Characters / Free Guy

Free City Non-Player Characters

In general

• Artificial Intelligence: The native AI for the NPCs allows them to become increasingly complex as characters. The code is so well-written that under the right conditions, they can pass the Turing Test and be mistaken for a human, as with Guy.
• Bald of Authority: Invoked — one NPC is a bald CEO type.
• Masquerade: Most of the NPCs have rich off-screen lives that the players never see, and the players get access to things the NPCs never see.
• Non-Player Character: They are all artificial characters created to populate the world and give players someone to maim/rob/kill.
• Theme Naming: All NPCs have names that are pretty much nicknames, alluding to the incomplete nature of Free City. Even the Barista's nametag just says "Missy".

Guy

Played By: Ryan Reynolds

The film's main character. Guy is a Non-Player Character who works in a bank that keeps getting targeted by "sunglasses people", and whose programming has him pining for the perfect woman. Everything changes when he meets a mysterious "sunglasses girl" and falls in love, triggering a shift in his AI that changes him far beyond what anyone could've imagined.

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• Artificial Intelligence: Guy is a Non-Player Character who has developed sentience.
• Author Avatar: He's one for Keys, who created the character to express his feelings for Millie and his inability to bring them out.
• Benevolent A.I.: He's a Hero Protagonist, and he's an AI.
• Character Catchphrase: "Don't have a good day, have a great day!" is his — at least, before he meets MolotovGirl.
• Contrived Coincidence: Millie is surprised to learn that Guy shares exactly her tastes in coffee and ice cream. It's actually because Guy is based on a character Keys wrote to channel his feelings for Millie.
• Did Not Get the Girl: He realizes that Millie can't live her life online, and a romance between a human and AI wouldn't work, so he lets her go and encourages her to go out with Keys.
  Guy: I'm just a love letter. Now go find the guy who wrote it.
• Grew Beyond Their Programming: Meeting MolotovGirl causes him to begin to think about deviating from his routine, which causes him to take a player character's sunglasses and realize that the world he lives in doesn't look the same to the players.
• The Hero: After he takes the sunglasses and MolotovGirl challenges him to grow in level, he resolves to become this for the people of Free City, stopping the "sunglasses people" from stealing and killing the other NPCs.
• I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: At the end of the movie, he tells Millie that he knows they cannot be together, since he's an AI and she lives in the real world, and that she should go for the person that clearly programmed him as a "love letter" to her.
• Nice Guy: It comes with being The Hero and The Paragon; Guy is in general a friendly and kind individual to others.
• The Paragon: As he begins to become an internet sensation thanks to his pacifist actions, players around the world begin to question their behavior towards NPCs in the games they play, and Free City's NPCs decide to follow his lead and go on strike against the game after a Rousing Speech from him.
• Plot Parallel: His arc parallels Keys' in the real world — both of them are the leads of their respective arcs, wear blue shirts, are stuck in a loop courtesy of Antwan, break out of their loops over the course of the film, and have feelings for Millie.
• Ridiculously Average Guy: Discussed, justified, and defied. Guy was originally made to be a generic NPC meant to populate Free City and be used as glorified cannon-fodder for the players. His personality is positive by default, his dress sense is generic (blue shirt, white pants), and even his name, "Guy", sounds more like a placeholder than an actual name. Ironically, this makes him stand out all the more when he starts behaving like a Player Character.
• Separated by a Common Language: Having no concept of gaming slang and being generally literal-minded means that Guy often gets confused when talking with players. A commonly-used example is, when people mention his "skin", he assumes they're talking about his actual skin.
• Spanner in the Works: Him growing beyond his programming ends up helping Millie find out that Antwan did steal Life Itself's code.
• Trademark Favorite Food: Medium coffee, one cream, two sugars. Also, bubblegum ice cream. Both of them are also Millie's favorites, which is exactly why they are also his.

Buddy

Played By: Lil Rel Howery

Guy’s best friend, a security guard at the bank who has resigned himself to never fighting back against the "sunglasses people".

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• Ambiguously Gay: Buddy gets a lot of pleasure from feeling Dude's pecs. Also, there are points where his relationship with Guy seems to blur into the romantic.
• Anti-Nihilist: When Guy learns he's an NPC he goes into a Heroic BSoD so deep that he can't comprehend why Buddy still wants to help him despite being told they aren't real. Buddy's answer:
  Buddy: What's more real than helping a friend out?
• Conditioned to Accept Horror: Like most Free City NPCs Buddy finds nothing strange or even that unpleasant about being routinely robbed, maimed, and even (temporarily) killed by the "sunglasses people".
• Disney Death: Buddy gets erased while Guy crosses the bridge, but he is later resurrected when Life Itself is restarted with the Free City data.
• Meaningful Name: His name is Buddy, and he is programmed to be a good friend.
• Plot Parallel: His arc parallels Mouser's in the real world — both of them are men of color who are friends with a blue-shirted white man, both initially hesitate to join their friends in their efforts to break out of their respective loops, and both eventually break free and join their friends against Antwan's machinations.

Dude

Played By: Ryan Reynolds (voice and facial capture), Aaron W. Reed (body)

An attempt at an Ascended Meme version of the "Blue Shirt Guy" intended for Free City 2, eventually patched into the first game in a last-ditch effort to stop Guy.

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• Ascended Meme: In-Universe. An attempt by Antwan at cashing in on the "Blue Shirt Guy" phenomenon — without understanding why Guy became so popular in the first place.
• Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!: Guy is able to stop him by putting his sunglasses on Dude, distracting him with the game's HUD and allowing Guy and Buddy to get away.
• Catchphrase: "Catchphrase." The Soonami dev team didn't have time to give him an actual catchphrase, but Antwan thinks it's pretty cool.
• Calling Your Attacks: And friendly gestures, too — he calls pretty much everything he does at the top of his lungs.
• Cloudcuckoolander: He claims that he can bench-press a sentence.
• Defeat Means Friendship: In Free Life, he's befriended Guy and Buddy.
• Dumb Muscle: He has a bodybuilder's physique and, due to his rushed and incomplete AI, isn't very bright.
• Evil Knockoff: Of Guy, created as an Ascended Meme version of the latter and eventually used to try to stop him. Granted, when he's not under Antwan's control, he's not evil.
• Final Boss: Of Free City, though he was only patched in at the last second to keep Guy from reaching the edge of the map and revealing all of Antwan's stolen assets.
• God-Mode Sue: Invoked. A Freeze-Frame Bonus when Guy puts the sunglasses on him shows he has infinite health, armor, and maxed cash.
• Heel–Face Turn: He's uploaded into Free City as a villain to stop Guy, but after Guy gives him his sunglasses and shows him the game's HUD, he ceases his attacks. He is among the NPCs that survive the destruction of Free City and move to Free Life, where he is last seen being on friendly terms with Guy and the old Crazy Cat Lady.
  • He even cheers Guy on together with the other NPCs as Guy runs for the Free Life build. And when Guy succeeds, Dude is overjoyed, happily yelling 'You did it!', emphatically pointing at the blue shirt tattoo on his chest, and cheering ecstatically.
• Large Ham: He's a loud, bombastic, larger-than-life presence.
• Mad Libs Dialogue: The dev team didn't have time to take out his placeholder lines.
• Mr. Fanservice: He's absolutely jacked, courtesy of having the body of a real-life bodybuilder, with even Buddy commenting on it in-universe.
• No Indoor Voice: Every other line is delivered at the top of his lungs, the rest as a thorough growl.
  Dude: FRIENDLY GUESTURE.
• Obvious Beta: In-Universe. He's grossly incomplete because Antwan pressed the dev team into patching him into Free City before he was even finished.
• Red Right Hand: He gets an actual red right hand (and arm) when preparing to land a death blow.
• Stylistic Suck: He's presented with intentionally dodgy CGI and placeholder-riddled dialogue, reflecting his unfinished nature.
• [Trope Name]: Much of his dialogue is like this due to how unfinished he is, to the point his way of saying "Hello" is yelling "Friendly gesture!"

Real World Characters

Soonami Employees

In general

• Punch-Clock Villain: Most of the employees are simply doing their jobs, whether that means forcing an NPC into a violent situation (who they don't know are alive), removing a malicious player, or sacrificing quality to meet a demand.
• Those Two Guys: A subversion — Keys and Mouser are initially set up this way, being introduced together and also pursuing Guy together, all the while doing a Straight Man and Wise Guy routine to comment on gaming culture. However, after this encounter, they both go their separate ways, and have no direct interaction with each other till the end of the movie.

Antwan Hovachelik

Played By: Taika Waititi

The main antagonist of the film, Antwan is the arrogant manchild CEO of Soonami. He couldn't care less about what anyone other than him wants, and assumes that he knows best in every situation.

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• Bad Boss: He's introduced with Mouser warning Keys that he's on the premises, and as he strolls through the office, he casually fires an employee for little reason, dismisses conversations from his assistants about lawsuits, and admits to Keys that he outright lied about players being able to carry over their characters from Free City into Free City 2. He gets worse from there.
• Big Bad: Exposing his plagiarism makes up the main plot of the movie alongside Guy gaining sentience.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: Being a Bad Boss who has no regard for his employees, as well as the main antagonist.
• Creative Sterility: As Mouser points out in the climax, Antwan didn't meaningfully contribute anything to Free City. The underlying code is Keys' and Millie's, and all the art, writing, and so forth was produced by the other Soonami employees, whom Antwan disrespects and overworks.
• Dick Dastardly Stops to Cheat: It's revealed that he acquired the publishing rights to Life Itself, only to bury it out of a supposed belief that it wouldn't sell, but he still ripped Keys and Millie's AI engine for Free City. Not only would Life Itself have targeted a very different niche than Free City (meaning Antwan spent money to sink a game that wouldn't even cut into his own sales), but had he simply paid to use the engine from Life Itself, he'd likely have two successful games in different demographics, Millie and Keys both on board with Soonami, and no lawsuit.
• Faux Affably Evil: When he's first introduced, he has the aura of quirky coolness that one would expect from his actor, despite his greed and Bad Boss tendencies. As the film goes on, he gradually shows his much darker side, until he goes completely off the rails in the climax.
• Hate Sink: Antwan Hovachelik is the greedy and selfish head of Soonami Industries who stole the "Life Itself" game coding from programmers Millie Rusk and Walter "Keys" McKeys to create the game "Free City". Eventually learning of the sapience of the NPCs in the game created through the AI's original coding, Antwan—who let them all be subjected to constant abuse by the players and even reset the game in order to try wiping the NPCs' memories away too—seeks to destroy Guy and the rest of the game to prevent his theft of the code from being exposed by having the world attacked and then his new character Dude nearly kill Guy with his bare hands. Antwan then nearly personally wipes out all life in the game by viciously destroying almost all the servers with an ax—only relenting when Millie offers him the only thing he truly cares about—all current and future profits moving forward.
• Jerkass: Antwan casually fires an employee just because, thinks little of his employees and the game's players, and only cares about the money he can get out of the latter. And when he goes into his Villainous Breakdown, he begins to destroy the Free City servers just because Guy is about to reveal that he stole Life Itself's code.
• Jerk with a Heart of Jerk: He seems to be on board with Mouser at one point, and even suggests they come up with a catchphrase on the count of three, only for the "catchphrase" to be "Get back to work!" Additionally, he initially seems to be genuinely concerned that Keys is in a position he's unsuited for, offering him to make him a programmer. He actually based Free City off of Life Itself's source code, and needs him to fix the errors.
• Laughably Evil: He may be an Ax-Crazy Jerkass, but it’s hard not to find him amusing at points. Given that he’s played by Taika Waititi, this is practically a given.
• Lying Creator: In-Universe, he's lying his ass off about Free City 2 being backwards compatible with Free City.
• My Nayme Is: It's read "Antoine", but spelled like a phonetic guide to pronouncing "Antoine".
• Stupid Evil: Besides being a jerk, he's an absolutely terrible businessman. His response to finding out one of the A.I.s in his game has become unprecedentedly advanced, rather than patenting it, or at least using it to market the game further, is to order that the entire game's code be rewritten, effectively erasing the world's first sentient AIs. When he's seemingly on the verge of being outed for stealing the code to his game, his response is to physically destroy the servers of his own game, which is almost certainly more expensive than simply settling the matter out of court with all the money he's indicated to have made.
• Tech Bro: He has little regard for the quality of his games or the wellbeing of his employees, so long as his games sell. He turns up at Soonami in the middle of the film in an outrageous outfit, having just returned from Burning Man.
• Villainous Breakdown: As the Blue Shirt Guy becomes a phenomenon and Keys and Millie start closing in on him, Antwan starts to shed his quirky exterior, culminating in him attacking the Free City servers with an axe.

Walter "Keys" McKey

Played By: Joe Keery

The film's tritagonist. Walter is the co-creator of Life Itself, a game with a revolutionary artificial intelligence that was bought out by Antwan and buried. He currently works for Antwan at his company, Soonami Games, as a Quality Assistance worker/content moderator, and appears to be browbeaten into doing his job. When he realizes that Guy is actual proof of real artificial intelligence and a potential demonstration that his and Millie's code was stolen, he begins to help his friend find the proof she needs.

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• Cannot Spit It Out: He is in love with Millie, (and has been for at least five years, as Guy's 'Lovelorn' programming had to have been created before the 2015-dated interview) but has never been able to actually say it out loud. Guy's lovelorn feelings are a reflection of his own, as he used the character as a "love letter" to Millie.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Programming-wise. Not only did he and Millie co-create Life Itself (which eventually spawns the first true AI), in the climax he codes the bridge in less than an hour real time, and manages to finish the upload into the still-running game with a single keystroke (while Flipping the Bird). He also manages to livestream Guy to not only the in-house Soonami monitors but to all the players online, with only a few keystrokes managed with a single hand while being escorted out the building, which means he must have had the command set up on his laptop already.
• Everyone Can See It: Millie and Antwan seem to be the only people in Keys' life unaware that he loves her. Even the 2015 interviewer picks up on it.
• Heel–Face Turn: At the beginning, he is just another goon in Antwan's company, and goes after Guy because he thinks he is a hacker. When he realizes what Guy actually is, he immediately goes to Millie and the two work out how to reveal the truth.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: We only learn Keys' real name because it's shown on-screen during the 2015 interview with him and Millie.
• Plot Parallel: His arc parallels Guy's in the virtual world — both of them are the leads of their respective arcs, wear blue shirts, are stuck in a loop courtesy of Antwan, break out of their loops over the course of the film, and have feelings for Millie.
• Porn Stache: Keys' in-game avatar of choice has one, which makes him look like a "dirty stripper cop".

Mouser

Played By: Utkarsh Ambudkar

Keys' coworker and fellow content moderator at Soonami, who initially works with him to investigate the situation with the Blue Shirt Guy.

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• Animal Motifs: Despite his nickname, he's associated with rabbits (with a Running Gag of insisting that they're apex predators).
• The Dragon: While most of Soonami's programmers go along with Antwan's shady orders to keep their jobs, Mouser is the one who gets the most focus, and his friendship with Keys makes him a more personal enemy.
• Easily Forgiven: He does every single slimy, illegal, or immoral thing Antwan tells him to do, then FINALLY draws the line when he learns Antwan DID steal Millie and Keys' work. He shows up at the end, completely buddy-buddy with Millie and Keys, as if he hadn't been 100% behind Antwan until the Moral Event Horizon. He doesn't even apologize to them, at least that we see on-screen.
• Even Evil Has Standards: He does whatever Antwan tells him throughout the film, until he finds out that Antwan really did steal Millie and Keys' AI engine for Free City, and is disgusted by it enough to turn on him.
• Heel–Face Turn: He turns on Antwan after learning of the latter's plagiarism, throwing his lot in with "[his] boy" Keys. He's later seen hanging out with Millie at the end, and is quite happy when she finally realizes Key's feelings for her.
• Horrible Judge of Character: He believes Antwan's claim that Millie's lawsuit is frivolous for most of the film.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: Mouser's real name is never said at any point. It's not even shown to the viewer, like with Keys.
• Plot Parallel: His arc parallels Buddy's in the virtual world — both of them are men of color who are friends with a blue-shirted white man, both initially hesitate to join their friends in their efforts to break out of their respective loops, and both eventually break free and join their friends against Antwan's machinations.
• Virtual-Reality Warper: He uses "God Mode" twice in the film to try and contain Guy. He escapes both times, albeit with assistance from Keys the second time.

Other

Millie Rusk

^{Click here to see "MolotovGirl"}

Played By: Jodie Comer

The film's deuteragonist, Millie is a programmer and co-creator of Life Itself, who plays the game Free City as MolotovGirl because she thinks she can find proof within it that Antwan stole Life Itself's code for Free City.

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• Action Girl: As MolotovGirl, Millie kicks all kinds of ass, both on her own and with Guy's help.
• AM/FM Characterization: Her favourite song is "Fantasy" by Mariah Carey, which she incorporates into the game. She also has an Arcade Fire poster in her apartment.
• Big Damn Kiss: She has three of them during the movie.
  • The first during her date with Guy at the park.
  • The second to restore Guy's memories after the server reset.
  • The third with Keys after she realizes he is in love with her.
• Meaningful Appearance: MolotovGirl wears a pair of black leather gloves with the fingers exposed, highlighting her badassness.
• Oblivious to Love: She never realized that Keys was in love with her. Given that she mentions that Guy was her first boyfriend ever to not end up toxic, she might have been deliberately not been looking for love on the logic of "once bitten, twice shy".

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