Characters / Cyberpunk: Edgerunners – Other Characters

Main Character Index | Main Characters | The Crew | Corpos, Criminals, and Fixers | Other Characters

In the City of Dreams, not everyone is a greedy Corpo, a homocidal Gangoon, or an Edgerunner straddling the line between the two worlds. Sometimes, they're just ordinary people, working to make ends meet. Sure, not everyone's a saint, and some may resort to shady means to meet those ends, but you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone with a pure soul in Night City. And sure, you might never have a drink named after you at the Afterlife, but at the end of the day, as long as you can live to see that sun come back up with your mind and body intact, maybe that's all that matters. So, who's ready for tomorrow?

The following list consists of characters who appear in Cyberpunk: Edgerunners that do not belong in the categories above.

James Norris

Lieutenant Colonel James Norris

A member of the New United States Armed Forces who succumbed to cyberpsychosis at the beginning of the series before being put down after killing 27 people. His salvaged Sandevistan would become a key part in David Martinez's life.

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• Arm Cannon: He had a Projectile Launch System installed in his left arm.
• Ax-Crazy: Par the course for a Cyberpsycho, given his introduction involves him walking right to an NCPD officer and blowing his head away without warning. If the fact the NCPD had already been called to the scene and Jimmy Kurosaki's edited XBD of his rampage are any indication, his rampage had already started with some unlucky civilians before they even showed up.
• Blade Below the Shoulder: He had a Mantis Blade installed in his right arm, as well as an unnamed but similar blade implant in his right leg.
• Boom, Headshot!: Presumably how he goes out, given the last shot of the XBD made from his rampage by Jimmy Kurosaki is of a MaxTac officer putting the barrel of his M-179 Achilles right up to his face and pulling the trigger.
• Colonel Badass: A distinctly villainous example, but Norris was a Lieutenant Colonel with some extreme cyberware, and his utter massacre of NCPD shows why he should be feared even before he went over the edge.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: On the giving and receiving end. The NCPD were basically fodder unable to even scratch him as he ripped through them, but once MaxTac got involved they quickly hacked through his ICE and left him vulnerable before repeatedly shooting him. What few shots he got off just plinked off their armor before they neutralized him with a point-blank headshot.
• Cybernetics Eat Your Soul: He succumbed to cyberpsychosis at the beginning of the series, and from what can be seen he was definitely decked out in high-grade implants.
• Defiant to the End: Though this is probably more due to insanity then bravery, Norris continuously fires into the face of the MaxTac that kills him.
• Immune to Bullets: NCPD gunfire doesn't appear to even scratch him. It takes MaxTac bringing out the big guns before he's actually hurt.
• Small Role, Big Impact: He only appears directly in the first few minutes of the first episode with a scattering of mentions later on, yet his death and Gloria's acquirement of his Sandevistan implant plays a massive role in David's life as an Edgerunner.
• Super-Speed: His military-grade Sandevistan gave him the ability to both outrun gunfire and rush around multiple NPCD officers to nail them all in the back of the head so fast it looks instantaneous.
• The Voiceless: He never speaks or even makes a sound during his rampage.
• Walking Armory: As part of his rampage he carried a tech shotgun, an assault rifle, two autopistols, plus all the cyberware he was mounting. The NCPD never stood a chance.
• Weird Beard: The cybernetic implants on his mouth and jaw resemble a full beard and moustache.

"Doc"

Doc

"You know, I'm not a licensed physician."

Voiced by: Kenjiro Tsuda (Japanese), Borge Etienne (English), Carlo Vázquez (Latin American Spanish)

A surgeon who moonlights as an unlicensed ripperdoc in Santo Domingo.

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• Back-Alley Doctor: By his own admission, he's not a licensed physician, that doesn't stop him from carving people up and installing cyberware at their behest, even if the procedure isn't painless.
• Caught with Your Pants Down: David goes to his clinic to get the Sandevistan installed, Doc's in the middle of watching a porn BD and wearing hardware to enhance the experience. He doesn't even pull up his pants when opening the door and even continues when David threatens to walk out.
• Doctor Jerk: Licensed or not, Doc has a terrible bedside manner, mocking his patients even when he's operating on them, and admitting he's only interested in the eddies. Later episodes, particular his final conversation with David, shows he does care deep down.
• Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": Is only ever referred to as "Ripperdoc" or just simply "Doc".
• Honest John's Dealership: Downplayed. While Doc is a scam artist when it comes to his other ventures and will demand a pretty penny whenever he can, but when it comes to handling chrome he will genuinely offer his fullest ability to his clients and give honest advice.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: He makes no pretenses to anyone, not even his clients, that he cares about anything else except money and getting hard on his braindances and is rude as all hell, even when on the job chroming someone up. That said, however, he does care about his clients wellbeing whether they know it or not, as he routinely gives advice to David when handling his chrome for no extra charge and when it's clear he's so far off his rocker (nearly choking him out in the process) and is about to hit the wall in the finale, he doesn't hold David's outburst against him and simply tells him to go become that legend seriously. The last time Doc is seen, he's sadly reflecting on David's fate.
  Doc: Another tale for the next dreamer...
• Kick the Dog:
  • Attempts to shortchange David on selling the Sandevistan for 10,000 eddies when David is in desperate need for cash after his mom's accident (which he gets called out on), then drops his offer to 6,000 the next day when David calls back after her passing (which again, David calls him on). Granted, it's unclear if David ever mentioned why he was so desperate for cash in the first place, or even if it would have moved Doc in any way.
  • For whatever reason, he either doesn’t administer painkillers or uses ones that don’t numb the pain at all. Viktor Vektor proves that administering these kinds of drugs should be easy and common, judging by how calm V is after getting their eyes replaced.
• Pet the Dog:
  • Suggests David get better fitting cyberware and even slow down/stop getting new ones for the sake of his own health.
  • He also installs the Sandevistan on David free of charge, which makes the rest of the plot possible. He does bank on David begging to take it out and giving it to him for free once adverse effects start kicking in, but the fact that he later gives health advice to David shows that he doesn't really mean it.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: Come 2077, and you'll find that his clinic's been occupied by someone else, with absolutely no indication as to what caused him to move out.

Gloria Martinez

Gloria Martinez

"My son at Arasaka Tower top floor! I can just see it. You've got this, Dee."

Voiced by: Yurika Hino (Japanese), Gloria Garayua (English), Analiz Sanchez (Latin American Spanish)

David's mother, and an EMT for the Night City Medical Center.

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• All for Nothing: She works herself to the bone to afford David's tuition at Arasaka Academy and their monthly rent. After her death, David gets expelled from AA by assaulting Katsuo and joins a gang of edgerunners, kickstarting the very life of crime that leads to his eventual death, all of which she worked so desperately to help him avoid.
• All of the Other Reindeer: She tells David that she gets treated just as badly at work by her coworkers as David does by his classmates because of their poverty.
• Ambiguous Situation: Was Gloria's death inevitable or was it due to medical malpractice? From the doctor's description, she was fine and then she wasn't. While this does happen in medical treatment all the time, the sheer shadiness of the clinic, the dodgy answer given by the surgeon, and the fact that we never saw her face paints an unclear picture.
• Anti-Villain: It's revealed that mama Martinez was a member of Maine's gang, or at least a close affilate, and sold scavenged implants on the black market.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: And how. She and David are caught in the crossfire of a drive-by hitjob between a group of Animals and their corporate executive mark, resulting in the corporate's car flipping and crashing directly into the Martinezs. David survives with minor injuries but Gloria is hospitalized, barely able to survive because he pays for sketchy surgery due to them not having health insurance. The very next day, her vitals plunge and she ends up dying anyway, leaving her son orphaned, homeless, and broke. The doctor says outright that even if the accident never happened, she would likely have worked herself to death anyway.
• Dramatic Irony:
  • The one person trying to steer David away from a life of crime was a criminal herself.
  • She wants her son to become a top Arasaka suit, yet at the same time works with a crew of mercenaries that frequently targets Arasaka suits. Even if nothing goes wrong, it's not hard to imagine that David might wound up being a victim of Maine's crew someday, especially if he rises high like Gloria wants him to do.
  • Her dream was for David to reach the top floor of Arasaka Tower, and David does just that in the final episode... as a cyberpsycho on death's door, and he meets his end at the hands of Adam Smasher.
• Evil Parents Want Good Kids: Downplayed. She's an organ thief who peddles her ware to a crew of hardened criminals, but she does it so David would grow up to live a better life than hers.
• Good Parents: Gloria is shown to be an overworked but loving woman who deeply cares about her son's future. Mike Pondsmith even states that her being a good mother who did all she could is one of the reasons why David has the emotional stability to handle as much chrome as he could.
• Hope Spot: An absolutely cruel one, at that. Despite the doctor telling David her surgery was a success, her vitals suddenly plummet and she dies the next day.
• Mysterious Past: It's never explained how she became acquainted with Maine and his crew.
• Organ Theft: It's heavily implied that Gloria makes ends meet by taking advantage of her position as an EMT to steal cyberware from corpses and then selling them off on the black market.
• Plot-Triggering Death: Her death is what leads to David implanting the spine she hid in her coat and leads to his current life of crime.
• Struggling Single Mother: Her job clearly has her overworked and underpaid, with the majority of her spare eddies getting funneled into her son David's corporate education. Her secret side gig procuring cybernetics for Maine and his crew only barely kept her in solvency.
• Too Good for This Sinful Earth: Of a cast comprising of hardened mercenaries, ruthless corpos, and cutthroat criminals, Gloria stands out as the kindest character in the show. Maine liked her enough that he hesitates to kill David for his Sandevistan simply because he's her son. Her sudden death in the midst of a gang drive-by shooting serves as a reminder of how cruel and unforgiving life in Night City can be.
• Vicariously Ambitious: Gloria works herself to the bone and steals cyberware from corpses as a side hustle to earn enough for David to attend Arasaka Academy. She has big dreams of him rising through the ranks of the mega-corp, making it to the top floor of Arasaka Tower. While David never shared her dream, he tells Lucy he doesn't see anything wrong in devoting himself to achieve someone else's dream.
• We Hardly Knew Ye: She dies before the end of the first episode due to her injuries from the car accident.

Katsuo Tanaka

Katsuo Tanaka

Voiced by: Kaito Ishikawa (Japanese), Aleks Le (English), Anatole de Bodinat (French), Arturo Castañeda (Latin American Spanish)

David's classist, relentless bully at Arasaka Academy.

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• Asshole Victim: It's impossible to feel bad for him when David punches him into a wall and breaks his nose. Even his own father doesn't have any sympathy for him.
• Blatant Lies: He initially claims that he doesn't care who attends Arasaka Academy as long as they can pay the tuition, but then quickly begins belittling David for his low birth.
• The Bully: Treats David like trash for being from Santo Domingo and "daring" to rise above his station.
• Casting Gag: Aleks Le goes from being Tanjiro's best friend to his antagonistic bully.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Dishes one out to David in the first episode thanks to his martial arts implants. David returns the favor the next day, though. Brutally.
• Dirty Coward: Loves to lord over David thanks to his implants, but as soon as David gets one good hit in on Katsuo thanks to the Sandevistan, he’s left pathetically invoking his father’s name and threatening to have David expelled, which David couldn't care less about by that point, while crying about his nose being broken.
• Fair-Weather Friend: After David punches Katsuo into the wall, his "friends" can be seen panicking and frantically running out of the classroom immediately afterwards.
• Freudian Excuse: While he’s definitely a massive Jerkass who deserves no sympathy, seeing how little his father cares about him leaves few to wonder why he ended up the way he did.
• Hate Sink: He's a cruel, classist, and cowardly bully who makes David’s life in Arasaka Academy a living hell just for being lower on the social ladder than him, even having the gall to mock David the day after his mother died. Which only makes the ensuing beatdown David gives Katsuo after getting the Sandevistan installed all the more emotionally satisfying for the audience.
• Insane Troll Logic: He claims he has no problem with the poor attending the academy… if they can afford it, ignoring that if they could afford it, they wouldn't be poor.
• It Amused Me: He beats and mocks David for not only his lower-middle-class status, but also because he finds it fun.
• Jerkass: He frequently gives David shit for his lower-middle-class upbringing, beats him up for his own amusement, and even sinks as low as to mock his mother's death from a car accident, calling it "karma" for thinking she could've given her son a shot at working for Arasaka. This makes it easy to cheer for David when he gives the little twat his comeuppance in Episode 2.
• Jerkass Has a Point: He’s actually right in that David’s illegally updated scroll would cause issues, a sentiment shared by David’s mother. Sure enough, when David tries to use it anyway it causes the system to crash and Gloria has to come over to the school to apologize and pay for damages.
• Kick the Dog: After Gloria dies and David is forced to cremate her remains, Katsuo calls him, offers some incredibly backhanded sympathy, and spends the rest of the conversation saying she deserved to die, calling it 'karma' for daring to try and give her son a chance at a better life, and that he should drop out to avoid shaming her memory. Needless to say, this is the breaking point for David, and what pushes him to decide to install the Sandevistan himself.
• Laser-Guided Karma:
  • David punches him into a wall hard enough to shatter said wall and break his nose, and he completely deserved it.
  • Suffers a far darker instance later in the series, to the point of being Disproportionate Retribution. The thing that sends David over the edge is Katsuo verbally shitting on his mom and calling her death a karmic punishment. By sheer coincidence and terrible luck, his father is killed by David's crew and his body is desecrated by a cyberpsychotic Maine, who was a good friend of Gloria's.
• Privileged Rival: His wealth and status stand in stark contrast to David's poverty.
• Rapid-Fire Fisticuffs: Thanks to an MMA brain implant and some chromed hands, he assaults David through lightning-fast punches. This is all while making ridiculous JoJo's Bizarre Adventure-style screams. Though ultimately, the implant seems more flashy than practical as David almost has to walk into it to be affected, he stands just out of reach of the flying fists for a few good seconds before a blow actually connects. One has the impression that if he just took a step back, he wouldn't have been hit at all. This is in contrast to his father who makes much better use of the implant in a practical combat scenario.
• Right for the Wrong Reasons: For as much of a prick as he is, he's right in his assumption that Gloria had to do some unsavory work in order to afford David's tuition, though rather than prostitution like he insinuates, she poached cybernetic implants from corpses and sold them to Maine's crew.
• Small Role, Big Impact: While he only appears in the first two episodes, his frequent bullying of David, up to cruelly mocking his mother’s death is what spurs David to install the Sandevistan, putting him on the path to becoming an edgerunner.
• Speak Ill of the Dead: After David's mom dies, Katsuo leaves him a voicemail just to rub salt in the wound by repeating his accusation that Gloria got David into Arasaka Academy by prostituting herself, going so far as to say she deserved to die as karmic comeuppance. His message is the last straw for David to install the Sandevistan so he can get some payback.
• Spoiled Brat: As soon as he's in real danger, he immediately invokes his father's name and privilege.
• Starter Villain: No longer appears after David enters the world of edgerunners. Though his father does.
• Threat Backfire: After David gives him a well-deserved ass-kicking, he cries and threatens to call his father to have him expelled, disregarding the fact that, with his mom dead, David no longer had the financial means to stay in the academy any further, not to mention he hated being there in the first place.
• The Worf Effect: His combat cyberware, while rather impressive, is worthless compared to David's Sandevistan neuralware implant (especially a military-grade one that far outranks whatever he's got chipped in), as their second fight shows.
• Your Mom: He's already every other kind of jerk. Why not go all the way and imply David's mother made the eddies for tuition on her back?

Homeless Man (spoilers)

Homeless Man

Voiced by: Shoto Kashii (Japanese), David Allende (Latin American Spanish)

A bum that the crew runs into after a night on the town. Pilar decides to antagonize him—a fatal mistake, as the bum turns out to be a cyberpsycho and shoots him dead.

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• Arm Cannon: He has a projectile launch system, which he uses to kill Pilar and throughout the rest of the fight with the Crew.
• Ax-Crazy: He’s a Cyberpsycho, so this goes without saying. He brutally murders Pilar, and blindly tries to murder the rest of Maine’s crew.
• Boss in Mook's Clothing: Pilar thought he was a regular hobo, only to get his head popped by a cyberpsycho. Not only that, but the man is sporting serious chrome, including a missile launcher in his wrist.
• Crazy Homeless People: He's a hobo, he's introduced urinating in the street, and he's a cyberpsycho.
• Full-Frontal Assault: He's taking a leak in the street when the crew runs into him, and doesn't bother to zip up during the ensuing fight.
• Gag Penis: Pilar begins to mock the man for chroming his penis moments before his death.
• Gonk: Even for a Trigger character, this guy looks weird, with a lumpy head, missing teeth, patchy hair, and pretty much everything below his waist being mechanical.
• Hero Killer: For a given definition of hero, anyway. However, he kills Pilar instantly.
• Knight of Cerebus: He kills Pilar, a purely comical character, and things quickly start getting worse after he appears.
• No Name Given: He's not lucid enough to introduce himself, so nobody figures out his name before Maine punches his head off.
• Rasputinian Death: What it takes to finally put him down is absolutely absurd even by the standards of this setting. The entire crew peppers him with bullets and hacks from everywhere to no avail, up until David blows a hole through his head, and even then, the psycho still tries to make a move to kill David until Maine just outright punches his head clean off his shoulders, finally putting the monster down for good. Rebecca comes in for cleanup by splattering his head into nothing more than a red stain on the ground in rage-filled grief towards the psycho for killing her brother.
• The Unintelligible: The man is so far gone into cyberpsychosis that he can't even form coherent words, merely mumbling unintelligibly.
• Villain of Another Story: Whoever this dude was prior to becoming a cyberpsycho, he was next level. His entire lower half is mechanical, and he sports guns and a missile launcher all built into hands. Most likely, this guy was a merc himself and a heavy duty one at that. Even at his absolute lowest he's one of the most terrifying opponents that the gang faces.