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First Encounter Assault Recon
From left to right, Jankowski, Sun Kwon and Betters.
- Actor Allusion: Sergeant Holiday is voiced by David Scully, well known for portraying Sergeant Johnson from Halo who is also a tough African-American Sergeant Rock leading a small team of horrifically outmatched soldiers.
- Artistic License – Military: Although Fettel controls his soldiers via telepathy, F.E.A.R. is strangely called to carry on what is thought to be just the assassination of an otherwise regular army commander, something a unit specialized in takedowns would probably do better than a team specialized in ghostbusting. It's only when it's revealed that the Point Man is his brother and that Alma is in the party that it starts making sense that the Senator and Aristide called F.E.A.R. instead of going for people like the Nightcrawlers.
- Badass Normal: They are all regular military and science men who are in task of engaging supernatural forces. At least, until it's revealed that their point man is a psychic super soldier. Also, at least two of the team's operatives can see apparitions, which is explicitly stated to be outside of the common human traits, not to mention they can even turn into them...
- Fun with Acronyms: First Encounter Assault Recon. The guy who named the unit during its foundation surely wanted its future members to realize what they were going to get into.
- Mildly Military: Zig-zagged. The team is officially a part of the United States Army and its shown members are seasoned military men who follow the proper hierarchy, but it is a very small unit and rather informal in its approach to its task, working more like a consultant team than a straight military unit.
- Minored in Ass-Kicking: Even although their specialty is not conventional warfare, they are shown to be arguably more elite in this field than established elite forces like the SFOD-D, which is basically their personal Redshirt Army.
- Noodle Incident: The incident which caused the F.E.A.R. team to be formed in 2002 is never explained. The team has clearly found bizarre stuff before, judging for how nonchalantly they take the briefing about a psychic clone army (with Jankowski even lamenting outsiders don't take them seriously due to things like that), but we are never informed of any other mission carried on by them.
- Paranormal Investigation: Their task.
- Send in the Search Team: They end up being the search team an awful number of times.
Command
Rowdy Betters
Commissioner Rodney "Rowdy" Betters
- Voiced by: Jim Ward
The team leader and field coordinator.
- Big Good: As F.E.A.R.'s highest ranked member, he could be considered the nearest to this.
- Communications Officer: Serves as this.
- Everyone Has Standards: At the end of the first game, he's utterly disgusted when he learns what Armacham did to Alma. It's implied he immediately sent Becket's Delta Force team to arrest Genevieve Aristide to have her face trial for her actions.
- Mission Control: His task.
- Never Bareheaded: In all of his apparitions, he keeps his army cap.
- Nice Guy: In comparison to Jankowski, Betters is quite happy to have the Point Man on the team and is always encouraging and supportive to him during the mission. He's the only friendly link you have for most of the first game.
- Non-Action Guy: He rarely leaves the F.E.A.R. headquarters. His only instances are in their first takedown attempt of Fettel, in which he deploys the Point Man on the battlefield from a car, and when launching the second F.E.A.R. team, which is personally briefed by him in the C-130 they are going to parachute from.
- Linked List Clue Methodology: Betters pieces together the truth behind Project Origin as you progress. If you don't guess before he does, he often provides The Reveal if not As You Know.
- The Smart Guy: He is the brains behind the team.
- Voice with an Internet Connection: He appears in person at the very beginning of the game, drives you to Auburn and is not seen in person since (unless you count the expansion Perseus Mandate, where he briefs the second team in person).
- What Happened to the Mouse?: He does not appear in the second or third games despite being presumably alive and active at that time. It is mentioned in Project Origin that, for whatever reason, communications have been cut off in Fairport so presumably Betters just can't reach anyone, but his absence from the third is still unanswered.
First F.E.A.R. Team
Spen Jankowski
Lieutenant Spencer "Spen" Jankowski
You've gotta be fucking kidding me. This is why nobody takes us seriously. Military clones?
Voiced by: Tim Gouran
The First F.E.A.R. team's former point man, until the Point Man came along. A seasoned veteran, his job, like Point Man's, is to scour the Armacham Technology Corporation for Paxton Fettel. His life is cut short when he, along with a few Delta Force escorts go missing.
- Ambiguous Situation: His entire fate. The only thing vaguely sure about him is that he dies at some point. Probably.
- The Big Guy: Aside from being seemingly the hugest guy of the team, he has a few of the traits commonly associated to the archetype, namely his outgoing personality (albeit of a nastier kind than most examples) and his presumed fighting ability (he is not specialized in a non-combative task like Sun-Kwon or Betters and was their former point man).
- Dark Is Not Evil: He is a dedicated member of the team despite being crude and snarky. Even after he becomes a mangled ghost, his messages, while cryptic and sometimes menacing, are helpful: he gives vital pieces of info and urges the characters to take action.
- Deadpan Snarker: His way of coping with things that unsettle him.
- Eye Scream: His eyes are gone in his ghost form. Judging for the bloody trails on his cheeks, he probably lost his eyeballs while he was still alive.
- Icy Blue Eyes: Until he loses them.
- Never Found the Body:
- Despite his subsequent ghostly appearances, Jankowski's actual corpse is never found by anyone on the site.
Word of God is that the player was originally meant to find it, but they decided it was scarier if he just vanished. - Possibly averted in the now non-canonical Perseus Mandate, in which the Sergeant sees a ghostly vision of Jankowski wandering into an alley where a a very bloody corpse is traced. It's unknown if it's meant to be his body, which would open new questions (for example, as told in Offscreen Teleportation below, how he came to be there).
- In the underground hospital in F.E.A.R. 2, the player can find a stitched corpse with no eyes, a shaven head and attire similar to Jankowski's D-12 armor uniform. Again, it's unknown if it is Spen's corpse and, in that case, if it is meant to be canonically his corpse or just an Easter Egg.
- Despite his subsequent ghostly appearances, Jankowski's actual corpse is never found by anyone on the site.
- Offscreen Teleportation: Oddly, after you find Jankowski as a ghost, F.E.A.R. command continues to pick up his living signal at random in wildly varying and very distant locations. Betters even wonders how he's getting from place to place so quickly. This phenomenon seems to be meaningless, because the times F.E.A.R detects him are not always the same you stumble into him, and you actually still see him after the team has stopped picking up his signals altogether.
- Spirit Advisor: Something allows him to make appearances after his unclear fate to offer cryptic insights into what's going on. They mostly regard Alma; he's one of your first hints that she even exists and has an effect on events.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: His fate is to be eventually killed in action and his eyes gouged out, but the killer, whether it was Alma, Paxton Fettel or any of their Replica goons is left mysterious.
- You Can See Me?: Inverted example. In Perseus Mandate vision, Jankowski's ghost appears right before the Sergeant in the alley, but Spen is unable to see him, perhaps due to his lack of eyes. Still, he seem to be able to sense the Sergeant's presence, and even says "Is someone there?" before disappearing. Interestingly enough, this doesn't seem to happen to him all the time, as in other ghostly appearances he sees his interlocutors just fine.
Jin Sun Kwon
Technical Officer Jin Sun Kwon
"He isn't eating these people for recreation, he's getting something out of it."
- "I'm not even sure where to start. Almost complete liquefaction. Maybe a chemical agent? This is going to take some time."Voiced by: Susanna Burney (F.E.A.R.) and Kim Mai Guest (F.3.A.R.)
The F.E.A.R. team's medic and forensic specialist, Jin spends most of the time in the games in the rear guard collecting evidence and doing recon. She does not participate in combat, wielding a camera over a weapon.
- All Asians Know Martial Arts: Presumably, as she adopts a fighting stance when unarmed and facing Paxton Fettel's vision in Extraction Point. Then again, being involved in high-risk military operations would justify her having at least some self-defense training.
- Camera Fiend: As the team's analyst and forensics expert, Jin is never seen without her hand camera.
- The Coroner: Has the unenviable task of working out just how in hell a bunch of Delta Force Operators became red steam and blackened skeletons in a matter of seconds.
- The Heart: Seems to be the kindest and most caring member of the team.
- Limited Wardrobe: Subverted. She is the only character who gets a new outfit in the third game, ditching her D-12 armor for work clothes.
- The Medic: Though she spends some time playing medic for others, including the Point Man after the warehouse explosion, he doesn't really need her help. He has a stack of medkits anyway.
- Nice Girl: With a bit of Deadpan Snarker, opining the reason Jankowski feels the Point Man is "looking right through" him is because Jankowski is one-dimensional. She defends the Point Man's usefulness to the team and is always concerned for his well-being.
- Non-Action Guy: She doesn't carry a weapon with her or use one in any of her appearances in the games, being the technical and medical officer for F.E.A.R. That said, she is no pushover or helpless damsel in distress, and in Extraction Point was even able to escape on her own from being captured by the Replica:Jin Sun-Kwon: "Can anyone hear me?"Douglas Holiday: "Yeah, I can hear you. It's Holiday. How did you get away?"
- Raven Hair, Ivory Skin: As she is Asian.
- Ship Tease: In the first game, she mentions that she thinks the Point Man is cute and is relieved when they link up to go after Alice Wade. Betters even says they can "make out later".
- Super-Senses: In the game's first draft, she was going to be a psychic able to hear enemies from away, but it was scrapped.
- Team Mom: Mainly towards the Point Man.
- Voice with an Internet Connection: Apart from Rowdy Betters, Jin is the biggest user of the radio.
Second F.E.A.R. Team
David Raynes
Captain David Raynes
- Voiced by: Steve Blum
- Authority Equals Asskicking: The leader of the team and a calm, wise soldier who is mostly unphased even by the supernatural phenomena at play.
- The Captain: Of the second F.E.A.R. team.
- Dissonant Serenity: He is incredibly biasé about the rather horrible events he endures. Dialogue between Chen and him hints that they have a career in the F.E.A.R. team and have probably seen a lot of things.
- Voice with an Internet Connection: Takes over this role from Betters following the explosion when the team loses contact with him.
Steve Chen
Lieutenant Steve Chen
I remember taking my kids on a tour of the place last summer.
Voiced by: Keith Ferguson
- The Ace: Is skilled in combat, forensics, and technical expertise.
- Asian and Nerdy: Asian in name and character design, and quite enthsiastic about his fields of knowledge (and some things that aren't).
- Dark Is Not Evil: Like Jankowski, he remains helpful even after becoming a ghost.
- Deadpan Snarker: Despite the seriousness of the task, Chen still has the time to make sarcastic comments about how disproportionate his paycheck is to his work.
- Nightmare Fetishist: Enough to take his children to a tour of an underground ghost city. They likely ended up with a few nightmares.
- Plucky Comic Relief: His "pathetic paycheck" aside, he requests Betters to lag a rescue operation, claims his Noodle Incident was a mere slip-of-the-hand and tells the Sergeant to "try not to get blown out of any more windows".
- Our Ghosts Are Different: After his death, Chen appears several times to the Sergeant to guide him to useful items, apparently helping him from the afterlife. His last apparition is in the evacuation helicopter, in which is seen waiting for the Sergeant before disappearing.
- Unfinished Business: It is strongly implied that saving the Sergeant from suffering his same fate is Chen's reason to return as a ghost. He appears several times to help him, every time cleaner and less corpse-looking, until the Sergeant ends the mission and is evacuated, moment in which an untarnished Chen seemingly shows his approval to him before vanishing for good.
- We Hardly Knew Ye: Poor Chen. He only manages to stay alive for four Intervals, with some decently friendly ice-breaking moments before he gets killed by one of Alma's Scarecrows.
SFOD-D (Delta Force)
- Black Helicopter: Aerial transport across Fairport is provided by dark UH-60 Black Hawks that often get shot at by Replica soldiers, and one carrying Point Man, Jin, and Holiday even crashes into a building at the beginning of Interval 08 of the first game.
- Empowered Badass Normal: Dark Signal is mostly made up of already badass Delta Force operators who gradually awaken their latent psychic abilities, with Becket and Keegan standing out.
- Elites Are More Glamorous: Not so much, in the first game, considering the casualties they suffer and the fact that Point Man works for F.E.A.R., with only Holiday standing out. Somewhat Played Straight in the second game with Dark Signal, a special psychic unit within Delta Force that the player character Becket belongs to.
- Red Shirt Army: The majority of the Delta Force operatives in the first game are massacred by either Alma or the Replica soldiers, despite their elite status. Dark Signal fares slightly better ( possibly due to their dormant psychic abilities) and its members fight alongside the player throughout the second game.
Douglas Holiday
Sergeant Douglas Holiday
"Man, I should have called in sick today."
- "I hear you're a bad motherfucker, I hope it's true."Voiced by: David Scully
- Actor Allusion: Holiday is voiced by David Scully who also portrayed Sergeant Johnson in Halo who like Holiday, is also a tough African-American Sergeant Rock that leads a small team of ill fated and outmatched soldiers.
- Badass Normal: Holiday is the only Delta Force operative who doesn't get his ass handed to him over the course of the game. In the Xbox 360 port, he gets his own playable level wherein he of course lacks the Point Man's killer reflexes, but mows down whole squads of Replica anyway.
- Black Dude Dies First: Averted! Until Extraction Point.
- Demolitions Expert: In charge of blowing things up and/or defusing them.
- Killed Off for Real: In the Vivendi Timeline, Holiday is brutally slain by Alma's apparitions early in Extraction Point. His final words implore the Point Man to "Find Jin!"
- I See Them, Too: In Extraction Point, he is able to see Fettel's ghost and Alma's apparitions.
- Mauve Shirt: Survives to the end of the first game, but is either killed in Extraction Point (Vivendi Timeline) or is simply left unaccounted for (Monolith Timeline).
- Shipper on Deck: To an extent; he jokes about Jin being the Point Man's girlfriend.
- Stuff Blowing Up: Holiday uses demolition charges to clear the way, and also defuses the bomb strapped to Aldus Bishop.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: Doesn't appear or get mentioned in F.3.A.R. despite being presumably alive in that timeline. This is especially strange because he was right there with Jin the last time we saw him, yet she returns while he doesn't.
Keira Stokes
First Lieutenant Keira Stokes
- "Halford wasn't sure what will happen when Alma shows up. I hope it's not one of those horror movie things where she reads your mind and uses your deepest fears against you. That would suck."Voiced by: Jen Taylor
Dark Signal's communications officer, Lt. Stokes is the only female member of the squad. Despite being a commissioned officer, Staff Sergeant Griffin commands the unit in combat, as she is primarily a communications specialist and liaison, not officially part of Delta Force.
- Action Girl: Despite weighing about half as much as the rest of the squad, she holds her own in combat quite well, and fights alongside Becket off and on throughout the game.
- Badass Normal: Holds up pretty well against all the other supernatural monsters despite not possessing any psychic powers unlike the rest of Dark Signal, who do. Ironically, her lack of any superhuman abilities may have kept her alive longer than anyone else because it meant she could not be linked to Alma.
- Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: She is a dark blonde and very supportive towards Becket.
- The Lad-ette: As the one woman in a squad otherwise exclusively male, she swears, fights and cracks filthy jokes enough to keep pace with her squadmates.
- Precision F-Strike: She gets two really great instances during the game. The first comes right after she helplessly watches Griffin get brutally killed by Alma: "What the fuck is going on?! Fuck!" The second is near the very end when Aristide reveals her plans to her and Becket: "What the fuck is wrong with you?! Why are you doing this?!"
- What Happened to the Mouse?: Her ultimate fate is unknown, as she doesn't appear in the third installment, so she presumably bled out after being shot by Aristide.
- You Are in Command Now: Takes over after Alma kills Griffin.
Harold Keegan
Sergeant First Class Harold Keegan
- Voiced by: John Patrick Lowrie
Member of Dark Signal who seems to be having odd health issues during the mission, which only gets worse when he gets shot early on and subsequently starts suffering abrupt migraines.
- Bullet Time: During the final battle, he is capable of doing this to you. The only way to slow him down is to enter slo-mo yourself.
- Crazy Jealous Guy: But not of his own will.
- Evil Counterpart: After being possessed and Mind Raped by Alma, he is essentially one to Becket. He's a member of Dark Signal with the powers granted by Harbinger, linked to Alma, but spurned and losing his mind to implanted desire for her, while Becket becomes her unwilling favourite.
- Fighting from the Inside: "Becket...help me!"
- Final Boss: Of F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin.
- Madness Mantra: Alma's music box tune. Once he wanders away from the squad, he can be heard humming it to himself, occasionally broken by his howls of agony from a migraine.
- Mercy Kill: At the end, he begs Becket to "help" him. Becket has a pistol to his head.
- Mind Rape: What Alma does to him is horrific.
- Mirror Match: His final battle with Becket turns into this, with two Slo-Mo users facing off against one another.
- Murder the Hypotenuse: Played for Horror. Becket doesn't want anything to do with Alma, but she has warped Keegan's more synchronized mind into believing he loves her and should kill Becket to keep him away from her. By the end, he seems fully aware that he is playing right into her hands.
- Tragic Monster: He is mind raped into becoming obsessed with Alma and fighting Becket. By the end, he is little more than a distraction to keep Becket's mind occupied while she rapes his body, and actually begs for death in the end.
Top Griffin
First Sergeant Cedric "Top" Griffin
- Voiced by: Phil LaMarr
The leader of the Dark Signal Team. Survived the Fairport explosion and tried to link up with the rest of the team.
- Defiant to the End: Though at first he seems susceptible to Alma's compulsion, he rebels at the last moment and begins firing on what he perceives to be her presence, shouting curses.
James Fox
Sergeant James Fox
- Voiced by: unknown
The oldest member of the team, Fox is married and has a family outside Fairport.
- Crazy Jealous Guy: Again, it's Alma's fault.
- You Remind Me of X: It's theorized in supplemental materials that he is killed by Alma when she mistakes him for her father, as Fox has a daughter the same age of Alma and is very devoted to her.
Manny Morales
Sergeant Manuel "Manny" Morales
- Voiced by: unknown
Morales is the APC driver for the Dark Signal Team, taking the crew where they need to go in case they need to link up. Friendly and resilient to weirdness, he provides moments of levity for the team when necessary.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: The last time Becket sees him is before entering the Telesthetic Chamber in Climax. Sure, Manny's guarding the APC and seems unlikely to be surprised, but considering Aristide showed up inside the Chamber, it's possible she either persuaded him to allow her in or killed him through deception in order to pass. Or she may have been hiding somewhere inside the reactor all along, had gotten there before the Dark Signal team and waited for the right moment to strike.
Redd Jankowski
Sergeant Redd Jankowski
- Voiced by: Tim Gouran
The younger brother of Spencer "Spen" Jankowski from the first game. Redd is a reluctant member of the Dark Signal Team and the most vocally against the original mission.
- Deadpan Snarker: He's the most sarcastic member of the team and regularly makes jokes and complains throughout the mission.
- Gone Horribly Wrong: His death involves being repeatedly stabbed in the chest with syringes filled with a mysterious green substance. Given he was strapped to a table similar to the one Becket woke up on it can be presumed that he was undergoing the same procedure and something went wrong.
- Sacrificial Lamb: He's the first member of Dark Signal to bite it, only lasting about an interval and a half.
- Suspiciously Similar Substitute: Naturally, of his brother Spen, down to the voice actor. He amps up his brother's snarking tendences and is much more obnoxious, though.
