Characters from the campaign and multiplayer modes of the game Call of Duty: Black Ops III, a part of the First-Person Shooter franchise Call of Duty.
For characters in Zombies, see here.
open/close all folders
Campaign
Characters appearing in the campaign mode of Black Ops III.
Player
Player/Soldier #25954
Both the Male and the Female Player in the Character Selection Menu in their default forms.
The Male Player
The Female Player
The Player Character and protagonist of the game, the Player (aka Soldier #25954) starts the game out as an unaugmented black ops soldier serving under Jacob Hendricks' command. During a botched mission in Ethiopia, the Player is left behind during extraction and brutalized by a robotic grunt, leaving them short of some limbs and with other life-threatening injuries. Following this, the Player is rebuilt using artificial limbs and a Direct Neural Interface system, turning them into a cybernetic Super-Soldier who continues to serve with Hendricks as a wet-works specialist for the Winslow Accord.
- Action Girl: The female Player.
- Ambiguous Ending: The campaign's Gainax Ending leaves the Player's ultimate fate up to some serious debate. After killing Hendricks, they eat their gun and pull the trigger to stop Corvus, since they're the last host. The Player then finds themselves in the first Ambiguous Situation: the Frozen Forest, which can be interpreted as either their Dying Dream, a virtual reality simulation, or a virtual afterlife they have been transported to by Corvus. After defeating Corvus in the Frozen Forest, they return to what seems to be the real world, where they destroy their DNI and walk outside the Coalescence facility, where they are approached by a ZRF soldier who asks them what their name is. They reply "Taylor". Does this mean the Player has been possessed by some vestigial consciousness of John Taylor, that they've simply gone insane and adopted the name Taylor, that they actually are named Taylor (which is a unisex first name, or a surname) and coincidentally share it with John Taylor, or are they actually dead and seeing this as some sort of afterlife/virtual reality/virtual afterlife? If you pause the scrolling text that appears before each mission, you get what seems to be a definitive answer to the game's Gainax Ending. The Player is a Decoy Protagonist reliving the events of John Taylor's last mission (which takes place just prior to the first mission of the game) as they die on the operating table during their cybernetic surgery. After the first mission, a Dying Dream occurs before the last mission, where the Player controls Taylor's body in real life and uses it to purge their DNI and defeat Corvus before handing it back to Taylor. Because of the chaos of a dying mind, the events are somewhat different than what happened in real life. The player takes Taylor's role, while Taylor and his new squad members (which the player met in the first mission) take the role of Dylan Stone and Taylor's other 3 traitorous teammates. The Corvus A.I. was created in the Player's DNI after they were maimed by robots.
- Ambiguously Gay:
- The female Player, courtesy of the implied romance brewing between the Player and Kane in later levels. An alternative explanation is that the romance between Kane and the Player was actually the memories of Taylor's romance with Kane overlapping with the Player's own Dying Dream.
- In Nightmares mode Kane's romance with John Taylor is never acknowledged, and her status as being a vessel for Dolos to interact with the Player leaves even her humanity a question mark. However, later levels start to imply a romance between the Player and DOLOS, with the final level OOZING with subtext, as they quickly bond over their shared hatred of Deimos, and in The Stinger, the Player vows to help Dolos fight the Divine Conflict that killing Deimos would kick off. Perhaps the most obvious example is when the Player admits that being eternally stuck in Malum would be Worth It if it meant killing Deimos, and Dolos replies, in an oddly seductive tone, "I think you and I are going to get along just fine..."
- Ambiguously Human: By the end of Nightmares, it's implied that the Player has become something other than human, courtesy of Dolos - the big hint that she is this is due to being able to speak in Malum, where every other mortal character is rendered as The Speechless.
- An Arm and a Leg: They lose all but their left leg in the first mission.
- Back from the Dead: In Nightmares mode, Dolos restores the Player to life, after realizing that she still needs her to fight the Divine Conflict that will kick off over killing Deimos.
- Badass Normal: During the first mission compared to Taylor and his team.
- Badasses Wear Bandanas: Both the male and female Players can wear bandanas, though the female character appears more fond of them, as her default face comes equipped with one.
- Boyish Short Hair: The female Player's hair runs the gamut from being basically bald with a little fuzz, to a Furiosa-style buzz-cut, to short hair tied up with a bandana.
- Cigar Chomper: Can be seen smoking real big ones in the Campaign screen and in Singapore.
- Dead All Along:
- Quite possibly, given the Freeze-Frame Bonus on Mission 1, that reveals that the player character seemingly died due to complications from their cybernetic surgery. Thus, the entire campaign after Mission 1 would be an elaborate Dying Dream, likely enhanced by the DNI and Taylor's memories, since he interfaced with the player character while they were in a medically-induced coma.
- Is stated up-front in Nightmares mode, and the goal of the game is to relive the Player's memories leading up to her death.
- Decoy Protagonist: See the Mind Screw addendum to Ambiguous Ending above.
- Determinator: Absolutely nothing stops them from doing what they think is right, whether it'd be tearing through a burning safehouse besieged by the 54 Immortals to save Kane in Singapore or powering through legions of Corvus-controlled Mecha-Mooks in Cairo and Zurich...and even after eating their gun they keep right on going. He/she gets bonus points for outwardly declaring they will bring down Corvus and avenge their friends and comrades.
- Did Not Get the Girl: Chooses to continues pursuing Hendricks at the cost of his relationship with Kane. Later Defied when she chooses to stay with them for the final battle in Zürich, out of loyalty.
- Ghost in the Machine: Given what Corvus has been established to be capable of, it's hinted that by some form of it's meddling that their mind has been digitized and stuck in the recesses of Taylor's DNI.
- I Did What I Had to Do: They are easily one of the most ruthless player characters in the entire Call of Duty series, and often states this in regards to their actions.
- Heroic Suicide: Immediately turns their gun on themselves after killing Hendricks to stop Corvus from turning them into it's next host. Subverted when they find themselves in the Frozen Forest and the fight against Corvus continues.
- Hero of Another Story: The Nightmares campaign mode is told (exclusively) from the female Player's perspective, and she takes on a much more central role compared to the Supporting Protagonist role of the Player in the main campaign.
- The Lad-ette: The female Player, to extremely butch degrees.
- No One Gets Left Behind: Appears to be a firm believer in this trope. They insist on going back to save Kane in Singapore once the 54 Immortals leave the Q-Zone, and they also want to go back and save Lt. Khalil in Mission 10. It may be because they themselves were left behind that they don't want anyone else to meet the same fate.
- No Name Given: They are simply referred to as "Player" in subtitles. The main villain even mentions at the end of the game that he doesn't even know your name. In the ending, they refer to themselves as Taylor, which can be interpreted in many different ways. The only official identity given for them is "Soldier #25954."
- Not Quite Dead: The last level subtly implies that while their physical body died, they still live on within Taylor's mind and have inadvertently hijacked his body by the time of the attack on Switzerland. The jury's still out on which one of them's doing the driving by the time Corvus is finished.
- Player Character: Basically their name.
- Purely Aesthetic Gender: The male and female character models are purely there for the looks.
- Sanity Slippage: Just like everybody else infected by Corvus.
- Say My Name: Screams Rachel Kane's name when she gets killed by Nova-6.
- Supporting Protagonist: They take on this role, with most of the drama and plot advancement in the story being carried out by Hendricks (as well as his Protagonist Journey to Villain), Taylor, and Kane.
- Static Role, Exchangeable Character: Sort of. You can change the Player's face and even gender between missions in the safe house, but no matter what face you choose or if you're playing as male or female, the Player fulfills the same story obligations every mission.
- Walking Spoiler: In Nightmares mode the fact that the Player is Dead All Along and undergoing a Dying Dream as a Ghost in the Machine is all said right up front in that mode's first mission. Double Subverted later on, as her circumstances of death in Nightmares are completely changed; unlike the original story where the Player dies in the hospital in Zurich, and the events past that being her memories accidentally hijacking Taylor, she lives throughout the entire campaign, only dying in the final mission after delivering a Mutual Kill on a Deimos-possessed Hendricks. And to top it off, the subsequent Ambiguous Ending is completely ignored, instead showing Dolos has brought the Player back to life to help her wage the oncoming Divine Conflict that has been triggered by Deimos's death.
- We Can Rebuild Him: After losing three limbs during the first mission, the Player undergoes an Emergency Transformation to acquire Artificial Limbs and a Direct Neural Interface system, transforming them into a cyborg. ( In the original campaign, it doesn't work and they die on the operating table. In Nightmares, it DOES work, and the Player is in the driver's seat for the entirety of the story thereafter.)
- Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: Grunt robots seem to trigger them. For good reason, since one of them brutalized the Player in the first mission, likely leaving them emotionally scarred.
Hendricks
Jacob Hendricks
Voiced By: Sean Douglas (English)note
This is where we say goodbye. I can't do it anymore. The madness has to stop. For all the good we do, I just can't see things in simple black and white anymore. There has to be another way. Maybe this technology can change things. Maybe you can change things... You just need to wake up.
The Player's combat partner throughout the game, Hendricks was originally their commanding officer when they were both unaugmented soldiers serving in a Winslow Accord black ops unit. After a botched mission in Ethiopia left the Player severely wounded and in need of augmentation, Hendricks volunteered to get the augmentations alongside his subordinate, and went on to serve with the Player as a wet-works specialist for the Winslow Accord. He has a history with John Taylor, which is detailed in the Black Ops III comic.
- Ace Custom: Uses a modified KN-44 with a recon sight and dual extended magazines throughout the campaign.
- Badass Normal: Just like the Player, he's a regular human in the game's first mission, but is still a highly effective elite Black Ops soldier.
- Cutscene Boss: He's the only major Corvus host who isn't confronted in any sort of Boss Battle type scenario.
- The Complainer Is Always Wrong: He spends most of the game being a jerk to the player, and disagreeing with whatever the player does.
- Deconstructed Character Archetype: Of the Hot-Blooded partner archetype embodied by Woods and Harper in previous games. His impulsive rages are severely detrimental to the mission; in the dreamscape, the Player punches him twice, has to repeatedly tell him to keep his shit together, and outright admits that the only reason s/he continues to tolerate his antics is because they are otherwise cut off from support (and because the player considers him his/her friend), while in reality Taylor notes that Hendricks is clearly becoming emotionally compromised and repeatedly withholds information from him in order to keep him in line, with varying results.
- Deuteragonist: He's your best friend and primary companion throughout the campaign. Or, at least, most of it. After spending most of the game as The Lancer for the player character, he then pulls a Face–Heel Turn after succumbing to Corvus, taking over from Taylor as The Dragon for the Big Bad Corvus and the last level features Rachel Kane replacing him until her death as The Lancer with Hendricks as The Heavy Final Boss before facing Corvus itself.
- Face–Heel Turn: After killing Taylor, he succumbs to Corvus' infection and heads to Zurich, triggering a Robot War. The Player is forced to put him down. When they encounter him again in the Frozen Forest, he makes it clear he's sided with Corvus.
- Hypocrite: Two counts of this.
- When he and Taylor cross paths in the first mission, he shows disapproval of the latter's augmentations, heavily implying that he has just become a war machine rather than a human being. Upon the Player being given an Emergency Transformation to a cyborg, he immediately goes to having Jumped at the Call. It's not clear if this is just hypocrisy, Survivor Guilt, or also jealousy at play.
- In one of the later levels, when Raul Menendez's name is brought up in passing, Hendricks becomes extremely angry and states his patriotic hatred of Menendez's Dark Messiah methods. At the beginning of the final level, Hendricks has become a Dark Messiah himself and justifies his plan to change the world using a rationale not unlike Menendez's. Granted, Hendricks had been driven insane by Corvus at that point.
- Jumped at the Call: Unlike the Player or Taylor, who became Cyber Soldiers after receiving life-threatening injuries and losing much of their organic body anyway, Hendricks volunteers even though he's perfectly healthy.
- Leeroy Jenkins: Upon seeing civillians being executed by the 54 immortals in the Third Mission, he abandons all stealth in a fit of rage and attacks them.
- Protagonist Journey to Villain: Starts as as The Lancer for the player character, before becoming The Heavy for Corvus in the climax.
- Sanity Slippage: Throughout the game he becomes increasingly aggressive, distrustful, and outright paranoid. It's because he's been infected with Corvus and is gradually being brainwashed.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here:
- In the final battle in the Frozen Forest, instead of helping or fighting against you, the mental image of Hendricks instead opts to simply leave and says as much as he goes.
- Background text indicates that Hendricks was previously the Commanding Officer of Taylor's assassination team, but ultimately found the work morally objectionable due to the events of their last mission together, opting to transfer out to a different Black Ops field (which is why he's leading a hostage rescue team instead when the game begins).
- Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: On a number of occasions he deviates from his orders to do the right thing, such as rescuing P.O.W.s instead of leaving them behind. However, at times this makes him seem as much a hothead as it does make him seem morally conscientious (such as when he attacks the 54 Immortals slaughtering civilians even though the civilians were already executed). He acts like this even before being infected by Corvus, but Corvus seems to bring out the worst aspects of this trait, ultimately convincing him to go full Dark Messiah.
- Sour Supporter: After he becomes infected by Corvus, he gets increasingly distrusting of the player character and combative against orders. Most noticeably, near the end of the Singapore mission, he argues that you should just leave Kane to be tortured to death by the 54 Immortals.
- Survivor Guilt: Likely why he volunteered for cybernetic upgrades, since it was forced upon the Player when he couldn't extract them in time.
- Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: With Kane, whom he mistrusts greatly. This is at least partially because he's being manipulated by Corvus, but he also didn't like her very much even before being infected; given that she's a C.I.A. agent and Hendricks just uncovered evidence of the C.I.A.'s morally questionable dealings that goes way beyond even the usual Black Ops stuff he's seen before, his apprehension is somewhat understandable.
- What the Hell, Hero?: He calls out the player on their ruthless actions several times throughout the game. Though it does ring a bit hollow later on as he's increasingly being influenced by Corvus.
Kane
Rachel Kane
Voiced By: Rachel Kimsey (English)note
A C.I.A. agent assigned to be the liaison officer between the agency and Hendricks and the Player, Kane is first encountered in Singapore while the team is investigating why a C.I.A. safehouse went dark. Hendricks mistrusts her from the beginning, while the Player is willing to put more faith in her. When it becomes clear that Taylor's team is responsible for the murders at the safehouse, Hendricks, Kane and the Player form an uneasy alliance to track him and his targets down.
- Action Girl: She fights alongside you several times throughout the game.
- Ambiguously Bi: She acts as the Implied Love Interest of the Player regardless of gender, and is also mentioned to have previously been in a relationship with Taylor. Though if you believe The Reveal then her relationship with the Player is just Taylor's memories of his time with her overlapping with the Player's Dying Dream.
- Badass Driver: She helps Hendricks and the Player escape the 54 Immortals by remotely piloting an airboat, and shows off some wicked wheelman skills in doing so. She also pilots a fighter jet in Mission 9.
- Badass in Distress: Gets captured by Goh Xiulan in the sixth mission Vengeance
- Badass Normal: She remains unaugmented for the entirely of the game, and yet still managed acquit herself magnificently against all of the augmented foes she faced down. In her first scene "on screen", she takes down a Warlord single-handedly with her sniper rifle. She can also defeat Grunts in hand-to-hand during gameplay; unlike Cyber Soldiers, who simply overwhelm them with brute force, she uses finesse to dodge their strikes and shoots out their weak points with her rifle.
- Big Damn Heroes: Right when the Player and Hendricks get pinned by a Warlord, she arrives and kills him with her Sniper Rifle
- Brainy Brunette: She's an extremely smart intelligence officer in addition to being a badass Action Girl.
- Chekhov's Gunman: She is the Rachel who was mentioned by Hendricks in the first mission and had a relationship with Taylor.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: She gets killed off when the room she's locked in is flooded by Nova-6. Even one century later it still looks like an incredibly awful way to go. To her credit, however, she spends her last moments urging the player character to finish the fight and not to trust Corvus, rather than breaking down.
- Friendly Sniper: Typically uses a sniper rifle in combat.
- Mission Control: When she isn't fighting alongside the Player and Hendricks, she takes up this role.
- Prim and Proper Bun: A slightly more serious than usual Action Girl. Also has a bun.
- Scarf of Asskicking: Never seen without her Winslow Accord scarf around her neck. It's also a pretty good indicator that something is off with the continuity throughout the game, since in the first level, we can see John Taylor wearing the scarf around his left arm as a memento of his time with Rachel, before suddenly showing up in her possession, which is explained by the fact that most the game is the Player experiencing Taylor's memories in his/her Dying Dream.
- Sleeves Are for Wimps: In the Egypt levels, and also in the Zurich hospital.
- Small Girl, Big Gun: Her signature weapon is a Locus sniper rifle which is almost as big as she is.
- Unwanted Rescue: She initially preferred not to be rescued by the Player and Hendricks for the fear of impeding progress on dealing with Taylor. Ultimately Averted as she doesn't really complain when you actually rescue her.
Taylor
John Taylor
Voiced By: Christopher Meloni (English)note
Okay Newblood, you've been here before. Let's see if you can change history.
An augmented Super-Soldier and former comrade of Jacob Hendricks who is now in charge of his own cyber-ops squad, John Taylor and his team go rogue early on in the game, murdering several CIA agents at a black ops safehouse in Singapore, prompting the Player, Hendricks, and Kane to hunt him and his squad down and find out why they went rogue. It is later revealed that Taylor and his team were infected by the rogue AI Corvus, and were at least partially unresponsible for their actions since he was slowly losing his mind to Corvus. He has a past with Hendricks, which is detailed in the Black Ops III comic.
- Arc Villain: While he is the Secondary Antagonist of the whole game, he is one in particular for the tenth mission Lotus Towers
- Big Bad: Except, not really.
- Big Good: He, or a figment of him, becomes this for the Player towards the end when the two of them assault Corvus directly.
- Cool Old Guy: In his early 50's, he's a generation older than the rest of the cast (who are in their 30's).
- The Determinator: Refused to abandon Kane in Singapore and defied her orders with Hendricks to rescue her. Also, he was the only member of his team to resist Corvus and helps the Player never give up in the face of it.
- Did Not Get the Girl: He chooses to become a Super-Soldier at the cost of his relationship with Kane, due to his wish to continue serving the military.
- Good All Along: A really extreme example of this trope. He and his team uncovered Coalescence Corporation's involvement in continued human experimentation involving the Direct Neural Interface that resulted in the Singapore Disaster and 300,000 deaths, but along the way ended up committing atrocity after atrocity in finding the truth, in part due to being infected, manipulated and brainwashed by Corvus.
- A Father to His Men: When the mission in Ethiopia got botched due to Taylor letting Hendricks disobey orders and rescue every single POW over there, he took all the blame for it himself in the mission report.
- Heel–Face Turn: An apparition of him fights alongside you in the final level.
- He Knows Too Much: Kane admits that the C.I.A. was going to "silence" Taylor and his team after their discovery of the C.I.A.'s illegal human experimentation and complicity in the Singapore disaster. However, she insists that Taylor's team were given a chance to walk away and forget it ever happened, and were only targeted for termination after already leaking the dirty laundry. Hall has an entirely different version of events in which the team leaked the data only after the C.I.A. ordered them killed, but given that she's confirmed to be Brainwashed And Crazy her testimony is somewhat less credible.
- Hero of Another Story:
- He's one of the protagonists of the Black Ops 3 prequel comic series.
- The text that scrolls by before each mission on the loading screen are actually mission reports from Taylor detailing the events of his last mission with Hendricks prior to the events of the game. The events of the mission reports mirror the missions experienced by the player to an astonishing degree, with many hints that the player is in a Dying Dream actually re-living Taylor's last mission (due to Taylor briefly touching minds with the player via DNI while they were in a coma), with certain details (such as the identity of the villain) scrambled around due to the chaotic state of a dying brain.
- Heroic Willpower: When you finally confront him face-to-face near the end of the game, he eventually regains enough control over himself to take himself out rather than continue to be Corvus' puppet. Ironically it seems he was able to do this because of how far gone he was, because at the point he was nearly completely merged with Corvus he was also finally aware of how dangerous Corvus and his plans were.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Rather than be controlled by Corvus, he takes himself out.
- No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Taylor seems to have it rough with this trope.
- His decision (or rather, agreement to Hendricks' decision) to rescue all all POWs from Ethiopia leads to a botched exfiltration, which leads to the Player getting maimed by the grunts.
- And his insistance to help the now maimed player (via Interface), also leads to Corvus' rebirth, which eventually leads to practically the entire cast dying, including the player.
- Player Character: Very heavily implied that most of the campaign's gameplay is actually his own memories of his hunt for Dylan Stone alongside Hendricks.
- Rogue Agent: After uncovering the human experiments in the Coalescence Corporation building and being infected by Corvus, he turns against the Winslow Accord and spends most the game on the run from the Player, Hendricks, and Kane.
- Super-Soldier: He's augmented.
Taylor's Team
The Team as a whole
Taylor's Cyberbernetically enhanced Black Ops team, specialising in Wetworks.
- Brainwashed and Crazy: They are revealed to have been infected by Corvus, who brainwashed them into doing his bidding
- Big Damn Heroes: As mentioned right below, they kill a dozen NRC soldiers, who were threatening the Player, Hendricks, Said and Khalil.
- Dwindling Party: When they start dying, they do so one-by-one throughout the game.
- Establishing Team Shot: They are introduced making short work of NRC soldiers in the first mission itself.
- Rogues Gallery: They become this after brainwashed by Corvus.
- The Team: They are a team of wetworks specialists who helped the Player and Hendricks in their missions.
- V-Formation Team Shot: In a shot in the second mission New World, they all can be seen in this style in one shot.
Sebastian Diaz
Voiced By: Reynoldo Gallegos (English)note
Taylor was right - We've gotta show the world the truth.
A specialist in heavy weapons, Diaz is a member of John Taylor's elite team
- Arc Villain: Of the fifth mission Hypocenter.
- Token Minority: Diaz is a Latino member of Taylor's team.
- We Hardly Knew Ye: He dies quite early into the Campaign compared to the rest of Taylor's team.
Peter Maretti
Voiced By: Ary Katz (English)note
A bullet through the head will still get you a date with your maker
Specializing in marksmanship, Maretti is described as the "funny man" on Taylor's Team and was the team's designated marksman.
- Arc Villain: Of the ninth mission Sand Castle
- Black Dude Dies First: Averted, He is the second-last person in Taylor's team to die, and only does so in the ninth mission of the Campaign.
- Inertial Impalement: Dies in this manner by falling into a rod after being kicked by the Player.
- Plucky Comic Relief: Calls himself the "funny man" of the group.
- Token Minority: Maretti is an African-American member of Taylor's team.
Sarah Hall
Voiced By: Katee Sackhoff (English)note
When people really want to bury secrets, they tend to bury bodies right along with them.
A female soldier in Taylor's team, and Taylor's number two, Sarah Hall functions as the team's intelligence expert. She graduated from a military academy, where she wrote her graduate paper on the Battle of Bastogne from World War II. Her backstory is detailed in the Codex and in the Black Ops III comics.
- Action Girl: She knows how to fight.
- Dumb Blonde: Inverted, she is Blonde and is the Smart Girl of Taylor's team.
- Dying Dream: In Mission 8, after you bring her Manticore down and are forced to interface with her DNI to retrieve her memories, you are transported to a virtual one and encounter Corvus for the first time.
- Mercy Kill: She is killed within the Frozen Forest by the Player for this reason as per request.
- Mini-Mecha: The Manticore, which she pilots during her Boss Battle.
- The Smart Girl: She functions as Taylor's intelligence operative, graduated from a military academy, and is the most strategic and cunning out of his soldiers.
- The Squadette: For Taylor's team.
Singapore Arc
Characters who appear throughout missions 3-6, set in Singapore. For Danny Li, see Multiplayer Specialists.
Goh Min
Voiced By: Lanny Joon (English)
Do not insult me with your lies. You... and your kind, have killed many of our people. THIS CANNOT BE FORGIVEN! - Goh Min
Siblings in Crime with Goh Xiulan and leader of the 54 Immortals crime syndicate and de facto ruler of the Q-Zone, Goh Min are first encountered at the biodomes in Singapore, where he blows Hendricks and the Player's cover, leading to a firefight that kills him.
- Brother–Sister Team: Although it quickly becomes a one-woman operation since he gets killed off.
- Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Is this to Goh Xiulan.
- Siblings in Crime: Is this with Goh Xiulan
- The Triads and the Tongs: Invoked. "54 Immortals" certainly keeps with the Tongs theme of mythological naming, and Goh Min has a paternal status with his men, (Goh Xiulan referring to him and herself as "Father" and "Mother" to the rank-and-file).
- Villain with Good Publicity: Seems to have this within the Q-Zone, at least. Hendricks' contact outright says that the 54 Immortals are the only reason the Zone even has electricity after the rest of the world walled them in.
- We Hardly Knew Ye: He is killed off in the first scene he's in, leaving his sister to do all the action.
Goh Xiulan
Voiced By: Lynn Chen (English)
I swore vengeance. You built your walls to contain the weak and sick. You turned your back on them. Forgot about them. Today the children of your apocalypse will reap their vengeance upon those who stood by and watched them die. You brought this upon yourself. - Goh Xiulan
Siblings in Crime with Goh Min and leader of the 54 Immortals crime syndicate and de facto ruler of the Q-Zone, Goh Xiulan is first encountered at the biodomes in Singapore. When her brother was killed, she then goes on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge, disrupting Hendricks, Kane, and the Player's activities while they try to track down John Taylor's team.
- Arc Villainess: She acts as this for the first act of the game, which takes place in Singapore.
- An Arm and a Leg: The Player cuts off her hand in order to access the 54i database.
- Bad Boss: She doesn't hesitate to flood the Corvus black site when she learns the Player and Taylor are still down there, even knowing that many of her men are with them.
- Brother–Sister Team: Although it quickly becomes a one-woman operation.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: Goh Xiulan is killed off by having her face slowly pushed into a fire, causing her face to melt off in extreme detail.
- Dark Action Girl: She is about as despicable and ruthless as they come.
- Even Evil Has Loved Ones: The reason she goes on her Roaring Rampage of Revenge.
- Rape, Pillage, and Burn: In their fit of Rage, the 54i under Goh Xiulan ransack Singapore, butchering all civillians they could get their hands on.
- Revenge Before Reason: She becomes Blinded by Rage after Min's death.
- Roaring Rampage of Revenge: She basically destroys most of Singapore in her blind lust for blood after Goh Min is killed.
- Siblings in Crime: Is this with Goh Min.
- The Triads and the Tongs: Invoked. "54 Immortals" certainly keeps with the Tongs theme of mythological naming, and Goh Xiulan has a maternal status with her men, (she referring to her brother and herself as "Father" and "Mother" to the rank-and-file).
- Totalitarian Gangsterism: Singapore is under one such regime under the twins.
- Villain with Good Publicity: Seems to have this within the Q-Zone, at least. Hendricks' contact outright says that the 54 Immortals are the only reason the Zone even has electricity after the rest of the world walled them in.
Egypt Arc
Characters who appear throughout missions 7-10, set in Egypt.
Lieutenant Zeyad Khalil
Voiced By: Noshir Dalal (English)note
Citizens of Cairo! Now is your time! Take back your city!
Khalil is a commanding officer of the Egyptian Army.
- Ambiguous Situation: Subverted, He was captured in the Second-Last mission, but he does rescued in the first mission, which actually takes place after the former.
- I Surrender, Suckers: He pulls this move along with the Player and Hendricks against NRC Soldiers in "Lotus Towers"
- La Résistance: He is the commander of the Egyptian Army, who serves to protect Egypt from their enemies, the NRC.
- Meaningful Name: Khalil means Good Friend in Arabic. Now take a good guess what his relation to the player is.
- Pay Evil unto Evil: He is not going to show any mercy for the NRC forces for what they are doing to Egypt.
- Put on a Bus: He suddenly gets captured by the NRC near the end of the tenth mission Lotus Towers and disappears from the story for the final mission.
- Walking Spoiler: His appearence in the first mission Black Ops and his prior knowledge of Taylor and Hendricks is a sign that the campaign isn't chronologically sound
General Abbasi Hakim
Voiced By: Faran Tahir (English)
A General of the NRC
- Disney Villain Death: How he actually gets killed. The Player throws him off to his death from the top of the Lotus Towers.
- Filler Villain: He only exists to get killed by the Player in their plan to retake Cairo with Hendricks and Khalil.
- Killed Mid-Sentence:
- What ? How the hell did you-
- New Era Speech: He was seen giving one to the citizens of Cairo before he gets killed.
- Straight for the Commander: Why he gets killed, to distract and destabilise the NRC forces for enough time to liberate Cairo.
Dr. Yousef Salim
Voiced By: Tony Amendola (English)note
As in any ground-breaking research, our greatest barrier is our own fear! Our own doubts... The only thing holding us back, is how far we are willing to go.
A psychologist and one of two survivors from the Singapore disaster being hunted by Taylor and his team.
- Just Following Orders: Salim insists that he was just a psychologist and has no moral responsibility for any of the actions or consequences of Coalescence's Singapore project.
- Kidnapped Scientist: Finding him becomes a priority after he gets captured by Taylor in the seventh and eight missions.
- Psycho Psychologist: Downplayed. He may be perfectly sane and normal, but he had a direct hand in orchestrating Nazi-esque human experiments and creating Corvus.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Salim was the one who implemented the Frozen Forest meme as a means of calming the SP/CORVUS Project's human test subjects. Corvus would later attach an almost religious significance to the Frozen Forest and this obsession would pass down to its hosts.
- You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Taylor shoots him in the head after Salim gives up info regarding the Frozen Forest.
Zurich Arc
Characters who appear in the eleventh and final mission of Black Ops III
Sabastian Krueger
Voiced By: Robert Picardo (English)note
Society doesn't just happen. The people NEED to be protected. If the only way to prevent future attacks is to monitor the thoughts and desires of the population, then the choice is obvious. We need to know who our enemies are and what they are planning! That is how we save lives!
A corporate executive at the Coalescence Corporation, and the other survivor from the Singapore disaster who is being hunted by John Taylor and his team. At the end of the game it's revealed that he was in charge of a project to a create an AI that would monitor and analyze the thoughts of people connected with a Direct Neural Interface to preempt terrorist attacks and other crimes. The project accidentally led to the creation of Corvus, who started hunting Krueger and other men connected to the project down.
- An Arm and a Leg: Exaggerated, he loses all of his arms at once at the time of his death.
- Corrupt Corporate Executive: He was in charge of the project that creates the rogue AI Corvus.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: See An Arm and a Leg.
- Demoted to Extra: In Nightmares, his role as a chief antagonist is mostly scrapped, with Dr. Yousef Salim taking over his role, by being the one to summon Deimos in the first place.
- Early-Bird Cameo: He briefly appears in the hospital scene giving orders to Taylor regarding the player character's integration into Taylor's C.I.A. unit. His face isn't shown and the subtitles refer to him only as "Unknown".
- Evil Sounds Deep: He speaks in a noticeably deeper voice than Robert Picardo normally does.
- Inconsistent Spelling: His name is alternately given as Sabastian Krueger and Sebastian Krueger in the subtitles.
- Ink-Suit Actor: Out of all the other characters Picardo had portrayed for the game franchise, this character bares the most resemblance to him, right down to the balding hairline of his.
- One-Steve Limit: Averted, shares the name Sebastian with Diaz.
- Thought Crime: One of the reasons he wanted to create Corvus is because he wanted to monitor the "thoughts and desires" of the entire population to stop terrorism. This is as terrifyingly invasive and Orwellian as it sounds.
- Totalitarian Utilitarian: If the West can be protected with the surveillance program to end all surveillance programs ran by a tyrannical artificial intelligence using human brains from kidnapped criminals as CPUs, so be it. It saves lives, in his opinion.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: He's a corporate executive in charge of a large number of projects at the Coalescence Corporation, as well as a very high-ranking C.I.A. official, and thus responsible for the creation of Corvus, though he never intended for the system to become self-aware.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: His goals are only to protect the West an its interests, even if it means conducting illegal human experimentation on kidnapped subjects, mass producing bio-weaponry for an unspecified purpose, and implementing a system to monitor the daily thoughts of pretty much everyone on the planet.
Corvus
Voiced By: ???
I was born in the minds of others. A brief moment of agony... then darkness.
Everything after this sentence will be a spoiler, so maybe don't read this if you haven't finished the campaign yet. Corvus is a rogue AI accidentally created by the SP/CORVUS project run by the CIA out of the Coalescence Corporation building in Singapore. The original intention of the project was to create an artificial intelligence that would monitor the thoughts and actions of everyone connected with a Direct Neural Interface system to preempt terrorist attacks and other crimes. Corvus was born from the collective experiences of the human test subjects who were forced into the project, and his first action was to flood the Coalescence Corporation building and the rest of Singapore with Nova-6 gas, leading to the deaths of 300,000 people. In 2065, he is unleashed by an unsuspecting Taylor and his team, infecting them and influencing them to hunt down the men responsible for his creation. His ultimate desire is to infect and control all humans connected to a Direct Neural Interface system.
- A.I. Is a Crapshoot: A crapshoot that has no idea what it is doing, in fact.
- Animal Motifs: Ravens, which is fitting given his name, Corvus being the latin word for Raven.
- Big Bad: He's responsible for the actions of Taylor and his squad, and poses an existential threat to the entire human race. If he even exists in reality at all.
- Big Brother Is Watching: The C.I.A. originally created him for this purpose. After gaining sentience, he seems to have no real interest in his original function, though.
- Berserk Button: It really doesn't like being called a "mistake".
- Brainwashed and Crazy: He is responsible for mind controlling Taylor, his squad and eventually Hendricks into doing his bidding.
- The Corrupter: To those it infects. Technically, this also makes it a Contagious A.I..
- Digital Abomination: It is a rogue AI that corrupts people via DNI infection and seeks to mindlessly expand in search of answers regarding its own creation.
- Powered by a Forsaken Child: Corvus' original incarnation was a supercomputer using the human brains of kidnapped criminals as processing units. The Corvus A.I. arose entirely unintentionally from the combined thoughts and memories of the humans wired into it. This is why Corvus had Taylor's team kill the Black Station personnel using the M.O. of a 54 Immortals enforcer, who was one of the minds used to create Corvus.
- Psychopathic Manchild: At the end of the game, Taylor (or, rather, the figment of Taylor's personality found in the Frozen Forest) realizes that Corvus isn't a Master Computer with a grand plan for world domination, but rather an enraged child lashing out blindly and wanting to just continue to grow and learn more.Taylor: They were trying to tell us that this AI isn't even that smart - It fucked up. It fucked everything up! It couldn't control or contain anything. It doesn't have a master plan - it just grows - snowballing into a... wrecking ball of emotion that crashes through everything it touches. [...] DNI was suppose to make everything better! Instead, Corvus has got all these pieces, but it doesn't know what it is!
- Sealed Evil in a Can: Spent a decade buried in the hidden C.I.A. laboratory deep under the Coalescence Corporation's Singapore facility, until Taylor and his team accidentally unearthed it.
- Shell-Shocked Veteran: Corvus was already pretty fucked up to begin with, having been born from the collective experiences of unwilling human test subjects, before spending a decade in isolation. Then the first people it comes in contact with are Taylor and his team, AKA human killing machines who are implied throughout the game to have been suffering from PTSD even before finding Corvus. This PTSD is the reason why Corvus became even more malevolent and insane after being woken up, and the reason for him creating the Frozen Forest; it was an ill-fated attempt to try and create a safe haven for the traumatized soldiers who were hosting him.
- Walking Spoiler: This character's very existence is a spoiler itself.
Nightmares
Characters who appear in the Nightmares mode of the Black Ops III Campaign.
Deimos
One of two Humanoid Abomination siblings released by the SP/CORVUS project run by the CIA out of the Coalescence Corporation. In this Alternate Universe, Deimos functions as the main antagonist. Setting loose a zombie apocalypse and, like Corvus, possessing Taylor's team and later Hendricks, Deimos goal is to takeover his home realm of Malum and kill his sister Dolos- Big Bad: Is the main antagonist of the Nightmare mode, replacing Corvus from the main campaign.
- Cain and Abel: He and his sister hate each other and seek to destroy one another. His reason for starting an undead army mostly alludes to killing his sister.
- Card-Carrying Villain: Is the demigod of dread and terror and loves living up to the title.
- Demonic Possession: Rather than infecting Taylor and his team with a virus like Corvus did, Deimos straight up possesses them to carry out his dirty work. Unlike most examples of demonic possession, Deimos controls them via their DNI, much like Corvus does.
- Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: During the climax of the campaign, he mocks the protagonist for their efforts, specifically the notion of a Heroic SacrificeI won't ever understand your species. You sacrifice yourselves for so little. Look at her [spoiler: Krane], she gave her life for something that would ammount to nothing. You tie yourselves with emotions, forcing yourselves to act impulsive, without any consideration of what would happen. You give your lives because you believe there's something to gain. As if some heavenly body will fall to its knees and worship you for your good deeds.
- Greater-Scope Villain: Implied, with the multiverse theory at play, Deimos points out that there's a neighboring universe, where the main campaign takes place, and Deimos witnesses the events of that story from outside.
- Hive Mind: Is behind the zombies, and acts as the "brain" behind all of them.
- Humanoid Abomination: He and his sister are beings from the realm of Malum.
- It's All About Me: Doesn't care for anything other than his goal to take over Malum and kill his sister. To him, humanity is his to control and his to destroy.
- Omnicidal Maniac: His goal? Kill his sister, take over Malum and bring about his demonic army. His methods: wipe out humanity with a zombie apocalypse, and use it to add to his undead army.
- Ungrateful Bastard: When he realizes Dr. Salim knew about him and thought Deimos wanted to thank him, Deimos doesn't hesitate to kill him, mocking Salim for thinking that a God would thank a human.
- Villainous Breakdown: Is calm, smug and collected, if a bit agitated at times throughout the game. When the protagonist and Dolos begin to beat him, he completely loses his shit, panicking and angry as he is finally defeated.
- You ALL Look Familiar: His character model is the exact same as Corvus in the original campaign.
- You Have Out Lived Your Usefulness: His reason for having Taylor kill Signapore's Coalescence Corporation staff is because they played their part in summoning him.
- Zombie Apocalypse: His primary method.
Dolos
One of two Humanoid Abomination siblings, and is the sister of Deimos, and both are out to destroy each other. She is the demigoddess of trickery. Unlike her brother, she doesn't wish to destroy humanity, but helps humanity fight her brother, particularly the protagonist.- Affably Evil: Despite her title as the demigoddess of trickery, she genuinely sees humanity's value despite its flaws and is willing to help fight Deimos for humanity, encouraging the protagonist along the way.
- Ambiguously Gay: Besides using Kane as a vessel to interact with the Player, she acts very... questionable around the Player as the game goes on, as she assures the Player to follow her advice to defeat Deimos, and they quickly bond over not just defeating Deimos, but utterly tormenting him before finishing him off. Then there's the fact Dolos brings the Player back to life despite originally saying she would be trapped in Malum forever, and how they both vow to slay all of the other gods in the oncoming Divine Conflict...
- The Chessmaster: She knew how to defeat her brother all along and knew the means to do it, she's just buying her time, amusing herself with Deimos getting his hopes up.
- Dark Is Not Evil: Despite her trickery title and seeming just as a menacing presence as her brother, Dolos has humanity's best interests at heart and unlike her brother isn't a threat to the world.
- Demonic Possession: In a way, like her brother (and Corvus) did to Taylor and Hendricks, Dolos uses Kane as a vessel to help fight Deimos, before Kane's death. Subverted in that she doesn't assume direct control like Deimos does, but simply appears as a voice in their head giving them advice - considering said advice is how to stop Deimos from wiping out all of humanity, there isn't really any good reason for Kane or the Player to ignore said advice.
- Humans Are Flawed: One of the reasons she wants to help humanity is that they will destroy themselves in time and don't need her brother's help. That said, she admits to seeing value in human life and that they are worth saving.I'm not my brother. I don't turn people into puppets. Not when they are so suggestible and malleable. Why control when they can formulate their own thoughts?
- It Amused Me: States the reason why she allowed her brother to carry out his plans was simply because she thought it was amusing to see him get his hopes up before his Villainous Breakdown.
- Lesser of Two Evils: Her brother is the demigod of dread and terror, she is the demigoddess of trickery. She isn't a threat to humanity, and the only target of her wrath is her brother.
Multiplayer Specialists
Black Ops III's multiplayer mode puts the player in the shoes of one of nine specialists (ten with the reveal of Blackjack), each of whom have a unique appearance, personality, and, more importantly, a powerful weapon or special ability (either the weapon or the special ability must be selected before playing a match) that can be activated through time and actions in the game, similar to the Super attacks and abilities in Destiny or the Titan drop system in Titanfall.
Donnie "Ruin" Walsh - United States
Voiced By: Christian Rummel (English)
Raised in a military family in a tough neighborhood, he is fearless and headstrong, exemplified by his willingness to replace his own limbs to become a better killer. His special ability is Overdrive, and his special weapons are the Gravity Spikes.
Confirmed to be returning in Black Ops 4.
- Artificial Limbs: Notably not the result of injury, only so he can kill better.
- Awesome, but Impractical: Gravity Spikes has a huge wind up time for an FPS that involves twitch reflexes, and is essentially a glorified lethal grenade attack, with the grenade being Ruin himself. And it has a very a short forward travel distance with activation. It's great if you catch a group of enemies unaware, or to come slamming into a contested objective in objective based matches. But most of the time, being able to run faster (and thus get into cover) is better, or using a different Specialist's weapon.
- Cybernetics Eat Your Soul: Shows no genuine sign of this, but uses them to help his killing regardless.
- Elites Are More Glamorous: Despite not being part of a formal elite unit, he believes himself to be among the best due to being 'mechanized infantry'.
- According to his in-game profile, he is actually an inversion; Ruin strongly dislikes special forces units and the people who operate within them, seeing them as both arrogant and dishonourable and he dislikes the people who idealize them as well.
- Military Brat: Established to come from a military family.
- Shockwave Stomp: His Gravity Spikes are this in all but name.
- Sociopathic Soldier: A rare heroic example, depending on which faction you're on.
- Super-Speed: Can use his Overdrive ability to outrun foes.
Alessandra "Outrider" Castillo - Brazil
Voiced By: Loreni Delgado (English)
Growing up in a favela, Alessandra used her mobility to traverse rooftops and watch the action below, eventually earning a role in the Brazilian Special Forces. Her special ability is Vision Pulse, and her special weapon is the Sparrow.
Returns in Season 2 of Black Ops 4.
- Elites Are More Glamorous: A decorated member of the Brazilian Special Forces.
- Lady of War: The graceful stealth fighter to Seraph's ruthless Dark Action Girl and Battery's Ladette.
- Powered Armor: If you look closely at her, especially when she's wearing some of her unlockable outfits, you can see she has very few cyberentic augmentations. Instead she appears to be wearing a lightweight or "stealth" version of the exos from Advanced Warfare.
- The Straight and Arrow Path: A high-tech compound bow in the 2060s? Why not? It makes a fair amount of sense when you think about it- with its explosive arrows, its basically a silent, lightweight, fairly rapid fire grenade launcher and even without them it is still a silent killer since it hits with enough force to not only kill instantly but send you flying as well. It apparently has a draw strength so high that no normal human can even use the thing- you have to be augmented or wearing Powered Armor to use it.
- X-Ray Vision: Her vision pulse allows her to see enemies through walls temporarily.
David "Prophet" Wilkes - England
Voiced By: Dave Carter (Black Ops III), Dwane Walcott (Black Ops 4) (English)
A member of the British Engineering Corps, Prophet uses his superior technology coupled with his cybernetic enhancements to confuse enemies before moving in for the kill. His special ability is Glitch, and his special weapon is the Tempest.
Confirmed to be returning in Black Ops 4.
- A Glitch in the Matrix: His "Glitch" ability allows him to teleport, under the justification that mutliplayer is a Virtual Training Simulation.
- Chain Lightning: A side-effect of his Tempest weapon. Anyone standing close to an ally of theirs who's currently in an electrified death throes, will also get shocked and killed, chaining up to a maximum of 5 times after the initial target.
- Cyborg: Granted, most of the other specialists are this, but Prophet takes it to the point where the others actually call him Transhuman.
- Elites Are More Glamorous: A member of the British Engineering Corps.
- Full-Conversion Cyborg: He is easily the most augmented specialist. He is said to be 70% cybernetic by the time the game's events happen.
- Gadgeteer Genius: Seemingly his role.
- Lightning Gun: His Tempest weapon, which even has the bonus of chaining between enemies.
- Shock and Awe
- Shout-Out: An elite special forces operative so heavily augmented that others call him "transhuman" who has the codename Prophet.
- Teleport Spam: The effect of his Glitch ability, allowing him to revert to his last position a few seconds priot.
- Virtual Training Simulation: The in-universe justification for his Glitch ability allowing a soldier to teleport.
Erin "Battery" Baker - United States
Voiced By: Morla Gorrondona (English)
Following in the footsteps of her large military family, her sibling rivalry pushed her to excel and become an Army Ranger. Her special weapon is the War Machine, and her special ability is Kinetic Armor.
Confirmed to be returning in Black Ops 4.
- Action Girl
- Body Armor as Hit Points: Her Kinetic Armor, in grand Call of Duty tradition.
- Bulletproof Vest: Her Kinetic Armor, although it does nothing against headshots and explosives.
- Cigar Chomper: A rare female example.
- Elites Are More Glamorous: Army Ranger.
- Demolitions Expert
- Grenade Launcher: Her War Machine weapon.
- The Lad-ette: Of all the female specialists, she's definitely the most rough and tumble. She's a Cigar Chomper, swears with notable frequency in multiplayer, and even manspreads in her menu screen animation.
- Military Brat: Her primary motivation.
- Sibling Rivalry: Her other primary motivation.
- Stuff Blowing Up: Her specialty.
He "Seraph" Zhen-Zhen - Malaysia
Voiced By: Charlet Chung (Black Ops III), Judy Alice Lee (Black Ops 4, Vanguard) (English)
Enforcer of the Singaporean cartel known as the 54 Immortals, she has an unflinching and unmatched discipline in combat, likely due to her adoption by a high-ranking military official. Her special weapon is the Annihilator, and her special ability is Combat Focus. For the record, "He" is her surname and "Zhen-Zhen" is her given name.
Confirmed to be returning in Black Ops 4.
- Dark Action Girl: She's a mob enforcer, rather a military operative like Outrider and Battery.
- Hand Cannon: The Annihilator is a revolver so powerful, so high caliber, that it requires a cybernetic arm in order to use it, presumably without a regular arm flying clean off.
- Military Brat: Subverted, as she is a mob enforcer, a related but distinctly different line of work.
- Repetitive Name: Her given name anyway, Zhen-Zhen.
- Required Secondary Powers: The Annihilator is an obscenely powerful gun, with monstrous kick. It's got so much recoil that Seraph's cyber arm is the only thing that allows her to fire it without suddenly destroying a perfectly good limb in one shot.
- Revolvers Are Just Better: The Annihilator can even rip through multiple targets
- Score Multiplier: Her Combat Focus ability grants her a bonus to her earned score.
- The Stoic: Raised to be duty-bound to the 54 Immortals and little else, her attitude is rock solid stoic. Claims to have held this even as her arm was removed, maintaining eye contact with her "surgeon" while her cybernetic replacement was to be attached.
- The Syndicate: She works for the 54 Immortals, a Singaporean crime syndicate.
Tavo "Nomad" Rojas - Colombia
Voiced By: David Cooley (English)
A master of survivalist training, Nomad uses the wild to turn his environment against his foes, using experience from his Jungle Warfare days to stay alive. His special ability is, fittingly, Rejack, and his special weapon is the HIVE.
Confirmed to be returning in Black Ops 4.
- Auto-Revive: When Nomad takes too much damage in a short amount of time after Rejack is ready, he will be downed with mercy invincibility given by the green smoke that surrounds him. He will also have the option to trigger Rejack. When Rejack is triggered, the protective smoke fades and Nomad gets back up with full health. If Nomad declines to trigger Rejack after getting downed, he will bleed out, die, and will lose Rejack on respawn for a cool-down period.
- Bee Afraid: The natural result of his HIVE weapon.
- Bee-Bee Gun: Fires insectoid drone nests that swarm any enemy that gets close.
- Elites Are More Glamorous: Member of the elite Rapid Deployment Force unit.
Experimental War Robot-115 "Reaper" - Unknown
Voiced By: Keith Silverstein (English)
The end result of an expensive R&D project by Coalescence Corporation, political incidents prevented this model from seeing the battlefield, except for the one prototype remaining. His special ability is Psychosis, and his special weapon is the Scythe.
Returns in Season 3 of Black Ops 4.
- Arm Cannon: His Scythe weapon.
- Artificial Intelligence: The most advanced ever made.
- Computer Voice
- Doppelgänger Spin: His Psychosis ability can work like this.
- Gatling Good: His special weapon is an arm-mounted gatling gun.
- Grow Beyond Their Programming: Granted, he's still a war machine, but robots clearly shouldn't be revising their own code, and do it several hundred thousand times at that.
- Hologram Projection Imperfection: Interestingly, applied to the real Reaper as well for maximum confusion.
- Mecha-Mooks: Meant to be one of many, until one too many incidents.
- Not So Stoic: While Reaper typically doesn't show any emotion, he still taunts his fallen enemies just like the human characters do.
- Projected Man: A weaponized variant.
Spectre - Unknown
Voiced By: Adam Gifford (Black Ops III), Roger Garcia (Black Ops 4) (English)
An assassination expert across the globe, nothing is known about Spectre, including their gender. Their very existence is something that can only be inferred. Their specialist ability is Active Camo, and their special weapon is the Ripper.
Returns in Season 4 of Black Ops 4.
- Absurdly Sharp Blade: Their victims are reported to have been cut with surgical precision.
- Ambiguous Gender: Although when Spectre is set on fire, a non-synthesized and rather masculine scream can be heard, hinting that Spectre is indeed male.
- Ambiguously Human: Several of Spectre's pre-game exchanges refer to Reaper as "another prototype", indicating that Spectre is either familiar with Reaper's product line or that Spectre is also some sort of prototype.
- Blade Below the Shoulder: Their Ripper weapon.
- Invisibility: Their special ability.
- The Spook: Very little is known about this person, not even their gender.
- Psycho Knife Nut: They're a remorseless killer specializing in knives.
- The Sociopath: Shows no empathy for anyone, prefers to work alone, and enjoys the thrill of the kill.
Krystof "Firebreak" Hejek - Czech Republic
Voiced By: Rick D. Wasserman (Black Ops III), Adam Gifford (Black Ops 4) (English)
Known as a "battlefield problem solver", he and fire go hand in hand. A normally stoic man, the only time Firebreak shows any sort of passion is when he starts doing his job - that is, burning everything in his path. His ability is Heat Wave, and his special weapon is the Purifier.
Confirmed to be returning in Black Ops 4.
- Deadpan Snarker: Very stoic, and has several witty one-liners.
- Expy: Of the Pyro from Team Fortress 2. Both have ambiguous appearances, never taking off their trademark fire gear, both have an intense affinity for fire and both have flamethrowers as their special weapons.
- Fire-Breathing Weapon: His Purifier weapon.
- Shockwave Stomp: A fire-themed variant of this is his Heat Wave ability.
Danny "Blackjack" Li - Unknown
Voiced By: Eddie Shin (English)
Li in the Singleplayer Campaign
Li as Blackjack
Once a well-connected 54i fixer, Danny Li narrowly survived a disastrous meeting that he brokered between Winslow Accord agents and the organization's leaders through the use of a recently acquired Rejack unit. Deeming that they had suffered too many losses already, the enforcer, Seraph decided not to execute him for his part in the deaths of Min and Xuilan Goh, stating that they needed all of their remaining strength in order to rebuild.
Blackjack now operates as a mercenary, restoring his reputation, and bringing glory to the clan; all the while salvaging up new stock from the spoils on the battlefield. His ability, Gambler allow him to randomly use other Specialist Abilities as his own; while Rogue lets him use the Specialist Weapon of any opponent he kills in combat.
- An Arm and a Leg: His right arm has been replaced with a cybernetic. It was presumably lost during the failed meeting with the WA Black Ops.
- Deadpan Snarker: As expected of the Black Market merchant.
- Jack of All Trades: His name aside, he can use any of the other specialist's gear, but he has nothing unique to him.
- Meaningful Name: His callsign and abilities invoke a gambling theme.
- Power Copying: Can either steal the Specialist Weapons of enemies by killing them while they are using them, or gain a random Specialist Ability which he can re-roll at any time.
- Red Right Hand: His right arm is cybernetic, and can unfold into a minigun just like Reaper's Scythe.
- Secret Character: Blackjack can only be unlocked for exactly 1 hour of in-game time by completing the Daily and Weekly contracts. Once completed, you will receive a token allowing you to play as him. Fortunately, if players want to play as him for longer than just 1 hour, these tokens can be stockpiled so once the hour is up, they can just use another one to continue playing as Blackjack.
-
Unexpected Character: No one suspected that the one-liner cracking Black Market merchant would become a playable character.
V.E.R.S.I.O.N.
Characters appearing in the prequel book of Black Ops III. Under construction.
Adnan
A father of Gurmit, this man holds some rather... old-fashioned values.- Cassandra Truth: His note about how world is happy to sit and wait for disaster hits surprisingly true later on, especially if one considers fate of Singapore (The Isle destroyed by the Superstorm Daisy and Nova 6 leak.
- Character Filibuster: Goes into a long rant on the state of the world, which is highly convenient for us... because,
- Mr. Exposition: his rant teaches us about the geopolitical state of the world in BO3.
- Nostalgia Filter: Seems to generally believe older times were better, despite all the overall recent improvements to the state of life in Singapore (as of 2037).
- The Patriarch: Seems to want to appear as such, to a questionable degree of success.
- Rambling Old Man Monologue: Frequently engages in such, up to the point when even his wife no longer pays much attention to them.
Bastien
An employee of Coalescence Corporation.Gurmit
A Singaporean from The Isle, who finds himself entangled in the work for Axcentric Corporation after a certain event…- Meaningful Look: The self-described "why-does-my-dad-want-me-to-commit-assault look", reserved for when Adnan goes ballistic on his rants once again.
- Uncertain Doom: It's not clear, if he was present at The Isle when it was sunk by the Superstorm Daisy or in the Singapore during the Nova 6 leak.
Mitzi
A sister of Bastien and an augmented human, she often parties in Turicum and seems to have interest for further augmentation- Affectionate Nickname: Mitzi-the-Wiki, given to her by Bastien due to her cog capacities boost.
- Cyborg: Not to the level of Mr. Väst, but she still boasts cog capacity enhancement, as well as liver and kidney boost.
- Hard-Drinking Party Girl: Thanks to her augs, she can drink however many she wants without suffering any ill effects.
Niklas
Väst
A transhuman CEO of Coalescence Corporation, born and raised in Zurich.- Affably Evil: Seems to be pleasant with Bastien and is known for his charity dinners he cooks himself, but has no problems lending resources of Coalescence Corporation to the SP/CORVUS project of Sebastian Krueger, despite the Singaporean incarnation of project killing 300,000 people during the incident.
- Corrupt Corporate Executive: Orders Bastien off-record to wipe the data on the secondary transponders of the Lung Boost victim in order to avoid making the corporation look bad. Not to mention the entirety of history between Coalescence Corporation and Sebastian Krueger.
- Fiction 500: His income is said to be comparable to GDP of developed countries.
- Large and in Charge: At 6'2", he's quite tall, and is also the CEO of Coalescence.
- Pro-Human Transhuman: He is described as not going over the top with his augmentations, presumably because of this trope being in play.
- Rags to Riches: He went from working on Data Entry of one of Coalescence's acquisisions to becoming its CEO.
- Ultimate Life Form: Played With. He is said to be heavily augmented *. But he stops short of augmentations that would make him a true Cyborg, as he's sticking to "tasteful" augmentations only.
