Characters / Golgo 13 Recurring

Characters who appear in more than one of Golgo 13's many adventures.

Golgo 13

Golgo 13

AKA: "The Professional", "Duke Togo", "Tadashi Togo", "Togo Rodriguez", "Saul Demio", "G13", "G", "God", "Monster"

The titular character of the Golgo 13 series. One of the world's best marksmen and assassins.

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• Achievements in Ignorance: An experienced yogi noted that Golgo achieved the first six stages of yoga without even knowing they existed via his own personal mental discipline.
• Affably Evil: Downplayed, as he is, for a majority of the time, very aloof and cold. But he's fairly civil and polite for a hired killer so long as you don't press one of his Berserk Buttons or try to screw him over.
• Badass in a Nice Suit: He is commonly depicted wearing a suit and tie to symbolize his professionalism and emotional detachment to his work. To him, killing is just a job, nothing more.
• Berserk Button: Four of them, actually.
  • Do not betray or deceive him. It's one of the few things that can make him break his Consummate Professional persona and he WILL get back on you on the event you break your end of the contract.
  • Do not stand behind him. Just... don't. His Reflexive Response will lead to him punching the poor sod at best.
  • If you must take something out of a pocket or a sealed container in his presence, make sure you do it slowly.
  • He doesn't tolerate impersonators. People who imitate him by falsely using his name or appearance more often than not end up with a bullet in their head, for example a priest whose only crime against Golgo was consenting to be surgically altered by the Golgo's clients so they could spend a few years establishing a future disguise for him. This ties into his professionalism. He won't stand to have his reputation tarnished as his reputation is his what makes him so in demand.
  Golgo 13: (to his client) "Understand that if you think to make another replica of me, you'll die as well."
  • Interestingly, he doesn't mind if he's name-dropped or if his reputation is used to manipulate other people so long as he isn't directly tied to whatever is going on and no one claims he was responsible for things he clearly wasn't. It should also be noted that, there are times he doesn't outright kill impersonators. A conman by the name of Lucky successfully earned himself a neat suitcase full of cash after claiming to be Golgo and blackmailing the "target". Golgo (the real one) shot the suitcase and rendered the money useless, but Lucky was otherwise unharmed.
  • In the same vein, for journalists and the like, do not expose him. You only get one warning.
• Born Lucky: He has lived through many missions and jobs where he logically should have met his end, including more than one fight where his opponents had him completely cornered. In the end something always saves him, which is fairly ironic considering his code name.
• Bringing in the Expert: Duke is one of the best assassins in the world and when he takes a contract he almost always fulfills it (unless the client does something in defiance of the agreement in which case they broke the deal not Duke and he'll gladly walk away). Also, his consummate professionalism and treatment of his vocation as a professional means that he commands a high price that many organizations both legal and illegal will pay as they see him as the right man for the job. Sometimes he won't even be brought in to kill someone but to consult with others and give his appraisal and experience to a job.
• Code Name: Subverted. Golgo 13 is the codename well known in certain circles for Duke Togo. But those who need to hire him, always appear to know him by both names, so Togo is probably also an alias. He also never actually introduces himself to anyone as "Golgo 13", and very few actually address him as such, since they know him as Duke Togo anyway. This makes it easy to spot any pretenders who have foolishly referred to themselves by the famous codename.
• Cold Sniper: While he has many talents marksmanship is one area where he truly excels. To list all of the impossible shots he's made over the course of his long career would take half the page but know that nine times out of ten he'll hit exactly what he was aiming for dead in the center.
• Consummate Professional: He sees his assassin career as a job and conducts himself with the utmost professionalism. If you hire him to take someone out, they are dead. End of story.
• Corrupted Character Copy: He is essentially an evil version of James Bond.
• Covered with Scars: While not normally visible due to his clothes whenever he goes shirtless he's shown to have many prominent scars covering his torso. Interestingly, he has no scars when he appears shirtless in the very first chapter of the series, only acquiring his scars as the series goes on.
• Cunning Linguist: He's known to be proficient in a number of languages, which helps him for making contact with the locals in a certain country or territory.
• Defiant to the End: Golgo will never betray a client or surrender critical information, even under penalty of pain and death. This is best shown in the Queen Bee movie, when the titular woman has Golgo at her mercy at gunpoint. She asks him if he'll beg for his life and he just stares her down even as she pulls the trigger. (As it turns out the gun wasn't loaded, otherwise he would have died right there.)
• Demolitions Expert: Not showcased very often due to his preference of taking his target out at extended range via a quick shot to the head but he has many talents in the area of explosives as well as guns. In "Eva, Heading for the Sea" he manages to disarm a terrorist bomb on a cruise ship and in "Telepath" he uses a grenade launcher to blow up a target who could accurately predict and dodge all of his normal sniper shots.
• The Dreaded: Not many people know his name but everyone who knows his reputation greatly fears him, including many of his own allies. One early story ("Hit and Run") doesn't even have him show up in person, a detective just uses his name to intimidate a mafia boss into turning himself into police custody for his own safety.
• Escape Artist: It's not any kind of magic or trickery, either. Golgo always makes sure to have an exit strategy for when things go sideways. One of the best examples of his skill occurs in The Professional when he gets ambushed by Lt. Bragan's men after completing a hit. In the second between him closing the door to his car and them opening fire he manages to escape into the ocean as the vehicle goes up in flames from the hail of gunfire. The scene then cuts to him swimming away underwater as bullets wizz by on all sides.
• Everybody Has Standards: Duke is just a hired gun. A tool to do a job. Unlike other assassins shown in the series, he doesn't take pleasure from killing, doesn't do what he does for a thrill, and sees what he does as a profession. While he won't risk himself for others or do things that are altruistic, he also has a code of honor and will usually help people who have done him a favor. Beyond that he's just a guy that kills people and so he can get visibly unnerved if not shaken by the more horrible things he's seen other people do.
• Evil Virtues: Well, the "evil" part is debatable, but he has a lot of virtues attributed to "good guys". These include:
  • Determination (He WILL accomplish his contract, no matter what)
  • Gratitude (If you help him he will certainly be grateful, and might even get some favours done for you)
  • Humility (He doesn't think much about his reputation as the "Hand of God" and treats his skill as pure professional)
  • Loyalty (Comes with his Determination. Unless the one who made a contract with him breaks it first, betrayal is not a thing in Togo's vocabulary)
  • Patience (Togo might take days to take out his target, but he will wait until the perfect time if needed)
  • Honesty (Comes with the Loyalty part. Golgo will always be honest on his contracts)
  • Diligence (While he is certainly resourceful, his targets are usually well-protected or with a high number of guards and in situations where Golgo is an disadvantage. He succeeds regardless)
  • Regard for Human Life: Albeit, in his own strange way. Golgo, for all his cold professionalism, does not treat life as cheap. He respects innocent persons' right to live. However, along with his intended target, it is those who are "in the business" or "also playing the game", so to speak, who must be prepared for the possibility of death at his hands, if necessary (also see his Berserk Buttons).
    • A very good example of this happens in the story "The Super Star". A young Princeton student is egged on by his peers to kill on Golgo, but instead of killing the kid outright, Golgo gets him to stand down. Later on the kid tries to defend Golgo from a couple of goons sent by the story's antagonist. The kid ends up losing his life but lingers long enough to hire Golgo to save a visiting Henry Kissinger form asssasination.
    • In "Machine Cowboy", he runs into a young punk who's a member of a bike gang he's been hired to eliminate. Instead of killing punk, Golgo opts to get the punk into an accident during a car chase that breaks his arm. By the end of the story, he is the only gang member left alive after Golgo finishes the job.
• Has a Type: Volume 6 of the Viz series has a section on all of the confirmed sexual partners Golgo has had from his introduction in the late 60s up until 2000 when the translation was published. Out of just over 100 women 72 (roughly 3/4) were white, with Asian sexual partners coming in a very distant second at 14. (Every other group included clocked in at under 10 total.) It's unknown if he prefers Caucasian women for a racial reason or if he just happens to sleep with so many due to a lot of his jobs taking place in majority-white countries like the USA or Britain. He also seems to have a fondness for prostitutes but that's probably just for practical reasons.
• Hates Small Talk: He has a reasonable amount of patience for hearing backstories and minor details that directly relate to his mission but will quickly become annoyed if a client tries to tell him their whole life story or deviates too much from the subject at hand. When speaking to him he expects people to stay on topic and isn't shy about letting them know it.
• I Have Many Names: Almost all of which are either aliases or codenames. He often goes by Duke Togo or just simply Golgo-13 but whatever his real name is nobody seems to know it.
• Known Only by Their Nickname: Duke Togo is not is his real name, unlike what many would assume, it's just his go-to-alias most of the time and his clients roll with it.
• Lack of Empathy: One of his most defining traits is his complete and utter detachment to emotion and sympathy when eliminating his targets. It doesn't matter if his intended victim is a human being, an animal or an inanimate object... he'll pull the trigger without so much as an ounce of pity or remorse.
• A Lighter Shade of Black: Duke Togo is an amoral, cold and ruthless professional assassin... and that's it. He shows no ill will towards any of his targets or clients (unless THEY make an issue of it), and he's just as willing to do jobs for altruistic and well-intentioned clients as much as the scum of the earth, as long as the check clears. He is the ultimate professional in an ugly profession. As such, it's not hard at all to root for him, considering the vast majority of people he's hired to kill are absolute garbage the human race is better off not having numbering among them. Even when killing someone who clearly doesn't deserve it, it's the client who's the true monster here, not Golgo. It also helps that Laser-Guided Karma is VERY MUCH at play in the Golgo 13 universe, and Golgo's most unscrupulous clients more often than not end up getting their just desserts, usually at Golgo's hands.
• Man of Wealth and Taste: He often dresses in a nice suit and several stories show him to be quite the wine and cigar connoisseur. During a chapter of the manga he even refused a Last Smoke when about to be executed by a group of African soldiers because the cigar offered by the commander was below the standards of his usual brand.
• Master of Disguise: Several jobs require him to go deep undercover but he always has the perfect disguise to fit the role he must play. He's donned the personas of everything from lowly vagrants and drifters to high rank military personnel, businessmen and government agents. He even managed to successfully pass for a black man in rural America to kill a racist scumbag who drove a vietnam vet to suicide in "The Dark-Skinned Sniper".
• Mortality Phobia: While Duke is an undisputed badass and has done things that would take nerves of steel, he has admitted that at heart he is a coward and credits that fear as to why he's still alive. Duke never takes unnecessary risks and never leaves anything to chance because he wants to survive. He prioritizes his safety first. While he will take risks for the sake of completing a job, he does everything he can to stack the odds in his favor.
• Mysterious Past: No one know where he came from or what nationality he has. The most accepted theory is that he's from the Serizawa Family and was the only survivor when his family was targeted in a massacre.
• Nerves of Steel: One of the reasons he's survived so long and completed so many jobs is his ability to think on his feet and avoid panic when the chips are down. The closest he comes to expressing fear or shock is a mildly surprised look that barely changes his facial expression. There'a a reason his default face is so infamous.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: His design is heavily modeled after the late Ken Takakura. Ironically, in the 1970 live action film adaptation, he was played by none other than Mr. Takakura himself.
• Nominal Hero: Whenever he is hired by the good guys, he only technically qualifies as a good guy himself because he happens to have been hired to take out the bad guys this time. He doesn't have an altruistic bone in his body and only cares about his paycheck.
• Non-Idle Rich: The man commands several million dollars per job, has had multiple Swiss bank accounts, and on more than one occasion has owned an entire island. Circumstances sometimes part him from his assets, but he rebuilds them soon enough. And yet from all appearances he only feels comfortable when carrying out a job.
• Omniglot: He's master of several different languages and takes jobs from people of all manner of nationalities.
• One-Man Army: He doesn't get to showcase it as often as his sniping skills, but he's also an expert when it comes to hand to hand combat and regular fighting. Unlike most other examples of this trope he won't just jump headfirst into a fight guns blazing and will instead use careful strategy and tactics to try to catch his opponents off guard. Most of the battles he wins against foes of a superior number are the result of him carefully drawing them out while luring them into a trap.
• Only in It for the Money: Duke only cares about the fee a job will bring. He is NOT a Psycho for Hire and he doesn't take any pleasure in killing. As long as someone can pay his fee and he agrees to the deal, he'll take the job.
• Pragmatic Villainy: Duke never takes unneeded risks and avoids doing anything immoral if it's not required to finish a job. He doesn't really care what immoral acts he needs to perpetrate to get a job done but he doesn't want to risk extra trouble. He'd rather pay an informant rather than interrogate someone, hire a commercial photographer to take photos of a target rather than do it himself, and basically leaves anything not involving killing the target to other people he has confirmed to be trustworthy.
• Professional Killer: Key word being professional. He'll kill virtually anyone for any reason so long as he receives a fair payment and is treated with professionalism and honesty in return. If his contacts try to deceive or betray him he has no problem adding them to the body count.
• Psycho for Hire: More or less. While he doesn't take pleasure in killing people (or rather, it's left ambiguous whether he does or not) and just sees it as a profession, it still doesn't change the fact he still accepts literally any task, no matter how immoral it is or how innocent his target is, as long as he is paid huge amounts of money, and shows no remorse in doing so, while other hitman characters at-least have a stricter moral code when it comes to who they kill.
• Punch-Clock Hero: Though he mostly works as an unrepentant hitman for anyone who can afford his fee he often times finds himself playing a more heroic role than usual due to his targets being vicious criminals or other villainous types. In fact, the very first episode of the anime series has Golgo sniping a terrorist holding a plane full of civilians hostage. He only did it for the paycheck but he saved a lot of innocent people that day.
• Punch-Clock Villain: While we rarely see what Duke does in his off time, we can see that he views assassination as a job only. He approaches it like a craftsman and is a true professional. He won't do anything immoral or illegal when it has nothing to do with his work.
• Quick Draw: While his preferred weapon is a rifle, he's still a crack shot with pistols, and is incredibly fast on the draw, as anyone who's made the mistake of reaching into a pocket in his presence and nearly ended up facing a Shoot Him, He Has a Wallet! end can attest.
• Screw the Rules, I Have Connections!: Zigzagged. Half the time whenever Golgo is arrested by the authorities the various government agencies who owe him favors bail him out. The other half is that he is simply let go due to the evidence against him being extremely circumstantial.
• Sex God: He's had no shortage of sexual partners over the years, all of whom seem to enjoy themselves way more than he ever does.
• Signature Move: Golgo is known for his ability to dispatch targets by applying a no-nonsense shot directly to the forehead with whichever weapon he's using. One imitator (a psycho who wanted to be Golgo), tried to be certain to eliminate his victims the same way, castigating himself if he failed.
• Smoking Is Cool: One of his main trademarks in the original manga that was oddly removed in the later anime adaptation for some reason. The 1980s movie The Professional shows him smoking Parliaments as his preferred brand while the manga implies he only smokes top quality cigarillos since he turns down a One Last Smoke that wasn't up to his normal standards while being held captive by a group of soldiers.
• The Sociopath: High functioning, borderline, and downplayed in Duke's case. He's as cold as ice and there pretty much nothing he wouldn't do for the sake of a job. For him it's about cold logic and feelings rarely if ever are a factor in his decision making. That said, he doesn't enjoy the criminal or immoral acts he perpetrates but sees them as necessary to get jobs done. In casual life, he never seems to do anything illegal or harmful, can be social, and will even do things like give to charities (albeit to add to his cover). While he has done really messed up stuff he only sees it as work like a normal person going in to punch a clock everyday. Duke never intentionally harms innocents. Aside from his targets, the only ones who are even likely to find out how deadly he is are those who are either "in the business" or "playing the game". And if you know who he is, then you are likely "in the game".
• Sociopathic Hero: Sure, he will perform heroic deeds now and then, but that's only if he is being payed to do so (as mentioned above). And overall, he is still a cold-hearted, textbook sociopath with little to no empathy or morality.
• The Stoic: His expression is legendary for barely changing, regardless of the circumstances. The only times he's known to change expression is when something goes wrong on a job or he's in significant pain.
• Undying Loyalty: He holds no permanent allegiance to any one country or ideal but will not under any circumstances betray his current employer even if it means risking his life. This only applies until he actually completes the job, however, and he won't hesitate to gun down a client afterwards, especially if they prove themselves to be dishonest or treacherous.
• Villain Protagonist: He plays this trope very straight in the chapters where his targets are not people worse than him.
• Who Shot JFK?: Mandy Washington theorizes he did so, but he can't prove it. In any case, Golgo wasn't known to be active in 1963, so this is unlikely. That being said, he has been involved in the aftermath of the assassination and has taken out quite a few insiders.

Golgo 13's Contacts

Dave McCartney

Dave McCartney

Manga Appearances: "At Pin-Hole!" (Story #37, Anime Episode 1), "The Orbital Hit" (Story #137) "Grain War" (Story #190), "Sharpshoot in the G String" (Story #257, Anime Episode 7), "The Death of Mr. and Mrs. Crown" (Story #319)", One Minute Past Midnight" (Story #430), "Night of the Murder Play" (Story #481, Anime Episode 33), "Azhdahaka's Feathers" (Story #489), "End of the Feast" (Story #496), Gunsmith Dave

Anime-only Appearances: "The Masterpiece Assault Rifle" (Episode 3), "Touchdown" (Episode 12), "Florida Chase" (Episode 25), "Angry Waves" (Episode 35), "Arms of the Angel, Arms of the Devil" (Episode 50)

Played by: Mitsuo Senda (JP), Chris Ayres (EN)

A recurring arms dealer and master gunsmith who assists Golgo in many of his jobs by providing special equipment or modifications need to complete them.

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• Adaptation Relationship Overhaul: Duke is more reliant on him in the anime, and their relationship in the manga almost always ends up with Dave becoming exasperated. Dave is also far more chipper in the former and always takes on Golgo's jobs with gusto.
• Alternate Company Equivalent: If Duke is James Bond, Dave is undoubtedly his Q.
• Arms Dealer: His primary business is running an underground gun shop for high profile clients like Golgo. He even makes and modifies much of his own merchandise which earns him a lot of extra cash on the side when a customer needs something extremely specific for a job.
• Accent Adaptation: The Viz translation appears to give him a Scots accent (or at least he admits to being of Scottish roots in "One Minute Past Midnight"), but the 2009 anime dub gives him a standard American one.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: To the point he's the star of his own spinoff manga!
• Friend in the Black Market: He's Golgo's main source for guns, goodies and gadgets outside the movies and although he charges some pretty steep fees for his work he always delivers the goods on time.
• Gadgeteer Genius: He regularly crafts, modifies and customizes the gear he sells to Golgo, often while under a strict time limit and for a very high price.
• Ultimate Blacksmith: Or gunsmith in this case. Nobody else can match his precision and skill in the time Golgo needs his guns to be ready and he commonly does days worth of work in mere hours.

Marcus Montgomery

Thomas Field

Swiss Gunsmith

Dwight Greenhill

Goichi Todo

Rosen Zamek

Recurring Clients

The Big Four

Sir Edward Hume

Appears in: Operation Big Safe" (Story #1), "Via Beirut, "Melancholy Summer" (Story #13, Anime Episode #20), "Under the Dark Streetlight", (Story #31), "Her Majesty's Melancholy", "Jet Stream", "Eurocrat Special", "Sub Rosa", "Sir Hume's Last Request", "English Rose" (Story #369)

Anime-only appearances:

The head of MI6 and a member of the Big Four. Golgo's first recorded client, for the job of assassinating Bernhardt Muller. When the job was done, Hume then tried to kill Golgo via his contact. It failed of course, but Golgo uncharacteristically accepted more jobs from him in the coming years.

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• Cultured Warrior: He's the leader of a spy agency who has a deep knowledge of horticulture.
• Easily Forgiven: He ordered Golgo's death in the first story, but Golgo never sanctioned him by assassinating him, as usually happens to most of Golgo's traitorous clients.
• Shout-Out: An aged British spymaster responsible for handling affairs with an extremely efficient hitman? Where have we seen that before?
• Xanatos Gambit: How he roots out a mole during one of his adventures with Golgo 13: he gives all four main suspects a letter addressed to the mole. The one who takes aim at him, obviously the guilty one, will be shot by Golgo. It works.

O'Malley

Hoover

Kinski

Moshe Dayan

The Rockford Family

The family in general

David Rockford

Lawrence Rockford

Other Parties

Mandy Washington

Appears in : "Kensaku Azuma, the Japanese" (Story #59), "Statistically Explained Sniping" (Story #85), "Queen of Mystery" (Story #147), "The Last Will of Mao Zedong" (Story #168), "Quiet Meadow" (Story #484), "Trembling Asetic" (Story #532)

A former Intrepid Reporter who specialized in true crime books. In the story "Kensaku Asuma, the Japanese", he tries to find Golgo's origins, but backs off the case when his friend, Oyama is murdered. At first he thinks it's Golgo who did the job, but it turned out to be The Dragon of a member of the Japanese elite who he angered with his books. He retires afterwards and turns down later requests to help in investigating Golgo's origins later in the series.

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• Because You Were Nice to Me: For whatever reason, Golgo never goes after him despite his attempts at unmasking his origins. Then again, Mandy didn't push his investigation into the hitman's origins any further, so Golgo had enough justification to leave him be. Alternatively, Golgo probably isn't Kensaku Azuma at all, so maybe he let him go on those grounds.
• Intrepid Reporter: Was one before his retirement.
• Refusal of the Call: He outright says "no" when he's asked to help in later investigations into Golgo's origins.
• Scare 'Em Straight: His experiences in his debut story plus his other near encounters with Golgo convince him to retire from the reporter business.
• The Unfought: Mandy does catch a brief glimpse of Golgo in Dallas during "Statistically Explained Sniping", but they never talk.
• Who Shot JFK?: He believes Golgo did it, but can't prove it.

Fanette Gobert