been tested, and that while he did knowingly sell untested vaccines, many doctors have given untested Flu shots. He also notes that even if his vaccines didn't work, the belief that there was treatment, kept people from panicking, and that after the truth got out, it wasn't long before panic and fear caused things to spiral out of control.
504* KarmaHoudini: [[KarmaHoudiniWarranty Not for long anymore]], since at least two countries are working together to get their hands on him. And it's mentioned that the Russian's aren't going to renew his lease.
505* LaughingMad: Considering he lives all alone in Antarctica, this is perhaps not surprising.
506* NeverMyFault: He blames the Great Panic entirely on the reporter who broke the story to the public that his zombie vaccine was worthless. Assumes zero responsibility over the fact that his zombie vaccine ''was'' worthless.
507* OnlyInItForTheMoney: He knew Phalanx was a lie, and didn't care. Getting the money was what he cared about.
508* RichReclusesRealm: Made millions of dollars by peddling a fake vaccine for the zombie virus, then acquired Vostok Station in Antarctica as his personal refuge from the ensuing Zombie Apocalypse. Now that the apocalypse is over and humanity is recovered, however, Breck isn't interested in leaving - just in case anyone decides to take him to task for his crimes.
509* SmugSnake: Gloats at the victims of his scamming.
510* TheSociopath: Absolutely zero remorse for the harm done to those who made the mistake of believing that Phalanx actually worked.
511[[/folder]]
512
513!!Background Characters
514These characters are not directly interviewed by The Interviewer, but nonetheless influenced the plot in some significant manner.
515
516[[folder:General Raj-Singh]]
517An Indian military commander during the Battle of Ghandi Park, who died sealing the pass into the Indian Safe Zone.
518----
519* {{Determinator}}: He was determined to make a LastStand with his men during the Battle of Ghandi Park. It took one of his men knocking him out cold with a rifle blow for them to make him leave.
520* {{Foil}}: To General Lang, the commander mentioned in Philip Adler's interview. While General Lang was a panicky, unstable commander who ordered his soldiers to retreat to a safe zone then [[DrivenToSuicide shot himself when he couldn't deal with the guilt of abandoning numerous civilians to die]], General Raj-Singh is shown to be AFatherToHisMen willing to stay with them to the bitter end and accepts the burden of blowing the charges at the last road to the Indian Safe Zone (thereby causing countless civilian deaths) to save his soldiers the guilt, even blowing the charges by hand when the remote detonator doesn't work.
521* FourStarBadass: He's a general and a certified badass, with no-one who saw him in action having anything bad to say about him.
522* FrontlineGeneral: He led and fought beside his men during their LastStand in Ghandi Park. Later on, he's the one to ultimately save the Indian Safe Zone.
523* HeroicSacrifice: He manually set off the detonators needed to seal the last road into the Indian Safe Zone when they failed, preventing the undead from flooding into the country's last refuge.
524* LastStand: Subverted. He wanted to stay with his men and fight with them to the very end, but one of them knocked him out and forced him onto the last chopper out.
525* TheMagnificent: Several characters and ex-Indian military members refer to him as "The Tiger of Dehli."
526[[/folder]]
527
528[[folder:The US President]]
529The president of the United States of America when World War Z broke out, and the one responsible for its subsequent resurgence.
530----
531* DentedIron: The enormous stress, responsibility and guilt of the job ended up physically depleting the President, who died as the war began to wind down.
532* HeroicSacrifice: He gave everything he had to the Z War, even as he began to physically degrade. It's all but outright stated this eventually killed him.
533* HopeBringer: Downplayed. His speech at the Hononulu Conference wasn't an immediate, universal shot in the arm for all humanity, but it was the first step in bringing back their hope and setting them on the path to reclaiming the planet.
534* NervesOfSteel: He remained calm and logical throughout the whole of the war, and the decisions he made helped ensure America's survival.
535* NoCelebritiesWereHarmed: The descriptions of him heavily imply he's Colin Powell.
536* OOCIsSeriousBusiness: The Whacko notes that the Secessionists were one of the very few things that unnerved even TheStoic President, with the man simply stating that "They must be eliminated swiftly, decisively, and by any means necessary," in private.
537* OurPresidentsAreDifferent: A more benevolent version of President Scheming with a dash of President Iron. He was willing to tolerate a lot of morally grey actions and cold logic to keep American intact and functioning, but still had lines he wouldn't cross, and his sheer determination played a crucial role in keeping the USA together.

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