Animorphs: Animorphs / Characters

Character sheet for the main protagonists in Animorphs. Everyone else can be found here.

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Tropes common to all Animorphs

Animal-Motif Team: The team fights aliens by turning into Earth animals, with each having a preferred battle morph: Jake uses a tiger, Rachel uses a grizzly bear (or an African elephant), Cassie uses a wolf, Marco uses a gorilla, Tobias suffered Mode Lock as a red-tailed hawk (though he regained his morphing ability, he tends to stay in his hawk body during battles), and Ax uses his own Andalite body.
Animorphism: The Trope Namer. They possess the ability to transform into any animal whose DNA they have acquired (via touch). However, staying morphed longer than two hours causes Shapeshifter Mode Lock.
Anti-Hero: None of them are outright good guys, especially by the end. While wanting to stop the Yeerk invasion is obviously a good thing, their methods are rather morally sketchy.
Badass Crew: You have to be a badass to fight a Yeerk invasion for three years while you're in school.
Been There, Shaped History: Through the Sario Rip in Megamorphs #2, they are responsible for the extinction of the dinosaurs.
Bears Are Bad News: All of the kids can morph to polar bear, which is occasionally used as an all-purpose power morph. It's Marco's cover morph in Book #25.
Break the Cutie: They constantly go through this throughout the war; by the end, only Cassie and Marco are stable enough to live a normal life. Even then, Marco's life is empty.
Call of the Wild Blue Yonder:
- Every character who has the chance to turn into a bird enjoys the experience of flight quite a bit, especially early in the series before the stakes have really sunk in. David annoys Marco by loudly reveling in the sensation of flying as a golden eagle (before raising a lot of red flags by randomly killing a crow).
- Tobias is hit by this the hardest. He suffers from a crappy home life (constantly bounced from an aunt to an uncle, neither of whom care about him) and generally being maladjusted ("born with a "Kick Me" Sign" is one description) and jumps at the chance to morph a bird, allowing him to escape his problems by literally flying away. Because he's reluctant to turn back to human, he decides to go with the others into the Yeerk Pool as a hawk and suffers Mode Lock at the end of the first book. From there he has a very complicated relationship with his hawk body, which got him out of his home life problems but left him increasingly far from his humanity, but he does still love flying. He's later given his morphing ability back... but his default form is still a hawk. He can morph into his human body, but rarely does so. By then his hawk instincts mean he's even less able to function and he's usually wildly uncomfortable as a human, except when assuming the body of a pretty girl.
Child Soldier: The kids are thirteen when the story begins. They are sixteen years old when the series ends three years later. They've been fighting a war the entire time.
Children's Covert Coterie: A group of thirteen-year-olds operating as a covert resistance movement via improbably valuable alien tech. Naturally, when not trying out new morphs and scouting new missions, they struggle to fit their activities around school, family events, and homework - not to mention the effort of trying to keep their work a secret from their parents. Because the Yeerks can literally be anyone, the Animorphs are very cautious about seeking allies and even more so when the time comes to look for new members, to the point that their recruits are invariably fellow kids. The "secret" aspect goes out the window when the Yeerks figure out a means of identifying the Animorphs by blood testing, forcing them to evacuate their parents and go on the run.
The Chosen Many: It's revealed in the later books that all six were selected as "players" by the Ellimist in his and Crayak's eternal game across the universe. Furthermore, the Ellimist deliberately chose four of them based on special connections to the situation at hand: Marco is the son of Visser One's host body, Cassie is a "temporal anomaly" who can sense disruptions in the timestream with borderline Psychic Powers, Ax is Elfangor's younger brother, and Tobias is Elfangor's son. Jake was picked because of his natural strength, leadership abilities and links to the other four. Rachel just happened to be with the others when they found Elfangor, the Ellimist just considered her a fortunate bonus. The Drode whines that creating a team like this is the equivalent of "stacking the deck", which the Ellimist cheerfully refuses to speak about.
Creepy Cockroach: They all have cockroach morphs, but Marco's the one who gets to have one as his cover morph in The Reunion.
Deconstructed Character Archetype: In spades:
- Kid Hero: It's obvious from the get-go that the kids, having no sort of military knowledge or practical connections whatsoever, are pretty much just making it up as they go and doing the best they can with what they have, and they're closer to Child Soldiers than anything else.
- Wake Up, Go to School & Save the World: As you'd expect, fighting as an uncover guerrilla resistance agent tends to take up a lot of the kids' spare time and energy, and is too important to leave to an extra-curricular schedule. The war takes place at the expense of the kids' personal lives (sometimes forcing them to fight for up to, it is mentioned, three days straight without sleep) and their grades and sociability are pretty much done for by the end of the series.
- The Good Guys Always Win: Played with. The kids actually do manage to save their home planet, but the fact that they're massively outgunned is a major element in the story, and the kids comment from time to time that only rarely are their missions actually successful. One of the major messages of the series is that, despite idealistic platitudes, victory ultimately goes to those who are ruthless and desperate enough to take the most extreme measures, not to the morally superior.
Dysfunction Junction: All the Animorphs have many problems and flaws.
First-Name Basis: The kids do not reveal their last names (and, as Marco notes, he won't even swear to you that "Marco" is his first name). In the last book, Jake's last name is finally revealed to be Berenson, which may be Rachel's last name as well, given that previous books indicated their fathers were brothers.
Four-Philosophy Ensemble:
- Cynic: Rachel and Marco
- Realist: Jake
- Optimist: Cassie
- Conflicted: Ax and Tobias
- Apathetic: David
Four-Temperament Ensemble: Jake is melancholic (shrewd, calculating); Rachel is choleric (aggressive, driven); Tobias is supine (aloof, timid); Cassie is phlegmatic (the peacemaker); and Marco is sanguine (the cheerful jokester). Ax is also melancholic, as a Fish out of Water from a tradition-bound culture.
Giant Squid: The whole team morphs one, but Rachel gets it as her cover morph in The Exposed.
Healing Factor: When they morph from one form to another, any wounds the previous form sustained are quickly repaired.
Heroic Dolphin: The whole team can morph dolphins (Jake, Rachel, Cassie and Marco acquire them in #4, Tobias in #15 and Ax in Megamorphs #2), and tend to use it as their preferred water morph. It's also Cassie's first cover morph, seen in The Message.
The Juggernaut: Rachel's first battle morph is an elephant and, later on, Jake acquires a rhinoceros in order to mount a one-man assault on a fortified compound. Then, during the David arc, all of them acquire one of these morphs.
I Just Want to Be Normal: All of them with the exception of Rachel and even she gets tired of the whole thing sometimes.
Multiform Balance: While each of the kids have their own unique morphs, there are several occasions when they've morphed the same animal (sometimes to exploit the fact that the animal goes into a stupor when being acquired, long enough for them to escape, like the hammerhead shark or the T. rex). The inverse of the trope bites them in the ass when they attack the Yeerk pool all in polar bear morph and nearly die.
- Especially exemplified with their bird morphs. All six have a bird of prey for normal missions and seagulls for over-the-water missions (since their bird of prey forms can't rely on thermals, as they usually do, when over the ocean), but some of them later acquire owls for night flights (and keeping an eye on someone who's trying to escape) and later mallard ducks for long-distance power flying.
Ordinary High-School Student: With the exception of Ax, all of them used to be normal kids.
Panthera Awesome: They all acquired jaguars in Book #11, only to lose them upon the end of the Sario Rip effect. It is Jake's cover morph in that book.
Pop-Cultured Badass: With the exception of Ax, who isn't from around these parts, all the kids make references to television shows, films, books and comics of the 1990s. Marco and Jake are probably the two worst is this regard. Marco in particular comes across as One of Us.
- This backfires on Marco in Book #30 when Visser One points out that his use of a movie reference confirms her suspicions of the "Andalite bandits" being human because a real Andalite would never make a pop culture reference to human culture.
Pragmatic Hero: All of the Animorphs turn into this over the course of the series, though they show signs of it as early as the David books, where they condemn David to a Fate Worse than Death after he tries to kill them. Jake, Marco, and Rachel even cross the line into Unscrupulous Hero or Sociopathic Hero sometimes (for example, when Jake blackmails Erek by threatening to kill Chapman, and later when he kills 17,000 defenseless Yeerks in the heat of the moment, when Marco told his father that his stepmother had been a Controller from the beginning and never actually loved him, and Rachel whenever she indulges her Blood Knight tendencies). By the end, all have turned into He Who Fights Monsters.
Rodents of Unusual Size: The team morph beavers in The Resistance. It's Jake's cover morph for that book.
Shapeshifter Mode Lock: Should they remain in a morph for more than two hours at a time, they will be trapped in it forever. This happens to Tobias at the end of the first book when he becomes trapped as a red-tailed hawk. Cassie almost suffers this fate in Book #19 when she willingly traps herself as a caterpillar, but escapes from it via a loophole when the caterpillar's natural life cycle of cocooning itself to become a butterfly resets her morphing clock.
Sparing the Aces: A meta example, as almost all of the main group is allowed to survive the war but every single one of the Auxilary Animorphs are killed.
Strong Ants: The Animorphs turned into ants for the first time in The Predator to steal Yeerk tech for Ax. It was unpleasant then, and on every later occasion, they tried to avoid using that morph. (It's also Marco's cover morph on The Revelation.)
Thou Shalt Not Kill Muggles: They avoid killing human-Controllers, whereas Hork-Bajir and Taxxons are fair game. Unfortunately, this tips off Visser One to the possibility that they're humans rather than Andalites, as Andalites wouldn't care if they killed a human.
Threatening Shark: All of the kids can morph to hammerhead shark, following the mission in Book #15. Ax also has a tiger shark as his first Earth morph.
Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: They're kids. They have long body counts behind them, even if most of those bodies are alien rather than human.
Voluntary Shapeshifting: They can become any animal they have touched.
Wake Up, Go to School & Save the World: Deconstructed. It stops being an issue after #25, when Erek gets the idea to have the Chee use their holograms to impersonate them at home and school whenever a mission looks like it'll take longer than their usual after school and weekend hours.
What Measure Is a Non-Human?: Killing Hork-Bajir and Taxxons doesn't trouble them as much as killing humans would.
Wise Beyond Their Years: Also deconstructed. They are far more resourceful and intelligent then kids their age have any right to be, but it comes at a cost because of how quickly they've had to grow up in the process of fighting a war. Particularly notable with Jake, who runs the whole war effort, and Cassie, who has performed brain surgery, but true for all of them.

My name is...

Jake

Jake Berenson

Debut: Animorphs #1: The Invasion (1996)
Played by: Shawn Ashmore (TV series), MacLeod Andrews (Audiobooks)

Jake is one of those people who are natural leaders. If you were ever trapped in a burning building, you would turn to Jake and ask "What do we do?" And he would have an answer, too.

"Big Jake, Fearless Leader" of the Animorphs; not because he wanted to be, but because his friends look to him for guidance. While saving the world is nice, what he really wants most is to save his brother Tom, a Controller. Known as an open and friendly guy at the beginning of the series, the constant pressures of having to act as leader and manipulate his friends for strategic ends gradually cause him to become more ruthless.

Achilles in His Tent: For a short time in The Ultimate after failing to keep his parents from getting infested.
The All-American Boy: At least at first. He's initially portrayed as this, being a wannabe basketball star, who spends his days hanging out with his best friend at the arcade. This gets quickly replaced with grim responsibility as the team leader.
Alternate Self: In the third Megamorphs book, an alternate Jake is seen having grown up in a totalitarian society. He's a junior Nazi and wannabe dictator.
Big Brother Worship: Made explicit in the first book towards his older brother Tom. Naturally, the news that Tom's a Controller is what convinces Jake he has to fight.
Big Friendly Dog: Jake's first morph is his pet golden retriever Homer. Homer later appears as Jake's cover morph in The Threat.
Cain and Abel: Played with. Jake and his older brother Tom are enemies, but it's not Tom's fault.
The Call Knows Where You Live: Jake wasn't really determined to fight the Yeerks until he found out about his brother being a Controller.
Cannot Tell a Joke: Jake can snark with the best of them, but when it comes to telling outright jokes, he inevitably summons the crickets. Even Ax, at one point, gets a big laugh just by repeating a joke that Jake had told earlier. Nobody laughed the first time.
The Chains of Commanding: Jake constantly feels the pressure of being in charge, and allows it to slowly consume his life.
The Chessmaster: As the series reaches its climax, Jake resorts to increasingly more amoral actions to win the war.
Comes Great Responsibility: "Power enough to win? No. Power enough to fight? Ah, yes. Just enough, little Jake, here is just enough power to imprison you in a cage of duty, to make you fight."
Deadpan Snarker: Has his moments, and due to his extreme seriousness they are especially heavy on the "deadpan."
"What kind of spaceship was it?" the clerk asked. ^note
"Toy," Jake answered.
Did You Just Scam Cthulhu?: Magnificently played out in The Attack. He manipulates the collective memory of the Howlers to force Crayak into eliminating them.
Don't Call Me "Sir": A Running Gag between him and Ax involves Ax calling him "Prince," and him objecting to the title. Amusingly inverted in the Bad Present in Megamorphs #3, where he objects to Ax calling him "Prince" to instead demand he be called "Supreme Leader."
Don't You Dare Pity Me!: Jake does not want your sympathy; just your loyalty.
The Dreaded: Eventually becomes this. Eva, the former host of the previous Visser One, says flat-out that Jake is the only person Visser One fears.
Dreaming of Things to Come: In The Capture, Jake sees Crayak while the Yeerk in his head starves to death. Crayak himself doesn't show up for another dozen or so books.
The Everyman: During his first three books. The Warning was the first book to really flesh Jake out.
Fallen Hero: After the war, he is clearly suffering from some flavor of PTSD.
Fighting from the Inside: In The Capture, Jake becomes a Controller. He never stops fighting the Yeerk in his head.
Fly Crazy: This is his cover morph in The Capture. In The Warning, he almost dies after being swatted as one.
Future Badass: In the Bad Future of The Familiar, Jake is a huge good guy who looks like he's worked out since adolescence.
Genius Bruiser: A Guile Hero and chessmaster who can become a Siberian tiger? That'll qualify you.
Good Is Not Nice: Not after three years of leading a guerrilla army, anyway.
Got Volunteered: This is how he became The Leader of the Animorphs.
Guile Hero: Jake runs an entire war against a vast alien empire using nothing more then his brains and six kids (himself included) who can turn into animals.
Heroic BSoD: In The Ultimate. Then post-war in The Beginning; he goes through years of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. He also goes through it briefly in The Warning after being almost killed in fly morph.
Honor Before Reason: In The Threat.
Humble Hero: Jake's opinion of himself does not match those of his companions.
I Have Many Names: A complete list of Jake's nicknames: "Big Jake," "Fearless Leader," "Jake the Mighty," "Prince Jake," "Jake the Yeerk-Killer" (sometimes "Big Jake the Yeerk-Killer," used mockingly), "Jake the Ellimist's Tool" and (in the alternate timeline from Megamorphs #03) "Supreme Leader."
I Just Want to Be Normal: Perhaps even more than the other Animorphs other than Cassie; frankly, he just wants to go back to having a normal family life.
Informed Judaism: Jake's father is identified at one point as Jewish, but it never figures into the overall story. Ax also mentions that the Berensons said a blessing over a meal when he was impersonating Jake in The Capture.
It's All My Fault: As the team's leader, Jake blames himself often.
The Juggernaut: Not as frequently as Rachel, but Jake's rhinoceros morph is horrifyingly impossible to stop once it gets going. In Book #16, Jake uses it to ruin an entire armed compound, brushing off shotgun pellets, handgun rounds, electric fences, steel-reinforced doors and entire walls as nothing.
The Leader: Jake was put in charge because he is the best choice, but can and will use his charisma to force others into seeing things his way.
Large and in Charge: A minor example. According to most characters and artwork, Jake is tall and has a football player's stocky build. In The Familiar, adult Jake is stated to have a Schwarzenegger-esque build and a body a Yeerk would "give three ranks for".
Losing the Team Spirit: In The Ultimate, due to a Heroic BSoD after his parents were taken by the Yeerks. This leads to the team effectively breaking down for a second, with no one to guide them.
Lovable Jock: Like Tom he seems quite enthusiastic about basketball, though he apparently wasn't good enough to make the team.
Lightning Bruiser: His tiger and orca whale morphs.
Like Brother and Sister: Although Jake and Rachel start out as cousins that only know each other nominally, they start treating each other like actual siblings as they spend more time together, which is best exemplified in The Solution.
Living with the Villain: His brother is infested by a high-ranking Yeerk.
My God, What Have I Done?: Immediately after winning the war, the true weight of his actions hits him like a brick.
Manipulative Bastard: Not at first, but as the series goes on Jake slowly evolves into one.
Military Brat: Neither of Jake's parents are military, but his great-grandfather fought in World War II and he has a relative who fought in the Civil War.
My Greatest Failure: He feels this way about the David incident and sending Rachel to die.
Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Jake makes some pretty epic screw-ups in The Threat.
Out-of-Character Alert: Jake gets his head dunked in a Yeerk tank in one book, and the rest of the Animorphs worry that he might have become infested (he is). The Yeerk is able to emulate his speech patterns and mannerisms perfectly, which terrifies Jake. But when the others suggest isolating and watching him for 3 days to be sure, he tries to talk them out of it. They realize that if Jake were himself, he'd have no problem with taking this measure.
Panthera Awesome: Siberian tiger, his favorite morph.
The Protagonist: The closet thing to the series' central character. Jake is the only character with pre-existing ties to each of the other Animorphs and, since he is one of those people who are natural leaders, it only made sense. While his friends certainly look up to him as a hero of sorts, he doesn't see himself as much of a big deal and would rather not lead at all if he had a choice.
Recurring Dreams: At the end of The Capture Jake sees a disturbing vision of a big red eye that gives him nightmares for the next twenty books. It's finally revealed in The Attack that the Big Red Eye is in fact Crayak, the Ellimist's opposite number.
Reluctant Ruler: Leads the team because everyone else supports him in that position. Rachel's narration in book 12 comments that "No one exactly elected him, but if we ever did vote on it he'd get all the votes — except his own."
Reptiles Are Abhorrent: One of Jake's first morphs was a green anole lizard. The experience he had with it seems to have scared him off reptile morphs in general. The only other reptiles he ever morphs are the Tyrannosaurus Rex in Megamorphs #02 and an anaconda in The Answer.
Reunion Kiss: After twenty-six books, Jake's first kiss with Cassie ends up being this.
Rhino Rampage: His secondary battle morph is a rhinoceros, which he acquired in The Warning (where it's the cover morph) and uses for breaking down walls.
Scaled Up: His final book, The Answer, sees him morphing an anaconda on the cover. He uses it to convince the Taxxons to turn on their Yeerk overlord and go nothlit.
Shell-Shocked Veteran: In the final book especially, but even before that.
Signature Move: Siberian tiger. His standard bird morph is the peregrine falcon.
Snub by Omission: Done to Cassie accidentally in The Answer. Perhaps justified, given her recent actions.
Straight Man and Wise Guy: Jake is the team's natural leader as he is brave, responsible, cool under pressure, and able to take charge during a crisis. His best friend Marco is the wise guy.
Survivor Guilt: He's got it after so many people die during the final battles, including all the Auxiliary Animorphs, Rachel and Tom.
Team Dad: While the others rely on Cassie for emotional support, they look to Jake to call the shots and reprimand them for being stupid.
Cassie: Now what?
Marco: Yeah, now what, Dad?
That's an Order!: Jake doesn't assert his authority often over the others, but when he does they know it's time to listen. Before the final battle, some of the Auxiliary Animorphs try to Opt Out, but Jake forces them to go anyway. They all die.
Tragic Hero: After years of fighting to save his family, Jake loses them to the Yeerks, causing him to spiral into General Ripper territory and ultimately becoming a character worthy of a Shakespearean tragedy with his cold-blooded plan to end the war causing the deaths of his brother and cousin.
Veteran Instructor: After the war ends, Jake works training a squadron of morphers for the US military.
Vetinari Job Security: In The Weakness Jake goes out of town for a week and Rachel becomes leader in his absence. The consequences aren't pretty.
Warrior Prince: Sort of. Though not a prince in the royal sense, Ax considers Jake to be his prince and by the end even other Andalites acknowledge Jake by that rank.
The Worf Effect: David subjects him to this in The Threat, dominating him in a fight in his tiger morph.
Worthy Opponent: Visser Three eventually came to regard him this way, complimenting his tiger morph on more than one occasion.
Young and in Charge: The incredibly young leader of Earth's major resistance to the Yeerks.
Young Conqueror: He grows into this over three years of leading a guerrilla strike force.

Rachel

Debut: Animorphs #1: The Invasion (1996)
Played by: Brooke Nevin (TV series), Emily Ellet (Audiobooks)

I should have never suggested to Rachel that she's weak or helpless. Rachel may look like Little Miss Teen Model or whatever, but she thinks she's Storm from the X-Men.

The warrior of the group. Unlike the others, Rachel loves the thrill and adrenaline surge of combat, and she becomes more and more unstable as the series progresses. Not helping is the fact that her friends, particularly her cousin Jake, implicitly encourage this by using her for her "unique talents". Rachel is very fashion-conscious and looks like a teen model, while her favorite morphs tend to be as large and gruesome as possible.

'90s Anti-Hero: She doesn't look the part, but certainly fits it personality wise, being ruthless, bloodthirsty, and borderline Axe-Crazy at times.
Action Fashionista: She can't actually wear her outfits into battle, but she's easily the most fashion-conscious member of the team and their most enthusiastic ass-kicker. Even when she gets split into whiny crying fashionista and brutal berserker, she's still capable of insane courage/likes dressing fashionably respectively.
Action Girl: Xena is both her role model and the nickname Marco gives her. There's a reason for that. Her signature battle morph is the grizzly bear. She's a Blood Knight, The Big Guy, and her other passions in life are gymnastics, her boyfriend, and shopping.
Attack! Attack! Attack!: Unsurprisingly, this is her battle strategy when she temporarily becomes leader of the Animorphs in The Weakness.
Ax-Crazy: Deteriorates into this as the series goes on.
Bad Guys Do the Dirty Work: Part of the consequence of her increasing Blood Knight tendencies, and something Jake will occasionally invoke. Upon realizing they may need to kill David, Jake immediately thinks of getting her. She's torn between acknowledging she's the person for the job and wondering what it says about her (and his opinion of her) that he knows that. In the finale, Jake sends her on a suicide mission to kill his brother, her cousin. She agrees, knowing she's the person for the job, and by this point is too broken by the war to do anything else. She also, at one point rationalizes the need for her to do these things, so the others don't as:
"They needed me to be the bad guy. And I needed them to be the good guys. Because if they were good guys, and I was on their side, then that meant that I was a good guy too. Even if I was different."
- Also discussed with Cassie at one point, when the time comes to do a morally dubious but necessary action:
Rachel: I'm going to take David back to the island and leave him there again.
Cassie: I don't know if you can do it a second time.
Rachel: (snapping) You know what, Cassie? I don't know, either. So will you do it for me?
Cassie: (taken aback) I... I don't...
Rachel: Yeah. I didn't think so.
Battle Couple: With Tobias. They fight side by side for the entire series against the Yeerks, and they begin to fall in love with each other as early as the first book. Just before Rachel dies, Tobias helps her to complete her final mission and kill Tom. Rachel's last words before her death are "I love you", which she says to Tobias.
Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Outside of battle, according to the others. Averted in battle — she is just as likely to get hurt as the guys.
Bears Are Bad News: Grizzly bear is her signature morph. She's so attached to it that the suggestion polar bears are tougher personally offends her.
The Berserker: Rachel becomes absolutely ballistic in combat. This becomes more and more of a problem as the series progresses.
The Big Guy: Jake: "I think in a bad fight, I'd rather have you with me than anyone else." Both Rachel's morphs of choice, and her brutality make her well-suited to this role. As the series goes on, she starts trending more and more towards becoming The Brute.
Big Sister Instinct: Especially early on, she feels driven and motivated to protect her friends. In the very first book she and Jake distract searching Controllers while the other three, who are slower, run; in the second book she's affected by Melissa's feeling that her parents don't love her anymore and vows to fight for her and kids like her. As the books progress she starts to revel in the violence and it becomes more of her motivation, but on some level she's still trying to protect the team.
Blood Knight: Rachel becomes more violent as the series goes. She tries not to fall into this, but fails more and more as the series goes on, ending in a Heroic Sacrifice.
Bullet-Proof Fashion Plate: Not literally, but other characters repreatedly mention that Rachel carries herself impeccably, as if she could walk through a hurricane in a wedding dress and come out spotless.
Broken Ace: Smart, talented, brave, and beautiful, she's also violent, reckless, and becomes increasingly scared of and horrified by herself and her actions.
Car Fu: A very dark case, as in The Sacrifice Rachel very nearly commits vehicular homicide on the mild-mannered Captain Olston (who wasn't even threatening the kids, just holding out his hand for them to stop).
Catchphrase: "Let's do it!" Lampshaded by Marco rather frequently.
Challenging the Chief: Her and Jake butt heads a few times. Crayak uses this to try to persuade her to kill Jake, without success.
Combat Pragmatist: Lampshaded: In one of the early books Marco challenges her to an arm-wrestling match. She promptly kicks him under the table and laughs.
Cool Cat: Her first cover morph is Fluffer Mckitty, her best friend Melissa's pet cat.
Corrupted Character Copy: Of Kimberly Ann Hart. Like Kimberly, Rachel is Girly Girl of the team, is a gymnast, an Action Fashionista, and her Color Motif in the graphic novel is pink. However, while Kimberly is a Nice Girl who embodies Heart Is an Awesome Power, Rachel is a Blood Knight who gets more ruthless as the series progresses.
Cute Bruiser: Blonde beauty in her regular form. Elephant or grizzly bear when fighting.
The Dark Side Will Make You Forget: While all the Animorphs undergo this to some degree, Rachel is the most affected, as she can't even remember what she was like before the war.
Death Seeker: Rachel shows signs of this towards the end of the series, as she realizes she's become a Blood Knight and has no idea what to do with herself once the war's over. She ends up dying in battle on a suicide mission to kill her own cousin.
Dirt Forcefield: This is a bit of a Running Gag between her and Cassie.
Do Not Go Gentle: In human form, surrounded by enemies, Rachel refuses to surrender. Her last act is a Dying Declaration of Love to Tobias, who's watching from Earth.
Doppelmerger: In The Separation, Rachel is split into two individuals as a result of being cut in half after morphing into a starfish. Erek King figures that they can re-merge themselves by having them acquire and morph into each other while touching.
Dying Moment of Awesome: Rachel's last stand on her own against all members of Tom's morph capable team. It ends with her as a regular human girl standing in front of a polar bear, and being Rachel, she doesn't even flinch.
The polar bear said, <You fight well, human.>
And then he killed me with a single blow.
Enemy Within: The crocodile morph in The Reaction which takes over her thinking at the most inconvenient times.
Enemy Without: The crocodile in The Reaction becomes this after being expelled from her body. In The Separation Rachel is split between good and evil leading to...
Evil Me Scares Me: Nice Rachel of Mean Rachel, and it sticks with Rachel in general long after that book.
Face–Heel Turn: Every time they meet, the Drode tries to goad Rachel into one. As she gets more addicted to bloodlust she starts worrying that sooner or later she'll actually do it. This is one of the reasons she agrees to the suicide mission.
The Fashionista:
- Even with spending most of her time defending the world from parasitic slugs, she still finds a way to look exceptionally stylish.
- When Ax starts demorphing involuntarily in "The Sickness", she covers his eye-stalk with a bandana made from Marco's flannel shirt. Cassie notes that, even in the middle of a crisis, she somehow makes it look good.
- When Erek's hologram starts failing, Rachel immediately gets him clothes, including designer underwear.
Fragile Speedster: In The Weakness she and the rest of the team morph cheetahs, which are fast but not that durable. It's her cover morph for that book.
The Friend Nobody Likes: Not for most of the series, but late in the books Rachel finds herself slowly alienated from her friends due to love of battle increasingly contrasting with their battle fatigue. She and Cassie, best of friends, slowly drift away from one another, Marco becomes more openly hostile towards her aggressiveness, and there are points at which even Tobias and Ax keep their distance. They don't outright think her a psycho the way she fears they do in The Return, though.
Futureshadowing: In The Familiar Rachel is crippled, horribly scarred, and unable to morph. It's implied Jake is responsible.
Girly Bruiser: She's by far the most dangerous of the human Animorphs, yet she loves to wear nice outfits and be well-dressed.
Girly Girl with a Tomboy Streak: She's an unapologetic mallrat who loves shopping and fashion, does gymnastics, and wears leotards, but she's also the strongest of the group by far, picks the scariest and most badass animals to morph, and is the only one who actually enjoys combat.
Go Out with a Smile: Tries to smile before she dies so that Tobias, her beloved, will remember her that way.
Good Girl Gone Bad: From straight-A student to Sociopathic Soldier.
Grievous Harm with a Body: She's been known to use her own severed limbs as weapons in battle if need be.
Hair-Trigger Temper: She's implied to have one even before the series began but truly develops a rather violent one over the course of the war.
In Harm's Way: She quickly becomes like this. At one point, she rejects a Deal with the Devil that would instantly end the alien invasion, because she realizes that she'd have nothing to do afterwards. Marco once comments that she's a great person to have on your side in a fight — the only problem is, she's always looking for a fight.
Helpless Good Side: Nice Rachel from The Separation is kind, but a little air-headed and completely useless in battle. Subverted when it turns out that Mean Rachel can't actually get anything done, because Nice Rachel has all of her concentration, strategic planning skills, and sense of duty. And threatens to pull a Taking You with Me on Visser Three by demorphing inside his head.
Hero with an F in Good: Rachel is a good person, but she has a bloodthirsty love of battle that borders on disturbing. It gets to the point that it starts to worry her at points just as much as it worries her friends.
Informed Judaism: Rachel, like Jake, is Jewish (or at least her father is), but it doesn't play into her story much either.
Interspecies Romance: With Tobias, in a way: Tobias is human, but trapped in the body of a red-tailed hawk; and later it is revealed that his father was an Andalite, namely Elfangor, though he was trapped in human morph at the time.
I Just Want to Be You: The primary driving force behind her and Cassie's relationship. Rachel wishes she could be compassionate and empathetic like Cassie. This relationship fractures when she realizes that Cassie's reluctance to fight means Rachel has to overcompensate as shown in The Resistance.
The Juggernaut: Rachel's elephant morph is generally described in these terms, plowing over anybody and anything that tries to get in her way. While all of the others also do either elephant or rhinoceros, Rachel is the only one who regularly uses it, to the point where it's her secondary battle morph. In The Reaction her crocodile morph is described in similar terms, and the real crocodile, once turned loose, lives up to it, taking down Rachel's grizzly bear and most of a TV station before being stopped by Ax.
Jumped at the Call: It's often said that she is the only one in the group that actually enjoys fighting the Yeerks. However, in rare moments even Rachel has expressed her desire to be a just a regular girl rather than the warrior her friends see her as. The difference is that while the others want to be normal because war sucks, Rachel wants to be normal because she enjoys fighting in the war too much and recognizes that that isn't good.
Jumping Off the Slippery Slope: She spends three years trying not to fall into this as her Blood Knight tendencies, the need to throw herself into battle again and again, and the idea that she can protect the others from becoming killers by doing it herself slowly but surely turn her into the team's Token Evil Teammate. She has high points and low points, but generally she manages to keep it together until the events of The Return and the subsequent unmasking of the Animorphs by the Yeerks. Once she's abandoned the facade of ordinary life entirely what little restraint she had left quickly follows, and one of the last books in the series, The Sacrifice, consists of her mostly just kicking one dog after another. Realizing she's fallen into this, she agrees to a Suicide Mission at the end, knowing that someone needs to die for an important reason, being unwilling to sacrifice anyone else, and also knowing she could never fit into normal society again.
Kick the Dog: In The Sacrifice, Rachel tries running down the mild-mannered Captain Olston with a convoy. Fortunately, she's stopped by Ax, but it's a close thing, and a chilling reminder of what she's become.
Laser-Guided Amnesia: She suffers from this in the first Megamorphs book.
Leotard of Power: Her most common morphing outfit. Justified, since she is a gymnast.
Life-or-Limb Decision: Forced to make one in The Solution. She chews through her own tail to escape being locked in the cage with David.
Lightning Bruiser: As many Yeerks have discovered, an African elephant can move. So can her bald eagle. Ditto for the sperm whale and orca.
Like Brother and Sister: Although Jake and Rachel start out as cousins that only know each other nominally, they start treating each other like actual siblings as they spend more time together, which is best exemplified in The Solution.
Literal Split Personality: In The Separation Rachel is cut in half while morphed as a starfish. Because of starfish anatomy both halves survive but have a faction of the original Rachel's personality; Nice Rachel is the meek Helpless Goodside while Mean Rachel has her Ax-Crazy tendencies and Hair-Trigger Temper cranked up.
Lovable Alpha Bitch: Subverted in that she never displays the usual traits like the Girl Posse or Spoiled Brat. Although there are times when the lovable part could be questioned. Ask David.
The Magnificent: "Xena: Warrior Princess."
Mighty Glacier: The crocodile is described as such both physically and mentally. "The crocodile mind didn't rush at you. It was slow. So slow. But slow in the way that a supertanker may be moving slowly, but still be impossible to stop."
Morality Chain: Rachel and Tobias are this to each other. Rachel loves Tobias for the humanity inside of him, namely his sweet and kind nature, and often reminds him of the ways he is still human. Tobias in turn loves Rachel for all of who she is, accepting even her more violent tendencies as a part of her. Their love for each other keeps both of them connected to their humanity: without Tobias, Rachel might become a full-bore psychopathic killer.
More Deadly Than the Male: Rachel is the single most physically dangerous human member of the team by a long stretch, and ties with Marco for ruthlessness.
My Future Self and Me: In The Stranger Rachel meets her counterpart from a Bad Future. She's a Controller.
Near-Rape Experience: In her very first narrated book, no less. Naturally, the creep ends up running for his life when she goes to elephant morph.
Chapman: He was running like all the hounds of hell were after him.
Never Say "Die": Pointedly averted in The Solution.
Never Smile at a Crocodile: Rachel morphs one in The Reaction, and develops a severe allergic reaction to it, which causes her to lose control of her morphing. Half the team ends up having to fight the thing at the end after she expels the fully grown, twenty foot killing machine from her body.
Noble Bird of Prey: Her avian morph is a bald eagle. It's the largest bird any of the six have and suits her aggressive nature and style of picking the most powerful creatures she can.
Non-Indicative Name: "Rachel" is Hebrew for "lamb", and she's anything but peaceful.
Not So Above It All: It's revealed in #12 that she and Cassie have a massive crush on Jeremy Jason, at least until he reveals his true colours.
One of the Boys: Her father tells her mother in The Stranger that Rachel is as good as a son because she's a tough as a boy. They go hiking, watch ball games and go to gymnastic events together. Double subverted, though, since Rachel is also characterized as The Fashionista who insists on hiding outfits (not clothes, outfits) in Cassie's barn just because she wants to look immaculate at all times.
One-Man Army: All the kids can do this, but Rachel is a special case, especially in the later books.
Psycho Sidekick: Arguably becomes this to Jake.
Recurring Dreams: Like Jake, she's afflicted with recurring dreams, though in her case they're nightmares of rats brought on from what she had to do during the David Trilogy.
She-Fu: Pulled off in The Solution and Megamorphs #04. Justified, since she's a gymnast.
Signature Move: Rachel has two of them, African Elephant and Grizzly Bear, depending on the situation. Her standard bird morph is the Bald Eagle.
- Though highly infrequently, Rachel is the only person on the team to use severed body parts as a weapon, on one occasion using a decapitated Hork-Bajir head to stab another, and one other time using her own severed arm to end a fight. Or so she claims.
Smarter Than You Look: Rachel looks like a Dumb Blonde, but is a straight A student.
Sociopathic Soldier: She tries very hard to not be this but falls deeper and deeper into the role as the series goes on.
Starfish Character: In The Separation she morphs a starfish that gets sliced in half. Introducing, Nice Rachel and Mean Rachel.
Statuesque Stunner: She is described as being very tall as well as very pretty.
Stranger in a Familiar Land: In her last book, Rachel notes that she feels like a stranger in her own school.
Superpowered Evil Side: It's her cover morph in The Return.
Superpower Lottery: As "Super Rachel" she is metamorphed by Crayak into an indestructible Reality Warper whose only limits are the ones she mentally imposes on herself.
Superpower Meltdown: In The Reaction. Her crocodile allergy starts causing her to morph any time she's under emotional pressure.
Teens Are Monsters: Even in the earliest books, Rachel revels in the power morphing gives her and very quickly acquires a taste for violence. She's able to vent it mostly through battle early on, but after the David affair she realizes what the war is turning her into. Ultimately she does fall into this by the series end, but only after the war turns into a full-blown open invasion.
Thrill Seeker: By late in the series, Rachel mentions in her narration that she only feels alive when fighting for her life, and that when the demorphing is done and the battles are over, she's overcome with an uncomfortable numbness.
Through the Eyes of Madness: In her final book, The Return.
Token Evil Teammate: 'Evil' is usually a little bit of a stretch, though. It's deconstructed somewhat, as Rachel sometimes displays an unsettling awareness that none of her teammates can be as dark as her, and she has to fill this role.

"They needed me to be the bad guy. And I needed them to be the good guys."

The Chosen One: Crayak sees her as a worthy agent to enact his will on Earth (which mostly means murdering Jake) and he does his best to convince her to pull a Face–Heel Turn.
Ultimate Lifeform: "Super Rachel", Crayak's next attempt at one after being forced to discard the Howlers, a ten foot tall cyborg that can morph into any creature the situation calls for, without having to acquire their DNA first.
Uncertain Doom: By killing Tom, Rachel technically fulfills the offer that Crayak laid out for her — she did, after all, kill "[her] cousin". Whether that means Crayak took her after her death or not is never made clear.
The Unchosen One: The Ellimist hand-picked at least four of the group, but tells Rachel she herself was "a happy accident".
Used to Be a Sweet Kid: In her earlier appearances she had much less of the darkness she shows later. She loved the adrenaline rush as early as book 2, but she used to care a lot too.
“Don’t look,” Rachel said to her. She put her arm around Cassie’s shoulder and held her close. Then she reached for Tobias and took his hand. I guess you never really know someone till you see them scared. And even scared to death, with tears running down her face, Rachel had strength to spare.
Vasquez Always Dies: Played with. Cassie survives the series, but the hardcore berserker Rachel does not. Rachel is, however, much more conventionally feminine and stylish in physical appearance than the tomboyish Cassie.
Vitriolic Best Buds: For all she insults and teases Marco, she really does see him as a friend (possibly more than a friend, although, if so, it never goes anywhere.) Notably, there are a few scenes where Marco is clearly really upset (such as the entire climax of book 30, where the team uses Visser One, (who has Marco's mom as a host) as bait, and at the end she is presumed deceased, and she decides to drop the sarcasm and actually be nice to him.
Violently Protective Girlfriend: As Taylor finds out the hard way.
War Elephants: Her first morph is an elephant and it sees regular use in battle until she swaps it in favor of the grizzly bear. Even then, she still uses it when the situation requires, in her words, "truck style power."
Xenafication: In-universe, she goes from a gymnastics-loving mall rat to one of the team's best and most brutal fighters.

Tobias

Debut: Animorphs #1: The Invasion (1996)
Played by: Christopher Ralph (TV series), Michael Crouch (Audiobooks)

He was a sweet, poetic kind of guy. The kind bullies love to pick on. He used to have messy, out-of-control hair and dreamy eyes that always seemed to be looking at something no one else could see. Used to... Now he has fierce, angry eyes that look through you like laser beams.

The quiet and thoughtful loner. Neglected at home and bullied at school, the morphing ability provided him with an escape. Finding freedom as a red-tailed hawk, he soon broke the two-hour limit and trapped himself in the bird body for keeps, becoming what Andalites call a nothlit. He later regains his morphing ability, but with the hawk as his normal form. As you'd expect, flying aside, living as a hawk is not always fun, and the harsh realities of living as a part of nature (such as starving when hunting is bad and having to fight for territory) are piled on top of Tobias' increasing inability to function as a human and the fact that he's a major component of Earth's defense.

Aborted Arc: In the first book, Elfangor telepatically sends Tobias a bunch of pictures and information about the Yeerks, including what Yeerk pools and Kandrona rays are, which the boy had barely even begun to sort through. By the next book, this wealth of knowledge is completly forgotten about, and later books would establish that thought-speak doesn't work like that at all.
Advertised Extra: He was one of the most popular members of the team and even received an Adaptational Badass upgrade in the TV show to reflect this, but Scholastic decided that in order to have book cycles with five books per cycle that him and Ax would rotate out every cycle, getting one book apiece every ten books while the other four kids got two. So while he's not quite an extra, Tobias only gets half the narrative focus that Jake, Rachel, Cassie, and Marco get.
Airborne Aircraft Carrier: Interestingly, he serves as a living version of this on more than one occasion, carrying the rest of the team to and from missions when they're in bug morph.
Badass Bookworm: It's mentioned that he spends some of his time reading books over people's shoulders.
Battle Couple: With Rachel. They fight side by side for the entire series against the Yeerks, and they begin to fall in love with each other as early as the first book. Just before Rachel dies, Tobias helps her to complete her final mission and kill Tom. Minutes later, Tobias morphs to human to cry for Rachel.
Be Careful What You Wish For: Tobias' home life sucked so much that he preferred spending most of his time as a hawk. His affection for the morph was such that it concerned Jake and the others, and even lead them to suspect that he purposefully passed the two hour limit. Even so, the struggles Tobias endures living 24-7 as a bird are enough for him to miss being human… but even after he's offered an escape after regaining his morphing ability, he chooses to stay as a hawk.
Big Creepy-Crawlies: Tobias has the dubious honor of morphing a Taxxon in The Test.
Body Double: In The Illusion Tobias acquires and morphs Ax to convince the Yeerks he's an Andalite.
But Now I Must Go: Tobias vanishes after Rachel's funeral and isn't seen for three years, until Jake brings news of Ax's capture by the One and he joins him and Marco to go rescue him.
Bully Hunter: Seen most notably in The Android, where he's more than happy to give a few bullies chasing Erek a talon haircut.
Bully Magnet: He was this before becoming an Animorph. In fact, Jake first met him when two bullies were giving him a swirlie.
Changeling Fantasy: Life at home and school sucked so much that running into Elfangor was the greatest thing to happen to him in awhile. He later learns Elfangor was his father.
Daddy Had a Good Reason for Abandoning You: Elfangor didn't really have much of a choice in leaving his son and wife behind.
- Also, his mom couldn't take care of him, due to having her mind altered because of Elfangor's involvement and necessary removal. Therefore Tobias is shuffled between his aunt and uncle, neither of wich want him.
Dark and Troubled Past: While nobody really talks about it in-universe, there's some question about whether on some unconscious level he allowed himself to be trapped in morph on purpose because his life was so miserable. Reliving that moment while plugged into a Yeerk torture device, Tobias admits that even he isn't sure. In a leaked early draft for one of the final books in the series, Cassie realizes that Tobias did in fact choose to trap himself, but K.A. must have decided it was better not to spell it out so openly and it was left out of the final product.
Deadpan Snarker: While he dose this less often than Marco, he still has his snarky momements.
Death from Above: To small mammals and Yeerks.
Despair Event Horizon: Tobias fights his predatory instincts as long as possible, and when he finally succumbs to them he freaks out before succumbing to a period of depression. He gets over it. After Rachel's death, he withdraws from human society altogether.
Desperate Plea for Home: When captured by Taylor in The Illusion, Tobias undergoes severe torture and at one point thought-whispers <I just want to go home!> and either lets Taylor hear or hallucinates her responding to him.
Drives Like Crazy: He's an even worse driver than Marco. This is to be expected from someone who doesn't even have arms most of the time.
Dog Walks You: Unintentionally evoked by Tobias in his last book, The Diversion. He has to morph Champ, his mother's seeing-eye dog, to rescue her.
Double Consciousness: As a nothlit, he is permanently stuck with the minds of a boy and a hawk in his head.
Fantastic Racism: Tobias does not like golden eagles. While it's not as commonly mentioned, he also hates crows and jays. He also refers to seagulls and pigeons as "rats with wings" (and jokes that he's losing bird cred when the rest of the cast are in seagull morph and can't shut up about the delicious trash all over the place). That said, he doesn't take David comparing it to actual racism all that well.
"Flowers for Algernon" Syndrome: Subverted in that he kept his new ability, but still chose to remain a hawk most of the time.
Friendless Background: The only person that Tobias really knew prior to becoming an Animorph was Jake, and that's only because Jake saved him from getting his head stuffed in a toilet.
Future Badass: In The Familiar, Tobias has trapped himself in Ax's morph permanently and is ten years older, giving him the appearance of the second coming of Elfangor. He is also the hidden mastermind behind the EF.
Genocide Dilemma: In the climax of Megamorphs #02.
Go for the Eye: Seeing as how he fights most battles in his hawk form, this is one of his favored tactics.
Hair-Raising Hare: At hawk size, rabbits actually are dangerous, giving powerful kicks. Tobias morphs a rabbit in The Pretender to experience what it feels like to be prey.
Half-Human Hybrid: In more ways than one.
Heartbroken Badass: Tobias has always been one of the tougher members of the team: answering the call first, spying on the Yeerks even on the team's "time off", remaining true to his personality in spite of being trapped in a hawk's body with a hawk's instincts, undergoing torture and still managing to keep the team's secrets... After Rachel dies, he sinks into a depression and remains in seclusion years later.
Herald: In two senses. He's the one who pushes Jake into accepting what they saw was real, and he's also the Ellimist's favored Animorph.
Heroic Safe Mode: He resorts to this in The Illusion to keep from going insane from being tortured by letting the hawk mind take over.
The Heart: Invoked, because he doesn't want to lose his humanity to his hawk morph. He shares this role with Cassie.
Identity Breakdown: Tobias struggles with his identity as a human stuck as a hawk. The first time he eats prey that he hunted, he freaks out and tries to kill himself.
I Did What I Had to Do: He hauls this one out in the second Megamorphs book after arranging the extinction of the dinosaurs, the Nesk, and the Mercora.
I Just Want to Be Normal: Complicated by the fact that there is much evidence that Tobias prefers being a hawk but this doesn't stop the angst. In The Change, after spending an extended time trapped as a hawk, he finds himself wishing to be human again. Yet when he gets his morphing ability back, he chooses to remain a hawk rather than to become human and lose the ability to morph.
I Just Want to Have Friends: The Animorphs were important to Tobias as something he could be a part of with other people, and in Back To Before, he joins the Sharing because he has no friends.
It's Personal: With Taylor after she captures and tortures him.
Jumped at the Call: Even more so than Rachel. He was the first of the Animorphs to try morphing, and dragooned Jake into admitting it was real.
Like Father, Like Son: Tobias gets trapped in morph, only to have the Ellimist (somewhat) reverse it later. He fights the Yeerks for years, and during the war he falls in love with a blonde Action Girl. His father Elfangor had a very similar history.
Luke, I Am Your Father: He is Elfangor's son.
Loss of Identity: By the end of the series he has abandoned his human identity completely, remaining in his red-tailed hawk body and living out the remainder of a red-tailed hawk's life even when he has the choice to reclaim his human body and no more war holding him back from doing it.
Minor Living Alone: He spends most of the series living on his own in the woods, or at best staying with Ax in his scoop. After the war's end he elects to remain a hawk in the woods, even though he has the option of returning to human and reconnecting with his mother.
Morality Chain: He and Rachel are this to each other. She loves him for the humanity inside of him, and he loves her completely, accepting her violent side in addition to the rest of her. They keep each other connected to humanity: without Rachel, Tobias might succumb to his hawk instincts and forget his humanity even more.
Moses Archetype: Tobias is an unusual example, as he was never a member of the people he helped to free and lead to a new homeland (the Hork-Bajir). He was chosen by a higher power, though. The Hork-Bajir colony holds him in high regard, and the first two he saved, Jara and Ket, name their daughter Toby after him.
My Future Self and Me: Exploited by the Ellimist to allow Tobias to acquire his human self as a morph.
Non-Human Sidekick: Sort of. He ended up playing this role in the games straight.
Non Sequitur, *Thud*: In The Discovery Tobias accidentally knocks himself silly against David's window and starts rambling about Clue.
Number Two: Jake appoints him leader of the Marco/Tobias/Ax sub-team, affectionately dubbed 'Team Finesse', which ended up carrying the end of the war.
Omnicidal Maniac: In Megamorphs #02, as seen below. Probably the weirdest example of that trope in history.
Out-of-Character Moment: Infamously done in Megamorphs #02, to the point of most fans treating that book as Fanon Discontinuity.
Not Quite Back to Normal: He regains his human form after The Change, but only as a morph. This forces him to choose between remaining in the fight and only returning to human in temporary spurts, or regaining his humanity at the cost of abandoning the fight. He ultimately decides to keep fighting, and even after the war's end remains in his red-tailed hawk morph.
Parental Abandonment: His real parents seeimingly ditched him when he was young and he ended up having to live with in-laws, shuttled between an aunt and an uncle, neither of whom really wanted him.
Person of Mass Destruction: Tobias killed the dinosaurs. No, really.
Predators Are Mean: Subverted — Tobias regularly kills and eats small animals to survive, but he's actually one of the kinder, gentler members of the team.
Predator Turned Protector: One story has Tobias struggle with his dual hawk/human nature, trying to attack a baby rabbit but crashing into the ground each time. In the end, he kills the mother (from the hawk's viewpoint this is beyond stupid, as she could have produced more food) but watches over the babies. In another, Cassie learns of the location of skunk kits (their mother was hit by a Yeerk weapon) when Tobias says he caught and ate one. He ends up helping to guard them until the mother comes out of the vet clinic.
Primal Polymorphs: Over time, he grows so accustomed to living as a real hawk in the wild, he almost forgets what he looked like a human and seriously considers mating with another hawk. However, even when he gets his morphing power back courtesy of the Ellimist, Tobias still lives in the woods, eats mice, and only occasionally makes use of his human morph.
The Quiet One: Only talks when he thinks it is important.
Red Pill, Blue Pill: In The Change, the Ellimist gives Tobias the chance to turn back into a human, but only if he gives up his morphing power and abandons the fight against the Yeerks.
Roadkill for Dinner: Being stuck as a hawk due to Shapeshifter Mode Lock in the first book, he occasionally angsts about eating roadkill: it's easier than hunting for prey, but grosses out his human side.
Shapeshifter Default Form: The red-tailed hawk became his natural form after he regained the morphing ability.
Shapeshifter Mode Lock: Tobias is trapped as a hawk from books 1-13. Eventually, The Ellimist makes it somewhat better. With his help Tobias regains the power to morph and return to human form, but his default form is still a hawk and staying human for more than two hours will trap him again.
The Only One Allowed to Defeat You: Tobias feels this way when it comes to Taylor. In The Test he's obsessed with proving that he is stronger than her, and refuses to allow anyone else to kill or restrain her.
The Smart Guy: Jake's "go-to" guy, as his "personal Air Force," who acts as the team scout before they go out on a mission will know what they can expect.
The Sneaky Guy: He's the guy that scouts areas from above, tracks people down etc. For awhile, it was because that was all he could do but even after The Change this still remains his primary role.
The Stoic: Not really, but in his human form he comes across as such. He's been a hawk so long he forgets to make facial expressions, you see.
Signature Move: Red-tailed hawk, his default form. Which makes you wonder if the kid has a bit of a death wish sometimes, seeing as how he takes on hordes of deadly enemies armed with ray guns as nothing but a bird.
Stockholm Syndrome: Courtesy of Taylor. See below for more on her.
Super-Senses: As a hawk he has amazing sight and hearing.
The Chosen One: The Ellimist flat-out tells him as such in The Change. Strangely, it never really seems to go anywhere.
Unable to Cry: And it ends up saving his life. Definitely a case of Blessed with Suck.
War Elephants: Acquires the same elephant morph as Rachel in Book #22.
Well-Intentioned Extremist: His reason for ensuring the extinction of the Mercora was to ensure that humanity would evolve.
Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: He hates water missions. It's a bird thing.
Yank the Dog's Chain: In The Pretender, the woman who was going to be Tobias's new family turns out to be Visser Three in a morph.

Cassie

Debut: Animorphs #1: The Invasion (1996)
Played by: Nadia Nascimento (TV series), Sisi Aisha Johnson (Audiobooks)

If you want to picture Cassie, think of a short, cute girl with very short black hair, wearing overalls and big muddy boots and looking totally capable of giving a tetanus shot to an angry bear.

The kind and compassionate member of the group, a young animal lover who helps her parents at their Wildlife Rehabilitation Clinic. She often serves as the group's "moral compass". Initially a moral absolutist, the things she's forced to do cause her to re-evaluate her ethics.

The Ace: She's the best morpher in the series by a massive margin, and is capable of controlling the process when she needs to.
Action Girl: Not to the degree Rachel is, but she's still a more than competent fighter.
All Up to You: In The Sickness.
Angst Dissonance: Goes through one when she kills a termite queen to shake off the Hive Mind effect, when she's killed a lot more enemies before.
Bad Liar: It isn't that Cassie gives herself away when she tries to lie or fast talk, it's more that she just can't think of anything to say. (For example, when asked to give her phone number, she said it was 12345678.) This is usually played for laughs by stacking her up against Marco.
Beat Them at Their Own Game: In The Solution Cassie is the one who comes up with the plan to use manipulation and trickery to defeat David.
Beautiful All Along: Invoked in one of her books. Rachel gets her to dress up in designer clothes and suddenly guys everywhere are noticing her.
Beware the Nice Ones: Cassie is the nicest person on the team, hands down. She's also a master manipulator, and can come up with plans every bit as brutal as those of Marco or Rachel if the situation calls for it.
- After losing Jake and Rachel in Megamorphs 3, Cassie snaps at a racist by going polar bear on him, trapping him against a wall and roaring with his face in her mouth. She's interrupted by Rachel complaining that Cassie's stealing her act.
Body Horror: Notably averted — Cassie is an estreen, meaning that she can control the way she morphs. The only other character seen with this ability is the Andalite prodigy Estrid.
Born Winner: Unlike the rest of the team, Cassie's contributions to the team are qualities she was born with, rather than skills she had to learn. See Superpower Lottery below.
Can't Stay Normal: She is a temporal anomaly — see the main page for a better description.
Color Me Black: Inverted in Elfangor's Secret — confronted with a racist in 1934's Princeton University, Cassie opts to turn herself white. Namely, into a polar bear.
Deus ex Machina: She was able to morph out of butterfly form despite becoming a caterpillar nothlit. Apparently turning from caterpillar to butterfly counted as a reset of the morphing clock.
The Face: Neither fighting nor scouting etc is her speciality. Her domain is being The Empath.
Forgot I Could Fly: Infamously done with her alternate counterpart in The Familiar.
Fragile Speedster: Cassie's wolf battle morph is this when contrasted with Jake's tiger and Rachel's grizzly bear.
Friend to All Living Things: Including, in at least one case, a Yeerk.
Future Badass: Subverted — In The Familiar she's a capable and dangerous EF agent, but it's not really her — she's been infested by a Yeerk.
Gambit Roulette: Her surrender of the blue box. She lets Tom steal it from Jake, counting on the gut feeling that giving Yeerks morphing power will cause mass defection in their ranks, as a Yeerk who becomes a nothlit will have no need to feed from the Yeerk pool and thus no longer depend on the Empire. However, she doesn't reveal this to have been her intention until after the defections start happening, making it seem like impossibly good foresight (or worse, Cassie hedging her bets, since if it didn't pan out she could always fall back on the excuse she used before of trying to keep Jake from killing Tom). Not to mention her plan created a ton of risks and threats that the Animorphs didn't have to worry about before, such as an entire army of morph-capable warriors as opposed to just one. While the roulette ultimately comes up in her favor, it exacts a heavy cost in life, culminating with Rachel's death.
Good Is Not Nice: Cassie is undoubtedly the most moral and compassionate member of the team. She will also morph a polar bear and put your head in her jaws if you call her a racist slur, or hatch a plan to turn you into a nothlit if you threaten her friends (see David).
Guile Heroine: She's the most compassionate, but she also gets people very well, which means that she can manipulate people if she feels like she has to—and given the circumstances she's put in, this naturally comes up. Just ask David.
Happily Ever After: She's the only Animorph spared by the Bolivian Army Ending.
The Heart: She reminds the team how important people and animals are.
Heroic BSoD: One battle in The Departure results in her having a near nervous breakdown, and deciding to leave the group.
Horn Attack: In The Hidden Cassie morphs an African cape buffalo, which is aptly dubbed the Widow-Maker. It's her cover morph for that book.
Hyper-Awareness: This is presented as the ostensible explanation for her near-superhuman ability to predict what people will do.
Identity Impersonator: In The Reaction Cassie acquires and morphs Rachel to throw a suspicious Yeerk off her trail.
I Just Knew: This is how she answers Jake when her ultimate Gambit Roulette comes together.
I Just Want to Be Normal: Cassie loves having the ability to morph. The whole guerrilla war against aliens thing though…not so much.
I Just Want to Be You: The primary driving force behind her and Rachel's relationship. Cassie wishes she could be strong and confident like Rachel. However, as Rachel starts acting more psychotic over the course of the series, Cassie's tolerance for Rachel's actions wears thin as shown in The Sacrifice.
In Harmony with Nature: Subverted in The Secret but played depressingly straight in The Message.
Kangaroos Represent Australia: Presumably the reason why The Unexpected exists.
Lightning Bruiser: Her Cape Buffalo morph. Like Rachel, Tobias, and Ax, she can also do African elephant, and she possesses the orca morph that the entire team can do.
Living Weapon: Cassie's plan to get rid of the Helmacrons in The Suspicion is to acquire and morph anteaters, the one animal in the world specially designed to see, attack, and destroy creatures like them. It works.
Manipulative Bitch: While other members of the team are more physically dangerous, when it comes to head games Cassie is the most dangerous Animorph by a long shot. Like Ender Wiggin and Hannibal Lecter, she has the ability to understand a person completely without particularly liking them, and she is more than capable of weaponizing this understanding to manipulate those she considers enemies. David is the most prominent victim of this, but she also manipulates Visser Three, Tom, and even Rachel over the course of the series.
Morality Pet: She becomes this to Aftran.
Nature Lover: Cassie has an extreme love and appreciation for animals and nature, likely influenced by her parents being veterinarians.
Noble Wolf: Her main battle morph. It's her cover morph in The Secret.
Omniscient Morality License: No matter what reckless action Cassie takes, no matter how badly she puts her friends in danger, the narrative always ends up proving her right. See The Departure, The Experiment, The Test and The Answer for the best examples.
Outdoorsy Gal: Loves nature, spends much of her time treating animals in a barn, and is seldom seen in anything aside from overalls.
The Owl-Knowing One: Her last cover morph, seen in The Ultimate, is a great horned owl. Ironically, she acquires this morph pretty early in the series.
Pretty Butterflies: Subverted in The Departure. It's her cover morph for that book.
Principles Zealot: Defied example of the trope. She is sometimes perceived as such by the other Animorphs, even though she compromises on her principles plenty of times throughout the series. Specifically defied in The Extreme when they discuss eating a seal to survive:

Cassie: [annoyed]: It's obvious what we have to do. And not just to the bear's leftovers, but to any live seal we can find. What I don't understand is why you're asking me for permission. Do you guys think I'd put an animal's life over yours? Or mine, come to think of it?]

Puppeteer Parasite: In The Sickness Cassie becomes the only Animorph to ever morph a Yeerk.
Rage Breaking Point: When Fenestre reveals he's been killing the Controllers he abducts to get at their Yeerks, Cassie — in wolf morph — snaps and would have killed him had the others not restrained her. Jake ominously implies she was the one who torched Fenestre's mansion in order to invalidate the amnesty offer Jake gave him.
Reluctant Warrior: More so than any of the other Animorphs, Cassie detests having to fight.
Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory: In Back to Before, Cassie is explicitly stated to be a temporal anomaly who has this ability by default. She is vaguely aware of the true timeline via dreams and bad feelings in the It's a Wonderful Plot alternate universe.
The Smart Guy: Her parents are both vets, so she knows a lot about animals. Given the series premise, this comes in handy in almost every single book with Cassie's typical role during mission preparations being "use her animal knowledge to suggest the animal that is best suited for the needs of that particular mission and often exploit her parents' vet resources to gain access to one for the team to acquire as their newest morph".
Sapient Cetaceans: She morphs one, a humpback whale, in The Andalite's Gift. It sees fairly regular use in later books.
Sapient Steed: Her first morph is a horse. In The Unknown, she becomes a literal sapient steed for a jockey thinking he's riding a famous racehorse.
Screw This, I'm Outta Here: In The Departure.
Sharing a Body: With Aldrea in The Prophecy.
Skilled, but Naive: Possibly the most professionally talented member of the group (see Teen Genius below) but her uncompromising sense of morality hinders her usefulness to the team.
Signature Move: Wolf, a morph she acquires early in the series with the rest of the team and keeps using long after she's acquired far more deadly animals. Her standard bird morph, like Marco's, is an osprey.
Smelly Skunk: Obtains this morph in The Secret. Visser Three finds out not to mess with one the hard way.
Soapbox Sadie: If she has a moral conflict with whatever the team is doing, she makes her opinion known.
Sole Survivor: It's heavily implied that the other remaining Animorphs do not survive the Bolivian Army Ending, making her this.
Superpower Lottery: As if being an estreen wasn't enough, Back to Before comes along and suddenly Cassie's a temporal anomaly, a virtual superhero whose very presence undoes the meddling of the Drode. Amusingly, the Drode himself lampshades this when he angrily accuses the Ellimist of 'stacking the deck' by including her on the team.
Team Mom: She gives emotional comfort and moral advice to the others… whether they want it or not.
Technical Pacifist: As a guerilla soldier committing violence is inescapable for Cassie but she is the most reluctant member of the team to use lethal force.
Teen Genius: Perhaps the only teen in all of history to successfully perform brain surgery.
Termite Trouble: Cassie's Heroic BSoD in The Secret happens because she's forced to kill a termite queen.
The Extremist Was Right: In the last few books, when she allows Tom to escape with the morphing cube. Her rationale was a 'gut feeling' that experiencing the morphing power for themselves would cause the Yeerks to break ranks. Though she was ultimately proven right, her choice caused a few major hiccups in the war as well as severing her trust with Jake. It was also a major gamble, and if it hadn't worked Cassie would have single-handedly been responsible for losing the war.
Token Good Teammate: As the series progresses, Cassie becomes this to the whole team.
Unresolved Sexual Tension: With Jake at the start of the series.
War Elephants: She, Ax, and Tobias acquire the same elephant morph as Rachel in Book #22.

Marco

Debut: Animorphs #1: The Invasion (1996)
Played by: Boris Cabrera (TV series), Ramón de Ocampo (Audiobooks)

Marco thinks the whole world is just a setup for a joke. Marco will tell a joke while he's bleeding and terrified and in pain. But there are times when his eyes lose their skeptical expression and grow glittery and dangerous.

Jake's best bud since infancy, the comedian of the group, as well as most cynical, ruthless and practical. He was against fighting the Yeerks at the beginning, but soon changed his resolve when it became personal. Described as a "paranoid nutcase" with a "Hamlet complex", Marco's knack for strategic and critical thinking was instrumental when it came to missions and the security for the group, but his tendency to hold efficiency and pragmatism above all else would cause him to have personal conflicts.

Affectionate Nickname: Often calls Rachel "Xena: Warrior Princess," Tobias is "Bird Boy," and Jake is "Big Jake" and "Fearless Leader". Marco is also the first person to call Aximili "Ax."
Ambition Is Evil: Averted. Occasionally Marco will remark upon a desire for wealth and power, as in "The Warning" when he enviously eyes Joe Bob Fenestre's mansion and declares that'll be him one day, but he is never portrayed as evil for this mild avarice as David is. He in fact fully achieves it after the war's end.
Bears Are Bad News: In the alternate timeline of Megamorphs #03, Marco uses Rachel's grizzly bear as his favored battle morph. Like all the kids, he can do polar bear.
Big Guy, Little Guy: With best friend Jake. Jake is described as being big for his age and the tallest Animorph. In contrast, Marco is described as being small for his age and the shortest Animorph, even when compared to under-five-feet-tall Cassie.
Brilliant, but Lazy: Marco is frequently stated to make poor grades in school and barely scrape by, which is ironic given how he is arguably the most clever Animorph.
Marco: I've told you guys before, every now and then I stay awake in class. Just for a change.
The Call Knows Where You Live: Marco was ready to call it quits. Then he found out about his mother.
Casanova Wannabe: Marco hits on and even dates a very large number of pretty girls throughout the series, but it never really works out for him. He graduates to The Casanova after the war's end, but it's unclear how many of the many women he dates truly like him and how many are just attracted to his fame and status as the self-appointed spokesman of the Animorphs.
Catchphrase: "Are you insane!?" and variants thereof. So much so that the others will say they're quoting Marco when using the same words.
Children Do the Housework: Due to his dad's deep depression since the disappearance of his wife, Marco has had to do the chores and shopping for a while in the early books.
Class Clown: Wisecracking funnyman who loves to be the center of attention.
Commander Contrarian: For good reason. Marco deliberately points out flaws in plans so that they can be eliminated or at least acknowledged before they go into action, making the plan as good as is reasonably possible.
The Consigliere: Marco is too cautious to be a good leader, but seems to naturally step into the role of number two to whoever happens to be in charge at the moment, giving them a foil to bounce off of and work things out with. Jake and Tobias seem to take this pretty well. Rachel... not so much.
Consummate Liar: The best liar on the team, capable of fooling Visser One herself.
The Cynic: Marco's view of life is jaded at best.
Dark and Troubled Past: Had an idyllic childhood until the sudden disappearance of his mother caused his family to break down, making him much more cynical and scornful of idealistic beliefs, regarding expedience and pragmatism as of prime importance.
Deadpan Snarker: Marco lives by sarcasm.
Devil's Advocate: Tends to present this view when the group debates something, acting as a foil for Cassie's more idealistic leanings.
Dirty Coward: In the first few books Marco was portrayed as something of a weasel compared to the rest of the team, having a distinct streak of self-preservation the others didn't and not wanting to risk his own skin fighting the Yeerks. The Predator revealed that this wasn't self-serving cowardice, but rather fear that if he died his father would be utterly destroyed. And with the revelation that his mother was infested by Visser One, Marco acquired a personal stake in the fight, mostly shedding this trope (though he remained by far the most cautious member of the team).
The Dissenter Is Always Right: Zig-zagged. His cynical side is often useful for finding traps and not having the group rush in recklessly. On the other hand, despite being the best tactician of the team, he often ends up wrong simply because luck and the demands of the plot conspire to make him look stupid. So most of the time, he's just a wiseass, but a smart one.
Don't You Dare Pity Me!: At first, he keeps the fact that his mother is Visser One a secret from everyone but Jake (who was the only other Animorph who knew what Marco's mother looked like) because he doesn't want the others feeling sorry for him. He also doesn't like people coming to his aid about his home situation.
The Drag-Along: At first, until he has a reason to fight.
Drives Like Crazy: A Running Gag. It turns out he gets it from his mother, who drives on mountain roads at speeds that would have been high on a freeway.
Jake: Do you hate trash cans? Is that it? Do you just HATE TRASH CANS?
Earn Your Happy Ending: Among the Animorphs, excluding Ax, Marco ends up the best off. He saves his mother, reunites his family, and ends the war living the life of fame and fortune he always wanted. And, unlike most of them, he doesn't really feel too guilty about the things he's done, though he did fewer of them than most.
- And then he abandons everything to go on a possibly suicide mission to save Ax, out of loyalty, but also because he was bored out of his mind.
Freudian Excuse: The main reason for his initial reluctance to help out in the war effort is because of the death of his mother; his father lost himself to the grief, and initially doesn't want to fight out of fear that if something happened to him, his father would just give up completely. He's given a reason to fight at the end of the fifth book, when they discover that his mother is still alive, as the human host of Visser One.
Good Is Not Nice: Marco is sarcastic, condescending, and a borderline Smug Snake at times. He's also firmly one of the good guys.
Glory Seeker: To some degree. He's always talking about how he'll be rich and famous after the war, and once the wars ends he's quickly proven right.
Guile Hero: He is by far the most cerebral and calculating of the Animorphs. Read The Reunion for the most triumphant example. He is of the aggravating variety, as opposed to Cassie's more empathic one. She predicts emotional reactions; Marco screws with you to get the one he wants. Lampshaded in a few books, he's proud to be one.
Heroic BSoD: He suffers a brief one in The Predator upon discovering, much to his horror, that his supposedly deceased mother is not only still alive, but is the human host of Visser One.
Heterosexual Life-Partners: With Jake, later Tobias and Ax fall into this category as well.
Hidden Depths: While he presents himself as a laid-back clown whose main interests are girls and pop culture, he's a very shrewd thinker and one of the most ruthless thinkers in the group who once compared Rachel to a Tolkien elf.
The Hyena: Ironically, he never actually morphs a hyena.
I Did What I Had to Do: How he defends some of his more morally dubious actions.
If You Die, I Call Your Stuff: To Jake in The Answer.
I Just Want to Be Normal: Moreso than any of the others, Marco hates being an Animorph. He was this close to calling it quits before he discovered his mother was still alive.
I Know Mortal Kombat: He never said he knew how to drive, just that he had the high score on a driving game called Wipeout.
I'm Not Doing That Again: Spoken word-for-word in The Reunion.
Insistent Terminology: He morphs a gorilla, not a monkey.
Jerkass Has a Point: In book 12, he furiously chews out Rachel for jumping into a crocodile pit to save a boy, and acquiring and morphing a crocodile, pointing out that someone could have caught her morphing on video tape. Despite admitting he annoys her, Rachel is forced to concede Marco's point, since the Yeerks are everywhere and if she had been taped, they would know that the "Andalite bandits" are human.
Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Marco is definitely the most cynical and probably the most morally gray of the Animorphs, the most willing to cross lines the others hesitate as. He's also the meanest of them, being quick to insult, provoke and patronize friend and foe alike, often for extremely petty reasons. For all that, he's not a bad person; he's a loyal and even self-sacrificing friend and comrade who is always there for you in a pinch. It's not that he doesn't care about other people, it's just that he's extremely guarded and finds it easier to push people away than welcome them in.
Killer Gorilla: His main battle morph. While he is a good guy, he's morally ambiguous enough to qualify for this trope, and the gorilla's brutal strength is what gets emphasized, as opposed to its peaceful nature.
The Lancer: Jake's other go-to guy and best friend, for his strategic abilities. He's probably the closest to being a traditional Lancer: The Hero's best friend, has a contrasting personality, second-guesses all orders (albeit for good reason),etc, etc. Also plays this role consistently, automatically assuming the role of Commander Contrarian and second-in-command to whoever's giving orders, whether it's Jake, Rachel, or even Tobias.
Latino Is Brown: Averted in the original book covers. Marco is the only Latino character (and his father is implied to not be Latino), but the covers showing him have a pale-skinned model. In the 2011 re-release, a pale model was used at first, but later changed to a brown one due to claims of whitewashing. Played straight in the graphic novel adaptation, where he has a noticeably darker skin tone. In the TV series, he was played by the noticeably brown Boris Cabrera.
Luke, I Am Your Father: His mother is alive, the host of Visser One.
Meta Guy: There are times when you think Marco is well aware that he's a protagonist in a dark, teen sci-fi series. It helps that he's a comic fan and often tries to compare their life to other, less stressful, works of fiction.
Missing Mom: Marco's mother disappeared on a boating trip several years prior to the start of the series. Cue The Predator….
Mister Muffykins: His dad's new beau, Nora, has a poodle named Euclid. He morphs it to harass the Yeerk self-help guru William Roger Tennant and it's his cover morph in The Proposal.
The Nicknamer: Came up with the name Animorphs.
Obviously Not Fine: Marco prefers not to acknowledge his problems to himself but especially not the group. No matter what personal problems he's experiencing, he almost always tells them that he's just fine, whether those problems be experiencing stress-based morphing difficulties or plotting to kill his mom as a Controller. People usually don't buy it, and those problems tend to catch up to Marco at the worst possible times.
Obfuscating Stupidity: This is Marco's preferred way of handling adults, as seen in The Reunion where he sneaks into an office building by acting like an overly eager kid.
Marco: I've found that if you act like a moron, adults tend to leave you alone. It's when they think you might be as smart as they are that they give you a hard time.
Only Sane Man: He often feels like he's this to the group, especially to Rachel.
Polar Bears and Penguins: He, along with the rest of the team, gets a polar bear morph in The Extreme. It's his cover morph for that book.
Properly Paranoid: He doesn't trust being easily, but given his situation you can understand why. Often he turns out to be right, such as in the case of David, though Marco did his best to make that a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy.
Refusal of the Call: He was the one most against fighting the Yeerks in the beginning. This changes after his first viewpoint book in The Predator reveals that his mother is alive, giving him a personal stake in fighting the Yeerks.
Rhino Rampage: Acquires the same rhinoceros as Jake for a heavy-duty mission in Book #22.
Running Gag: His inability to drive, "Are you INSANE?!" "Do you just hate trash cans?!"
Sad Clown: He had psychological/emotional issues even before the series started, due to the disappearance of his mother. He often jokes to hide his fears and insecurities.
Sarcastic Devotee: His loyalty to the Animorphs is rock-solid but that doesn't stop him from picking apart ideas he thinks are stupid and criticizing the team's leaders (especially Rachel when she temporarily takes the job) when he feels like they're not thinking things through.
Scaled Up: A rare heroic example. In The Discovery he morphs David's pet cobra Spawn. It's even lampshaded by Rachel.
Rachel: Kinda the perfect morph for Marco, when you thought about it.
Screw This, I'm Outta Here: In The Predator. He changes his mind after learning his mother is still alive as Visser One's host.
Shameless Self-Promoter: After the war's end he is the only Animorph to embrace publicity, becoming the self-appointed spokesman of the team and making himself a millionaire through relentless and tireless self-promotion. He "writes" a book, goes on talk shows and even stars in his own TV show.
Shapeshifter Identity Crisis: In The Proposal, where stress over his dad's remarriage causes him to start blending morphs.
Shapeshifter Mash Up: The Proposal again. The polar bear/toy poodle cross ("I was a poo-bear?") is especially memorable.
Shorter Means Smarter: He's The Smart Guy in the strategic sense and is implied to be smaller and skinnier than the rest of the team (In "Back to Before", he mentions being several inches shorter than Rachel and later in the chapter, an unmorphed Rachel boosts him over her head to reach a fire escape without any apparent difficulty.)
Signature Move: Silverback gorilla. His standard bird morph, like Cassie's, is an osprey.
Silly Rabbit, Idealism Is for Kids!: Often tells Cassie this.
Spiders Are Scary: In The Android, Marco has to morph a wolf spider. He really, really doesn't want to.
The Smart Guy: Strategy. "Sees the line" from point A to point B. Amusing in that his grades are alluded to be the worst before the series begins, but he's far, far smarter than he lets on.
Smug Snake: Can approach being an antiheroic version of this, and it's certainly how Rachel and later David see him. He's very good at manipulating people, but his paranoia and arrogance can, and sometimes do, get in the way. And then there's the sarcastic personality, and the tendency towards smirking, and advocating the Shooting of Dogs. Still a good guy, and high-functioning enough to be very useful.
The Sneaky Guy: Along with Tobias. Marco values stealth over straight combat, so Jake often relies on him with he needs someone to spy or collect information...as opposed to someone like Rachel.
Sour Supporter: Again, at first.
Stepford Snarker: Marco's sarcasm covers up serious mommy issues, and intense hatred for the Yeerks.
Straight Man and Wise Guy: He plays against his best friend Jake's straight man as Marco throughout the war always maintains a sense of humor, able to crack jokes and make sarcastic remarks in the midst of battle.
The Strategist: Most of the Animorphs' plans (especially the nasty ones) are strongly influenced by Marco.
Swallowed Whole: Marco (in spider morph) gets eaten by a bird in The Android. Inverted in The Discovery, when his new cobra morph swallows Ax (who, as it happens, is in spider morph).
Threatening Shark: Marco ends up on the wrong end of one in The Message and is almost bitten in half for his trouble. Ironically, he ends up with a hammerhead shark as his cover morph in The Escape.
This Is Gonna Suck: Marco makes it his duty to let his teammates know just how incredibly insane and dangerous their plans are.
Unscrupulous Hero: Notably, in the opening to Megamorphs #3, when every other Animorph has become a fascinatingly horrible person, Marco is more-or-less the same as he's always been. Only happier, because his mother's alive and he just got Pong.
Victory Is Boring: While Marco initially revels in his fame and equipment fortune after the war's end, when we meet him again after the 3-year timeskip we find him morphing lobster in his own giant pool, remembering the last time he morphed it during the war and thinking about how "those were the days".
Wise Beyond Their Years: In the early books, he was the responsible one compared to his father, who fell apart after Eva's disappearance.
Would Hurt a Child: In Book 19 Cassie makes it very clear that Marco is willing to go through Karen, whose age is in the single digits, to get to Aftran, her Yeerk.

Aximili-Esgarrouth-Isthill

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/ax_human.png

Debut: Animorphs #4: The Message (1996)
Played by: Paulo Costanzo (TV series), Adam Verner (Audiobooks)

Ax is a soldier down deep inside. Smug and superior sometimes, loopy and silly other times, Ax is still an Andalite aristh, a warrior-in-training. And he's Elfangor's brother, which tells you a lot.

Elfangor's younger brother, Aximili joined the group when he was rescued by the kids from the wreckage of Elfangor's Dome ship, which fell into the Pacific Ocean. Initially considering himself an outsider, Aximili, or "Ax" as he came to be known, retained many of the traits and values of his people (which ranged from loyalty and discipline to outright ruthlessness and xenophobia), and the distinctions led to both comedic and insightful critiques on Earth customs. As the series progressed, it became apparent that he and the kids were more alike than different, and as he adapted to life on Earth Ax was forced, like his Earth counterparts, to question the principles that he had hitherto taken for granted.

Ace Pilot: Ax is the best starship pilot the team has, even for ships designed for other species. Even for ships designed for mutants of other species with twice the normal amount of appendages.
Advertised Extra: Like Tobias, Ax was only allowed to have one book every two book cycles, rotating out with Tobias while the other kids all got regular books every cycle. As a result, while he's not an extra, he still only gets half the narrative focus that his human teammates get.
Affectionate Nickname: Aside from "Ax", the others sometimes call him Ax-man.
Alien Among Us: Ax is the resident alien of the group, an Andalite that occasionally masquerades as a human.
Alien Arts Are Appreciated: Has a great appreciation for many human inventions. He even wonders why humans use computers when they have books. He considers the cinnamon bun to be our greatest achievement, and his favorite part of any television program is the raw emotionality of "These Messages."
Aliens Steal Cable: He loves television, especially These Messages. Andalites generally steal cable, and he mentions watching some human shows in class while learning about humans, but while stuck on Earth Ax learns to truly appreciate TV.
Allegiance Affirmation: Invoked and exploited. As Ax usually fights in his own Andalite body while the rest of the team use terrifying animals, the Yeerks speculate that it's done to announce that the "Andalite bandits" are here, and possibly that he can't morph like the others. The former is correct, as it helps fuel the impression that they're all Andalites instead of mostly humans.
Almighty Janitor: He is an aristh, the equivalent of a cadet, and yet he manages to fight and hinder the Yeerks alongside five human teenagers. He gives Rachel a run for her money for the most dangerous member of the team when it comes to hand-to-hand combat; in fact, it's usually this guy that comes to the rescue of the other kids when they're down and out. On top of that he's got the widest skillset when it comes to alien biology, weaponry, strategy and computers. Yet despite this he spends the entirety of the series as the lowest-ranked member of the team because it squares better with his Andalite values of loyalty and service, even willingly deferring to an alien as his Prince.
Ambiguously Brown: His human morph is described this way, due to being a Mix-and-Match Man.
Awesome Moment of Crowning: He was an "aristh" (cadet) at the time he was marooned on Earth, and promoted directly past "Warrior" to "Prince" within hours of the Andalite fleet arriving three years later. Even Elfangor hadn't accomplished that, and he got a Dome Ship named after him.
Beware My Stinger Tail: Like all Andalites, he has a lightning-fast tail blade.
Beware the Silly Ones: Ax is frequently used as a comedic character due to his infatuation with taste and tendency to play with sounds, but when push comes to shove, he is the most dangerous member of the team. Rachel might be the team's Blood Knight but Ax has pulled off some truly insane feats, among them killing a rogue crocodile in The Reaction (after it beat half the team), defeating Visser Three in single combat as early as The Decision and even killing a Tyrannosaurus Rex in In the Time of Dinosaurs. This is highlighted pretty effectively in The Separation, when even Mean Rachel doesn't want to tangle with him. The main difference between Ax and Rachel, in terms of "Who can kill you faster?" is that Rachel needs to morph in order to do any kind of real damage, while Ax is just as dangerous in his default form.
Big Eater: Because Andalites don't have mouths, they eat through their hooves. When he becomes human, he experiences taste for the first time. Hilarity Ensues, especially since he can't tell the difference between things that are edible and things like cigarette butts.
Bizarre Alien Biology: Big time. Andalites are blue-and-gold-furred centaurs with long, bladed tails, no mouths, two stalk eyes, and internal clock, two hearts, natural telepathy, and eat through their hooves.
Blunt Metaphors Trauma: Being an alien, metaphors don't really work well with him. He has a tendency to take instructions literally, which, combined with him being in public in human morph, makes for some very funny situations. (He also has a notable fascination with pronouncing things, as in his original form he has no mouth and communicates telepathically. Hence the repeated syllables.)
Ax: Spicy, right? This flavour-or-or-is called spicy?
Rachel: Yeah, it's spicy. Hot, too.
Ax: Yes, the temperature is hot. Hot-tuh.
Rachel: No, I meant the flavour is hot. The temperature too, though. Skip it.
Ax: Skip?
Rachel: Uh, no. Forget it. Drop it.
No sooner were those last words out of my mouth than I regretted them. Ax promptly dropped the container of refried beans he'd been holding. It landed wrong side down on the table.
- Another personal favorite with Ax, when he attends a school dance:
  Marco: That girl is warm for your form. She wants your body.
  [Later]
  Ax: I would like to shuffle my artificial hooves to the music with you. But you cannot have my body. My bo. Dee.
Book Dumb: By Andalite standards. It's implied more than once that Ax was a sub-par student who was more interested in sports and girls than his lessons. The main reason he comes across as smarter than the other kids is because he simply had more to learn. He has a wide general knowledge, because he did pay some attention, but he can't always remember how to apply his knowledge. It's also justified by the fact that, while he's considered a minor in his culture, he has finished his formal education and has been in military service, meaning he hasn't had to apply the finer aspects of his education in practical situations before. By human standards, however, he's a freakin' genius, able to reconfigure a computer program into a Subspace Ansible because he thought it was a game where you correct the errors. He also accomplishes a number of impressive technical feats using scavenged human garbage, including setting up a television in his scoop out in the woods, complete with a power source and stolen cable so he has stuff to watch with Tobias on it.
Catchphrase: Two of them:
"We have x of your minutes left."
"Ax, they're not *our* minutes, they're *everyone's* minutes!"

"Now we have x-1 of your minutes."

"Yes, Prince Jake."
"Don't call me Prince."
"Yes, Prince Jake."

Child Soldier: Notable for being the only one of the Animorphs to begin the war as a soldier.
Child of Two Worlds: Ax was born on the Andalite home world and spent his life up through his teenage years on Earth, but it was on Earth that he truly became an adult, and over his three years with the Animorphs he becomes a child of Earth as well as the Andalite home world, studying and coming to love humans and human culture. Ultimately he does elect to return to the Andalites, placing his duty above his personal desires as is so characteristic of him.
Closest Thing We Got: While essentially just a student by the standards of Andalite culture, Ax often has to act as the team's expert in matters of alien science and culture, due to the fact that even his limited knowledge from his home culture is far superior to what the rest of the team know before certain topics come up.
Cloudcuckoolander: Comes across as one when he's in human morph, between his imperfect grasp of human customs, his bizarre eating habits, and his Verbal Tic of playing with the sounds of spoken English at every possible opportunity. On at least one occasion the other Animorphs passed him off as a Funny Foreigner.
The Comically Serious: Ax is arguably the funniest character in the group, despite having a relatively serious personality and not understanding human comedy at all.
Conflicting Loyalty: Ax's entire character arc is built on this. As an Andalite aristh, Ax is the only one of the kids with an existing affiliation, and it doesn't help that loyalty is very strongly ingrained in Andalite culture. Yet, as time goes on Ax begins to bond with his human friends, leading to plenty of situations where he is caught between his loyalty to the Andalites and to the Animorphs. This is the single reason why Ax is only acknowledged as an Animorph in-series towards the very end despite fandom preferring him as the Sixth Ranger — it's not until The Answer, second-to-last book in the series, where Ax finally commits himself fully to the Animorphs.
Cryptically Unhelpful Answer: When Tobias asks him how he eats in The Alien ("I have hooves, don't I?"). He explains for real later in the book: when Andalites run in grass, their hooves absorb nutrients from the crushed plants (and any bugs that were on the plants).
Day Time Drama Queen: Spends his free time watching human soap operas, but unfortunately thinks they are accurate representations of normal human behavior.
Deadpan Snarker: While Ax starts off with no understanding of sarcasm, he eventually picks it up from the kids and by the final few books, his deadpan game is so strong that no one can actually tell if he's joking or not.
Delicious Distraction: Ax in human form + food = inevitable disaster.
Does Not Understand Sarcasm: He gets better about it as the series progresses.
The Dreaded: He's so deadly at Andalite tail-fighting that Visser Three, who has an older, more mature and more experienced Andalite warrior body for a host, is afraid to face him one-on-one. It must have run in the family because Elfangor was equally feared.
Everyone Has Standards: Best displayed in The Conspiracy, where, after capturing Chapman, Jake orders Ax to torture him before letting him go. Ax does so, but is absolutely horrified after the ordeal and makes it clear to Jake he will never do something like that again; he's so pissed over the incident that for once, he doesn't address Jake as "Prince".
Ax: <I will gladly fight this Controller and even, in fair battle, kill him, but I am not a torturer.>
Exact Time to Failure: Has an amazing ability to keep time in his head. He acts as a timer during missions to make sure the group doesn't spend more than two hours in morph.
Extreme Omnivore: Ax has been known to eat everything from nachos to paper cups to cigarette butts.
Fantastic Anthropologist: As previously mentioned, he's only a student, but being a stranger in a strange (to Andalites) land, he does study humans and their culture in his free time. This side of him is most prominent in his first book, The Alien, in which all chapters begin with excerpts from a diary he is keeping detailing his studies and experiences, but even in his later books (which leave out the excerpts), he still strives to learn as much about humans and their ways as he can.
First Kiss: Played with. He experiences his first human kiss with Estrid while experimenting with their human forms.
Fish out of Water: He's the only one of his kind on Earth that he knows of, and the only people that know he exists are four human teenagers and a former teenager turned bird. On the bright side, that bird turned out to be his brother's son.
Funny Foreigner: When in human form, the other Animorphs cover for him by stating he's from Canada ("Canadese"). While it is true that he's a foreigner who's mostly unfamiliar with local customs, claiming he's Canadian doesn't really work all that well.
- In one book, he arbitrarily claims to be from the Republic of the Ivory Coast, when pressed by Cassie's dad, which he remembered from the World Almanac he'd been reading. Cassie's dad doesn't buy it at all, but doesn't press it when he picks Canada instead.
Going Native: By the end of the series he's arguably more human than Andalite in terms of personality and habits. As a war hero, he's publicly known worldwide as Aximili of Earth.
Honor Before Reason: It's a cultural thing with Andalites, and Ax certainly isn't an outlier, particularly in the early books where he does stupid things like run off to assassinate Visser Three single-handedly. Fortunately Tobias is usually there to mitigate the fallout of this.
- After running from their first encounter with the Howlers, Jake has to pull a Full-Name Ultimatum to get Ax to morph instead of staying and fighting.
Humanshifting: Ax is unique for morphing more humans than any other Animorph.
Humanity Ensues: Ax often assumes a (disturbingly attractive) human morph in public.
Humans Kill Wantonly: He becomes disgusted with humans during the third Megamorphs book, when he sees the nature of human wars — specifically, at the Battle of Agincourt, then at the Battle of Trenton. He claims that though the Andalites had their own wars, they were never as pointless or sadistic as human wars were. He also claims that Andalites never deliberately killed children or committed genocide on other Andalites. He gets over it afterwards.
Humans Through Alien Eyes: His narrations often have him pondering the strange, wonderful and terrible realities of human culture.
Humorless Aliens: At first, though he gets better as the series progresses.
Hugh Mann: Human Ax walks strangely, speaks like he's just learned how to talk (which he technically has in terms of verbal communication since his natural Andalite form lacks a mouth), and is completely ignorant of how to engage in human social interaction. He also likes food…A LOT.
I Just Like Saying the Word: Andalites don't have mouths, so human Ax finds it hugely entertaining to play with sounds like a toddler.
Innocent Fanservice Guy: Since his species never wears clothes (which he calls "artificial skin/hooves"), he frequently wonders aloud why humans even bother with them. He also feels no embarrassment when the other team members morph nude in front of him.
Insistent Terminology: He almost exclusively refers to Jake as "Prince Jake," no matter how many times Jake tells him not to. He also exclusively measures time in "your minutes".
Instant Taste Addiction: Part of Ax's characterization is that he turns into a Sense Freak when in human morph (Andalites absorb nutrients through their hooves, and thus don't really have a sense of taste). His first taste of a cinnamon bun leads to it becoming his Trademark Favorite Food, with the epilogue noting that morphed Andalite newcomers to Earth are always easy to spot in public, they're the ones yelling about food.
Is This What Anger Feels Like?: Upon learning that Cassie let the Yeerks get away with the morphing cube, Ax's narration comments that he's not sure what he's feeling towards her... but it's a lot like hatred.
Klingons Love Shakespeare: In Ax's case, he loves soap operas (especially the commercials) and cinnabons.
The Magnificent: After the war he becomes known as 'Aximili of Earth'.
Mix-and-Match Man: His human morph is made from Jake, Marco, Rachel and Cassie's DNA.
Mundane Object Amazement: Among his favorite human inventions: books, cinnamon buns and cigarette butts.
My Friends... and Zoidberg: All of the blurbs on the back cover described the adventures of "X (the main character of that particular installment), the Animorphs, and Ax," with the subtle implication that, being an alien with prior loyalties, Ax didn't count as a true Animorph. This remained a constant up through The Answer, the book in which Ax finally committed to the Animorphs once and for all, but fans often ignore this character arc and insist that he's the real sixth Animorph. (Plus, Covers Always Lie)
No Mouth: He eats through his hooves instead.
Non-Specifically Foreign: His human morph is Ambiguously Brown, but his accent and speech patterns don't match any human culture the characters know. When he's asked where he's from, he tosses out random countries he's learned about from books, trying the Ivory Coast, and when that doesn't work, Canada.
Ax: I am from Canada. I am Canadese.
Not a Morning Person: According to Jake he's "cranky till he gets a few good hoofs full of dewy grass."
Odd Name, Normal Nickname: Ax is not exactly a normal name, but far less conspicuous than his full name, Aximili-Esgarrouth-Isthill. He also goes by Phillip or No while appearing as a human.
O.O.C. Is Serious Business:
- He has the utmost respect for Jake, constantly referring to him as his prince. However, in The Conspiracy, being forced to subject Chapman to Cold-Blooded Torture on Jake's orders, he's so furious and disgusted over the incident that he coldly addresses him as just "Jake" while making it clear he will never do anything like that again.
- In the last stretch of the series, Ax has a completely serious day where he morphs several humans and behaves perfectly normally, using a gun to shoot Visser Two and counteract acts of global terrorism. It culminates with him knocking Jake unconscious to absolve him of responsibility for his final plan: threatening to use a nuke to bomb a Yeerk pool to prevent World War III.
Our Centaurs Are Different: Blue, four eyes, a tail, no mouth, and eats through his hooves.
Politically Incorrect Hero: An aspect of him fans don't often like to dwell on, but as an Andalite Ax has absorbed his people's attitudes, and for better or worse Andalites have several stances which are on Earth regarded as politically incorrect. He looks down upon the disabled ("vecols" in the Andalite parlance), has a distinct streak of speciesism (most notably in "The Prophecy" where he bickers with Aldrea about the merits of Andalites vs. Hork-Bajir), and even a smidgen of sexism (though ironically enough not for human females, just Andalite ones). This side of him doesn't come up often, but it is hard to ignore in "The Prophecy" and "The Other".
Pretty Boy: In his male, but somewhat androgynous, human morph, which is attributed in part to having two girls' DNA. Several characters describe him in narration as "either being a really pretty guy, or a kind of unattractive girl."
Proud Warrior Race: The Andalites are one of the proudest species in the series, and are undeniably skilled warriors (even without the morphing ability).
Rank Up: See Awesome Moment of Crowning above.
Rascally Raccoon: His last book, The Sacrifice, sees him morph a raccoon to sneak off and report to the Andalite military.
Running Gag: Aside from his food obsession and bluntness, there's the way he always calls Jake "Prince Jake", only for Jake to say "Don't call me Prince", and repeats himself when in human morph. Morph. Mor-phhh... As the series progresses, it evolves from a Verbal Tic into playful team banter. He even says it in the Bad Present of Elfangor's Secret, though in that case Jake is demanding to be called "Supreme Leader."
Scaled Up: In The Alien he morphs a rattlesnake in an attempt to assassinate Visser Three.
Science Hero: As the team's resident alien, Ax fills this role.
Sense Freak: See Big Eater above.
Signature Move: Signature Morph: As the only Animorph who goes into battle as himself (the Yeerks don't know if it's because he has a morphing problem or a way of "showing the flag"), the morph that Ax uses most often is his combo-created human morph. His standard bird morph is the northern harrier.
Sixth Ranger: Joins the group a few books late.
The Smart Guy: Knows about alien things. You know, being an alien and all. This most often comes in handy when he identifies the various alien creatures that Visser Three utilizes as battle morphs and gives the rest of the team mid-battle briefings about the powers/abilities of said creatures.
Some Call Me "Tim": Some Call Me Ax: Or occasionally, Phillip. Marco's father knows him as "No."
Species Loyalty: An overarching subplot is Ax's divided loyalty between his species and his human friends. He's usually on the Animorphs' side, since he's the only free Andalite that he knows of for light-years around, but the issue comes up whenever the Andalite military shows up, since he's technically still a soldier of his people.
Spock Speak: Like most Andalites.
Swallowed Whole: In The Discovery, in his wolf spider morph, by Marco (who had just become a cobra and hadn't yet gained control of it). Even worse, he's poisoned in the process. Luckily, he's able to escape and demorph, healing in the process.
Token Nonhuman: The only nonhuman in the group, unless you consider Tobias (for several reasons).
Trademark Favorite Food: Cinnabons. He loves them.
Two of Your Earth Minutes: Very much a deliberate Running Gag on his part, practically serving as his Catchphrase:
Ax: We have seventeen minutes left.
Marco: (after a pause) Seventeen *minutes*?
Ax: (correcting himself) Seventeen of your Earth minutes.
Undying Loyalty: Raised by Andalite military customs to follow the orders of his superiors without question.
Verbal Tic: As an Andalite, he has no mouth and communicates with thought-speak. Whenever he holds a conversation while morphed into a human, he can never go very long without repeating individual parts of words, often but not always drawing out their component sounds. SOU-nds. Sauw-nnnn-dss.
War Elephants: Ax, Tobias, and Cassie acquire the same elephant as Rachel for a heavy-duty mission in Book #22.
What the Hell, Hero?: Ax, along with half the team, calls Cassie out in #52 when it's finally revealed that she allowed Tom to escape with the morphing cube.
You Can't Go Home Again: Although he tries a couple of times early in the series.

David

Debut: Animorphs #20: The Discovery (1998)

Smirking, pouting, easily offended David. David, who half the time seemed to be reckless, but other times had been cowardly and quickly panicked. David, the new Animorph.

After finding the Morphing Cube and subsequently revealing its location, David became target number one for Yeerk forces who were searching to gain the morphing power. After a battle that destroyed his house, David's parents were taken by Yeerk forces. Frightened, alone and unable to trust anyone, David was given the morphing power by the others as part of an attempt to recruit him, but his growing resentment for them strained relationships within the group. Feeling that his life was threatened not only by the enemies that took his parents but also by the new strangers that now surrounded him, he turned Sixth Ranger Traitor and promptly attempted to eliminate the Animorphs one by one.

Ain't Too Proud to Beg: Begs both Visser Three (though that may have been a ploy on his part) and the Animorphs for mercy.
Alas, Poor Villain: Even after everything he does, Rachel has no animosity for him in his final appearance and he surprisingly has none left for her, telling her he's tired of fighting the Animorphs and just wants a Mercy Kill. Whether or not she gives him one is left for the reader to decide.
Ambition Is Evil: David's self-serving nature is played in stark contrast to his heroic and selfless teammates. He progresses from wanting to use his powers to become a millionaire to plotting to create a new group of Animorphs.
And I Must Scream: The Return reveals that his time trapped in rat morph was very much this, not just because of the horror of being stuck in such a vulnerable prey animal, but also the isolation and the constant threat of predation.
Animal Motifs: He's associated with rats, since that's the morph the Animorphs trapped him in. To a lesser extent, he's also associated with snakes, since he has one as a pet and later gains a rattlesnake morph.
Apologetic Attacker: A smug version to Rachel in The Solution.
David: You're very good, Rachel. You know, I wish I didn't have to do this.
Archenemy: Fixates on Rachel as his worst enemy, a sentiment she returns by the end of The Solution.
Badass Boast: In The Threat.
Jake: If the Yeerks don't get you, we will.
David: Yeah, I know. But already there used to be six of you and now there are just five. Pretty soon, Jake, it'll be four.
Because You Were Nice to Me: With Cassie, and ironically it's part of what leads to his downfall. Due to her being the only member of the team to treat him with any sympathy or kindness, he restrains himself in his dealings with her (notably not attacking her at all during his midnight Divide and Conquer plan and later retreating from a battle he could have won when Cassie physically places herself between him and the rest of the team with her humpback whale morph). Cassie, for her part, understands David with ruthless clarity, and personally masterminds the scheme to trap him, manipulating him to a degree Hannibal Lecter would be proud of. Since he never realizes Cassie's role in his entrapment, he still feels this way about her come The Return, stating outright that Cassie was his first choice when Crayak demanded "a companion" (read: one of the Animorphs to be trapped in rat morph with him), but then decided on Rachel since he couldn't sentence Cassie to the living hell of being trapped in rat morph.
Better Living Through Evil: He proposes using the morphing power to get rich. Later he plots to put this plan into action.
Child Soldier: Like all of the others, though in his case he rejects fighting for the Animorphs and becomes a renegade soldier fighting for nobody but himself.
Cornered Rattlesnake: Both figuratively and literally in The Solution.
Corrupted Character Copy: Of Tommy Oliver. Like Tommy, David is built up to be the team's Sixth Ranger, is a bit of a loner, and had a rough upbringing. However, Tommy was only an enemy to the Rangers because he was Brainwashed and Crazy, and once he joined the team, he became a virtuous hero, was promoted to team leader, and became the Big Good in Zordon's absence. David, on the other hand, was a sociopath long before meeting the team and eventually betrayed them because he hated following orders.
Cowardly Lion: Both figuratively in #20 and literally in #21.
Create Your Own Villain: Though David was a disaffected, sullen kid with a tendency to harm animals well before the Animorphs met him, and his loss of his parents and home wasn't entirely their fault, the team did alienate him by forcing him to sleep in Cassie's barn (no one thinks to ask the Chee for help, and in fairness they've barely worked with said Chee by this point) and by threatening his life for minor rule breaking, pushing him over the edge and driving him to betray the team.
Cruel Mercy: Leaving him as a rat instead of killing him.
Dangerous Deserter: After going AWOL he becomes one of the team's worst enemies.
Deal with the Devil: He makes one with Crayak to get off the hellish island the Animorphs left him on.
Dead Person Impersonation: Disposes of the body of Jake and Rachel's mortally wounded cousin and takes his place.
Death Seeker: By the end, he's given up on revenge and begs Rachel to kill him, preferring death to going on trapped as a rat.
Dirty Coward: Much like Marco in the early books, David exhibits a cowardly streak when the tide turns against him. At first this is just the understandable nerves of a rookie to the team, but when he descends into villainy it becomes this, particularly once he goes full Smug Snake in The Solution.
Divide and Conquer: His midnight plan to kill the Animorphs one by one. It almost works.
Even Evil Has Loved Ones: For all his faults, David seems to have genuinely loved his parents, sneaking off from Marco's house to try and call them and even going so far as planning to ransom the blue box in exchange for their safe return. He only abandons this plan when Cassie makes it clear it won't work.
Even Evil Has Standards: Unlike the rock-solid morality of the Animorphs, David's morals are decidedly... loose. He declares himself to not be a murderer when betraying the team, saying that he would never kill humans, only animals. This is... faulty and self-serving logic at best, especially considering that he claims it only after Rachel escapes his attempt to kill her, but considering the mixed signals the Animorphs gave him (in particular Tobias's claim that "birds can't steal" unwittingly planting in David's mind the disassociation between humans and morphed humans), it makes a certain twisted sense from his perspective. In The Solution it is strongly hinted that David has abandoned what loose morals he had when he appears in Saddler's body, but K.A. revealed in her Reddit AMA that David did not in fact kill Saddler.
Evil Counterpart: To... all of the Animorphs, really. He thinks of himself as a leader and plans on starting his own band of Animorphs (Jake), he can single-handedly execute complex plans that hinge on people acting the way he thinks they will (Marco), he prefers power morphs and enjoys battle more than the heroes (Rachel), he can easily read and exploit others' personalities (Cassie), he has no home of his own due to the war (Tobias), and he takes on the role of an outsider (Ax). His only distinguishing features from the other Animorphs are his selfishness and need for power and control.
Failed a Spot Check: A key reason his plans fall apart is that he killed a random red-tailed hawk and spent the next few days assuming he'd killed Tobias, allowing the Animorphs to keep an eye on him without him knowing.
Fatal Flaw: David has to be in control at all times, has to dominate those around him (especially Rachel), and cannot conceive of somebody being smarter then he is.
Fate Worse than Death: He's forcibly trapped in rat morph for the rest of his life, and stranded on a remote island. By the end of The Return, he so dreads going back to that island that he literally begs Rachel for a Mercy Kill.
Flaw Exploitation: He rivals Marco in how good he is at this. When he turns on the Animorphs, he exploits Ax's ignorance of alarm clocks (making him think David was in a jewelry store— Ax couldn't tell the difference between the alarm clock going off and a burglary alarm) and Rachel's preconceptions about him to split them up and attack Rachel. He get a taste of his own medicine when the Animorphs subsequently exploit his ego and need to psychologically dominate Rachel to bring him down.
From Nobody to Nightmare: Just a disaffected teenager who found the morphing cube. Nearly kills the entire team.
Gamebooks: In Alternamorphs #02, the reader is cast as a thinly veiled Expy of David, to the point of paragraphs in the first three chapters being lifted verbatim from The Discovery. It's the closest thing David gets to a narrated book.
Good Shapeshifting, Evil Shapeshifting: He has quite a few of his negative personality traits revealed or accentuated by his choice in morphs:
- When the group decide to allow David into the group, he opts to acquire a Golden Eagle as his first morph for its sheer size, ignoring the group's recommendation to try something smaller and more manageable. None of the Animorphs entirely comfortable with the outcome of the ensuing argument, especially Tobias, who notes that Golden Eagles are in the habit of attacking other raptors. This is actually an early hint that David is going to turn traitor.
- Generally, the Animorphs try to avoid using human morphs unless they have the consent of the donor, as it's essentially an act of theft, and any situation in which they break the rule is considered desperately serious. As such, it's another red flag when David gets casual about morphing Controllers and even fellow Animorphs with zero consent. Later, David takes this further when he replaces Jake's cousin Saddler while he's in hospital, and though it's never specified if he went so far as to enact a Sickbed Slaying ^note or just stole his identity after he flatlined, the fact that he was willing to exploit the grief of Saddler's parents to essentially get himself adopted is a sign that David is now beyond redemption.
- In the finale of this particular trilogy, David makes use of a rat morph in order to track down the hidden Escafil device... only to end up caught in a trap by the Animorphs and left there until his two hours are up, leaving him as a rat for the rest of his life. For good measure, when he finally re-emerges later in the series, the rat morph blends perfectly with his sneaky, vicious nature.
Grail in the Garbage: He was about to sell the morphing cube online before the Animorphs caught wind of it. Worse, he was about to unwittingly sell it to Visser Three.
Greed: He first tried to sell the Escafil Device on the Internet which is how he ended up being pursued by Visser Three, and after the Animorphs let him in on their team he decides he could use his newfound morphing powers for profit.
Hallucinations: Blink and you'll miss it: Jake hallucinates a terrified rat-David in the Bad Future of The Familiar.
Hate Sink: K. A. Applegate all-but-admitted in a 1997 FAQ that she wrote David to be this kind of character, describing him in a post-book FAQ as a "weak, rotten human being◊". The problem with this example as compared to most other characters of this type is that David is a child of 14 who loses his family in a single night and suddenly finds himself surrounded by strangers who don't seem to care about him or even like him very much. He commits one of the darkest acts in a series full of them, but when you're talking about a series where one of the main heroes orders the execution of over ten thousand helpless sentient beings, it's hard for some to hate him as strongly other Hate Sinks.
He Knows Too Much: David knows far too much about the team for the kids to let him walk.
Identity Impersonator: In The Threat he acquires and morphs a Controller briefly. One book later, he's also acquired Marco, and Jake and Rachel's cousin, Saddler.
Introverted Cat Person: He's not a very social person and he owns an irascible cat dubbed Megadeth.
It's All About Me: Like most teenagers, David's a self-absorbed and self-involved person, lacking the heroic drive of the other Animorphs. Losing everything he's ever cared about heightens this side of him, and by the end of his trilogy he's totally out for himself and no one else, having elected to Take a Third Option and alienated himself from both the Animorphs and the Yeerks. He might have grown out of this with time, as most teens eventually do, but time was never a luxury he had.
It's Personal: Between him and Rachel after Rachel threatens to kill his parents. He pays her back by sneaking into her home and threatening her while she's showering, a clear message that he knows where she lives and can come after her at any time.
Karmic Transformation: They trapped the Sixth Ranger Traitor in rat morph. There's no way that wasn't deliberate.
Kidnapped by the Call: His only other option being capture and infestation by the Yeerks.
Kick the Dog: Killing a random bird the instant he gets his golden eagle morph. He tries to pass it off as being taken over by the morph. Some of the Animorphs buy it, but Marco does not.
King of Beasts: His lion morph. He defeats Jake's tiger in a one-on-one battle at the climax of The Threat.
Knight of Cerebus: The series takes a decided turn for the darker after his introduction.
Left Hanging: His final fate.
Lightning Bruiser: Definitely favors these. His battle morphs for land, sea, and air — lion, orca and golden eagle respectively — all count.
Manipulative Bastard: To a degree, though he's not half the manipulator he thinks he is and certainly isn't in Cassie's league.
Military Brat: His father was an NSA agent and he had to move around frequently throughout his life.
Never My Fault: David never accepts responsibility for his actions, blaming everyone other than himself for the trainwreck his life has become. Of course, the Animorphs never accept responsibility for their parts in pushing him over the edge either (not in the original trilogy at least, though Rachel does admit in The Return that David is what he is because the Animorphs made him that way), so it's a tragic case of kids being kids on both sides.
The New Rock & Roll: It's supposed to be a warning sign that David likes heavy-metal bands like Megadeth and reads Spawn as opposed to more wholesome comic books like Jake and Marco do.
New Transfer Student: Transfers into the school only days before his life collapses.
Noble Bird of Prey: Like Rachel, he prefers powerful morphs and picks a golden eagle. With it, he's quite savage, fitting the more aggressive and dangerous aspects of the trope. However, he's a far cry from noble.
Nobody Calls Me "Chicken"!: One of his main character flaws. He does stupid things to show off and look good, and totally loses his cool when Rachel calls him a coward.
No Sense of Humor: Pegged as such by Marco for not laughing at his jokes.
"Not So Different" Remark: In The Return he tells Crayak that Rachel is no different than him and certainly not any better, she's just been luckier.
- While not commented on in series, he is also this to Jake, whose downward spiral after his parents are taken eerily echoes David's own downward spiral. Jake's a more mature character by far by that time, and would never betray the team, but both characters love their parents and are devastated by their capture at the hands of the Yeerks.
Out of Focus: He never narrates a book, in whole or in part. The closest is in the second Alternamorphs, but that unnamed character has very little personality.
Panthera Awesome: His main battle morph is a lion.
Paper-Thin Disguise: Basically plans to use one when he takes over the life of Jake and Rachel's cousin Saddler; Rachel reflects that David can use Saddler's clothing even when he has to morph back to himself as they're basically the same size, and if he demorphed to sleep he'd look enough like Saddler in the dark that nobody would notice.
Politically Incorrect Villain: He reveals a stereotypical teenage boy's misogyny in The Solution, at least when it comes to Rachel. He also calls Tobias a "bird racist" when Tobias waxes on about his contempt for seagulls and seems put out when Cassie patiently explains that it's not the same thing.
Plug 'n' Play Friends: A deconstruction. The Animorphs (except Marco and Ax) expect a relative stranger to join their team, cooperate with them, and go along with their tactics. Unfortunately, David is not a joiner by nature, is deeply traumatized by his forcible recruitment to the group, and promptly tries to destroy the group altogether.
Premature Empowerment: Was given his abilities long before he was mature enough to handle them.
Rat King: Claims in his final appearance that rats are "compelled to obey" him due to his superior intelligence, but he's lying.
Rebellious Rebel: Does not want to follow Jake's orders in the slightest.
Reckless Gun Usage: To a certain degree in The Discovery. When the Animorphs invade his house in bird morph he responds by whipping out a BB gun and chasing them off the premises.
Recurring Character: He was built up to the Villain of the Week for his trilogy and later returned for one last hurrah in The Return.
Red-Flag Recreation Material: It's foreshadowed quite early on that he can't be trusted, not only by his cowardice and lack of maturity, but by the fact that he likes horror comics like Spawn and heavy metal bands like Megadeth.
Reptiles Are Abhorrent: Keeps a cobra as a pet and later morphs a rattlesnake.
Rule of Pool: His house has a pool and Marco is envious of his good fortune. The pool comes into play again a book later, when Ax tricks a trio of Hork-Bajir into throwing themselves into it.
Sanity Slippage: His mental health clearly deteriorates throughout the trilogy. Not surprising, given he loses his whole life to the Yeerks, becomes a fugitive who can't even go out in public as himself, is recruited into the Animorphs and has to face the dangers they face every day. Despite all this, he mostly holds it together throughout The Threat and even after his betrayal he sort of still wants his parents back. It's only once that option's off the table that he really tailspins out of control. And by The Return he's been driven completely insane due to the hellish experience of being trapped as a rat and the long isolation he was forced to endure.
Screw This, I'm Outta Here: When he sees Jake morph a dragonfly in The Threat he says this, though he doesn't go anywhere.
Scylla and Charybdis: This is how David sees the situation he's been thrown into: he's caught between the alien parasites that have enslaved his parents and a group of Child Soldiers who insist on controlling his every move. Ultimately, he decides to Take a Third Option.
Scaled Up: He morphs rattlesnake in The Solution, keeping his theme of choosing morphs that are both extremely dangerous and lightning fast.
Screw the Rules, I Have Supernatural Powers!: Like the Animorphs themselves in the first ten books, David sees nothing wrong with using his powers to screw the rules. Unfortunately, while the Animorphs mostly used their powers to inflict Laser-Guided Karma on various unpleasant people (or sneak into concerts), David wants to use his powers for purely selfish ends.
Shapeshifter Mode Lock: Trapped as a rat by the Animorphs.
Signature Move: A lion. His standard bird morph is the golden eagle.
Sixth Ranger Traitor: Betrays the team within days of recruitment.
Small Name, Big Ego: While David acquires a series of powerful morphs, once he exposed himself as the villain he soon made it clear that he wasn't as smart as he thought he was. He essentially operated on the premise that the rest of the team were idiots where he was the only one 'smart' enough not to focus on the Yeerks, never acknowledging that the Animorphs are more experienced than him and able to anticipate some of his tricks (particularly when he essentially assumes he killed Tobias when he actually just killed a random hawk.
Smug Snake: He's Marco's dark reflection in this regard, having all of his manipulative traits and smug self-assurance but lacking the checks on his behavior and respect for his teammates that Marco has.
Spot the Impostor:
- David morphs Jake's cousin, who is badly injured after being hit by a car and expected to die in surgery, and takes his place. Jake figures it out almost instantly, when "Saddler's" injuries are miraculously healed. Everyone else not in on The Masquerade fails miserably.
- He also acquires Marco against his will, and uses his Marco morph to attack an unsuspecting Ax and infiltrate the Animorphs' school unnoticed, much to the real Marco's disgust. It's only until "Marco" sits on a chair backwards that the others realize the real Marco doesn't sit like that.
Surrounded by Idiots: In The Return. He manages to recruit two henchmen, but they're both bumbling idiots who ultimately end up turning on him.
Taking You with Me: Attempted on Rachel in The Solution, but she bites off her own tail and escapes his hold.
Teens Are Monsters: Like Rachel, David is a teenager with a distinct and troubling taste for violence, but he lacks her better side. He owns a BB gun that he happily shoots birds with (birds that were trying to rob him, admittedly), one of the first things he does after gaining the morphing power is use it to kill an animal, and ultimately he does try to kill half the team. He doesn't succeed in killing anyone, but it's not for lack of trying.
Take a Third Option: Caught between the Animorphs and the Yeerks, neither of whom he trusts. He eventually turns on them both.
Tragic Villain: In The Return, where even Rachel (who has the most cause of anyone to hate him) pities him and what the war did to him and her both.
Tricking the Shapeshifter: The team defeats him by using an elaborate version of this ruse. First, they trick him into turning into a rat to enter a buried trap with Rachel (by pretending that the MacGuffin he tried to blackmail out of them is there). Rachel escapes the trap, David stays locked inside until he enters Shapeshifter Mode Lock.
- And as part of that, they tricked him into thinking he tricked them into turning into cockroaches, which he then trapped in a bottle.
Ungrateful Bastard: He's not too thankful to the Animorphs for saving his life. Whether this is just straight-out ingratitude or bitterness that they left his parents behind is never made clear.
The Unchosen One: Both literally and figuratively. He eventually decides to fight on his own terms, declaring both the Animorphs and the Yeerks his enemies. In The Return he is literally the unchosen one, as Crayak sets him up to be his weapon only to reveal he's just a tool being used to persuade Rachel to join him.
The Un-Favourite: An out-of-universe example: In an interview, Applegate referred to David as a selfish, weak human being. Yes, that's right. Even the author considered him a waste of space.
Unnamed Parent: Neither of his parents' names are ever given.
Unwitting Pawn: He makes a deal with Crayak in The Return, but Crayak has no intention of honoring the deal and is only using him to coax Rachel into embracing her violent side.
Verbal Tic: David has a tendency to say the name of the person he's talking to several times in a single conversation, usually when he's trying to be threatening. In one occasion in The Solution, he says Rachel's name six times in one page.
Villains Want Mercy: After spending a book and some change trying to murder the Animorphs and gloating about his superiority to them, he begs them to show him mercy in the end. He does not receive it.
- At the end of his second appearance, he's begging for a Mercy Kill instead. The book ends without revealing if he got it.
What Happened to the Mouse?: Played with — in the ending to The Solution it is stated that the team never heard from David again, but that was later retconned in The Return, a book written just to explain what did happen to this mouse (or rat, as the case may be). While he's dealt with definitively by the end of the book, it is never revealed what his final fate was.
What Measure Is a Non-Human?: Unlike the other Animorphs, David thinks it's A-okay to kill animals, as seen in The Discovery where he kills a random crow just minutes after morphing for the first time, mostly just because he can. When he betrays the kids, he's able to justify trying to kill them by saying that when they're morphed they're not human, and thus, fair game. Though in his defense, Tobias first suggested this when he said it's not a crime for a hawk to take clothes from an abandoned house, and David later claimed it's not a crime for an eagle to break a window at a hotel, so this may have eventually evolved into his sense of logic
With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: He goes from a relatively normal kid to a loose-scrupled killer after gaining the morphing power.
You Dirty Rat!: He's trapped as a rat in at the end.

The Auxiliary Animorphs

Debut: Animorphs #50: The Ultimate (2001)

We trusted them and they did us proud.

When the Animorphs are finally uncovered and forced to go on the run, they decide to recruit some fresh blood in case they are killed. Realizing that the Yeerks would have no use for handicapped hosts, they do their recruiting at a children's hospital. Enter the Auxiliary Animorphs.

11th-Hour Ranger: They don't get recruited until very late in the war. Two of them, Ray and Tricia, aren't even mentioned until the last book they appear in.
Accidental Misnaming: An interesting case is the character of Timmy. Originally named Tuan in the manuscript for The Ultimate, his name was changed to Timmy for the final release. But the manuscript for The Sacrifice wasn't updated to reflect this, leading to the same character being named Timmy in one book and Tuan in the other. Canonically, according to the Anibase, his name is Timmy.
Action Girl: Collette, Kelly and Erica.
The Big Guy: James is explicitly stated to both taller and heavier than Jake, who is by no means a small kid.
Child Soldiers: They're all teens or younger.
Call-Back: James's choice in battle morph causes some unease among the Animorphs because it's the same battle morph that David used. Fortunately for the other Animorphs, James has a much more developed sense of loyalty and morality than their first blond-haired lion morpher.
Chronic Hero Syndrome: James is the self-appointed protector of his group, and despite being handicapped is more than capable of flipping Jake onto his back from his wheelchair.
Cool Cat: Timmy's battle morph is a bobcat.
Continuity Drift: One of them, Timmy, is referred to as Tuan in a later book, which was what the character was originally going to be called.
Cute Bruiser: Collette is one.
Disability Superpower: They master their morphs' instincts a lot faster than the original kids did. Cassie theorizes this is because, while their bodies are weaker, their minds are stronger.
Exotic Weapon Supremacy: Some of their morphs fall under this. At one point one of them fights off Hork-Bajir as a walrus.
First-Name Basis: Nearly all of them.
Fragile Speedster: James, like Jake, has a peregrine falcon flight morph.
Handicapped Badass: Most were injured before being recruited. The morphing power heals a few, but only some.
Knight in Sour Armor: A lot of them are cynical and initially suspect the Animorphs are trying to pull some kind of dumb prank on them. Justified, since they've spent most of their lives in hospitals and have had to eat their fair share of crap from people playing cruel jokes on them.
Last Stand: Along with General Doubleday and his Army troops, they fight this on the ground while the Animorphs infiltrate the Pool Ship. Jake even calls this battle "the last stand" outright. Sadly, we never see this battle from any of their perspectives, and much more sadly, they are all killed by the battle's end.
The Leader: James, like Jake, is a Type II personality with a Type IV style of leadership.
Mauve Shirt: Most of the named Auxiliary Animorphs.
Never Smile at a Crocodile: Collette's battle morph is a crocodile.
Opt Out: Right before the final battle, a lot of the Auxiliary Animorphs decide that they want to sit it out, due to the fact that their friend Ray was recently killed. Jake doesn't really care and makes them go anyway. ("We didn't give them morphing power so they could have fun flying around. This is when we need them. All of them. You're their leader, James, so lead.") They then all get killed.
Out of Focus: Like David, none of them are ever allowed to narrate a book in whole or in part.
Panthera Awesome: James's battle morph is a lion.
Recurring Character: They appear in The Ultimate, The Absolute, The Sacrifice and The Answer.
Recruit Teenagers with Attitude: The Animorphs specifically recruited kids around their own age, figuring they would be both quicker to adapt to new realities and more likely to listen to them.
Red Shirts: Some of them don't even get named.
- A special red-shirt shout-out goes to Ray, an auxiliary only introduced in The Answer who is first mentioned after he has already been killed.
Sacrificial Lion: They get slaughtered in The Answer by the Pool Ship's Dracon cannons.
Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness: Timmy is gifted with an extensive vocabulary which is a cruel joke as his speech impediment makes him unable to use it. When he morphs and discovers thought-speak, he immediately launches into a giddy recitation of various ten dollar words he knows but could never before speak.
Signature Morph: Various — crocodile (Collette), black panther (Craig), lioness (Erica), lion (James), wolf (Jessie), African elephant (Judy), grizzly bear (Julio), bull (Kelly), polar bear (Liam), leopard (Ray), bobcat (Timmy), rhinoceros (Tricia).
Suicide Mission: Jake sends them to buy the Animorphs time to take over the Pool ship.
Throwing Off the Disability:
- James was injured in an accident, so he is healed by the morphing power, as are Erica and Craig. The other auxiliaries aren't so lucky.
- Collette's case is particularly tragic in this regard, as she's been lying to everyone around who'd listen that she's only temporarily paralyzed due to a sporting accident. Needless to say, morphing doesn't heal her, somewhat ironically forcing her to finally accept the fact that she'll never be able to live the physically active life she imagines.
  - The Not Secret: Everyone already knew. They could read her charts.
We Are "Team Cannon Fodder": Their ultimate fate.

You

Debut: Animorphs: Alternamorphs

You is a character from the Alternamorphs spin-off Gamebooks The First Journey and The Next Passage. In both cases this character is not the same person, but two different people. In The First Journey the character becomes an Animorph along with the others and receives the power to morph from Elfangor. In The Next Passage, the character takes the place of David, and joins the Animorphs at this point in the story. In both cases, the reader of the book slips into the role of the new Animorph.

Ambiguous Gender: The gender is never mentioned. The character is of the same gender as the reader.
Big Damn Heroes: In the good ending of The First Journey the narrator fights as a giraffe against Visser Three and even defeats him. Just in time to save Marco's mother.
Child Soldier: Just like all other Animorphs.
Disproportionate Retribution: At one point in The Next Passage, refusing to promise Rachel to stay out of an upcoming battle for (supposedly) letting Cassie die to a Howler results in an ending where the surviving Animorphs trick the narrator into getting stuck in a fly morph for good. Keep in mind that, unlike David, who succumbed to a similar fate in canon, the narrator didn't intend to get Cassie killed. It was all dumb luck on their end.
Earn Your Happy Ending: In The Next Passage the narrator has to choose whether they will experience an adventure in the time of the dinosaurs or on the planet Iskoort. If they choose the dinosaurs, the happy ending will be that the Ellimist will bring them back a week before the Yeerks kidnapped their parents. The narrator can then choose to rejoin the Animorphs or have an ordinary life.
- The happy ending on planet Iskoort ends with the reader becoming a new and accepted member of the Animorphs (though Rachel probably won't like the reader very much).
Expy: In The Next Passage, to David.
Friend to Bugs: While the other Animorphs, even Ax, find it gross and repulsive to morph into insects, the reader, at least with houseflies, has no problem with insect morphs.
Genial Giraffe: In The First Journey the reader has a giraffe as a second battle morph.
Heinous Hyena: Zigzagged. In The First Journey this is the narrator's preferred battle morph, and the narrator is one of the heroes. Yet the hyena's mind is still described as very aggressive, and the first and third times the narrator morphs into it lead to bad endings. And the second time the morph is used, it's not the reader's choice.
The Mind Is a Plaything of the Body: Inverted in The Next Passage. Much like David, the narrator has no problem with the mind of the animal being morphed into and is not overwhelmed by its instincts.
No Name Given: This Animorph is exclusively referred to as "You" by other characters, due to being a self-insert. It's awkward in places.
Shapeshifter Mode Lock:
- In The First Journey one bad decision leads to the narrator becoming a hyena forever.
- In The Next Passage, a wrong decision results in Rachel forcing the narrator to be a housefly.
Technically Naked Shapeshifter: Inverted. After the first morph, humans are usually naked. However, the narrator is one of the few humans who can morph with their clothes right from the start. On a meta-level, it is easier for the reader to project their gender onto the narrator because it does not describe whether the male or female Animorphs have to look away when the narrator demorphs.
The Friend Nobody Likes: The first "You" is close enough to Marco to recognize his mom, and Marco is comfortable sauntering into their house and eating their food, but otherwise their connections to the other kids are very tenuous, and the others aren't all that friendly towards them. The second "You" is rather worse off, with the whole cast being much more inclined to hostility. While the Ellimist in most of the series comes off as relatively benign, in Alternamorphs #2 he's far more of a jerk.
The Sixth Ranger: In both books. The seventh ranger in The Next Passage because Ax is already a member of the team there.
Wicked Weasel: Inverted. In The First Journey, a ferret is the first morph the narrator receives. And they used it successfully for spying twice.
Word of God: The narrator's adventures are considered as canon. However, they take place in other timelines or parallel worlds.

Characters / Animorphs: Animorphs

Jake Berenson

Rachel

Tobias

Cassie

Marco

Aximili-Esgarrouth-Isthill

David

The Auxiliary Animorphs

You

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Characters / Animorphs: Animorphs

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Jake Berenson

Rachel

Tobias

Cassie

Marco

Aximili-Esgarrouth-Isthill

David

The Auxiliary Animorphs

You

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