The primary villain of the first game, a former Spectre agent turned rogue, who takes control of an army of geth and sets out to find an artifact known as "the Conduit." Is actually being controlled by Sovereign.

Did we forget to mention that his theme song is also the Game Over music?

---

• Anti-Heroic Willpower: How he manages to overcome Sovereign's indoctrination long enough to kill himself.
• Arch-Enemy: The most personal adversary to Commander Shepard, by far.
• Artificial Limbs: Has a mechanical arm donated by the geth, and later gets many Reaper implants.
• Battle Aura: As the only turian biotic encountered thus far, he gets an appropriately awesome charge-up scene whenever he enters into battle.
• Big Bad: Or not.
• Boss Remix: A remix of Sovereign's theme.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: By Sovereign.
• Creepy Blue Eyes: Glowing blue ones too, and if you look really closely, they resemble The Illusive Man's, which hints that both have been touched by Reapers.
• Dark Messiah
• Deadpan Snarker: During the Council meeting he mocks the fact that a dream is their sole evidence against him.
• Driven to Suicide: Can be talked into this during his Heel Realization.
• Draco in Leather Pants: In-universe. Lair of the Shadow Broker reveals that there's at least one documentary portraying him as a misunderstood hero.
  • The fact that during Kasumi's heist, a statue of Saren is seen as a desirable gift, seems to imply that Saren is the subject of a lot of Misaimed Fandom in-universe. The Death Glare Shepard gives the statue doesn't begin to sum up his/her obvious feelings about this.
• The Dragon: While he at first appears to be the Big Bad, he's just a puppet to his sentient flagship, Sovereign.
  • The Heavy: That said, Saren tends to steal the limelight.
• Dying as Yourself: With a Charm/Intimidate, the last lucid independent thought Saren can have is to kill himself to make the indoctrination end.
• Dying Like Animals: Surprisingly, Saren is a mouse.
• Even Evil Has Standards: In Revelation, one of the many people he beat for information was a batarian who was going to beat a prostitute. Saren makes clear he is disgusted by this, and then goes on to torture the batarian for information.
  • What makes this noteworthy for Saren is that the prostitute is human, a species he openly despises.
• Evil Counterpart: Can be seen as a version of Shepard who's willing to cross the Moral Event Horizon in order to achieve "greater good." This is especially made clear in the Paragon ending of Mass Effect 2.
• Evil Hand: The implants that reanimate him at the end of the game were given to him after Virmire; Sovereign became suspicious of him, and wanted to keep a closer eye on his pet.
• Evil Overlooker: Can be seen in the boxart.
• Evil Sounds Deep
• Fallen Hero: Though the prequel novel makes it clear he was always a jerkass.
• Fantastic Racism: While only mentioned in the game, the novel Revelation makes it very clear he hates humans.
• Fiction 500: He was a major investor in Binary Helix, which allowed him to fund various research projects, not to mention the veritable army of mercenaries he regularly hires.
• Final Boss: Of the first game, though Sovereign is directly controlling him at this point.
• Final Boss Preview: The first battle with him on Virmire. This battle is also a Breather Boss compared to the other bosses so far.
• Freudian Excuse: It's suggested that his racism toward humans is because of his brother's death in the First Contact War.
  • It's not. His brother, Desolas, did not die during the First Contact War: he died on the turian homeworld of Palaven well after the FCW had ended. Saren was forced to kill Desolas via long range bombardment upon realizing that Desolas had become irreversibly indoctrinated by a Reaper artifact, the Arca Monolith, and planned to use the Monolith to create an army of turian husks.
• Heel Face Door Slam: If you appeal to him using Paragon options.
• Heel Realization: Can be talked into having one of these.
• Historical Villain Upgrade: In the second game. While Saren is a pretty bad guy to begin with, the Council is quick to demonize him and exaggerate his villainy, in spite of the fact that Saren was a pawn of Sovereign. Saren is painted as the mastermind and becomes a scapegoat so that the Council can ignore the Reaper threat.
• Hollywood Cyborg
• Karmic Transformation: Getting turned into a Husk after dying is awful(ly poetic).
• Knight Templar
• Last-Second Chance: Shepard can offer him this, and if s/he is persuasive enough Saren will break free just long enough to kill himself.
• Les Collaborateurs: Seemingly, he helps the Reapers because he thinks they will spare at least some organics if Saren can prove they are helpful. Really, though, it's More than Mind Control in action.
• Machine Worship: Saren convinced the geth to obey him by doing this, acting as the 'prophet' for the return of the Reapers. Unfortunately for him, it didn't stay an act for long.
• Mind Over Matter: The only onscreen named turian biotic of the series.
• More than Mind Control
• Names to Run Away From Really Fast: Doesn't that name sound familiar?
  • He is also named after Søren Kierkegaard, the father of existentialism.
• Necessarily Evil: Believes that proving organics to be useful will save them from the Reapers. He's proven horrifically right about that by the sequel.
• N.G.O. Superpower: He's not just a state-sponsored terrorist with years of experience. He has asari commandos. Krogan mercenaries. An army of geth. And Binary Helix, an interstellar biotech conglomerate that pays for all of it. And don't forget his Creepy Starship.
• No One Could Survive That: At the end of the game. He doesn't.
• Not so Different: He's ruthless, racist, sadistic and willing to let hundreds die so long as it serves his ends. At many points, though, Renegade Shepard can note that he would do the exact same thing.
• Obviously Evil: In his very first appearance the cutscene practically draws flashing arrows pointing to the massive number of tubes festooning his back and to the glowing blue lights of cybernetics under his skin.
• Oh Crap: Has a minor one on Ilos when Joker combat-drops the Mako almost right on top of him.
• One-Winged Angel: When Sovereign activates his implants and takes over his body.
• The Paragon Always Rebels: Not that he's a paragon in the sense of the trope's meaning, Saren was still one of the best Spectres before he went very, very, very far off the rails.
• Post Mortem Comeback: Gets reanimated into a Husk by Sovereign. His death triggers a lowering of Sovereigns' shields and his balance, allowing the Normandy and the Alliance to take it out.
• Primal Stance: Normally, Saren's posture is wonderful. However, when he starts to get ticked off...
• Properly Paranoid: About being controlled by Sovereign.
• The Quisling: Though how much of this was his own thinking and how much was Sovereign's More than Mind Control is not entirely clear.
• Rabid Cop: Certainly fits the trope during Revelation.
• Recurring Boss: Twice. If you count his huskified form as a separate boss battle, thrice.
• Redemption Equals Death: He can be persuaded to kill himself so Sovereign can't make him open the Citadel Relay. Subverted since the galaxy still sees him as a monster. Ironic in that he was viewed as a legend while he was Sovereign's Dragon.
• Red Herring: It's implied at the beginning and in the prequel novel that Saren's driving motivation is his hatred towards humanity. This is largely bogus, since it was purely coincidental that his first attack happened to be a human colony, and he's acting equally against all the galactic civilizations.
• Red Right Hand: The massive number of cybernetics he's visibly crammed with, including a geth arm replacing one of his organic ones, kinda screams evil.
• Rogue Agent: Used to be the Council's best and most famous Spectre.
• Skippable Boss: Sort of. There are two stages to his boss fight, so convincing him to go through redemption by suicide simply skips the first part of the fight and propels you into the second section of the battle.
• Social Darwinist: He has elements of this.
  Saren: Your species needs to learn its place, Shepard.
• Story Driven Invulnerability: Refreshingly averted. Every time Saren appears in the earlier parts of the game, it's either in a cutscene where Shepard isn't present, or as a hologram that Shepard is incapable of throttling. When they finally meet face-to-face, it is on.
• We Can Rule Together: To Shepard, twice.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Wants to usher in the Reaper invasion because he believes that if organics make themselves useful, they will be spared by the Reapers (he's right, but not quite the way he hoped). Though it's impossible to tell how much of that belief was implanted by Sovereign, and his original plans for the ship weren't exactly nice.
• What Could Have Been: Saren's original costume design had him dressed all in black.
• Worthy Opponent: Despite his intense dislike of humans, he's very interested in getting Shepard on his side, going out of his way to do so twice in the middle of a battlefield.
• Villain with Good Publicity: At first. He gets exposed quite early on, though.

---

A powerful asari matriarch who acts as Saren's partner. Is also Liara's mother. Like Saren, she is also controlled by Sovereign.

---

• And I Must Scream: Indoctrination is already a case of this, but it's even worse for Benezia as she locked part of her mind away and was fully aware what was happening the entire time.
• Anti-Villain
• The Baroness
• Bi the Way
• Brainwashed and Crazy
• Buxom Is Better: According to Aethtya, who practically goes stary eyed remembering her magnificent rack.
• Cleavage Window: Aethyta fully admits having been entranced by that rack, "even before she hit the matriarch stage"...
• Discount Lesbians
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: "His teeth upon my ear... his fingers on my spine..."
• The Dragon: To Saren who is also a Dragon.
• Dying as Yourself
• Evil Costume Switch: Implied two games after her appearance, in Mass Effect 3, as Liara tells that when she was a child, her mother loved to dress in yellow.
• Evil Matriarch: Not by choice.
• Fighting From The Inside: Prior to speaking to the rachni queen. She is able to completely resist Saren's influence, after taking enough ammunition to stop an entire commando unit, long enough to help Shepard at least somewhat, but eventually succumbs to her injuries from the fight beforehand. She declines medigel if offered, saying she'd just go back to being a slave anyway.
• Flunky Boss
• Go into the Light: Cruelly subverted by her dying words.
  No light? They always said there would be a...ah...
• Heroic Sacrifice: Her final act is to give Shepard the coordinates to the Mu Relay and then request that they kill her so she will no longer be under Sovereign's control.
• Heroic Willpower: That plus her biotics allow her to seal off her consciousness long enough to have a last talk with Shepard.
• Hey, It's That Voice!: Deanna Troi and Demona.
• I Die Free: She specifically refuses medigel after Shepard's party fatally wounds her.
• Male Gaze: When we first see her on Saren's ship, the first things we see of her are her rear end as she walks towards Saren, and then her chest before the camera pans up.
  • Humorously, she coughs as if to say My Eyes are Up Here to the player and BioWare.
• Maligned Mixed Marriage: Being an asari, this is inverted. Benezia is the one who couldn't face the stigma of raising a pureblood daughter, and left Aethyta while she was still pregnant.
• Mind Over Matter
• Mind Rape: Quite literal, it seems. Benezia states that Sovereign's hold on her feels like "his teeth are at my ear - fingers on my spine..."
• Necessarily Evil: She started off helping Saren as a way of trying to dissuade him from his destructive path. Then Saren's Eldritch Abomination friend got involved...
• One Bad Mother
• Religious Bruiser: Revered among the Asari for her many writings on the subject of Theology.
  • Revealed in 3 that she was one of the few Asari who still actively practice worship to the Goddess Athame.
• Redemption Equals Death
• Spikes of Villainy
• So Proud of You: Tells Liara this before she succumbs to Indoctrination again.
• Suicide By Spectre: Because she knows she can't break Sovereign's Mind Control completely.
• Tragic Monster: She only joined Saren because she hoped that she could stop his evil from within. Then Sovereign decided to chime in.
• Woman in Black

---

"We impose order on the chaos of organic evolution. You exist because we allow it, and you will end because we demand it."

Voiced by: Peter Jessop

The immense vessel belonging to Saren. One of the Reapers, which is controlling Saren and using him to find the Conduit in order to open the way for a massive Reaper invasion of the galaxy.

WARNING: The entire following entry is one massive spoiler. Read at your own risk.

---

• Abusive Precursors: Holds the page quote.
• Badass Boast: Pretty much his entire speech during Planet Wham, er, Virmire. When combined with his very, very deep mechanical voice, it can give most people the shivers.
  Sovereign: You exist because we allow it. And you will end because we demand it.
• Bad Boss: He pretty much says flatout that he doesn't give two shits about the geth, and actually seems a bit insulted that they revere him as a god. That, and Reaper indoctrination.
• Big Bad: In the first game, he's the true force behind Saren.
• Blue and Orange Morality: He outright tells Shepard that the reapers' motivations are incomprehensible to organics.
• Color-Coded for Your Convenience: Sovereign is red, Harbinger is yellow. When Sovereign ASSUMES CONTROL of Saren, the possessed body is red.
• Cool Starship: ...since he is the starship.
• Dangerously Genre Savvy: Sovereign is smart enough to actually give a villainous monologue without giving away any details that would really let Shepard know how to stop it. It also turns out that the moment it realized that Shepard was inside Saren's base, it turned around and headed back to kill Shepard immediately, instead of leaving it to the mooks.
• Eldritch Abomination: Bonus points for being a squid-shaped starship.
• Evil Gloating: Practically every single line he has.
• Evil Sounds Deep: Oh, hell yes!
• Fighting a Shadow: When he possesses Saren. The only time you'll fight him in the game.
• Karmic Death: Killed by humans in the process of trying to activate the Reaper's relay.
• I Shall Taunt You: Makes some pretty badass boasts.
  "Your words are as empty as your future. I am the vanguard of your destruction."
  • Not without reason. See Nigh Invulnerability below.
• The Juggernaut
• Laser-Guided Karma: Personally forces a deceased Saren to fight Shepard through a painful Karmic Transformation. Comes back to bite him in the ass once Saren loses.
• Lightning Bruiser: In naval terms. Sovereign is immense and powerful, but shockingly maneuverable and fast. At one point Joker reports that Sovereign pulls a turn that "would shear any of our ships in half."
• The Man Behind the Man: The true force behind Saren.
• Meaningful Name: Both of his names are meaningful; "Sovereign" is Exactly What It Says on the Tin, and "Nazara" is an early Greek translation of Nazareth.
• Mind Control: Called "Indoctrination" in the game. All Reapers can do it - even when they're dead.
• Mind Rape: Indoctrination is also this. It's permanent and is about the most horrible fate a person can suffer.
• The Mothership: This is what everyone on Eden Prime calls Sovereign, for lack of a better word.
• Names to Run Away From Really Fast
• Nigh Invulnerability: Comes with being a Reaper. He is destroyed but it takes the combined efforts of TWO ENTIRE FLEETS to finally bring him down - and after his shields dropped after Shepard killed his vessel, Reaper!Saren.
• Omnicidal Maniac
• One-Scene Wonder: He only gets a single scene with dialogue, and then one line and a couple of cutscenes after that. But DAMN are they awesome.
  • In just those few scenes, he shows just how powerful ONE Reaper is, as when he's destroyed he brings almost an entire fleet with him.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Shepard's entire conversation with Sovereign consists of Shepard asking what the Reapers could possibly hope to achieve and Sovereign responding with a barrage of You Suck and 'your-death-is-an-inevitability'-style taunting.
• Sapient Ship
• Screw You Reapers: All Sovereign ever does is boast about the Reapers' superiority, but what happens to him? He gets blown up.
  • Though he does bring almost an entire fleet down with him. Without even trying.
• Smug Snake: All the smugness, but with none of the usual incompetence.
• The Unfought: Sort of justified.
• Time Abyss: Possibly tens of millions of years old.
• Vicious Cycle: Unique in that he and his kind are deliberately perpetuating it. Over and over again. For millions of years.
• Villainous Breakdown: His tone of voice when taking control of Saren's corpse suggests that he's more than a little pissed.
• Villains Never Lie: Ultimately averted. Pretty much everything he tells you about the Reapers and their purpose is proven wrong in the third game. It isn't clear if he was intentionally lying or had been fed false information; some of what he tells you is flat-out absurd, like the Reapers having no creator and no beginning.
• Voice of the Legion: The scary part is that he's not the only one...
• We Are Legion: Concerning the Reapers. And he's absolutely right, in more than one way.

---

"Invaders. Your every step is a transgression. A thousand feelers appraise you as meat, good only to dig or decompose."

A sentient alien plant that lives underground on the planet Feros. It is capable of controlling other sentient beings with the spores it produces by using behavioral conditioning to reshape their minds through crippling pain. Malicious and seeing all other life, sentient or otherwise, only in terms of potential thralls, it makes a deal with Saren that goes way far south.

---

• Arc Villain: For Feros.
• Attack Its Weak Point
• Blue and Orange Morality: It cannot conceive of any other form of sentient life as anything but a threat or potential thrall.
  • Blame Saren, who broke his promise to the Thorian.
  • Or don't, since in '100,000 years it deigned to actually negotiate with other sentients only once. So, even if that deal had been a good one and it niced up a bit after that, that's a lot of time on the Orange side.
• Eldritch Abomination
• Distaff Counterpart: Let's face it, it's pretty much an organic Reaper. Impossibly old? Check. Can control sentient beings? Check. Bizzare alien morality? Check. Cthulu-esque? Check. The main difference is that the Reapers care nothing for anything else beyond needing them for resources, while the Thorian seems to have a god complex.
• Hive Mind: Shiala reveals in 3 that, while the Thorian is truly dead, its spores have given Zhu's Hope a weak hive mind connection amongst the colonists, allowing them to put up a fight against the reapers.
• The Hypnotoad/Puppeteer Parasite: A bizarre combination of the two. It uses biological agents to control its slaves, but it doesn't personally invade them to do so.
• Mind Control via extended...
• Mind Rape
• People Puppets
• Stationary Boss: One that doesn't directly attack you, either. It leaves that job to the Creepers and asari clones.
• Strange Syntax Speaker: It flips back and forth between this and regular speech.
• Time Abyss: It's been alive for at least 100,000 years. Long enough to witness more than one Reaper invasion, as the villains know.

---

Voiced by: Gwendoline Yeo

An asari who followed Matriarch Benezia when she allied herself with Saren. She was later sacrificed to the Thorian in exchange for its knowledge of the Conduit and was ultimately freed by Commander Shepard. Due to the unique mind meld she experienced as the Thorian's thrall, she is the only known person to have completely recovered from the effects of Reaper indoctrination.

---

• The Atoner: If you spare her life, she becomes the protector of Zhu's Hope, saying they suffered for her misdeeds and she needs to make amends.
• Cloning Greens: The Thorian used her to continuously produce asari-like biotic slaves to fight Shepard when s/he killed it on Feros.
• Cursed with Awesome: Her exposure to the Thorian caused her to suffer from biotic instability. However, she and the other colonists of Zhu's Hope become a weak Hive Mind, and she can ignore Reaper indoctrination.
• Face Death with Dignity: If you decide to be a bastard and kill her after hearing her story, and after she gave you vital information, she is remarkably understanding and calmly kneels down for you to shoot her in the head.
• Green-Skinned Space Babe: The first asari to legitimately fit the title at that!
• Heel Face Revolving Door: If you choose to kill her on Feros, Shepard will discuss this trope before putting a bullet in her head.
• Heel Face Turn: She understandably became disillusioned with Saren after he fed her to the Thorian. The experience also had the benefit of helping her to break free of Sovereign's Mind Control.
• Hey, It's That Voice!: It's Paine!
• Hive Mind: She and the rest of the Zhu's Hope colonists have developed this by the third game due to lingering Thorian spores, allowing them to much better defend the colony from the Reapers. She also mentions that she believes she still has some degree of indoctrination, but the hive mind effect keeps it at bay.
• Mind Over Matter
• Phlebotinum Breakdown: For some reason, her powers go on the fritz if she survives being ingested by the Thorian; when you encounter her two years later her skin is green instead of blue, and her biotic powers are weak and erratic when she can use them at all.
• Ship Tease: With Shepard in the second game.

---

An asari neurospecialist working for Saren.

Voiced by: Belinda Cornish

• Brainwashed and Crazy: If you spared her, the third game reveals that Rana was indoctrinated the entire time.
• Evil Genius: To Saren's Big Bad (not really). She was hired by him to study the effects of Reaper indoctrination. This resulted in her own indoctrination.
• Not That Kind of Doctor: Studies neuroscience.
• Punch Clock Villain

---

A radical Batarian terrorist that serves as the main antagonist of the Bring Down The Sky DLC. He seeks to reignite the war between the Alliance and the Batarians by crashing an asteroid into an Alliance colony.

---

• Arc Villain: Of Bring Down The Sky.
• Arch-Enemy: Balak especially despises a Shepard with a War Hero or Ruthless background.
• Authority Equals Asskicking
• Enemy Mine: If he survived Bring Down The Sky, he can return in Mass Effect 3 and even be convinced to have his fleet join Shepard's war effort.
  • Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: The two make it clear that they really hate one another as well.
• Fantastic Racism
• Flunky Boss
• Karma Houdini: In the Paragon ending. You get a chance to rectify this in the third game, although you if you do so, you won't get the Batarian Fleet War Asset.
  • It gets worse with him as a War Asset. The batarian fleet is a fairly strong resource, but it sucks knowing that access to it requires working with this terrorist scumbag and mass murderer. Then again, around the time of Mass Effect 3, he murdered a whole bunch of Alliance personnel while trying to help his people survive the Reaper onslaught.
• La Résistance: Convinced that he is but the first of a wave of batarian terrorists who will initiate a campaign of terror across human space.
• Never My Fault: Applies this to his species as a whole with his "What the Hell, Hero?" speech about how the Hegemony falling is Shephard's fault in 3.
• No One Could Survive That: If you leave him to bleed out in the first game, he turns out to have survived and escaped in the third game.
• Not so Different: If you sacrifice the hostages, he will claim this.
• Revenge Before Reason: How some of his men views his methods.
• Sadistic Choice: Forces Shepard to choose between stopping him or saving the hostages.
• Shadow Archetype: He's similar to Saren in many respects - state-sponsored terrorists with a grudge against humans and impressive resources. They differ largely in that Saren cares far more about the Reapers to concern himself with anything else, whereas Balak is so prejudiced against humans that he honestly makes Saren look pleasant.
• Unexpected Successor: When the Reapers tear through the batarian military, he's left as the highest-ranking officer in the entire Hegemony.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: He tries to paint himself as this, but it's averted in that nothing he says justifies what he attempts to do. He even tries to accuse Shepard of being responsible for Kate Bowman's death when Balak was the one who set the bomb and triggers it if Shepard refuses to let him escape.
• What the Hell, Hero?: He tries this if Shepard refuses to let him go. He tells Shepard that s/he is to blame for the deaths of Bowman and her team after Balak blows the charges. At his accusation that "Who's the real terrorist here?" Shepard can retort that "You are. But you're dead."
  • He also tries to blame Shepard for the destruction of the entire Hegemony by the Reapers, though his logic is....squiffy. The short version is that, by stopping Balak from bombing Terra Nova, the Hegemony "had" to start doing more research on the Leviathan of Dis, an ancient derelict starship the batarians spirited away from a crash site on the planet Dis, in order to get an edge over the Alliance. The Leviathan was a Reaper. Hilarity Ensues, much of the Hegemony's government and military command is indoctrinated, and when the Reapers arrive the Hegemony gets stomped into the mud. And its all Shepard's fault! Shepard can only get him to stand down peacefully by saying whatever happened, they're all in this together now.
• You Are in Command Now: If he lives, he reveals in Mass Effect 3 that he's the highest ranked officer left in the remnants of the Batarian military.

---

"This was supposed to be a simple slave run."

Voiced by: Jason Singer

Balak's main lieutenant in Bring Down the Sky.

---

• The Dragon: To Balak.
  • Dragon Their Feet: He can be convinced to leave the asteroid with a high enough charm or intimidate level.
• Even Evil Has Standards
• Pragmatic Villainy
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: He had negative opinions on the mission since Balak joined up, and with enough charm or renegade points, can be convinced to leave.

---

A pro-human Alliance black ops group with the aim of advancing humanity's role in the galactic community. Due to disagreements with Alliance command, they eventually went rogue and became an N.G.O. Superpower in their own right. They appear in a Sidequest Sidestory in the first game, where they are experimenting on Rachni and Thorian Creepers, aiming to create super soldiers. They return in the second game, where they bring back Shepard after his death with the Lazarus Project, in order to stop the Reaper threat. There, they serve as Shepard's main financial backer, rebuilding the Normandy, giving Shepard's team custom weapons, providing intelligence, and paying Shepard after each mission. In the third game, they turn on Shepard and effectively declare war on the galaxy in their attempt to control the Reapers using ancient technology found on Mars.

---

• Arc Villain: In the first game Cerberus was encountered in a handful of the assignments, but had no impact on the main plot.
• Ascended Extra / Chekhov's Army: Became far more important starting with the second game.
• Faceless Goons: In the third game. There is a reason for this though; to hide the their new husk-like appearance.
• Jumping Off the Slippery Slope: Mass Effect 3.
• Kick the Dog: Everything they do, really.
• Knight Templar
• Mooks: In both the first game and the third game. In the first game, Cerberus Commandos were the most basic mooks; in the second, it was the Assault Troopers.
  • Gas Mask Mooks: Assault Troopers.
  • Elite Mooks: Centurions in the third game.
  • Cold Sniper: Cerberus Snipers in the first game and the Nemesis snipers in the third.
  • Superpowered Mooks: Research Technicians in the first game and Phantoms in the third.
  • Slave Mooks: Most of their soldiers in the third game are refugees who have been indoctrinated and jammed full of cybernetics. Background conversations suggest that many still join Cerberus willingly, though without knowing what they actually do to their troops.
  • Replacement Mooks: Indirectly become this to the Reapers, in a way. Their leader is indoctrinated, and does a lot of what the Reapers want unwillingly, even if the factions still do fight each other directly numerous times.
• Mad Scientist: They have a habit of hiring them.
• Mini Mecha: Their Atlas Mechs.
• N.G.O. Superpower: In the first game, they were relatively tame, just running a few outposts and research facilities on isolated planets. Later in the series, their power is massively increased. Especially in the third game where they possess, among other things, millions of stormtroopers outfitted with custom weapons and armor, fleets that can challenge the Alliance in straight up combat, enough funds to fund the building of their own weapons, vehicles, and armor, hundreds of facilities spread out across the galaxy, and enough resources to attack the Citadel, basically the capital of the galaxy. Even with the financial backing they receive from major corporations, their power is ridiculous for a simple human terrorist group.
• Playing With Syringes: Most of their experiments tend to be nothing short of inhumane as well as being highly impractical. However, according to the Illusive Man himself, most of them tend to be "rogue cells" though it could easily be interpreted as him claiming Plausible Deniability to look good in front of Shepard.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Though calling them "well intentioned" may be stretching it.

---

"I'm not good. I'm not even great. I'm the best damn helmsman in the Alliance fleet."

Voiced by: Seth Green

The pilot of the Normandy. While he is handicapped by brittle bone disease, he's an essential member of the team, serving as Mission Control and all-around piloting badass.

---

• Ace Pilot
• And Now for Someone Completely Different: The only playable character in the series other than Shepard.
• Ascended Extra: Joker goes from being effectively part of the scenery in the first game (never once seen outside of his pilot's chair) to having a much larger role (most notably the one referenced in the spoiler-protected entry just above this one) in the second.
• Badass Pilot
• Bring News Back: What Shepard tasks Joker with doing in the Everybody Dies ending. Before dying.
• Can't Have Sex, Ever: It is revealed in Mass Effect 3 that he risks breaking his bones even if he just engages in some 'light over-the-cloths action'.
• Cluster S Bomb: "Shit! Shit! Shitshitshit! What the SHIT?! Shitshitshitshitshitshit!"
• Covert Pervert: He is playing pornography whilst flying the Normandy. EDI is aware, too.
  • ..."covert"?
    • It WAS supposed to go to his earpiece.
  • After a tour of the Normandy SR-2, Liara mentions that he asked if she and Shepard were planning to reenact scenes from an asari porn vid. She doesn't get the reference, but Shepard might.
    • Shepard definitely gets it as s/he starts rubbing his/her neck, with an embarrassed tone in his/her voice.
  • If you didn't romance her, Joker asked if Liara had "embraced eternity" lately.
  • When Joker informs you that Jack and Miranda have started a fight in the latter's office he'll ask you to take pictures.
  • Covert?
• Deadpan Snarker: Despite "Joker" originally being ironic, he can lay down snark with the best of them (not surprising, given who voices him).
  "I guess the geth aren't all bad, huh? They're like EDI's ex-con uncle we don't talk about."
  
  "I'm glad that mess is over for Tali, Commander. Some of those quarians... I guess living aboard a ship can really mess with your priorities? Not that I would know... ah, I just burned myself. Great."
  
  "Two years and everything hits the crapper. Teach you to die on me."
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: The guy killed Sovereign!
• Disabled Snarker: His bone disease makes him extremely cynical.
• Dude, Not Funny!: In-universe. Though Shepard usually just rolls his/her eyes at his jokes, his crack about the Asari after the fall of Thessia is one of the few moments where Shepard will tell him to shut up.
• Escalating War: He winds up engaged in one of these with EDI, with him muting her until his thumb breaks, her making his chair spin unexpectedly, him putting grease on her camera lenses...
• Everybody's Dead, Dave: Joker is literally the only person to survive the events of the second game in the worst ending.
  • Also happens when EDI asks Joker to flush out the ship atmosphere to eject the invading collectors. "What about the crew?" "They are gone, Jeff. The Collectors took them."
• Fake Static: When he lets slip about Shepard hanging up on the Council to Liara, he quickly claims they're "going through some dark matter".
• Famed in Story: Nowhere near the extent as Shepard, but when he and Garrus exchange some good-natured speciesist jokes in ME3, Joker is indirectly the subject of one of Garrus's, who claims he heard it from a private on Palaven. (Why does the Alliance hire pilots with brittle bone disease? So their marines can beat someone in hand-to-hand drills.)
• Gaussian Girl: Joker cheerfully claims he was trying to invoke this when he smeared EDI's optics with grease.
• Green Eyes: Oh, those pretty, pretty emerald eyes...
• Gunship Rescue
• Handicapped Badass: Joker has Vrolik's Syndrome, also known as Osteogenesis Imperfecta or brittle bone disease. Basically, he can barely jog, and the slightest injury can break bones. He leads the 5th fleet into battle to save the Citadel especially when if you pick a Paragon option to save the Coucil, they flew in like Big Damn Heroes. Even more badass is how Joker managed to give the final killing blow on Sovereign in a puny frigate.
  • Notably too is that during said sequence, the normally talkative Joker is completely silent. Beware the Nice Ones indeed!
  • At the end of Mass Effect 2, the Normandy arrives to rescue Shepard and his team. The airlock opens... to reveal Joker hefting an assault rifle and taking potshots at Collectors. He even takes a couple down!
    • Note that he is doing so on two broken legs and with*
      (likely to be an exaggeration on his part)
      a full set of broken ribs.
• Hey, It's That Voice!: Hey! Oz is flying my Cool Starship!
• Hope Spot: From Mordin. Close to curing Vrolik Syndrome. Current iteration would cause liver failure. Still working on it.
• I Call Him "Mister Happy": An extremely sozzled Doctor Chakwas will inform you that Joker named his "Admiral Winky." That's right, Admiral, meaning Shepard is outranked by Joker's penis.
• Improbable Piloting Skills: "It takes skill to bank a ship in vacuum - don't think it doesn't!"
• Ink Suit Actor: Bears more than a passing resemblance to Seth Green.
• Insufferable Ace Pilot: Players fresh to the series might scoff at his early claims in the original Mass Effect that he's the best pilot in the Alliance. However, he demonstrates the validity of his bragging again. And again. And again.
• Insult Friendly Fire: Inflicts this upon himself after Tali's loyalty mission. Living aboard a ship your whole really screws with your priorities - uh, wait...
• Ironic Nickname: Joker took flight school very seriously, and he was given the name Joker by an instructor who constantly needled him for being so grim. After he graduated with flying colors, he let the nickname become a conventional one.
• It's All My Fault: In the third game Joker reveals he has been secretly blaming himself for Shepard's death, feeling that because he refused to leave the Normandy it was his fault that Shepard had to come rescue him, got spaced, then had to be rebuilt by Cerberus.
• It's Personal: Joker has shades of this against the Collector Ship in the second game. It destroyed the first Normandy and dared to do the same to its successor. When Joker opens fire during the suicide mission with the upgraded cannons, he makes it perfectly clear why no-one gets away with laying a finger on his baby.
  Joker How do you like that you sons-of-bitches?! Give them hell, girl!
• Let's Get Dangerous: Near the end of the first game, the Normandy is trying to land on a planet that contains the Conduit they and Saren have been looking for. While dodging air defenses and desperately looking for a way to get down, Pressley insists they can't drop the Mako because they're too close to the ground to successfully deploy it. Joker fixes his gaze and states "I can do it." No jokes, no bravado. The best pilot in the Alliance has a job to do, and by God he's going to do it.
• Like an Old Married Couple: After EDI is unshackled and saves the ship from the Collectors, their relationship changes. EDI even stops calling him "Mr. Moreau" and starts referring to him as "Jeff."
• Moment Killer: Cheerfully so in the first game.
• Non-Action Snarker: In spades.
• OOC Is Serious Business: In ME3, he gets out of his chair and salutes Shepard before the final mission. [1]
• Perma Stubble: He once joked about Shepard recommending him for a medal after saving him/her from "swimming in molten sulfur," but is convinced he doesn't want one since he'd have to deal with the ceremony for receiving it...
  Joker: Yeah, they'd probably make me shave, too. I just spent the last seven weeks working on this baby. No medal's worth that.
• Plucky Comic Relief: While other characters also have their funny moments, conversation with Joker are almost entirely optional and serve no other purpose than to be a source of comedy.
  • Though as we find out in 3, his constant joking does have a purpose. Basically, it's to keep Shepard from going completely off the deep end, after all the hell s/he goes through.
• Porn Stash: According to EDI, he has a few zettabytes of the stuff hidden away in the Normandy computers. She flooded Cerberus with it after they tried to shut her down remotely.
  • She was joking, however.
• Putting the Band Back Together: Is the first to rejoin Shepard's crew and clearly wants to try to reunite as many of his former comrades from the first Normandy as he can.
• Robosexual: Will enter into a relationship with EDI in a cybernetic body in Mass Effect 3 if Shepard encourages both of them.
• Quizzical Tilt: His reaction to EDI's 'humans on their knees' comment.
• Sarcastic Devotee
• Scotty Time: Joker apparently deliberately pads his estimates to make himself look good when he pulls off whatever his tasks are in under that. EDI calls him out on this.
• Ship Tease: With EDI in ME2 overlapping with Belligerent Sexual Tension. While Joker and EDI deny they are flirting, everyone else... isn't convinced.
  • Shepard can explicitly ship them in 3 after EDI appropriates the Dr. Eva mech.
  • In the third game, FemShep can ask if Joker ever considered the two of them. Joker gently shoots her down, saying in alternate universe, one that didn't have military ranks, Joker would totally rock her world.
• Shout Out: The above picture caption quote is referencing another ace pilot who is known for his snarking.
• This Is Gonna Suck: While he never actually says it, his facial expression and worried "Aw, shit!" definitely fit when the Collectors board the Normandy, and Joker finds out he has to run briskly hobble all the way from the cockpit to a maintenance shaft all the way at the opposite end of the deck, then make his way to the AI core from there, all the while trying to not get dragged off or killed.
  • His reaction in the intro of Mass Effect 2, being the first to realise that the Collector War Ship have locked weapons because they can see them.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: Despite their frequent spats, he and EDI work best when together.
• Undying Loyalty: He will follow Shepard to hell and back, like so many other characters.
  • So much so that Anderson, worried about Shepard physically and mentally, asked Joker to take care of him/her.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Gives a quick one to Shepard, blaming him/her for not being on the ship when the Collectors attacked and abducted the crew. He even threatens to leave but given his Undying Loyalty to Shepard, it's just emotions. EDI points that out as well.

---

Voiced by: Carolyn Seymour

The chief medical officer stationed aboard the Normandy. When Joker joined Cerberus, she went with him, ostensibly to keep an eye on his Vrolik's syndrome, but really to keep an eye on him.

---

• Ascended Extra: Is there for a bit of exposition early on, and then doesn't have much in the way of new dialog later in the game. In ME2, she becomes the de facto Team Mom of the crew.
• Drink Order: She prefers a specialty called Serrice ice brandy. You can get a bottle for her in the second game. Which both of you then get completely wasted on.
  • Then has quite a Mood Whiplash as she starts remembering dead crewmembers.
  • Mentioned in 3 that she's not forgotten that Shepard promised that getting hammered on brandy is their new yearly ritual.
• Good-Looking Privates: Her motivation for joining the Alliance military was, in her words, "handsome soldiers with sensitive souls."
• Grandma, What Massive Hotness You Have: She's looking pretty good for a woman who is at the very least in her sixties. Justified, as the medical advances in the Mass Effect universe are far enough to make people look significantly younger than their age would imply. Chakwas is barely middle-aged in the setting.
• Hey, It's That Voice!: As a polar opposite to the kind, always-looking-out-for-her-patients Chakwas, Carolyn Seymour also voices the Locust Queen in Gears of War.
  • She also voices a large number of minor characters in Knights of the Old Republic, most notably Bastila's mother.
    • Fridge Brilliance: She is a bit "motherly" to Shepard, who has the same voice actress as Bastila (if Shepard is female).
• Hospital Hottie: The community apparently has something of a fetish for her. Surprisingly there isn't a shipping base for her and Shepard.
• In Harm's Way: After the destruction of the SSV Normandy, Chakwas was given a post at the Mars Naval Medical Center. A pretty sweet deal actually, but the doctor couldn't stand being in one place for too long:
  Dr. Chakwas: I've spent most of my life on warhsips, never knowing what the next mission might bring. I'm used to the hum of engines, the creaking bulkheads, the subtle vertigo when the momentum dampeners kick in. Life planetside is too static, too boring.
• Just a Machine: Gets into an argument over whether synthetics are "alive" with Adams later in the game, providing another either/or support choice for Shepard. Chakwas takes the stance that they're machines, Adams that "machine" doesn't necessarily mean "inanimate".
• Lady Drunk: Shows subtle hints of having become this by 2 and 3, due to stress and the death of various friends.
  • On the other hand, it might just be limited to getting royally wasted with Shepard, once a year.
• Last Name Basis: Right up until the third game, where Shepard can call her Karin over another bottle of wine. She feels that using Shepard's first name would be a disservice to what s/he's fighting for. Or it's just her prerogative as a lady.
• Noble Bigot: Not towards aliens, but 3 shows that she point-blank refuses to accept artificial intelligences as truly alive. Even though Engineer Adams, who is clearly a good friend of hers, and (depending on the player) Shepard him/herself argue against her, she dismisses their arguments and maintains that they are just machines. This does not change the fact that she is, overall, a good person.
• Older than They Look: Granted it's mentioned repeatedly how medical advances have slowed aging in humans, but Chakwas is probably the most telling example.
• Parental Substitute: Frequently acts a mother-figure towards Shepard.
• Putting the Band Back Together: Jumps at the chance to come back to the Normandy in both 2 and 3.
• Significant Anagram: Her name is an anagram of "hacksaw."
• Sole Survivor: If Shepard delays in saving the crew from the Collectors, Chakwas will always be the last one alive to call him/her out for not hurrying. If she's sent back without an escort then she'll die for good.
• So Proud of You: Tells Shepard that she's very proud of him/her before the assault on Earth.
• Team Mom: Chakwas is definitely the most nurturing person on either of the Normandys, and often takes it upon herself to look out for the crew.
• To Absent Friends: One of the toasts Chakwas and Shepard can share during the brandy drinking cutscene.
• Undying Loyalty: Do you even need to ask?

---

"I know we'll all be court-martialed if this doesn't work out, but part of me loves this!"

Voiced by: Dwight Schultz

The navigation officer of the Normandy who is later promoted to XO once Shepard has been given command of the ship by Anderson. He enlisted to follow in his grandfather's footsteps, then received his officer's commission after participating in the Skyllian Blitz.

---

• Bald of Awesome
• Dropped a Bridge on Him: See Plotline Death.
• Fantastic Racism: A little more than Ashley, especially where turians are concerned, but Shepard can help him to see past this point of view, and his datapad found at the Normandy's crash site indicates that he had grown to respect his otherworldly comrades.
• Foreshadowing: His death is the first hint we get that Anyone Can Die in the sequel, even the crew.
• Mauve Shirt: He gets a few conversations and some characterization in the first game—and he's the first person to die during the Collectors' attack on the Normandy at the beginning of the second game.
• Plotline Death: He dies in the beginning of Mass Effect 2, knocked out by a support beam during the Collectors' attack.
• Sudden Sequel Death Syndrome: He is the first character from the original game to die in the sequel.
• Undying Loyalty: He's right behind Shepard's decision to steal the Normandy from Udina's grounding.

---

"If you name a class of Alliance ship, I've probably served on it. Everything from dreadnaughts and carriers right down to frigates like the Normandy."

Voiced by: Roger Jackson

The Chief Engineer aboard the Normandy. He's reassigned to a new post following Shepard's death in the beginning of Mass Effect 2, but he's back under Shepard's command in Mass Effect 3.

---

• Big Brother Mentor: Seems to have been one to Tali; she'll note in the second game that she's been having difficulty getting used to his absence.
• Hyper Awareness: Apparently the only Alliance technician who wasn't fooled for a minute that EDI was "just a VI" program. After she reveals the truth to him, he admits he was genuinely impressed with the way she kept counteracting his attempts to secretly disconnect her.
• Military Brat: Both of his parents serve on an Alliance agricultural vessel under Admiral Hackett's command.
• Mr. Exposition: Exists primarily in the first game to explain the Normandy's stealth system and engines.
• Put on a Bus: Aside from a blink-and-you-miss-it cameo during the intro and a few mentions, he is nowhere to be seen in ME2.
  • The Bus Came Back: He returns in ME3 and is back under Shepard's command once again.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: Has no problems with taking Tali under his wing in ME1, despite her being a quarian, and does the same for both Ken and Gabby in ME3, despite their previous service with Cerberus.
  • He also proves to be one of the most open-minded about synthetic life on your entire crew. He takes to EDI and is keen to debate whether she "is" the Normandy or a separate entity, and is quick to assert that any geth just minding its own business has more rights than Cerberus. All without any cajoling or persuade checks on Shepard's part.
• Shout Out: Engineer Adams and the Tantalus Drive Core? What about Dr. Adams and the Tantalus Penal Colony?
• Undying Loyalty: He's completely unperturbed at Shepard's decision to steal the Normandy from Udina's grounding.
  • However, this trope seems to apply primarily to the Alliance; he apologizes to Shepard in ME3 for not rejoining his/her crew aboard the SR-2 in ME2, but explains that he couldn't just simply quit his post.

---

"Ah yes, "Reapers"...We have dismissed that claim."

Voiced by: Alastair Duncan (Sparatus), Jan Alexandra Smith (Tevos), Armin Shimerman (Valern)

The ruling group of most of the known Milky Way galaxy, consisting of representatives of the three later four dominant species. They can be left to die in two of the three endings of the first game. If they live, humanity gains their trust. If they die, they are all replaced by successors and remain aloof to humanity.

---

• Character Tic: When two Councilors look at one, they're about to reach a consensus. Notably, when Valern and Tevos stared down at Sparatus just before they enlisted Shepard as a Spectre.
  • If they look at one who shakes his head, their subsequent decision will negatively affect Shepard. First was with Sparatus - they denied that Saren was responsible for the attack on Eden Prime. Second was with Valern - they rejected to help Shepard take Earth from the Reapers.
• Commander Contrarian: No matter what you do, even to the point of completely opposite behaviors, Councilor Sparatus will be a jerkass. Until Mass Effect 3, when he's the first councilor who provides a means to get support.
• Doomed Contrarian: If you allow them to die in the ME1 ending.
• Dying Like Animals: A winning combination of bats, lemmings, ostriches, and reindeer. Hopefully they'll wise up before the third game, but the vast majority of the fanbase is skeptical.
• Fantastic Racism: Sparatus, against humans.
  • Valern—or, if he is killed, his dalatress replacement—shows himself to be quite anti-krogan in 3.
    • Isheel (Valern's replacement) actually seems to be one of the few salarians who is not opposed to the krogan cure. She seems to see the pragmatic value of having them as allies against the Reapers.
• The Federation
• The Ghost: If the Council dies, their replacements are never met...until 3.
• Hey, It's That Voice!: Is that Councilor Quark or Councilor Snyder? Maybe even Councilor Andrew Ryan? Any of those possibilities make the salarians suddenly seem a lot less trustworthy.
• I Believe That You Believe It: One of the ways they claim the Reapers don't exist; the galaxy only has your word for it.
• Idiot Ball: Sparatus gets one without any doubt.
  • Ironically he's the first of the councilors to drop it in 3. It makes sense as well given his species' militaristic culture. Now that the enemy has been revealed and Shepard is proven right, he knows that an alliance with other species is needed but he also needs to take some heat off of Palaven. He offers a way for Shepard to achieve both.
• Jerkass: Sparatus takes every opportunity to deride Shepard, no matter how the player acts. The other Councilors are decidedly less judgmental.
  • Also, if the Council die, their replacements are evidently this. The original Council was at least nice enough to hear Shepard out and offer to reinstate him/her. The new Council won't even see him/her, with the exception of Anderson or Udina. And we all know how nice Udina is.
• Jerkass Has a Point: Councilor Sparatus. While he's often an ass about it, Shepard does frequently do erratic things and make decisions of galactic importance without bothering to consult the council first.
  • Also when you consider that turians are taught to value discipline, self-responsibility and their government is based on heirarchical meritocracy, it makes sense why he's irritated by Shepard's maverick attitude and insubordinate nature to authority.
  • Also when he is the only council member who believes that it is plausible that Benezia would order Liara's death: "Or maybe we don't know her - we never expected she could become a traitor." Because of indoctrination, he's dead right - they don't know her, and she does try to kill Liara.
• Memetic Hand Gesture: To the "point" where "Sparatus" cannot be "mentioned" without "air quotes." "* air quotes* "
• No Name Given: Until Mass Effect 3, Sparatus and Valern were known only as the Turian and Salarian Councilor.
• Obstructive Bureaucrat: No matter what Shepard brings to their view, they will never believe him/her.
• Schmuck Bait: The Citadel itself. The station is actually the mass relay that normally brings in the Reapers for their regular genocides, designed specifically to attract sapients and prevent them from analyzing it too well.
• Schrödinger's Gun: Sparatus loves using this against you. Kill the rachni: "Do you enjoy committing genocide?" Release the queen: "How long before they wipe us out?"
• Team Mom: Tevos spends about half of her time in any conversation trying to calm things down between Sparatus and Shepard or Udina.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: Sparatus was never exactly nice, but he did start off reasonable and actually made some good points. Then Shepard became a Spectre and all bets were off. He takes another level in the sequel, where he essentially tells Shepard that he thinks s/he's completely insane, easily manipulated, and an idiot. This is said with no irony whatsoever.
  • Inverted, surprisingly, in the 3rd game; while Valern coldly shoots down any help for Shepard, Sparatus is the first to help out. Furthermore, Tevos refuses to be at a diplomatic meeting because she thinks it's a wasted effort, purely due to krogan participating in said meeting.
• Ungrateful Bastard: Even if the player saves their lives in from Sovereign, they will still offer no help whatsoever in stopping the Collectors beyond the reinstatement of Shepard's Spectre status. While Tevos seems grateful and Valern seems neutral and they both deny the Reapers' existence, and Sparatus continues to be a complete Jerkass to Shepard. The fact you're working for what is essentially a terrorist group may have something to do with it.
  • Taken to the absolute extreme in the third game: After the Reapers invade, their response to Shepard being proven right is;
  Tevos: The cruel and unfortunate truth is that while the Reapers focus on Earth, we can prepare and regroup.

---

"I know Saren. I know his reputation, his politics. He believes humans are a blight on the galaxy. This attack was an act of war."

Voiced by: Keith David

Former commanding officer of the Normandy, now advisor to Shepard from the Citadel. Was once in the running to be the first human spectre until his efforts were sabotaged by Saren.

---

• Badass:
  • He was considered to become the first human Spectre before Shepard, he HAS to be one. In Revelation he mangages to survive fighting a krogan battlemaster in close quarters combat.
  • In the Shadow Broker's video logs, you can see him holding his own in a Citadel shootout as well as punching Udina in the stomach.
  • He was the first N7 Marine, almost the first human Spectre, does all kinds of crazy stuff in the novels, and in 3 is a Guest Star Party Member. Even more so, he stays behind on Earth, while it's being hammered by the Reapers. Admiral Hackett says that he's the only reason there's still an organized resistance on Earth.
• Badass Baritone
• Badass Grandpa: Still badass even as an older captain; when releasing the Normandy to Shepard, if sent to Citadel Security he'll headbutt a guard without slowing down. In the Lair of the Shadow Broker DLC, one of the videos the Broker has will show Anderson being ambushed by a krogan and a quarian. He's killing both of them with just a pistol.
  • In Retibution, he faces down Reaper-avatar Grayson and lives to tell the tale, which is pretty damed impressive when one considers that the only other person to tackle something like that was Shepard - and Shepard had two buddies to back him/her up.
• Beehive Barrier: Fortification is one of his powers during the intro to 3 - in his admiral's uniform, to boot.
• Big Good: While not officially leading the Alliance unless you pick the Paragon end of Mass Effect, he's the only authority figure other than Admiral Hackett that Shepard consistently respects. When he's promoted to Admiral by 3, he and Admiral Hackett share this role, with Hackett being the man behind the joint species fleet while Anderson is the leader of the Earth resistance troops.
• Butt Monkey: He has to take crap from Saren, who ruined his chances to become a Spectre by blaming the destruction of an element zero refinery on him in Revelation; Udina, who belittles Anderson and complains about everything he says in addition to shafting him mid-game, forcing him to step down and hand over the ''Normandy'' to Shepard. When he overrides the lockdown, you can either get him shot by C-Sec or have him punch out Udina (funny how you have to encourage him to do the latter).
• Continuity Cameo: You get to meet Anderson's old flame, Kahlee Sanders (from Revelation), in a Mass Effect 3 side mission. If you manage to rescue her, Anderson hopes to hook up with her after the war is over.
• Cosmic Plaything: The Universe just piles on the crap for this guy. He still gets up and does his job though.
• A Day in the Limelight: Mass Effect: Revelation.
• Desk Jockey: What he's demoted to when Shepard is given command of the ship. You can decide whether he stays like this or gets promoted to Councilor at the end of the first game.
  • In Mass Effect 3, he becomes the leader of the remaining human forces on Earth resisting the Reapers.
• Doomed Hometown: According to the first Mass Effect novel Revelation, Anderson was born and raised in London. Guess where one of the main targets for the Reaper invasion of Earth is?
• A Father to His Men: Especially when it comes to Shepard.
• Four Star Badass: Gets some admirals' stars in Mass Effect 3, and if he was Councilor, he has retired from that post to return to the military. Takes charge of the Resistance on Earth once Reapers start reapin'.
• The Good Captain
• Guest Star Party Member: Fights with Shepard directly during the intro level of Mass Effect 3.
• Hero of Another Story: Of Mass Effect: Revelation and Retribution.
• Hey, It's That Voice!: Hey Goliath! And Arbiter! Julius, maybe? What are you doing here?
  • If players played Modern Warfare 2 before playing Mass Effect, they will notice that Sgt. Foley isn't making them do entirely everything.
• I Need a Freaking Drink: In the two years between Mass Effect 1 and Mass Effect 2, apparently. The Shadow Broker's dossier on him shows that he's two steps from becoming a full-blown alcoholic due to all the booze he's had to down to ignore all the stupid he's been exposed to. His tab at Dionysus Imports: 2 bottles white wine after viewing "Saren: A Hero Betrayed", 1 bottle Gargle Blaster after viewing a documentary on what really happened behind the Citadel attack, 2 bottles Vodka Drunkenski after watching "Path of Lies: A History of the Alliance Military" and a documentary on the airquotes "Reapers" back-to-back. Followed by a call to Kleen Sweep Home Maintenance.
• Kicked Upstairs: In Mass Effect 3, Captain Anderson is now Admiral Anderson.
• Knight in Sour Armor: He knows full well the galaxy is run by idiotic politicians and bureaucrats. He does not like this. He gets up and does his job anyway.
• Mentor Occupational Hazard: Interestingly enough, he actually makes it to the very end of the trilogy before (possibly) dying.
• Nice Hat: He's sporting one in Mass Effect 3.
• The Obi Wrong: He was the first graduate of the N7 program for elite Alliance soldiers, and was the first candidate for humanity's first Spectre, but then he had to make way for Shepard.
• Opt Out: Whether you choose him to be the Councilor or not, Anderson opts to quit his position in Mass Effect Retribution, leaving Udina as Councilor.
• Paternal Substitute
• Quintessential British Gentleman: According to Mass Effect: Revelation, though he doesn't have the accent.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: One of the two human authority figures Shepard can actually count on throughout the entire series (the other being Hackett).
• Rebel Leader: During Mass Effect 3, he decides to stay on Earth and lead La Résistance during the Reaper occupation.
• So Proud of You: If you stop the Illusive Man from killing him, his last words in the entire series are how proud he is of his protege.

---

"What? Councilor, do the words "political shitstorm" mean anything to you?"

Voiced by: Bill Ratner

A human diplomat at the Citadel struggling to give humans a say in intergalactic politics. And a real jerk about it.

---

• Asshole Victim: He assists the Cerberus coup in 3, and is shot by either Shepard or the Virmire Survivor for his efforts.
• Ass In Ambassador: In spades. The turians describe him in the second game as "a diplomatic incident waiting to happen."
• Awesome Moment of Crowning: Can be given a Council seat at the end of the game.
  • In Mass Effect: Retribution, the novel sequel to Mass Effect 2, Udina is the Councilor regardless of your choice. Anderson opts to quit his job.
• Beleaguered Bureaucrat: While the Renegade ending leaves no doubt as to the kind of person he is, Udina sometimes seems as tired of politics as everyone else, but he has to deal with it because it's his job. This is most obvious if you talk to him after Feros.
• Catchphrase: Frequently utters just why "This is an OUTRAGE!".
• Divided We Fall: When he grounds Shepard as opposed to letting him/her go after the Conduit because he's afraid of losing the Council's favor.
• Face Heel Turn: In 3. Not that he wasn't already slipping in that direction to begin with, though.
• Jerkass: Ambassador Udina seems to enjoy his job a little too much, especially when foiling Shepard.
  • Jerk With A Heart Of Jerk: If you give him the position on the Council, does he serve as a "true advocate" for humanity? Balls no. He goes right back to being an Obstructive Bureaucrat and may even completely deny the existence of Reapers.
  • In Mass Effect 3, it is eventually revealed that Udina was outright working with Cerberus to engage in a coup against the Council.
    • Strangely, this is perhaps the most sympathetic he gets; his entire motivation for working with Cerberus was to force the Council to send support for his besieged homeworld.
• Kick the Dog: He was responsible for Executor Pallin's death in Mass Effect: Inquisition, where he tries to use the fact there could be enemies in the council to further a pro-human agenda .
• Obstructive Bureaucrat: Though he's fairly helpful at first. But not for long.
• Pet the Dog: If you convince the Alliance to return Nirali Bhatia's body to her husband, Samesh, or save Chairman Burns from biotic extremists, Udina is nice enough to supply them with Shepard's e-mail address so that they can properly thank Shepard in Mass Effect 2. Udina will do this even if Shepard recommends Anderson to the Council.
• Slave to PR
• The Mole: He is this in 3. It is unknown how long he was working with Cerberus, but he was the one who helped them get to the Citadel.
• The Quisling: In Mass Effect 3 he has joined in with Cerberus, and plots to assassinate the other Councillors and stage a coup with their aid. It's left ambigious whether he was Indoctrinated, idiotically ambitious or just plain desperate and scared when he went with this plan.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: It's easy to forget, but at the beginning of the first game, while he was not the friendliest guy, he at least would give Shepard the benefit of the doubt. But then he started basing his judgement purely on PR.
• Tyrant Takes The Helm: If you kill off the Council and put him in charge of the human one, he'll start restricting Spectre positions because he doesn't want anybody to operate outside of his authority. Even though the last person who did so saved the freaking galaxy.
• Ungrateful Bastard: Even if you recommend him to be on the Council, don't expect him to give you a warm welcome in the sequel.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Works with Cerberus to engage in a coup against the Council. He did it to get support for Earth.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Pulls this card when siding with the Council against Shepard near the end of the first game.

---

"I move faster on my own."

Voiced by: Alastair Duncan

A turian Spectre trained by Saren, Nihlus was selected to assess whether Shepard was qualified to join the Spectres and mentor him/her if that was the case. During the attack on Eden Prime, he's betrayed and killed by his old mentor.

---

• Et Tu, Brute?: Killed by a shot to the head from Saren, his mentor.
• Mentor Occupational Hazard: Before he got to do any mentoring, even.
• The Obi-Wan: He was supposed to fulfill this role for Shepard. However, Saren kills him before he could really teach Shepard anything.
• Sacrificial Lamb: Mere minutes after Jenkins.
• Sound Only Death: Saren pulls his gun on Nihlus, and the cutscene ends before he can pull the trigger. Just as gameplay resumes, the player hears a gunshot off in the distance.
• Worthy Opponent: Samara considers him one.

---

Voiced by: Jan Alexandra Smith

A human doctor who runs a clinic in the Wards. Your interactions with her tend to involve saving her from various gangs of blackmailing lowlifes, and she rewards you with free medigel refills. She can be a crew member in Mass Effect 3.

---

• Ascended Extra: Was involved in a minor manner in two quests early in the first game, not seen at all in the second and shows up running a hospital on the Citadel in the third game where you can bring her on board as the Normandy's medic instead of Dr. Chakwas.
• Distressed Damsel: A mild case.
  Shepard: Every time I come in here, I see someone threatening you.
• Dogged Nice Doctor Girl: Her email in ME2 indicates a crush on Garrus - understandable, since he rescued her in ME1. When Tali learns that the doctor sent Garrus dextro-only chocolates "because they reminded her of him", she either warns a Garrus-romancing female Shepard to watch herself or takes notes for the future.
• Everything Sounds Sexier in French
• The Informant: She provides the player with information during several quests. It tends to be information of the sort you wouldn't expect an ordinary clinic Doctor to know.
• Military Brat: Her parents were both Alliance military.
• Romantic Runner Up: Not to Shepard but to Garrus, given that she'll lose out to female Shepard or Tali.

---

A slave taken by batarians from the same colony from which Colonist Shepard escaped when s/he was sixteen. Shepard is told about how she escaped, but wants to kill herself, and is asked if s/he can help, having been through the raid.

---

• Bald Women: Or stubble headed girl, whatever.
• Kick the Dog: Shepard can force her to take the sedative and make snide remarks afterwards.
  Girard: Is she all right?
  Shepard: I'm fine, thanks for asking.
• Shoot the Dog: Talitha will either do this to herself if she feels threatened by Shepard, or Shepard can order a sniper to do so.
• Shout Out: To Crime and Punishment, as stated above, but Shepard's words of comfort are also taken from Aliens.
• Stockholm Syndrome: She tried to heal the slavers when a woman came along and slaughtered them all.
• Third-Person Person: How Talitha copes with what happened to her; she sees the trauma she faced as happening to another girl.

---

A Systems Alliance officer who commands Pinnacle Station, and is the central character of the Pinnacle Station DLC. He is a veteran of the First Contact War, and provides most of the commentary during the training missions.

---

• Badass Beard
• Badass Grandpa
• Cool Old Guy: As long as you can impress him in the simulations, he'll give you a Big Fancy House on a remote planet with infinite grenades, medi-gel, a big-screen TV and, most importantly, an avenue to purchase the best equipment in the game.
• Deadpan Snarker: He tends to be very caustic.
• Fantastic Racism: He openly carries a grudge against turians, but to be fair, during the First Contract War he was given a near-suicidal mission against dozens of turian mercenaries. He survived.
• Four Star Badass: Same as Admiral Hackett, though not with nearly as much political power.
• Large Ham Announcer
• Not Half Bad: His initial reaction to Shepard beating the current records.
• Retired Badass: He's not technically retired, but he no longer participates in war-fighting.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: He's not even mentioned in Mass Effect 2, and you can't visit the apartment he gave you on Intai'sei (though you being dead might have something to do with that).
  • The Bus Came Back: ... Sort of. Pinnacle Station and Intai'sei both show up in 3; the former can be scanned to earn some War Assets (Guard Captain Vidinos' spec ops team), and the latter for a sidequest Plot Coupon.

---

"Always a pleasure to watch you work, Commander."

Voiced by: George Szilagyi

The Captain in charge of the Special Tasks Group on Virmire. Worked with Mordin to modify the genophage and deliver it to Tuchanka. Sends a request to the Council for backup upon finding Saren's base but gets garbled into static so only Shepard and the Normandy comes to investigate. Returns in Mass Effect 3, now a major, provided you saved him on Virmire.

---

• All There in the Manual: The Shadow Broker's files on Mordin show how he worked with him on the modified genophage mission.
• The Captain: Has the rank and the personality for it.
• Heroic Sacrifice: He'll end up Taking the Bullet for the Salarian Councilor in Mass Effect 3 if Thane is not around to stop Kai Leng.
• Hold the Line: The bases of his Rousing Speech; without assisstance, he will can die doing it.
• Killed Off for Real: He will not survive if Shepard doesn't help with the base's defences, or if Shepard diverts attention to his troops.
  • See the Heroic Sacrifice entry above for what happens if you don't get Thane's help in the third game.
• Majorly Awesome: If he lives through Virmire, he gets promoted to this by 3.
• Meaningful Name: Named after Currahee Mountain. A mountain used during WW 2 to train Paratroopers
• Rousing Speech: A fan of these. Mordin somewhat exasperated with them, preferred to get the job done instead of wasting time with "chest-pounding."
• Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right: If he survived Virmire, you'll meet him again on Sur'Kesh, where he promises to lend the STG's support to retaking Earth regardless of what deals you have going with the Dalatrass. Should you help Mordin or Padon cure the Genophage, he makes good on that promise.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: With Mordin. Referred to as a "bit of a cloaca" by Mordin in the present, even if Kirrahe is dead; mission files held by the Shadow Broker reveal that on the mission to distribute the Modified Genophage on Tuchanka, the two of them spent most of the time flinging cloaca-based insults at one another, with Mordin poking fun at Kirrahe's insistence on following the plan to the letter and suggesting that he "has foreign object in cloaca" and Kirrahe losing temper at constant jibes and calling Mordin a "walking cloaca." However, when Mordin was injured in battle and refused to obtain medical attention until his work was finished, Kirrahe admiringly called him "one tough cloaca." Furthermore, cut content from Mass Effect 2 includes an email from Kirrahe (assuming he survived Virmire) in which he admits that he's been exchanging friendly emails with Mordin over special equipment requirements, and remarks that he's "a good agent. Nervy for a tech. Bit of a cloaca, though."

---

Dr. Conrad Verner

"You showed me what it meant to be truly extreme. I learned that lesson well."

Voiced by: Jeff Page

Shepard's biggest fan. Initially appearing on the Citadel in the first game, Conrad wants to be just like Shepard, going so far as to try to ask Shepard is s/he will help him become a Spectre. He may or may not survive the ensuing reality check. Reappears in Mass Effect 2, this time wearing a replica of Shepard's armor and trying to be a hero. He later appears in Mass Effect 3, where his story is fully culminated, and we discover interesting Hidden Depths about our favorite Butt Monkey.

---

• Badass Boast: Not that anyone takes him seriously.
  Conrad: Why don't you sit back and let me show you how it's done? I've got some asses to kick.
• Badass On Paper: How he looks to Jenna from Chora's Den. Yes, he does try to take a bullet for Shepard, but it's his stupidity and ineptitude that put Shepard in danger in the first place. From Jenna's perspective though, he looked like a Badass Bystander.
• Bi the Way: Implied. His level of obsession with Shepard, including the Stalker Shrine, is not affected by Shepard's sex.
• Borrowed Catchphrase: "I should go."
• Butt Monkey
• Completely Missing the Point: Several times. Put a gun up to his head to prove he's not ready for what he's proposing and he'll think you were teaching him how to be an extreme badass in the second game. He'll also mention how supportive his wife was and how she even paid for his transportation off world. Cue a facepalm from the asari bartender standing behind him.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: If Shepard tells him to get lost, a news report says he is killed attempting to stop youths from hitching a ride on top of a bus. It goes on to say he fell from the bus, hit several passing cars, and landed in the power turbine of a bio-mass recycling facility. Ouch.
• Desperately Looking for a Purpose in Life: Happens in the first and second games. In the sequel, Shepard can inspire him to do something other than emulating him/her. And in the third, Conrad finally gets to be the badass he always wanted to be—and actually was all along.
• Dumb Blonde: He's often way too naive for his own good. However...
• Genius Ditz: Conrad actually has a doctorate in xenotechnology and wrote a dissertation on dark energy. He'll actually contribute to the war effort in Mass Effect 3 if you ask him.
• Girlfriend in Canada: You learn in 3 that he never had a wife. His closest relationship is apparently his Stalker Shrine to Shepard.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Takes a bullet for Shepard. Can be subverted, if Shepard helped Jenna in the first game; she'll sabotage the shooter's pistol before he can fire and save Conrad's life.
• Heroic Wannabe: Very much so.
• Hero Worshipper: So much so that by Mass Effect 3, Conrad is supporting Cerberus because Shepard worked with them in the second game.
• Hidden Depths: He has a doctorate, and wrote his dissertation on xenotechnology and dark energy integration. That's Doctor Moronic Fanboy to you!
  • Not only this, but he has no money and is a refugee in 3 because he spent everything he owned to get the kids in his orphanage (The Sheperds) away from Reaper attack.
• Ignored Epiphany: Even if Shepard chose the Paragon route in 1 (thereby convincing him to stay with his family), he still shows up as a wannabe mercenary in 2.
  • Of course, this is due to a save import error, which will always assume that Conrad was dealt with in a Renegade fashion. Modifying the save to correct the error results results in an accidentally Dummied Out Paragon scene involved Conrad pretending to be Shepard's Lancer.
    Conrad: I'm Commander Shepard's squadmate! I'm practically second-in-command!
  • Lampshaded in Mass Effect 3, where he apologizes for lying that Shepard pointed a gun at him, saying it was just nerves.
• Ignored Expert: Part of his backstory. Turns out, his ideas on dark energy might just end up helping to save the galaxy.
• I Just Want To Be Badass
• Irritation Is the Sincerest Form of Flattery: He's taken to dressing like Shepard in the sequel.
• Loony Fan: Oh God yeah.
• Lord Error Prone: Big time.
• Miles Gloriosus: In the second game.
• Morality Pet: Potentially towards a Renegade Shepard.
  Shepard: Conrad may be an idiot, but even he doesn't deserve to be manipulated like that!
• Never Be a Hero: The point of the second game. Shepard has had intense, high-level specialist military training, and possibly genetic enhancements and faux-psychic powers. Conrad has nothing of the sort. Leave the saving of the galaxy to Shepard. Somewhat subverted in the Paragon ending, though, because Conrad finally gets that there's more than just one way to be a hero.
  • In the third game, he finally becomes a hero by Taking the Bullet for Shepard. If he dies, he'll ask if he finally got to help, to which Shepard will reply he did.
• Pet the Dog: In 3 Shepard can ask how he's holding up with the war going on, seems impressed when he admits he spent all his money to get the kids from his charity to safety and when he tries to take the bullet for them, even comforts him that he "did good". Its implied that, for all of his loony antics and how much he exasperates them, Paragon Shepard genuinely might be fond of Conrad.
• Ship Tease: With Jenna, another minor character from the first game, if Shepard helped her.
• Squee: This video is how Conrad would've reacted without the import save file bug. Go to about 2:00 to hear him say that meeting Shep again is the happiest day of his life, fanboy squee in every word. If you take the Charm option in his quest and lie that he helped expose a dirty cop, he'll reply with a tiny, quivering, pathetic "Really?", as if he can't believe he actually helped you out. Aww, Conrad!
• Stalker Shrine: When asked in 3, Conrad admits to having a shrine dedicated to Shepard. He claims it's in good taste, though."It's just a poster with a few candles. It's very tasteful"
• Stalker with a Crush: In Mass Effect 3 he may reveal that he's not actually married, in spite of the many earlier references to a wife who is also a fan of Shepard...and he has a shrine set up for Commander Shepard somewhere.
• Taking the Bullet: When he identifies his Cerberus contact, the contact tries to shoot Shepard, and Conrad leaps in the way of the bullet. Can be subverted if you helped Jenna from Chora's Den in the first game, as she Sabotages the gun causing it to make a bang, but the bullet doesn't actually fire.
• Ted Baxter: In Mass Effect 2.
• This Loser Is You: Almost everything he says and does in number two is a take that at the player. Conrad is what would happen if a real person were to emulate an RPG character.
  • In ME2,
    Conrad: I talk to people, y'know? Ask them if they have big problems that only I can solve. You'd be surprised how many people are just waitin' for someone to talk to them. Sometimes I poke through crates, too. Y'know, for extra credits.
  • In ME3,
    Conrad: Do you really think you'll defeat the Reapers?
    Shepard: You just asked me that, Conrad.
    Conrad: Sorry, I like to ask all the questions I can think of, and sometimes I forget which ones I asked already. I should go.
    • Conrad also repeats many of the same complaints that those against the whole thermal clip system have in a possible Take That, Us.
• Throw the Dog a Bone: In ME3, he starts off being manipulated by a Cerberus agent and being his normal loony self, but then gives Shepard important information on dark energy from his xenotechnology dissertation, indirectly helps Shepard capture the agent, and, depending on the outcome of a sidequest in the first game, either dies saving Shepard's life by Taking the Bullet or survives his attempted Heroic Sacrifice due to a C-Sec officer causing the gun to misfire. If he survives, he even hooks up with the officer in question.
• Too Dumb to Live: He'll get himself killed trying to prove that he's tough if you brush him off too harshly.
• We Need a Distraction: Cerberus takes advantage of his overenthusiasm and hero-worship in Mass Effect 3 to have him distract everyone in the refugee camp while a Cerberus agent poisons the medigel dispensers. Once he's told of the error in his ways, he immediately rats out his Cerberus contact.

---

"You have the right to remain silent. I wish to God you'd exercise it!"

Voiced by: Wendy Braun

An oft-undercover internal affairs agent for the consortium on Noveria that Shepard repeatedly encounters through the galaxy, repeatedly enlisting his/her aid in her investigations.

---

• Deadpan Snarker: She has quite a tongue when she's not pretending to be a secretary.
• Drink Order: She cheerfully promises Shepard a beer if s/he helps her arrest Anoleis; she delivers on that promise in the second game, but only as a prelude to asking for help in another investigation.
• Internal Affairs: Perhaps one of the only good examples in all of fiction; she's the least irritating person who can get you a freakin' garage pass on Noveria.
• Reverse Mole: When you first encounter her, she's posing as Administrator Anoleis's secretary, but quickly reveals herself to be an Internal Affairs agent for some corporate conglomerate.
• Screw You, Elves!: She currently provides the lead page quote.
• Ship Tease: With Male Shepard in the second game.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: Her cameo in 2 implied that she was going to have some future role revolving around dark matter. Ironically she's one of the few minor/supporting characters that doesn't return for the third game.

---

"Secrets are like herpes. If you got 'em, might as well spread 'em around."

Voiced by: Roger Jackson

A disgraced C-Sec officer known for numerous abuses of power and general disorderly conduct. Used as an obnoxious informant in the first game and an obnoxious criminal in the second.

---

• Dirty Cop: Anderson refers to him as an embarrasment kept in office only because humanity needed bodies in C-Sec. He was kicked out the second he was no longer needed politically.
• Dirty Coward
• Hey, It's That Voice!: Ewww! Mojo Jojo was hitting on Miss Keane!
  • And he calls her Princess.
• Politically Incorrect Villain: He attempts to hit on a female Shepard in a manner that seems designed to provoke a hostile reaction.
  Harkin: Why don't you sit your sweet little ass down. Have a drink and we'll see where this goes.
  Shepard: I'd rather drink a cup of acid after chewing on a razor blade.
• Shut Up, Kirk!: "Save yer sermons, this ain't no church."

---

"Check the vid. We get it? Great, bull-rushed on my own show."

Voiced by: April Banigan

A reporter who tries to get an interview with you in all three games. The first time, she not-so-subtly accuses you of bending over backwards to please the Council; in the second, she'll present your decisions from the previous game in the worst possible light no matter what; in the third, she accosts Shepard about leaving Earth during the Reaper invasion. You have the opportunity to punch her out in every case, and even if you don't take it, the Shadow Broker videos show that plenty of others are less restrained. She returns for a third round in Mass Effect 3 legitimately looking for answers about what's happening on Earth.

---

• Badass Bystander
• The Chew Toy
• The Dog Bites Back: Holy crap does she. If you try to punch her in the third game, she sees it coming, and she will knock Shepard on his/her ass if you fail the second Renegade interrupt.
• Evil Counterpart: Compared to the actual intrepid reporter, Emily Wong.
• Genre Savvy: Be careful how you handle her in 3. She'll duck the first punch you throw and, if you're not quick on the draw, knock Shepard flat.
• Heel Face Turn: In 3, if Shepard takes the Paragon interrupt, she stops being an intrusive ass and inspires wide charity support for Earth, becoming a valuable war asset—one that doubles in value if you never punched her.
• Hypocrite: Lair of the Shadow Broker reveals that she's apparently in a relationship with an asari despite her reporting being pretty pro-human/anti-alien. Or maybe "everybody loves the asari!"*
  Paraphrased from the Bachelor Party on Illium
  . Even xenophobes.
• Intrepid Reporter: Sees herself as this.
  • Paparazzi: What she really is.
• Ironic Name: "Khalisah" is Arabic for "sincere."
  • Meaningful Name: When she makes her third appearance, she really is upset about what's happening on Earth and wants to do anything she can to help.
• Made of Iron: The fact that she managed to survive getting punched in the face by a krogan should make her count as this.
• Pet the Dog: In Mass Effect 3, she will once again accost Shepard about leaving Earth, this time legitimately distressed and unhappy. While players have the option to do the usual Renegade interrupt, players who wait will get a Paragon interrupt. Hitting it will have Shepard comforting her, telling her that s/he's doing everything s/he can to stop the Reapers. Shepard even advises her to keep asking the hard questions, and to keep pressing people to aid Earth. This pays off, as her support becomes a legimate war asset in the form of charity funding.
• Running Gag: The opportunity to sucker punch her.
• Smug Snake: Especially after any physical beatdown you give her.
• Too Dumb to Live: One would think that she would learn to stop antagonizing Shepard with questions about how much s/he sucks.

"This is Emily Wong with FCC News."

Voiced By: Anndi McAfee

An actual reporter. You have the option to give her a good scoop on Fist, and later to help her break a story on the working conditions of traffic controllers on the Citadel. The day before Mass Effect 3 was released in North America, she took over Bioware's AllianceNewsNet Twitter account and chronicled the Reaper attack on Earth.

---

• A Day in the Limelight: Her tweets.
• Better to Die than Be Killed: Facing certain death, with no weapons and all Alliance cruisers destroyed, she chooses to ram her skyvan into a Reaper rather than wait for it to kill her.
• Death Equals Redemption: After realizing that her live-tweets lead the Reapers directly to the only effective evacuation point in the San Fernando Valley.
• Defiant to the End:
  "Go on. Make your noise. Try to scare us."
  "You want to see how a human dies? At ramming speed."
• Dying Moment of Awesome: Smashes her skyvan into a Reaper. And then there's the above quote.
• Heroic Sacrifice
• Hot Scoop
• Intrepid Reporter: Live reporting IN THE MIDDLE OF THE REAPER INVASION.
• Loose Lips:
  "This signal, going out and being rebroadcast everywhere… I think they picked it up. I led them here"
• Ramming Always Works: Invoked. This is her logic when she decides to ram her skyvan into a Reaper, but we don't learn whether doing so actually worked...though chances are high that it didn't.
• Senseless Sacrifice: Possibly. See Ramming Always Works
• Shout Out: Possibly. Her final line might be a reference to the execution of Fabrizio Quattrocchi, who, just before being shot dead by Iraqi militiamen, shouted: "Now you'll see how an Italian dies!"
  • Her ramming the Reaper may also be a shout out to Call of Cthulhu where Cthulhu was subdued by ramming it with a ship.
• Took a Level in Badass: During the Reaper invasion of Earth. It culminates in her ramming a Reaper with a skyvan.
• Unwitting Pawn: The Reapers were using her tweets to find areas where lots of people were gathered.

---

"Shepard? But...you're dead!"

Voiced by: Grey DeLisle

A shrewd asari politician and businesswoman. In the first game, she was being blackmailed by her Space Pirate sister, and hired Shepard to "take care" of her. Shepard encounters her again in the second game during the search for Thane, and quickly finds out that she's changed... for the worse.

---

• Bad Boss: Very bad...
• Big Screwed-Up Family: Lets just say trust issues are the least of their problems.
• Cain and Abel: Subverted. We learn in ME2 that a third sister wants her dead.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: Arguably in the first game, definitely in the sequel.
• Jumping Off the Slippery Slope: Goes from a pragmatic but ultimately decent businesswoman in the first game to a psychotic, ultra-paranoid bitch.
  • Fridge Brilliance: ...or she already was a psychotic, ultra-paranoid bitch who used you to kill a rival.
• Hey, It's That Voice!: It's Azula!
  • This makes the Cain and Abel implications with her a little funny in hindsight.
• Manipulative Bitch
• Wrong Genre Savvy: Despite Shepard's insistance, she remains utterly convinced that Shepard is the One-Man Army who's slaughtered their way through the building in order to kill her... then Thane drops from the ceiling behind her..
  • Only half-wrong, because Shepard did get to her by killing a lot of people...

---

"Remember my words, Commander Shepard. They will give you strength."

Voiced by: Gwendoline Yeo

A well-known and influential asari, Sha'ira offers a variety of personal services to her numerous clients, ranging from conversation and advice to sex. She is highly respected and wields quite a bit of political power.

---

• Ancient Artifact: She'll hand over a Prothean trinket if you resolve Xeltan's sidequest before hers, allowing Shepard to experience a vision on the planet Eletania.
• Bi the Way: Kind of. She's an asari, after all.
• Blue-Skinned Space Babe
• Boldly Coming: She will see (or "see") anyone, regardless of species or gender, though there is quite a waiting period. Among her known clients are a volus, a human, a salarian, a turian, and an elcor.
• Graceful Ladies Like Purple: She and all of her acolytes wear purple dresses.
• High Class Call Girl
• Male Gaze/Sexy Walk: Her introduction.
• Meaningful Name: "Sha'ira" comes from an Arabic word meaning "poetess", or "female poet". Her name also resembles the name of the hetaerae Neaira.
• No Sense of Personal Space: She gets very... snuggly with Shepard when first asking the Commander for a favour, which is strange since when Shepard first enters the room she tells him/her "That's close enough" even when s/he's at quite a distance. Maybe she likes to make sure she sets the boundaries for any sort of encounter with people, or wants a chance to use her (supposedly excellent) character-judging skills before letting them get too close?
• The Ojou: Most seem to regard Sha'ira with a kind of reverential awe.
• Optional Sexual Encounter: With absolutely zero warning, at that. Cue player cries of "the Consort raped me!"
• Punctuation Shaker: An interesting case, considering no other asari so far is shown to have a given name with an apostrophe. It's possible that Sha'ira is not her real name, however.
  • Since Asari surname's often do have apostrophes, its entirely possible that Sha'ira could just be her last name.
• Sex Tourism: People will visit the Citadel just to see Sha'ira.

---

An ex alliance solider, and potential former squadmate of Shepard, if you play the Sole Survivor background. Saw his whole unit wiped out on Akuze by a Thresher Maw. And goes Cerberus hunting when he find out they set it up.

Voiced by: Chris Postle

• Driven to Suicide: Depending on how you play his mission.
• Shell-Shocked Veteran: Not like you can blame the guy.
• Sole Survivor: Is the only surviving member of his unit. If Shepard has the Sole Survivor background, they both react with surprise upon seeing the other alive.
• What the Hell, Hero?: If he survives, he sends Shepard a message tearing him / her apart for working with the people who tortured him. Just be glad you never have to meet him in person...

---

The Rachni Wars ended with the complete and utter annihilation of the rachni, or so the galaxy thought. Thousands of years later, the Binary Helix corporation discovered a cache of rachni eggs in cryogenic suspension. To their pleasant surprise, one of these eggs was a queen and, once hatched, many interested parties sought to use her to breed an army of rachni soldiers. Shepard encounters the Rachni Queen on Noveria and is presented with a choice: To kill her and end the rachni threat once and for all, or release her so that she can follow her dream of rebuilding her race.

---

• Bizarre Alien Biology: She contains the genetic material of her predecessors, which allows her to lay fertile eggs without mating. In addition, rachni communicate through whalesong-like sounds (which may be partially telepathic, since they can be heard in a near-vacuum) that they refer to as 'singing'.
• Characterization Marches On: In Mass Effect 1 and 2, it is claimed that the Rachni were a peaceful race that were manipulated against their will into war with the rest of the galaxy. In 3, they were still manipulated, but it's indicated that they were pretty hostile anyway and were in fact bred to be vicious and cunning. The queen herself is also presented as being more alien than before, partially achieved by having her speak using numerous krogan dead simultaneously to achieve a choir like effect rather than the impression of speaking to a single entity.
• Chekhov's Army: If Shepard spares her life, she will send a messenger in the second game in order to pledge her support against the Reapers when the time comes.
• Cloning Blues: If you killed the Queen in 1, the one you encounter is a clone made by the Reapers.
• Did We Just Recruit Cthulhu?: Shepard has the option to do this twice to her, once in the first game and again in the third. If you choose this option in the first, in the second game an Asari who's been in contact with them delivers a personal message from the Queen herself thanking you and offering her support against the Reapers, and if you play your cards right she keeps her word and helps you build The Crucible in the third game, leading to an amusing incident mentioned in an email where the Rachni's presence freaks out most of the staff as yet another example of this trope.
• Distressed Damsel: At least, if the term "Damsel" can even apply to a giant insect. Regardless, the Rachni Queen gets captured in both 1 and 3, both times with Shepard being the only one to rescue her if they so choose.
• Face Death with Dignity: If you decide to kill her in the first game, her asari thrall tries to stop you. If you leave her to die in the third game, she accepts it as a release from the Reapers' torture. Her breeder replacement, by contrast, screams at her children to kill you.
• Genetic Memory: Appears to be the case, at least between generations of Rachni queens.
• Genocide Dilemma: On one hand, everybody and their grandma tells you about how dangerous the Rachni Wars were. On the other hand, she's done nothing wrong and swears to live in peace. It's up to Shepard to decide how it goes.
• God Save Us from the Queen!: Averted in the second game; if you spare her, it seems she's held to her promise not to cause trouble, and pledges to aid you in any way that she can when the Reaper war begins.
  • In Mass Effect 3, she is found strapped to Reaper machinery and forced to give birth to Husk versions of the rachni. However, she still remains defiant and vengeful against the Reapers, and will aid you in the war effort if you chose to save her again. Possibly her genetic memory keeps her free will intact, even though the same doesn't apply to her children.
  • Played straight with her Reaper-created clone, if you killed the original. If you spare her this time around, she and her children will ditch you in revenge, after massacring most of the Alliance engineering corps.
• Hive Queen: One of the few good examples.
• Last of Her Kind: She is the only remaining rachni queen, which means the rachni race will die with her if she is killed.
• People Puppets: Although she can do this, she only does it to communicate with Shepard and even then only because the person she's controlling is already (nearly) dead.
  • Depending on dialogue choices, Shepard can show concern that she is doing this in the second game. However, the one that Shepard's worried about is happy to help the rachni.
    • Ironically, some of the backstory clearly hints that those rachni who fought in the Rachni War were controlled by the Reapers. Sort of a parallel there with the heretic Geth.
• Royal "We": Though as a Hive Queen who uses telepathy to calm and control her offspring, you could consider it a plural "we" as well. Her Reaper-created clone, on the other hand, does not use this, which is an indicator that something is very wrong about her.
• Shout Out: Done almost whole-cloth (right down to the Queens killing the daughters that didn't share "harmonious" views) from the bugs in Ender's Game.
• Starfish Alien
• Voice of the Legion: In 3, she uses about fifteen krogan puppets to speak with Shepard's squad.
• We Are The Trope

---

A virtual intelligence on Ilos that is the last voice of the Protheans, who remained active just long enough to give Shepard critical information about the Reapers, and how the Protheans made one last ditch effort to warn future species about them.

---

• Cozy Voice For Catastrophes: Understandable, since it's a virtual intelligence.
• Fling a Light Into the Future: Vigil's sole purpose.
• Leitmotif: Vigil's theme is not only the menu music for the first game, but in Mass Effect 2, it's the music played when you and Kaidan / Ashley meet again on Horizon, when you get a hearty welcome from Wrex, and when you have the "date" with Liara on the Normandy after she assumes the Shadow Broker mantle. In Mass Effect 3, it plays after curing the genophage and/or after ending the geth-quarian war.
• Mr. Exposition: The rare positive variety.
• No Plans, No Prototype, No Backup: In the sequel, apparently once Vigil powered down it could not be reactivated again, making it an even riskier Xanatos Roulette by the Protheans. It's possible this was so the Reapers wouldn't be able to retrieve anything from its databanks even after it powered down, but that meant they left the fate of all future civilisations - sentient beings in numbers beyond counting - suspended by a single, slim thread. Even if it was a thread they'd never had before.
  • It turns out that the Protheans had several alternate plans, which makes sense considering the remnants of their society had no way of contacting each other and made their own plans. For example, Javik was supposed to lead a million-man army of cryogenically-suspended Protheans in rebuilding the Empire after the Reapers left. Another attempted to covertly uplift the proto-Asari as they were deemed the most apt to lead the next cycle of all the "primitives".
• Omniglot: Learnt English merely by studying Shepard's radio chatter.
  • Fridge Brilliance: Considering the Protheans were extreme Omniglots themselves who could learn an entire species's history just by touching them...
• One-Scene Wonder