open/close all folders
Team Quest
Dr. Benton C. Quest
Voiced by: George Segal (Season 1), John de Lancie (Season 2)
- Adaptational Dye-Job: The first season depicted Dr. Quest with greying black or brown hair depending on the episode.
- Beware the Nice Ones: Dr. Quest is an accomplished scientist who is well mannered and polite. He's also well versed in multiple sciences and has invented sonic weapons, supersonic aircraft, force fields, and time travel. He may not be as formidable as Race in a fight, but threaten his family and you'll live just long enough to regret it.
- Gadgeteer Genius: The man whipped up a force field to withstand a nuclear blast while standing at ground zero.
- Guile Hero: Once tricked Jeremiah Surd into believing that Jessie Bannon was dead in order for a very pissed-off Race to get the abort code to a deadly program from Surd. We later learn Race was in on it.
- Heterosexual Life-Partners: With Race.
- My Greatest Failure: The death of his wife, Rachael. To the point that his greatest fear is his family coming to harm because of him.
- Omnidisciplinary Scientist: If there's a field of study out there, count on Dr. Quest to be familiar with it, if not the world's foremost expert. Although he does state that Ornithology is not really in his line in "In the Realm of the Condor".
- Papa Wolf: Threatening Jonny isn't very smart. Dr. Quest will find a way to save his son. And if it doesn't exist, he'll invent it. This also extends to his extended honorary family, Hadji and Jessie.
- Reed Richards Is Useless: Thoroughly averted. Between his inventions available to the public, his theoretical work for various groups, or his contract work with the U.S. government, Dr. Quest not only believes in sharing his gifts with the world, but is clearly well off financially for doing so.
- When You Coming Home, Dad?: Dr. Quest reveals in "Village of the Doomed" that he worries about this trope, which is likely one of the reasons why he takes Jonny with him on his globetrotting adventures.
Jonathan "Jonny" Quest
Voiced by: JD Roth (Season 1), Quinton Flynn (Season 2)
- Age Lift: In the original series, Jonny and Hadji were both the same age. Here there is a two year age difference between the two, with Hadji being the elder.
- The Determinator: Once Jonny has an idea in his head, he will see it through, no matter what.
- Doesn't Like Guns: Says as much in "Assault On Questworld"
- Graceful in Their Element: Downplayed as Jonny is far from incapable but compared to the rest of the family he's Overshadowed by Awesome. The one area he excels at is in using Questworld, owing to how often he goes into it for the gaming options. He manages to outdo Race, the go to action guy of the team, and Surd, who hacks into Questworld to pull off stunts it wasn't even designed for and has managed to triumph over both Race and Doc who created it.
- Guile Hero: Once held Lorenzo at bay by making him believe his fire extinguisher was a loaded gun.
- I Know Mortal Kombat: Jonny has piloted various aircraft and tanks, stating that he gained the knowledge from video games.
- Leeroy Jenkins: An odd case, as Jonny has a tendency to rush in without thinking, often earning admonishment from Race, Benton, Jessie, Hadji, or any permutation thereof, but he tends to come out alright anyway. As Hadji told Dr. Quest in the first episode, "It was your own poet Emerson who said that 'Heroism always feels, and never reasons'."
- Overshadowed by Awesome: Jonny is a capable Action Hero and has plenty of moments of guile but the rest of his family outstrip him in different ways. His father, Hadji and Jessie eclipse him in intelligence and Race is The Ace so his Action Hero qualities don't get as much of a chance to be shown off.
- "Well Done, Son" Guy: A mild case, but in "Thoughtscape" it is revealed that Jonny's deepest fear is that his father is disappointed in him for not pursuing the sciences with the same enthusiasm as he or Jessie Bannon. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. Benton is demonstrably proud of his son, even if he isn't as devoted to science.
Roger T. "Race" Bannon
Voiced by: Robert Patrick (Season 1), Granville Van Dusen (Season 2, 6 episodes), Robert Foxworth (Season 2, 14 episodes)
- The Ace: There is precious little that Race can't do. And he'll fake the rest, too.
- Age Lift: In the original series, Race was thirty-two when Jonny was eleven. In this series, Race is thiry-eight in the first season, later being bumped down to thirty-seven in the second, with Jonny likewise being fourteen in the first and bumped down to thirteen. By the chronology of the original series, Race should be thirty-five, later beig bumped down to thirty-four.
- Amicable Exes: With his ex-wife Estella, although "The Mummies of Malenque" reveal that Jessie sometimes has to enforce it.
- All There in the Manual: His full name is displayed briefly on screen in the very first episode of the classic series. One episode, "Race For Danger", uses the "Roger" name, but it is from Classic Quest that his middle initial is known (and even then, we're not sure what it stands for).
- Anger Born of Worry: In "The Mummies of Malenque", Race is prepared to read Estella the riot act for putting Jessie in danger after he found her "neck deep in quicksand". She pointedly reminds Race that she's not the only one who's taken Jessie to dangerous places.
- The Casanova: To Jessie's eternal annoyance, as she's tired of running into her father's exes.
- Genius Bruiser: While he's no Dr. Quest, Race is hardly Dumb Muscle. He's an accomplished pilot, an expert at several martial arts, and perfectly capable of handling Dr. Quest's equipment without problem.
- Guile Hero: Once allowed a thug to escape, knowing the hired goon would never violate his code of silence, but also knowing that he could follow him with the tracker he planted on him.
- Heterosexual Life-Partners: With Dr. Quest.
- Meaningful Name: The surname "Bannon" means "White" and Race has prematurely white hair.
- Papa Wolf: For all the kids, but especially his daughter Jessie. Harm her, and there isn't a force on Earth that can protect you. And Dr. Quest will be backing him up.
- Spies Are Lecherous: Much to his daughter's chagrin, Race racked up quite the number of lovers in his years working in espionage and even afterwards proves quite eager to romance the nearest pretty face.
- Writers Cannot Do Math: He is supposed to be 38 in the first season, later bumped down to 37 in the second, but his date of birth is given in the second season as 1954, unless that means the season was meant to be set in 1991.
Jessica Margret Leya "Jessie" Bannon
Voiced by: Jesse Douglas (Season 1), Jennifer Hale (Season 2)
- Action Girl: Depending on the Writer. She suffered a degree of
Badass Decay in Season 2, though she recovered a bit before the show ended. - All There in the Manual: Her full name comes from promotional materials.
- Beware the Nice Ones: Consider what she does to Surd in "Thoughtscape", she's easily the cruelest of the group when she's pushed. Seriously, as kind as she usually is, do not hurt her family.
- Brainwashed and Crazy: She winds up this way in "Thoughtscape", thanks to Surd, who programs her to attack the Quests. After she recovers, she makes sure it will never happen again.
- Claustrophobia: She has this, demonstrated in the episode "Undersea Urgency" where she and Jonny are trapped in an undersea lab with mutant fish creatures. She has panic attacks when being presented with the possibility of entering small spaces.
- Damsel in Distress: She pulls this in the first season episode "The Darkest Fathoms", but spends most of Season 1 defying this trope. Then she falls into this in "The Mummies of Malenque" and spends much of Season 2 like this.
- Doesn't Like Guns: Varies. In Season 1, Jessie was fully willing to pick up a gun and use it, declaring that it was all in how one used it. In Season 2's "The Dark Mountain" she's openly disgusted by firearms. But in "Night of the Zinja" she has no issue with brandishing the gun she took off of the Zin Daughters.
- Green-Eyed Monster: Literally green eyed, she tends to get jealous whenever other girls show interest in Hadji or Jonny. Of course, seeing as how Hadji has a tendency to fall for villainesses...
- The Heart: Whenever she witnesses death, which is often, she shows the most sympathy out of the entire team.
- Ill Girl: After she was infected by Dr. Salazar's virus in "Mummies of the Malenque". Thankfully Jonny and Race manage to get the antidote for her in time.
Hadji Singh
Voiced by: Michael Benyear (Season 1), Rob Paulsen (Season 2)
- Age Lift: In the original series, Jonny and Hadji were both the same age. Here there is a two year age difference between the two, with Hadji being the elder.
- As Long as It Sounds Foreign: "Hadji" itself is a title for a Muslim pilgrim, not a name. Hadji's mother is a New Age Granola Girl with Psychic Powers, however, which is likely where he got it.
- Badass Bookworm: He acts as Dr. Quest's assistant and a badass adventurer in his own right. Unlike Dr. Quest, he's actually more knowledgeable in the mystic, metaphysics, and magical, often using it to save the day where conventional science fails.
- Bollywood Nerd: Actually predates the trope in popular culture. In reimagining Hadji for the first season, they moved him away from the quasi-mystical Indian stereotypes given in his origin works and portrayed him as computer literate and tech savvy... which dropped him square in the middle of a new Indian stereotype that quickly became prominent in the mid-to-late 90s.
- Changeling Fantasy: He's actually the lost prince of an Micro Monarchy on the Indian Subcontinent, sent into hiding after a coup.
- Culture Chop Suey: He has a Muslim title as his first name and a Hindu last name, as part of The Artifact from being created in the 1960s. Season 2 of The Real Adventures explains that he's from an Indian Fictional Country called Bangalore that seems to be a perfect mixture of Hindu and Muslim cultures.
- Deadpan Snarker: Very prone to this.
- Ethnic Magician: He has vaguely defined powers, sometimes presented as illusion and sleight of hand and sometimes as genuinely supernatural - Depending on the Writer. According to his mother, he inherited minor psychic abilities from her that mostly consist of psychokinesis usable on very small objects and supernatural intuition.
- Fatal Attractor: On at least two occasions, Hadji has fallen for girls who had...ulterior motives...for pursuing him. One was a succubus/vampire who was using him to get close to Jessie in order to drain her life energy. The other was one of the Daughters of Zin, and just using him to locate the hidden valley of Shangri-la.
- Omnidisciplinary Scientist: He doesn't have any doctorates, yet, but he seems more than capable of helping Doctor Quest with any and all of his various experiments.
- Rebel Prince: He loved finding his long-lost mother, but as soon as he found out he was the heir to a throne he crowned her Sultana so he could go back to living in America.
Bandit
Voiced by: Frank Welker
- Evil-Detecting Dog: If Bandit doesn't like someone, it's a sure bet that they're dangerous somehow.
- Immortality: After the events of "The Bangalore Falcon", Bandit is effectively immortal. This may be why he survived the carnage in "The Robot Spies".
- Pint-Sized Powerhouse: Bandit may be small, but he has knocked over mooks by leaping at them, and has bitten more than one assassin in their gun arm.
- Precious Puppy: Bandit is always getting fawned over by the ladies of the show, from Jessie and Estella to "Jezebel" Jade herself.
IRIS
Voiced by: B. J. Ward
- A.I. Is a Crapshoot: Though IRIS has never directly turned against the Quest Team, she has been repeatedly hacked.
- Literal Genie: In once gaming session, Jonny tells IRIS she'd better equip him with a "big" sword, to which she increased the length to the same size as his body, with a corresponding increase in weight. Jonny then tells IRIS to give him a break, at which point he falls over, breaking his blade in two, and leaving IRIS to reply that he'd requested a break.
- You Didn't Ask: Her typical response when the team doesn't get critical information right away.
Friends, Family, and Allies
Commander Bennett
Voiced by: Paul Eiding
- Reasonable Authority Figure: Trusts Race and Dr. Quest enough to give them leeway on their missions.
- Reassigned to Antarctica: His (offscreen) fate as of "Without A Trace", after a Presidential election shifted power and he found himself at odds with the new administration. Interestingly enough, by the end of the episode his successor, a nasty General Ripper who believed Dr. Quest and company kidnapped the President (not without cause, as Surd made a convincing video) met the same fate.
Estella Velasquez
Voiced by: Theresa Saldana
- Amicable Exes: With Race, though "The Mummies of Malenque" shows that sometimes Jessie has to actively enforce it.
Jade
Voiced by: Tasia Valenza
- Only One Name: Per the original series, although she has earned the nickname "Jezebel" Jade.
Pasha
Voiced by: Maurice LaMarche
Alice Starseer
Voiced by: Irene Bedard
- Cartwright Curse: She ultimately doesn't wind up with Dr. Quest because she chooses to explore space with the aliens.
- Starcrossed Lovers: She becomes Dr. Quest's Love Interest twice in his life, but both times circumstances and their own choices keep them apart.
President Alena Stansy
Voiced by: Darlene Carr
Captain Havel
Voiced by: Jim Meskimen
Expy: Of Captain Nemo, another seafaring Well-Intentioned Extremist who is driven to deadly violence for what he believes is a good cause.
Grandpa Doug
Voiced by: Harve Presnell
- Cool Old Guy: He's a wise and lovable Mentor Archetype to Jonny and Hadji...
- Beware the Nice Ones: But he won't stand for Von Romme murdering his employees and ruining the environment. And he repays Hank, a crooked ranch hand who was secretly working for Von Romme, with a haymaker that flattens him.
- No Celebrities Were Harmed: Sort of. He's based on Doug Wildey, creator of the original Jonny Quest series, who died shortly before Real Adventures began production.
Villains
Dr. Jeremiah Surd
Voiced by Frank Welker
- And I Must Scream: His fate at the end of his final episode, "Thoughtscape", after Jessie has had enough of Surd torturing her and her family. While his physical body lies catatonic, Jessie not only traps him in Questworld, but strips him of his mobility and powers there, leaving him confined to his wheelchair even in cyberspace — possibly forever.
- Beard of Evil: Sprouts one when Jonny and the gang find him in the madhouse. He's shaved in the second season, though.
- Evil Cripple: In the real world, he's a quadriplegic confined to his wheelchair — which is why he wants to rule Questworld, where he's not only fully mobile, but all-powerful until Jessie takes care of that in "Thoughtscape".
- Even Evil Has Loved Ones: His one redeeming quality appears to be that he values Julia as much as she does him. Even in one of his final episodes when he's shown flirting with other women—which the Quests exploit to make Julia question Surd's loyalty to her—Surd still personally reassures her that she's still in his esteem.
- Evil Old Folks: His hair is completely gray.
- It's Personal:
- Surd hates Race Bannon for getting him crippled, although his paralyzing injuries were actually caused by a trigger-happy SWAT officer.
- He winds up on the receiving end of this in "Thoughtscape", thanks to Jessie.
- Lack of Empathy: Exemplified by this exchange from "Escape to Questworld".Race: Doesn't it bother you that millions will die?
Surd: Does it bother me when I step on ants crossing the sidewalk?
Race: How'd you get so twisted? - Mad Scientist: He starts by creating nerve gas, then progresses to hacking Questworld and other tech-related crimes.
- Morally Ambiguous Doctorate: Has a degree, most likely in chemistry.
- Red Eyes, Take Warning: His eyes are red, not much more can be said that is not stating the obvious.
- Ungrateful Bastard: The heroes let him use Questworld to transcend his crippled body in exchange for helping them deactivate the nerve gas he created. He repays their kindness by using Questworld against them every chance he gets.
- Western Terrorists: Although his goal is money, not a political agenda.
- You Could Have Used Your Powers for Good!: In "Escape to Questworld", Race Bannon points out he could've used his abilities to help mankind and he asks why he should care.
Julia
Voiced by: Megan Cavanaugh (most Season 1 episodes), Mayim Bialik ("Assault on Questworld"), Helene Udy ("Cyberswitch"), Nancy Linari ("Without a Trace", "Thoughtscape")
- Evil Redhead: During the first season. She becomes an Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette in season two.
- Undying Loyalty: To Surd. Twenty years after his supposed death it takes him one call to Julia, to get her and apparently the other members of his old gang right back at his side.
Lorenzo
Voiced by: Chick Vennera (season 1), Rob Paulsen (season 2)
Ezekiel Rage
Voiced by: Michael Bell (most appearances), David Ackroyd ("Rage's Burning Wheel", "Future Rage")
- An Arm and a Leg: He loses his right arm after his first encounter with Team Quest.
- Apocalypse Cult: Leads one as part of his goal to bring about The End of the World as We Know It.
- As the Good Book Says...: He repeatedly quotes from the Book of Rage, which is at one point shown to consist entirely of one photo of his dead family.
- Ax-Crazy: Definitely not all there and is certainly dangerous.
- Companion Cube: The Book of Rage is this to him. He goes ballistic whenever it is taken and sees himself as nothing without it.
- Evil Redhead: Played with. He was a natural redhead, but when he had red hair he was a good guy; in the first season, he had a Bald of Evil, and in the second season he had long, white hair.
- Face–Heel Turn: He used to be a heroic secret agent before the loss of his family drove him to become the unhinged leader of an apocalypse cult.
- Fallen Hero: Once upon a time, Ezekiel Rage was a good man who loyally served his country, but when the US government abandoned him when he needed it most, causing the deaths of his family, he went insane and became the deranged cult leader he is today.
- Implacable Man: He's undergone many lethal accidents from being in an exploding helicopter to an exploding space station falling from orbit, but survived! It took being sent back in time with a nuke just to keep him gone for good.
- Killed Off for Real: In "The Edge of Yesterday", he winds up sent back in time to the age of the dinosaurs along with a nuke that explodes. His cracked mask seals the deal.
- Near-Villain Victory: In "Edge of Yesterday", Rage plants a nuclear bomb deep in the earth and doesn't reveal his plan until it's too late to stop it. It's only because of Time Travel that the Quest family is able to defeat him.
- Never Found the Body: How he keeps returning, until he's Killed Off for Real by a nuke.
- Omnicidal Maniac: He repeatedly plans to wipe out all of humanity, mainly due to his insanity, and he leads a cult determined to aid him in doing so.
- Start of Darkness: Ezekiel was once a US spy. During one mission he got his cover blown and was calling for his contacts to recover him and his family, but they weren't allowed to for political reasons. That resulted into his wife and daughter dying and him getting horribly scarred.
- Throw the Book at Them: Has been shown to attack people with his Book of Rage, even knocking Race unconscious with it once.Ezekiel Rage: Behold the Book of Rage! (thunk)
Dr. Zin
Voiced by: Clyde Kusatsu
- Actually a Doombot: Zin seldom puts in a personal appearance, preferring to delegate to his subordinates.
- Big Bad: The Biggest and Baddest for the show, often behind several of the other minor villains.
- Famous Ancestor: In a first for the franchise, Dr. Zin is established to be a descendant of Genghis Khan. This extends to his daughters as well.
- Killed Off for Real: In the final episode, Zin attempted a Taking You with Me with Dr. Quest, which only succeeded in killing himself as Dr. Quest managed to escape.
- Secret Test of Character: He does this in "Night of the Zinja" combined with Faking the Dead to test his daughters' ability to run his empire without him.
Anaya Zin
Voiced by: June Angela
- Archenemy: She seems to view Hadji as her archenemy, given her We Will Meet Again tendencies are always directed towards him.
Melana Zin
Voiced by: Lucy Liu
General Vostok
Voiced by: Mark Hamill
- Bald of Evil: He’s bald, and a ruthless terrorist.
- Big Ol' Eyebrows: They're not quite as big as his mustache, but they're still pretty significant.
- Dirty Communists: He’s an ex-KGB agent turned terrorist determined to create a Communist utopia, no matter how many lives are lost.
- Good Hair, Evil Hair: His 'stache is huge, and it gives him an appropriate resemblance to Josef Stalin.
Von Romme
Voiced by: Edward Asner
- Bad Boss: He whacks around his own minions and steps on their faces whenever he's in a mood, and he even promises to murder them if they keep bungling. Given the kind of man Von Romme is, it's hard not to take those threats fully seriously.
- Bald of Evil: He's bald, and a murderous Corrupt Corporate Executive.
- Corrupt Corporate Executive: He uses a bio-dome as a cover to mine uranium to sell to terrorists, and murders one of Grandpa Doug’s workers when he catches on, later trying to do the same to Doug, Jonny, and Hadji.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: He crashes headfirst into the uranium he mined, and dies of both heavy radiation poisoning and radiation burns. It's definitely a Karmic Death, though.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: He's killed by his own uranium.
Dr. Rabel Salazar
- Bad Boss: He uses one of his own men as a test subject for his virus.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: The Malenque mummies kill him by exposing him to a large dose of his own virus.
- Mad Scientist: Tries to recreate a virus that wiped out his ancestors.
