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Characters / Black Mirror: Fifteen Million Merits
aka: Black Mirror Series One Fifteen Million Merits

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    Bing 

Bingham "Bing" Madsen

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/e4e6caa0_0b44_4fde_afc2_a7e3137710ba.jpeg
Portrayed By: Daniel Kaluuya

  • Cluster F-Bomb: His final speech is a fuck sandwich.
  • Despair Event Horizon: When he tries, and fails, to stop Abi from joining the porn industry.
  • Determinator: He puts a lot of effort and focus into getting in front of the Judges, pushing himself to the breaking point just for a chance to speak some truth to power.
  • Forced to Watch: Without enough merits to skip the adverts, Bing is forced to watch the woman he loves being violated on-screen.
  • Gilded Cage: Bing winds up in a new home that seems miles better than his old cell, but it's really just a larger and slightly more comfortable prison for him to die in.
  • Heroic BSoD: Crosses over with Despair Event Horizon, but particularly when he's forced to watch Abi be raped.
  • Hypocrite: His ultimate fate. He becomes a self-loathing voice of the system to help lull people even further into placid acceptance of the world around them.
  • Nice Guy: He gives all his merits to Abi for a chance to have her in the talent show, showcasing his kindness.
  • Not So Stoic: He's usually stoic to the point of being nigh-catatonic, but there's a lot of feeling simmering underneath that he expresses on rare occasion.
  • Only Sane Man: At the very least, he's the only one to actually say something about the terrifyingly prison-like world he inhabits.
  • "The Reason You Suck" Speech: He gives an impassioned speech to the Judges of Hotshot in one of the most memorable moments of the entire series.
    "I haven't got a speech. I didn't plan words. I didn't even try to I just knew I had to get here, to stand here, and I wanted you to listen. To really listen, not just pull a face like you're listening, like you do the rest of the time. A face that you're feeling instead of processing. You pull a face, and poke it towards the stage, and we lah-di-dah, we sing and dance and tumble around. And all you see up here, it's not people, you don't see people up here, it's all fodder. And the faker the fodder, the more you love it, because fake fodder's the only thing that works any more. It's all that we can stomach. Actually, not quite all. Real pain, real viciousness, that, we can take. Yeah, stick a fat man up a pole. We laugh ourselves feral, because we've earned the right, we've done cell time and he's slacking, the scum, so ha-ha-ha at him! Because we're so out of our minds with desperation, we don't know any better. All we know is fake fodder and buying shit. That's how we speak to each other, how we express ourselves, is buying shit. What, I have a dream? The peak of our dreams is a new app for our Dopple, it doesn't exist! It's not even there! We buy shit that's not even there. Show us something real and free and beautiful. You couldn't. Yeah? It'd break us. We're too numb for it. I might as well choke. It's only so much wonder we can bear. When you find any wonder whatsoever, you dole it out in meagre portions. Only then until it's augmented, packaged, and pumped through 10,000 preassigned filters till it's nothing more than a meaningless series of lights, while we ride day in day out, going where? Powering what? All tiny cells and tiny screens and bigger cells and bigger screens and fuck you! Fuck you, that's what it boils down to. Fuck you for sitting there and slowly making things worse. Fuck you and your spotlight and your sanctimonious faces. Fuck you all for thinking the one thing I came close to never meant anything. For oozing around it and crushing it into a bone, into a joke. One more ugly joke in a kingdom of millions. Fuck you for happening. Fuck you for me, for us, for everyone. Fuck you!"
  • Scary Black Man: Invoked in universe by his later role as a scary man who rants against the evils of society, but Bing himself is gentle, kind, and definitely not scary.
  • Token Minority: In-universe on Hot Shots. He's pushed ahead of the line because the staff rather bluntly state that they need "an ethnic" to balance things out.

    Abi 

Abi Khan

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/blackmirror2_abi_2079943a.jpg
Portrayed By: Jessica Brown Findlay

  • Animal Motifs: A penguin – she makes origami ones out of packaging.
  • Break the Cutie: A sweet, shy and talented young woman is brainwashed and pressured into becoming a porn star; she's routinely humiliated and raped for the viewing pleasure of thousands of Apathetic Citizens.
  • Empty Shell: By the end, there's little left of the old Abi. She's become another tool of the Crapsack World she inhabits.
  • Extreme Doormat: A downplayed example. When Bing tries to persuade her to audition for Hot Shot, she initially resists but eventually gives in, presumably because she likes him and because he was persistent. However, it is implied that she was physically incapable of saying "no" after drinking the cuppliance when the Hot Shot judges coerce her into becoming a porn star.
  • Fate Worse than Death: The fact that she was essentially drugged into "agreeing" to be a porn star, and very obviously continues to be drugged into being compliant with essentially getting raped on camera on a regular basis makes her fate this.
  • Innocent Fanservice Girl / Ms. Fanservice: Zigzags horribly between the two, although the first is definitely an Informed Attribute (despite Brown Findlay's natural beauty). The judges describe being desperate to see her naked, and the porn industry turns her into this horrifically. By the end of the episode, a brief glimpse of her most recent appearance reveals that they abandoned the innocent look for her in favor of having her painted up like a prostitute wearing a blonde wig.
  • Rape as Drama: Her career as a porn star is effectively this. She's brainwashed and drugged into compliance, meaning she can't consent and winds up trapped in a horrific new life she didn't choose.
  • Stepford Smiler: Abi is an extremely dark example of this at the end. She keeps insisting she's happy – while clearly being absolutely drugged out of her mind.
  • Virgin in a White Dress: After becoming a porn star, Wraith initially has her wearing a white dress, presumably to play up her innocence. This is dropped by the end of the episode, however, as it's shown that they began to dress her up the same as their other advertised porn stars.

The Judges:

    In General 

Judges Hope, Charity & Wraith

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/7188_size0.jpg
Portrayed By: Rupert Everett, Julia Davis & Ashley Thomas

  • Corrupted Character Copy: As noted below, they are a No Celebrities Were Harmed version of American Idol's original judging trio, Simon Cowell (a tough-love realist), Paula Abdul (nicer and supportive), and Randy Jackson (in-between). However, they are at best insincere assholes and at worst exploitative douchebags.
  • Hate Sink: All three of them are varying flavors of awful, but special mention goes to Wraith. While Hope and Charity at least put up a semi-affable front, Wraith spends all of his screentime being a cruel, hateful dickhead. What really makes him the worst of the three, however, is the fact that he's pressured countless young women into becoming porn stars for his WraithBabes channel, keeping them compliant through routine drugging. Even his fellow judges don't seem to like him very much, with Charity in particular displaying some subtle discomfort in her body language.
  • Jerkass: All of them, in their own special ways. Charity is seemingly kind but ultimately insincere, Wraith is blatantly aggressive and vile while Hope acts like the "Jerk with a Heart of Gold" type but is a corruptive asshole through-and-through.
  • Meaningful Name: The concepts of charity, hope, and wrath, are being put under the microscope with their respective characters' personalities.
    • Hope seems like he's a realist on the surface with something promising to give — a transplanted Simon Cowell — but is actually much worse and full of falsities.
    • Charity is, by contrast, supportive on the surface but isn't just empty inside, she's outwardly bitchy and narcissistic, throwing out kindness to build a personality.
    • Wraith is just an angry, mean, d-bag. In addition, his TV show is called Wraith Babes. The literal definition of "wraith" (a ghost of your former self) is applied to the girls in the show, who are drugged out of their minds as they're forced to perform sex acts.
  • No Celebrities Were Harmed: The trio are clearly based on the panels of three typically seen on reality singing competitions like The X Factor and Pop Idol, consisting of a jerkass, heart, and someone in between. Fittingly, they best resemble the original three judges of American Idol, Simon Cowell, Paula Abdul, and Randy Jackson, who largely codified this configuration.
  • Religious and Mythological Theme Naming: Faith (not "Wraith", but phonetically similar), Hope and Charity are the daughters of Saint Sophia, being the Three Theological Virtues. Sophia symbolises wisdom with the daughters as virtues being instilled morals that spring from good people. To invert them and remove their wisdom would be to bring despair and indifference. The Other Wiki has an article for more.

Alternative Title(s): Black Mirror Series One Fifteen Million Merits

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