Characters / Meta Runner

Due to the nature of the series, there are Unmarked Spoilers for all of the cast. You Have Been Warned.

Main Characters

Tari

Turbo Artifcal Rapid Intelligence

"This place is incredible... but, why does it seem so familiar?"

^{Click here to see her Season 2 appearance before she escaped TAS Corp}

^{Click here to see her pre-Season 2 appearance}

Voiced by: Celeste Notley-Smith

First appearance: "Wrong Warp"

The main protagonist. She bears a cybernetic arm worn commonly by a "Meta Runner", one of many professional gamers who have enhanced themselves with cybernetics. Unlike other Meta Runners, she has the unique ability to warp into the video games she plays.

Tropes that apply to the Alternate Universe version of Tari found in the SMG4 Bloopers go on their character page.

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• Action Girl: More so than in the SMG4 bloopers. Here, Tari is more willing to get her hands dirty protecting her friends and she ends up being the most action-orientated member of her team.
• Adaptational Badass: Downplayed since many of her feats take place within their respective in-universe game worlds, but even outside of video games, this Tari fares a little better than her SMG4 incarnation in situations where she's blocked off by the antagonists, pushing aside an employee in an attempt to escape and actively trying to get past Evelyn when she's trying to reach the Hidden Heroes cartridge.
• Adaptational Personality Change: Downplayed. While Tari's sweetness and kindness had not been diminished in the slightest, as well as shyness, she lacks her optimism and confidence from Super Mario 64 Bloopers, as well as her passion for gaming. She is also far more somber and mature, lacking any of her childishness and cowardice. She also displays a mild temper and will sass her enemies back when they give her shit. Justified in being that she is clearly older, is amnesiac and has darker origins in this universe, and depending on how one interprets the vague hints of her backstory and strange abilities, she could very well be an highly advanced AI/android/clone who just came online, albeit with enough of a developed mind to possess a personality. However, she's slowly starting to become gradually more optimistic, and already has a love of ducks, so, it's possible she will eventually become more akin to her original self. Thanks to the Training from Hell she's gotten from being forced to work at TAS Corp, she's become quite a bit braver at handling situations.
• Amnesiac Hero: Hinted at in the Season 1 trailer. In the first episode proper, she wakes up with no memory at all other than her name, and a few snippets as well.This ends up being subverted with the reveal that she's actually an AI, and all of her "memories" came from recordings made before she became sentient, meaning she had no past life to begin with. Double Subverted with the upcoming Meta Runner: Source graphic novel where it's revealed that Tari was sentient even before becoming human.
• Animal Motifs: Tari's appearance is inspired by bluejays. In particular, her symbol and the designs on her jacket's shoulders resemble wings.
• Artificial Human: Fatal Error reveals that her AI derived from Lucinia's fractured and digitized consciousness, essentially making them twins. This AI was later put inside a body to make Tari...
  Theo: Wait, Tari? You're like...me?
• Beware the Nice Ones: She's a real sweetheart willing to help out those she meets and even feeling bad when she unwittingly hurts someone's feelings. However, getting on her bad side is one of the worst mistakes you can make as Lucks, Sheridan and Evelyn learn the hard way.
• Blue Is Heroic: She is the main protagonist of the series and sports blue hair, a blue jacket (or starting in Season 2, a blue jumpsuit), and her Meta Runner symbol is blue as well.
• Brought Down to Normal: In Season 3, Evelyn damages her Meta Runner arm, disabling her ability to warp, trapping her in Sheridan's server, and later, after pieces of Lucinia's mind were removed from her, she loses her built in HUD as well.
• Character Development: One of Glitch's tweets make it abundantly clear that come Season 3, Tari is no longer the fragile woman she started off as, and that she's "come a long way". Considering all the things she had witnessed and experienced, but also the bonds she formed, this is believable.
• Damsel in Distress: Spends most of Season 2 in the captivity of TASCorp.
• Deadpan Snarker: Her Adaptational Personality Change allows for more cynical moments, particularly when she's dealing with Evelyn.
• Despair Event Horizon: As shown in the Season 2 premiere, Tari has fallen into this ever since joining TAS Corp. Even putting aside the tragedy she experienced in the Season 1 finale, she’s been largely unhappy despite her six-month winning streak, between the coldness of her teammate Belle and the constant aggressive coaching from Lucks. Even when she’s allowed to see Theo, she knows that their situation is pretty hopeless even when she promises him that they’ll see MD-5 again one day.
• Early-Bird Cameo: She made her debut as a recurring character in Supermarioglitchy4's Super Mario 64 Bloopers, which teased her appearance as the main character of Meta Runner.
• Five-Second Foreshadowing: You may not think much about it at first, but her last flashbacks had heavily glitched appearances right before the lab explosion, hinting that those first memories actually came from a camera recording rather than a human eye. This gets further proven when Belle finds footage of "Project Blue," and the footage visually matches Tari's memories.
• Friendly Sniper: In Skybreakers, her class is Sniper, and she's a Nice Girl.
• Fun with Acronyms: Turbo Artificial Rapid Intelligence.^*May have been retconned to Turbo Assisted Rapid Intelligence
• Glowing Eyes: When Tari warps into a game, her real body’s eyes glow a bright blue. This also happens when she uses her info vision but it is much more subtle, being a darker shade of blue and limited to her iris/pupil.
• Gamer Chick: Her main character trait. She's also become a Meta Runner to get better at the games she loves.
• The Hero Dies: Subverted. Tari realizes she has to give herself up in order to fully revive Lucinia. However, thanks to the parting words of A.I. Lucks, she manages to find a way to live on even after Lucinia is revived, by managing to download her data alongside Theo’s into her own server made from whatever she could salvage from Sheridan’s server, and transferring it onto Theo’s old cartridge. But due to their instability, they can't leave without suffering from severe glitches, meaning that they won't have contact with the real world again for a long, long time, while their friends truly believe they’re dead.
• Hiding Behind Your Bangs: Her right eye is covered by her hair. This highlights her timidness.
• Kidnapped for Experimentation: Poor Tari is held hostage at TAS Corp for the majority of Season 2 as they study her capabilities.
• Impossibly Tacky Clothes: Downplayed, but she wears socks with sandals.
• Instant Expert: Zig-Zagged. Despite having no experience to playing video games, or barely any memory at all, she was able to quickly adapt to playing Ultra Jump Mania, and easily manages to drive a car after watching Lamar using the controller for it. However, she has more trouble adapting to multiplayer games, since the presence of human players introduce uncertainties to the game.
• Leitmotif: A piano instrumental version of Always Running serves as Tari's theme.
• Meaningful Name: Doubles as a Shout-Out. Her name is derived from Atari, a video game company and former video game hardware manufacturer that had a major role in popularizing home video game consoles in the late 70s and early 80s. In-universe, however, it is revealed to be an acronym for Turbo Artificial Rapid Intelligence in Fatal Error.
• Nice Girl: Tari is just as pleasant and polite as her SMG4 self.
• Nice, Mean, and In-Between: The nice to Belle's In-Between and Evelyn's Mean. She's easily the kindest of the "current" TAS Corp employees shortly preceding Sheridan setting his plans in motion and does her damndest to make the best out of her bad situation.
• Not Quite Dead: It seemed like she perished when she gave back Lucinia's conciousness, but it's later revealed that she and Theo are both in their own personal server. Unfortunately, since Tari had to give back Lucinia's conciousness, which helped her survive in the real world, she and Theo would suffer major glitches if they went back, and it seems like the rest of their friends may never know that they still live on.
• Precision F-Strike: Nothing too vulgar, but Tari lets out an irritated "Dammit!" in the very first episode while trying out Ultra Jump Mania, something she has yet to say in Super Mario 64 Bloopers.
• Reality Warper: Her ability to warp into the games she plays seems to be a downplayed one.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: She is the soft, humble and shy Blue Oni to Belle's more confident and strong-willed Red Oni. Their hair color also match.
• Rei Ayanami Expy: A Shy Blue-Haired Girl who also happens to be an Artificial Human.
• Riddle for the Ages: How she, an A.I., got her body is never explained. However, this might possibly get explained in Meta Runner: Source.
• Series Goal: To find out more about her past. She eventually learns that she's an advanced gaming A.I. merged with Lucinia's conciousness, but she's not sure how she got her body. After managing to save Lucinia and surviving by importing her data into a new server, she manages to find backups of her memory which are explored in the Meta Runner: Source comic.
• Shockwave Stomp: Of a sort. Forcing her out of Ultra Jump Mania causes her body to unleash a blast that works similar to this, sending nearby scientists flying.
• Speed Blitz: Beats the crap out of Lucinia at high speed with the help of a pair of magic boots.
• Split-Personality Team: Not outright stated, but it's implied that Tari overpowering Evelyn in Hidden Heroes was thanks to assistance from the pieces of Lucinia that were in the TAS Corp servers and had leaked out during Sofia’s data transfer.
• Training from Hell: Downplayed, but she certainly sees her time at TAS Corp as this. She's constantly threatened and yelled at for not meeting Lucks's standards and has to deal with the likes of Evelyn. And she's forced to maintain a smile whenever she's out in public.
• Trapped in Another World: This is the reason that Tari is in Skybreakers in Season 3, as she was forced to retreat Sofia's makeshift warp portal and her own warp ability was broken by Evelyn.
• Trauma Button: Looking at an empty coffee cup on the floor is all she needs to have flashbacks of the accident at Sheridan's lab. She seems to have gotten over this by Season 3.
• Unwitting Pawn: Her creator, Dr. Sheridan, made her as a means of causing Lucks' downfall and death, allowing him to enact his ultimate scheme with no competition.
• Volcanic Veins: Tampering with Tari’s arm while she’s warping causes glowing, circuit-like designs to start spreading from her eyes and arm until her shockwave is triggered. This foreshadows the fact that Tari is a hyper-intelligent AI in an artificial body.
• Weak, but Skilled: Her abilities grant her incredible feats, but because she was practically born with those abilities, she has zero preparation for the case where she doesn't have her abilities which is what happens to her early in Season 3.
• Wetware Body: She's really an AI merged with part of someone’s consciousness inside of a human-like body. How she got the body is still unknown.
• Wistful Smile: Gives this look in the thumbnail of the final episode. It was meant to foreshadow her sacrifice to bring back Lucinia.
• You Don't Look Like You: She's still the duck-loving Gamer Chick we all know and love, but some parts in her design look just a bit different from the SMG4 bloopers, mostly around the facial area. Lampshaded when she passes by a funhouse mirror-like screen that briefly mimics her movement using her SMG4 model in the first episode. An episode of the SMG4 bloopers reveals it was actually a two-way screen, as SMG4!Tari sees her Meta Runner counterpart on a malfunctioning television, and decides she's played enough games that day.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Having unintentionally achieved what Sheridan made her to do, Sheridan sought to have the mind fragments Tari absorbed from Lucinia forcefully carved out.
• Younger Than They Look: As if the reveal that she's an A.I. in a human-like body that came online not long ago wasn't enough to convince you, a monitor in the second episode of the final season reveals that she's still one year old.
• You're Not My Father: With the revelation of Dr. Sheridan being her creator, Tari is as far-removed from his psychosis as she can possibly be. Quickly disavowing her creator when he insists that he is "like her dad".

Theo

Theo

"Well, if you're not here to kill me... Welcome to Simple Flip Island! I am Theo! King of all the land!"

^{Click here to see his pre-Season 2 appearance}

Voiced by: Robyn Barry-Cotter

First appearance: "Wrong Warp"

The protagonist of the in-universe game Ultra Jump Mania.

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• The Ageless: As a video game character, he's locked into having the body of a child.
• Blood Knight: He's very enthusiastic when it comes to dangerous parkour, giant enemy crabs, or evil bosses. He also seems to be disappointed when Tari doesn't turn out to be one of said bosses.
  Tari: We can't take that many [monsters]!
  Theo: Sure we can! WHO'S READY TO DIE?
• Breakout Character: Proved popular enough to inspire his own spin-off pilot.
• Brought Down to Normal: Due to Theo being in the real world, he no longer has his superhuman jumping ability. He retains his coconut throwing skills, however.
• Catchphrase:
  • "Crackerjack!"
  • "Take that, foul beast!"
• Cartoonish Companion: A video game character with a cartoony design accompanying the heroes in the real world.
• Cloud Cuckoolander: From thinking Belle's disembodied voice is God to casually starting a live-stream while trying to hide from TAS Corp, Theo doesn't seem to have a train of thought that most would consider typical.
• Distressed Dude: Ends up being held hostage and imprisoned for most of Season 2 as collateral by Lucks to force Tari to work with TAS Corp and for MD-5 to never interfere with his plans again.
• Grew Beyond Their Programming: His interactions with Tari and co. made him more than a video game character, with his ability to actively resist Belle's inputs in Transfer Student being a prime example.
• Hard Light: What Theo's likely made of in the real world.
• Hypocritical Humor: In Episode 2, he says Tari shouldn't be able to perform a certain jump because she's wearing sandals, while he himself isn't even wearing any footwear, so jumping should be just as hard for him, yet, can perform impressive jumps just fine.
• Improbable Weapon User: His main attack is throwing a half-coconut shell at monsters and also has banana mines. They're not nearly as effective in the real world, though.
• Intangibility: It requires very specific conditions, but he can phase through walls invoked as a result of his game's faulty collision detection. This even works when he's held captive by TAS Corp outside of his own game.
• Kid Hero: The protagonist of "Ultra Jump Mania", and only a child.
• Leitmotif: Ultra Jump Mania, of course.
• Living on Borrowed Time: In Episode 6 of the final season, it's revealed that ever since Theo was permanently separated from his game, he's been having several random glitches every now and then and has been hiding it from the others. It's also shown here that he has to concentrate hard to stop the glitching.
• Medium Awareness: In-Universe, Theo's well aware that he's in a video game as heard in Episode 1, and is even aware of his game's age rating as well.
  Theo: Oh. Well, non-comical violence is looked down upon for an E-rated game.
• Mini-Mecha: Uses a large, wooden mech suit in Skybreakers.
• Nice Guy: He can be a bit intense, but he’s a fun, adventurous kid with a good heart.
• No Ending: His video game merely ends with a flagpole in the middle of a volcano without any official Final Boss. That's what it would've been like for Tari and Theo if Evelyn didn't show up with a hacked enemy.
• Not Quite Dead: It seemed like he perished when Evelyn crushed him in Skybreakers, but it's later revealed that he survived thanks to Tari managing to collect his data and putting them both into Tari's personal server. Unfortunately, since neither he or Tari after she returned Lucinia's conciousness aren't very stable in the real world and would suffer major glitches, it seems like the rest of their friends may never know that they still live on.
• Non-Standard Character Design: He has a more cartoony appearance than the rest of the cast, notably being roughly half the height of an ordinary human, his head being the size of the rest of his body and having larger rounded eyes. Justified since he is from a video game.
• Plucky Comic Relief: Shares this role with Lamar in the series, being one of the main sources of comedy in this dark and serious world.
• Precision-Guided Boomerang: His coconut shell returns to his hand after being thrown. This does not apply in the real world.
• Refugee from TV Land: For the majority of Season 1, he's been unintentionally brought to the real world after Tari was forcibly brought back.
• Secret A.I. Moves: Downplayed. He can perform actions that are outside of the possible inputs players can give him, but they don't really do too much.
• Secretly Dying: As revealed in the sixth episode of Season 3, it's revealed that Theo has continued to glitch after his data was extracted from his corruputed cartridge and it's heavily implied that it will result in his death, causing Theo to keep it a secret from his friends.
• Troubling Unchildlike Behaviour: Being from a video game where Death Is Cheap, he tends to talk about death very lightly, which is commented on as weird.
• Wrong Genre Savvy: He can be quite naive, and doesn't seem to understand how Tari's world works compared to his game, especially after being brought to Silica City. He seems to get used to it later on.
• Your Magic Is No Good Here: When he's brought to the real world, he loses most of his special abilities.

TAS Corp

Derek Lucks

Derek Lucks

"I no longer just want her abilities for TAS Corp. I want her."

^{Click here to see his Season 1 appearance}

Voiced by: David J.G. Doyle

First appearance: "Wrong Warp"

The creator of the Meta Runner arm, and the cold, ruthless, and opportunistic CEO of TAS Corp.

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• Ascended Meme: David J.G. Doyle introduced Lucks with his famous "I want her" line for both "Meta Runner Voice Actors Read Memes" videos.
• Arch-Enemy: Of Masa Shimamoto. The two have been butting heads likely for 2 years due to Lucinia’s disappearance, and Masa’s main reason for forming MD-5 was to expose Lucks and his company.
• Asshole Victim: Given how Sociopathic he's been toward everyone, no one mourns his murder in the Season 2 finale. They're more worried about the effects it'll have on his "killer."
• Bad Boss: While not outright violent, Lucks is quite callous in his treatment of his right-hand woman Belle, and makes no secret of his disappointment when she fails at competitions. He also sees no problem with threatening to decommission her and even angrily manhandles her when she mouths off to him. He doesn't prove to be much better to Tari once he has her, as he's constantly pushing her to meet his sky-high expectations.
• The Bad Guy Wins: At the end of Season 1, Lucks backs MD-5 into a corner by blasting off Masa's bionic arm and threatening to kill him unless Sofia surrenders herself. She does so and Lucks orders her data deleted. He agrees to an offer from Tari to let the team go in exchange for her joining TAS Corp and promising that they'd no longer interfere in his business, but in order to ensure this, he crushes the Ultra Jump Mania cartridge, causing Theo to disappear from the real world and leaving him trapped in his microchip, therefore holding Theo hostage. He warns Tari and MD-5 that if they go back on their word, then he will effectively erase Theo. With that, Tari is now under his thumb as a Meta Runner, and Masa, Sofia, and Lamar's hands are tied in helping her. Ends up being subverted by the end of Season 2, where he gets his much deserved comeuppance in an incredibly Karmic Death at the hands of Dr. Sheridan to Make Way for the New Villains.
• Beard of Evil: Well, a beard stubble of evil.
• Big Bad: As the initial main antagonist, Lucks' efforts to seek out Tari's warping abilities drive much of the first two seasons.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: To the public, he's a respected businessman and the highlight of the crowd during his shows. But in private, he's a sociopathic business owner with a long history of criminal activity.
• Boom, Headshot!: How he is murdered, by Dr. Sheridan through Masa's hands, literally. It's pretty clear it's fatal.
• Character Death: The first character in the series to unambiguously die. This is turned on him in Fatal Error, when Dr. Sheridan, his disgraced former employee, enables MD-5 to corner him after Sofia is finally able to leak his scuzziness to the public, and then hacks into Masa's new bionic arm and makes him shoot Lucks in the head.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: His goal is to acquire Tari to further strengthen TAS Corp, no matter how many others get hurt in the process. As of Season 2, he's succeeded in doing so. He's also done a lot of shady dealings, which MD-5 are determined to expose to the public and tarnish his reputation with.
• Disc-One Final Boss: The original goal was to expose his company's illegal practices and put him in jail, but Sheridan has other ideas.
• Dying Smirk: He sports one of these in final moments, legitimately impressed that Sheridan is not only alive, but has gotten one over on him before the latter forces Masa to blow out Lucks' brains.
• Evil Sounds Deep: Lucks has a very deep and almost menacing voice, which matches his cold and callous disposition.
• Face Death with Dignity:When facing down the barrel of his own pistol from Masa by his own will, his eyes do widen when Masa reasons he could still worm his way out of jail and doesn't back down, but even after he stands down only for his arm to glitch out and act on it's own, he still doesn't beg for his life, only smirking ruefully and congratulating the one taking control of Masa's arm (referring to Sheridan) before he takes a point-blank shot to the head, as seen below.
• Faux Affably Evil: He maintains a relatively calm and measured demeanor and tries to more or less gently convince Tari to join TAS Corp, but given that his treatment of her while her mind was in the game wasn’t too far away from Cold-Blooded Torture, not that he was bothered by it anyway, as well as being somewhat cold, ruthless and dismissive towards Belle, it's pretty clear he isn't a nice person.
• For Science!: Has no qualms with cold-bloodedly torturing a girl if it meant that he could use her enhancements for TAS Corp.
• Freudian Excuse: Averted completely with his final version, but an earlier version of him gave him one of being bullied as a child due to not playing video games.
• Good Scars, Evil Scars: Masa punching him in the eye not only gives him a black eye, but a scar as well. Keep in mind that it was Masa's Meta Runner arm—i.e. the one made of metal—he was hit with. This is followed by a gaping gunshot wound.
• Gory Discretion Shot: The camera doesn't let you see Lucks' shot face, though some blood lands on Masa's face.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Not only did his attempts to cover up the Project Blue incident ultimately lead to the demise of both his company and himself, but his death was at the hands of his own gun.
• Icy Blue Eyes: His eyes are blue, yet he’s the Big Bad and the first irredemably evil villain in all of Glitch Productions.
• Irony: He's in charge of the Meta Runners, the "top of the food chain" in video game tournaments, yet isn't good at video games himself.
• Ink-Suit Actor: Lucks appears to be heavily modelled after his voice actor, David J.G. Doyle, albeit much slimmer and taller.
• Jerkass: If his harsh and dismissive treatment of Belle, his valued right-hand woman and prized associate is any indication, the guy's kind of a dick. Although he does show some moments of kindness towards her, reacting petulantly but not unfriendly when she playfully needles him for playing games while she's working, showing he's not prickly 24/7.
  • He ends up being this to Tari once he has her under his thumb, as he's constantly pushing her to improve her skills, even with her six-month winning streak. In fact, in the Season 2 premiere during the car ride back to TAS Corp, he criticizes her last performance immediately after finishing a call where he talks about her joining his main line-up soon.
• Karma Houdini Warranty: In the season one finale, he manages to thwart MD-5's plan of taking down TASCorp. But in the season two finale, he ends up getting exposed and labeled as a criminal in “Fatal Error”, although his death prevents him from actually facing the consequences.
• Karmic Death: His ignorance of Dr. Sheridan’s experiments and subsequent cover up of Lucinia’s fate comes back to bite him in the ass when Sheridan takes control of Masa’s Meta Runner arm and shoots him dead... with the same gun he used to shoot off Masa’s original arm, no less.
• Killed Off for Real: Gets shot in the head by Sheridan controlling Masa's arm in "Fatal Error".
• Large and in Charge: He's the Big Bad for Seasons 1 and 2, the head of TAS Corp and is quite a bit taller than Belle. It also helps him put up a decent fight with Masa in both of the season finales he appears in. It doesn't save him from getting his head blown off by his own gun.
• Last-Name Basis: Lucks is always addressed by his last name. It's not until "Soft Lock" that we learn his first name is Derek.
• Leitmotif: Lucks I in Season 1.
• Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist: Lucks claims to have noble intentions, but he has done a lot of unscrupulous things, up to directly hurting people, such as allowing Sheridan to enact Project Blue and almost kill Lucinia in the process, lying to and manipulating everyone so they wouldn't leave him because of the truth, abusing all of his employees, and even willing to kill a child, all for his own benefit.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • He has this reaction when he realizes that Belle found out that he knew what happened to Lucinia.
  • His eyes widen noticeably in the Season 2 finale when Masa, with a gun pointed at him, points out that even if he gets arrested, he could worm his way out of trouble.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Lucks normally keeps calm and soft spoken even in some of his most evil moments, but when shit is going downhill for him in the last two episodes of Season 2, he finally properly loses it and actually enters a Villainous Breakdown for the first and only time in the series, consistently raising his voice and threatening to shoot Masa in the head if Tari doesn’t give him the server data, demanding it in an incredibly enraged voice.
• Pragmatic Villainy: For all of his villainous traits and actions, he only seems to resort to extreme measures when someone refuses to cooperate with him. If someone is willing to cooperate with him, he'll be more than happy to negotiate instead. This is best shown in Episode 10 where, despite having the MD-5 crew dead to rights, he still lets them go once he strikes a deal with Tari for her loyalty to TAS Corp.
  • Another example in Episode 12. Lucks talks it up with Theo in his cell, saying that, as much as Theo's been bored with it for six months, it was necessary for him to survive, otherwise he would still be glitching out or lifelessly floating in a void within his microchip.
• Precision F-Strike: Kinda like Belle, shouts "Goddammit!" when frustrated at lack of progress with researching Tari's powers and the game controller she used, despite his calm demeanor most of the time.
• Rank Scales with Asskicking: Lucks is a capable fighter, proven when he easily overpowers Masa in S01E10 when the latter tries to attack the former.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: The cold and calculated Blue Oni to Belle's hotheaded Red Oni.
• The Sociopath: Whatever good intentions he might have according to Belle, Lucks' willingness to experiment on a prone Tari's arm, even though it puts Tari in excruciating pain, and not even batting an eye at Tari's screams or Belle's disgust and pleas for him to stop does not at all imply "stern humanitarian". He just gets worse from there, culminating in Episode 10 by putting a gun to Masa's head after blasting off his robotic arm to force Sofia to surrender with Tari and Lamar unable to help due to being held at gunpoint by the guards. Despite this, he is more than willing to back down when Tari offers to work for him, as he wanted from the start, and he agrees to let them go provided they not interfere. But to ensure this, he smashes the Ultra Jump Mania cartridge and thus traps a hapless Theo, with his life on the line if they go back on their word, reinforcing this.
• Soft-Spoken Sadist: He usually speaks in a mild tone, only ever raising his voice above a half-whisper when he's angry, and has absolutely no qualms about resorting to cruel and violent means to get what he wants.
• Spell My Name With An S: His name is spelled as "Lux" in the description of the first trailer on YouTube, but he's credited as "Lucks" in the series' credits.
• Stalker without a Crush: He wants to acquire Tari for her ability to warp into games, but the way he puts it makes it come off as creepy. This is lampshaded by Belle.
• The Stoic: He's no-nonsense and all business in contrast with Sheridan's deranged and childish behavior.
• Tom the Dark Lord: Derek is an incredibly basic first name for a complete sociopath who will commit any crimes necessary to keep his reputation clean, and while he is always referred to by his last name, Lucks, even that isn’t that villainous sounding.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Lucks stealing the credit for the Meta Runner arm from Sheridan was the main instigator for Sheridan going insane and plotting the downfall of TAS Corp and the rise of SHERCorp using Tari and Remote Warping Technology. In other words, Lucks is responsible for the events of the entire series.
• Villain with Good Publicity: While Lucks generally managed to keep his dirty little secrets hidden from the public and media up until his final moments, as Sofia points out in “Friendly Fire”, that hasn’t stopped some people from suspecting that some things were amiss, as she shows him a collection of news and social media posts speculating on various things he was involved with, from the sudden “early retirements” of Masa and Lucinia, to people claiming to have seen him at Gamma Tech Stadium during the events of “Shutdown”. As of the Season 2 finale, all bets are off as with Belle's help, Sofia plasters all incriminating evididence for Silcia City and all the world to see, and a police sqaud's telltale sirens indicate he'll finally face jailtime for it all. Up until Masa is forced to murder him by Dr. Sheridan.
• Villainous Breakdown: When everything finally starts going wrong for him in the climax of the Season 2 finale, he enters genuine rage for the first and only time in the series.
  Lucks: I gave you both everything life had to offer! I housed you, trained, made you stars, and THIS is how you repay me?!
• Would Hit a Girl: Incites agonizing pain on Tari when his scientists were experimenting on her robotic arm. He also roughly manhandles Belle very early on. The Season 1 finale also gives the implication that Lucks would be willing to shoot her if he felt justified in doing so.
• Would Hurt a Child: In order to ensure Tari's cooperation and MD-5 staying out of his business, Lucks crushes the Ultra Jump Mania cartridge, forcing Theo out of the real world and trapping him within his microchip, threatening to erase him for good if Tari or MD-5 step out of line.

Belle Fontiere

Belle Fontiere

"You'd be surprised what people would do to be number one."

^{Click here to see her pre-Season 2 appearance}

Voiced by: Jessica Fallico

First appearance: "Wrong Warp"

The prize Meta Runner of TAS Corp and Tari's first rival. You can also find her Alternate Universe self used for the SMG4 Bloopers on this page.

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• Action Girl: As expected from one of, if not the most skilled gamers in the current in-universe standings, as she was able to defeat Masa in battle during the Tempest tournament. Granted, it was through forcing him to stop fighting in order to defend Tari from her, but still rather impressive.
  • This is even symbolically shown in her Meta Runner arm, which is her right arm (the one that pushes the face buttons on a controller, usually used to jump, attack, or do any number of versatile commands) while every other Meta Runner in Season 1 has their left arm replaced (which is relegated to the movement-oriented joystick or directional pad).
• Affably Evil: Though she can be snarky or arrogant at times and isn't above the use of force, she is still much more sympathetic than Lucks, notably during her conversations with Tari.
• Ambiguously Gay: Nothing explicitly confirmed, but the way Belle interacts with Tari, especially giving her cute pet names like "babe" and "honey", or leaning in close when lecturing her about her methods and goals, it'd makes you wonder what she's into.
  • Not to mention her traumatized reaction when she found out about Lucinia's possible death. It's made clear that there's SOME history behind the two of them, albeit without specifics. Made unambiguous with the two sharing a kiss in the finale.
• Anti-Villain: As TAS Corp’s highest-ranking gamer, she obeys Lucks’ orders and justifies his actions as being Necessary Evil, but she has scruples, or even complain about being sent on a mission while she could be playing video games instead (which to be fair, is literally her profession). Also, even while capturing Tari, she doesn't go out of her way to hurt or be unpleasant, rather casually chatting it up with her.
  • This trope becomes more prevalent in the first half of Season 2 before she does a full Heel–Face Turn. While the season starts out with Belle being largely anti-social to Tari, she later helps bail Tari out when Evelyn catches Tari trying to get the scientist's phone and expects Belle to turn her in to Lucks for violating Lucks' rule against his Meta Runners having personal gaming systems, instead handing Tari the phone and making her swear to keep it secret while Evelyn isn't looking, while straight up telling Tari that she doesn't think highly of Lucks' rules. She's also attempting to unravel the mystery of Project Blue and Lucinia in her spare time, even taking hacking classes, as she attempts to unlock Sofia's phone containing the incriminating evidence against TAS Corp, and later using her knowledge to sneak back into Sheridan's lab and obtain a file possibly containing info about Lucinia's involvement with the help of Theo.
• Berserk Button: Don't try to tell her lies about whatever happened to Lucinia. Especially when she's got a fireball right next to your face.
• Bond Villain Stupidity: When she has Tari at her mercy in the Tempest tournament, she doesn't take the chance to eliminate her, wanting immediate answers to what became of Lucinia (ignoring Lucks's statement that Tari can be interrogated once captured, and refusing to believe Tari when she says she doesn't know what happened, or who Lucinia is). Naturally, Tari escapes and goes on to perform the mountain glitch. The only reason this doesn't lead to MD-5 winning is due to Lucks having a Plan B.
• Chekhov's Hobby: Her very first on-screen moment is her speedrunning Ultra Jump Mania by exploiting several glitches to pass through walls. This becomes very important in season 2, where she tries to rescue Theo and can use the same glitches to help him escape.
• The Dragon: More-or-less acted as the second-in-command to Lucks in Season 1.
  • In Season 2 Episode 5, Lamar refers to her as "Lucks' Right-Hand Dragon Lady". Belle admits it's a pretty cool title.
• Deadpan Snarker: Unless it pertains to gaming, Belle's got some dry wit.
  Belle: (to nearby guard) Yo, Frank! I fell off my motorbike yesterday. Almost broke three bones.
  (Guards don't respond)
  Belle: I got a personal best of 33:18 in Dragon Kart just this morning.
  (Guards give a thumbs-up; Belle gives Tari a smug look to illustrate her point)
• Even Evil Has Standards: Evil is a stretch. Really, Belle is just a professional gamer and competitor at heart who just happens to work for a shady MegaCorp. As opposed to Lucks, she's horrified and loudly objects when his experiments on Tari's robotic arm while her consciousness is in Ultra Jump Mania are inflicted debilitating, excruciating pain on her. However, if sufficiently pissed off, Belle ends up losing such compunctions and ends up doing the same to Tari to get answers on what her relation is to Lucinia. Half-justified, due to her attacking Tari in a video game, but at the same time knows that Tari can still feel the pain.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: She really cares about Lucinia, and trying to find out what happened to her.
• Faux Affably Evil: Subverted. She seems to be this in the first season, but in Season 2, she Took a Level in Kindness and becomes genuinely affable.
• Fiery Redhead: She has bright red hair and is strongwilled and confident.
• Femme Fatale: Downplayed, but Belle shows an alluring, manipulative side towards Tari at first, telling her she'd be far better off joining TAS Corp.
• Gamer Chick: A very skilled one at that.
• Heel–Face Turn: After acting as the secondary antagonist in Season 1, Belle defects to help MD-5 halfway through Season 2 once she learns Lucks had been lying to her about what happened to Lucinia.
• Heel Realization: In Season 2, after she uncovers footage of Project Blue's aftermath proving that Lucks was hiding the truth about Lucinia's death all along, Belle finally recognizes the full extent of Lucks's corruption and switches to MD-5's side almost immediately, both to ensure her friend gets the justice she deserves, and to make amends with Tari (whom she blamed for Lucinia's death) and Masa (whom she disbelieved over Lucks's coverup).
• Hypocrite: When Lucks has his scientists tinker with Tari's arm when she's entered a game, and it ends up putting her in excruciating pain, Belle is immensely bothered by this and asks him to stop. However, in Episode 10, immensely angry and having a relapse of grief over Lucinia and having reason to believe Tari was responsible, Belle coldly begins burning Tari with pyro spells to get answers, and doesn't seem uncomfortable with it. Although, she is in a very irrational and vulnerable emotional state, but proves that when the chips are down regarding her loved ones, Belle's reservations are eschewed and shows that her emotions get the better of her better judgement.
• I Choose to Stay: At the end of Season 2, while the rest of MD-5 make their getaway, Belle stays behind with a traumatized Masa after Sheridan controlled his arm to shoot Lucks. Her reason?
  Belle: I don't belong with you guys anyway. After all, I also got dirt on my hands from working with TAS Corp.
• Ink-Suit Actor: Aside from having red-orange hair, Belle seems to bear heavy resemblance to her voice actress Jessica Fallico.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Has a fiery competitive streak and willing to do dirty things for Lucks, but her heart is in the right place.
• Lampshade Hanging: Hangs a huge one when Lucks talks about "wanting" Tari, and not just for her game-warping abilities, and comments on how creepy that sounds. Which's funny when you notice that nearly all of her quite tender interactions with Tari appear to border on flirting.
• Lady Swears-a-Lot: Belle's got one foul mouth on her, as can be seen from the many times she gets frustrated. She even almost lets out a "What the f-" when Tari performs a crazy driving-on-the-wall maneuver to escape the TAS Corp blockade. This is carried over to the SMG4 Bloopers, where "dammit" is one of Belle's voice clips.
• Leitmotif: Red Hot Champion.
• Ms. Fanservice: Has an incredibly attractive design with large proportions and a relatively exposing outfit that both bares her midriff and has a Cleavage Window, as well as a Stripperiffic design in Tempest.
• My Master, Right or Wrong: She's devoted to TAS Corp and fulfilling her bosses' goals, even though she admits Lucks' actions have hurt others, including herself. That all ends in Season 2 when she finds out he knew about Lucinia's fate and was hiding it from everyone, including herself, the very beginning.
• Nice, Mean, and In-Between: The In-Between to Tari's Nice and Evelyn's Mean. She's short-tempered and has done some rather underhanded things working for Lucks, but she clearly has a heart, is often not proud of said underhanded things, and sides with MD-5 when she discovers her boss' lies.
• No Indoor Voice: She frequently yells when she's angry or launches an attack.
• Pet the Dog: In The Stinger for the first season, Belle finds the phone of Sofia, the sister of her late friend Lucinia, containing the backup of the incriminating TAS Corp data. Rather than turn it in to Lucks, she keeps it for herself, and is now attempting to hack into it as of Season 2.
• Punch-Clock Villain: She is loyal towards TAS Corp, and while she can be as menacing as Lucks, she is however not as malicious as he is, as she notably has a Friendly Rivalry dynamic with Tari, at least until she realizes the connection between her and Lucinia's demise, and showed heavy concern for her when the TAS Corp scientists were causing her unbearable pain, to the point of objecting to Lucks.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: Her eyes completely glow red when warped.
• Red-Headed Hero: After her Heel–Face Turn.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni:
  • The determined and passionate Red Oni to Tari's meek and demure Blue Oni. Their respective hair color even match.
  • Alternatively, Belle also has this dynamic with Lucks, with Belle keeping her role as the hotheaded Red Oni while Lucks is the cold and calculated Blue Oni.
• Sore Loser: She really doesn't appreciate seeing Tari have much more skill than her. Or messing up in her gameplay overall.
  Belle: (In response to seeing Tari jump the TAS Corp roadblock in Lamar's car) God DAMMIT! Where the hell did she learn to do that?!
• Stripperiffic: Her outfit for her in-game avatar in Tempest reveals her shoulders, part of her top and thighs.
• Throw the Dog a Bone: In "Unreal Engines", when Belle catches Tari in Evelyn's room trying to get the scientist's phone, it initially seems she's going to turn Tari in to Lucks, but instead gives her back the phone while Evelyn isn't looking.
  Tari: You’re... not gonna tell Lucks?
  Belle: Please... he and his rules can go suck it for all I care. Besides, it’s just some weeby dating sim. What’s the worst you could do with it?
• Trapped in Another World: Has her brain surgically modified by Sheridan to trap her mind in his simulation.
• Violently Protective Girlfriend: She's in a relationship with Lucinia, and just the thought of something bad happening to her is enough to rile her up.

Evelyn Claythorne

Evelyn Claythorne

”Belle, be honest, would you rather play with me, or her?”

Voiced by: Elsie Lovelock

First appearance: "Hard Reset"

Belle’s fellow Womanchild, not so skilled Meta Runner at TAS Corp, and the second rival to Tari.

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• Alpha Bitch: In her second appearance alone, she openly insults Tari after a training session with her and chastises a TAS Corp scientist for playing Pocket Gakusei, even taking his handheld away from him.
  Evelyn: Pocket Gakusei? Well, that explains your mask. I'd hide my face too if I played an online anime dating sim.
• Attention Whore: In her first appearance, Evelyn expresses her frustration with the fact that Lucks has been giving much more attention to Tari than her.
• Ax-Crazy: While a bit subtle than Dr. Sheridan, it's very clear the girl is obviously not right in the head. She's willing to commit all sorts of heinous crimes just so she could kill Tari and doesn't care about the consequences of her actions.
• Bumbling Sidekick: While Evelyn isn't that comedic at all, her incompetence and being slow on the uptake when trying to give Tari a setback can make her capable of making things worse for Lucks. When she is loyal to Belle, she is easy to listen to and Belle was able to help Tari due to Evelyn being unaware of this.
• Colour-Coded Emotions: Evelyn has color-changing lights on her headband, dress, and even in her hair, similar to gaming equipment with RGB lighting. They change with her emotions with green signifying happiness and red signifying anger, with orange as a more calm/neutral state.
• Daddy's Girl: Seems to be close with her "daddy", as shown in The Stinger for "Fatal Error" when she gets a phone call from Dr. Sheridan.
• The Dragon: With Belle's morals (and ultimate Heel–Face Turn) causing her to fail in the role, Evelyn effectively serves as this to Lucks in Season 2, serving as Tari's main foe in video game environments. She has since become one to Dr. Sheridan in Season 3 following Lucks' death, this time around being tasked to kill Tari and take whatever data is left of her back.
• Expy: With her pompous, spoiled, attention-whoring disposition, pink hair, and immense jealousy issues, all that's missing is the homicidal bloodthirst and you have Meta Runner's equivelent of Saiko Bichitaru as she was before her reformation. Said homicidal bloodthirst would later come into play anyway, thanks to Dr. Sheridan.
  • Given that she’s an extremely self-centered and hammy individual of noticeably British lineage who becomes obsessed with overshadowing an initially-shy blue-haired individual she’s forced to live with, and later gains a major power boost by having something placed on her head, Evelyn might as well also be a gender-reversed Dio Brando.
• Final Boss: Inserts a monstrous avatar as the last obstacle Tari and Theo needs to pass for the latter to escape his game. Funny how the game didn't have a proper final boss in the first place.
• Freudian Excuse: Played for Laughs at a Q&A. When asked why Evelyn is so mean, the creators jokingly replied that it was because she stepped on a LEGO.
• God Mode: Sheridan grants her this when he gives her the warping ability, allowing her to disable Tari's warping ability, punch her across the room, and summon weapons from whatever game she wishes. This extends to games outside of the server where she is immune to banning and can break some of the rules.
• Green-Eyed Monster: Taken quite literally. She absolutely loathes Tari, and her eyes are green.
• Hate Sink: Evelyn's only purpose has been to make the viewer want to reach through the screen and strangle her.
• Hero Killer: She causes Theo to disperse into data fragments after fighting him in episode 7, though she herself is unsure of exactly what extent Theo is gone, but decides to gloat to Tari that she killed Theo anyway.
• I Am Very British: Evelyn has a very noticeable British accent.
• Insufferable Imbecile: Due to her being a completely mean-spirited and obnoxious Womanchild, she is pretty impulsive with being prone to have foolish behavior while mad or irrationally enraged (especially towards Tari) and is pretty slow on the uptake like when she got hoodwinked by Tari, Sofia and Lamar in "Soft Lock" due to her being a complete and utter Sore Loser. Also moments of her stupidity can easily make her clearly evil as well.
• I Shall Taunt You: In Overload, she causes Theo to disappear. Later while she has Tari cornered, before she decides to kill her she decides to tell her what she did to him. Unfortunately for Evelyn, this was a very bad decision, as Tari's breakdown ends up causing Masa to break free of Sheridan's mind control and attack her in the game and knock out Sheridan in the real world, freeing Belle in the process and allowing Tari to fight back.
• Irony: After all her "effort" to get recognized by the world, Evelyn ends up being locked in her gaming pod (because of her own faults) after being hoodwinked by Tari, Sofia and Lamar in the "Soft Lock" episode, away from being seen. Eventually, she does get recognized in some way… as a prison inmate for working with Sheridan, sure to draw attention to herself with her perpetual sobbing and the ugly, now-useless device grafted to her head.
• It's All About Me: Evelyn appears to be very jealous at Tari for all the attention she's been getting from Lucks despite the both of them on the verge of being inducted into TAS Corp's new line-up of Meta Runners:
  Evelyn: Belle... does Lucks hate me?
  Belle: (sighs) Seeing as how he's about to bring you into the main line-up, I would doubt it.
  Evelyn: Then why doesn't he give me exhibition matches, like he does to that... blue-haired science expirement?!?
  • Episode 13 reveals she gave herself an autograph.
    Tari: And I’m the one whose brain they’re studying....
• Jerkass: Evelyn is mean, nasty and cruel to everyone for no reason.
• Laser-Guided Karma: After everything she has done throughout the entire series, she finally faces her comeuppance in the form of jail time for working with Sheridan in the final episode.
• Leitmotif: Any time Evelyn is on-screen, a distinct musical theme plays.
• Meaningful Name: You know a character is a pain when "thorne" is part of her last name.
• Moral Myopia: Hates Tari because of how she seemingly gets the spotlight despite her efforts.
• More Despicable Minion: Somehow manages to be this to both evil parties she worked for. Lucks and Sheridan both defend their actions by claiming they want to help people and change the world for the better, but Evelyn makes no such justifications. She doesn’t even seem to care about Sheridan’s horrific endgame, just so long as she gets to prove her superiority to Tari.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: She has Tari dead to rights en route to Sheridan's server, but instead of killing her enemy then and there, she decides to torture her by saying that Theo disappeared in his fight with her, knowing full well of the bond they forged and how Tari would react. Said reaction is what ended up breaking Masa (and eventually Belle) from Sheridan's mind control, leading to her undoing.
• Nice, Mean, and In-Between: The Mean to Tari's Nice and Belle's In-Between, due to her unpleasant and selfish attitude with none of the redeeming qualities that Belle had when she antagonized Tari.
• Not Hyperbole: In Season 3, the A.I.s who brag to Tari that Evelyn is much better than Tari aren't exaggerations at that point, as unlike Tari, she actually had gaming skills before gaining her new abilities from Sheridan.
• Not-So-Harmless Villain: Prior to Season 3, Evelyn was a nuisance at best and at worst a roadblock to MD-5, with Lucks only giving her the Glitchemoth as a last resort. Once Sheridan upgrades her, she becomes a credible threat that gives a massive Curb-Stomp Battle to Tari. As lampshaded by her, she's an example of what Tari would be like if she had actual skill behind her abilities.
• Psycho Pink: Pink is her primary color scheme, and Evelyn is a total psycho.
• Psychopathic Woman Child: She becomes this in "Friendly Fire" willing to attack Tari's friends (in a game mind you) just to spite her, and her personality is almost akin to a spoiled teenage girl at best and a petulant tantrum-throwing child at worst.
• Remember the New Girl?: Evelyn first appears in Season 2, but Belle appears to have a history with her when she first appears. Justified, as Belle mentioned Lucks has other Meta Runners in the previous season.
• Skewed Priorities: You kinda have to wonder why Evelyn would mess with MD-5's plan to bust Tari out of TAS Corp just to spite her, since not only does she not even like Tari, but Tari herself spelled it out to her that she was not happy there and wants out of TAS Corp more than anything.
  • And that’s before getting into the fact that she helped Dr. Sheridan in his plot to kill untold amounts of people and trap their souls in his simulation of it meant being able to be dominant over Tari. And not once does she seem to show any remorse over any of the people she’s leading to their doom.
• Smug Snake: She is so overconfident of herself that she underestimated Tari and her friends badly. It bites her ass in the end.
• The Sociopath: A low-functioning one as while her nastiness is made obvious, she has a massive superiority complex, and she even supports Sheridan, despite him being a psychotic maniac who wants to warp everyone into his server to abuse them all over her hatred towards Tari, showing she doesn't care who gets hurt as long as she gets her way.
• Sore Loser: Perhaps even moreso than Belle. It doesn’t help both of her defeats were at the hands of Tari, whom she absolutely loathes.
• Soundtrack Dissonance: Subverted. Her Leitmotif is unusually happy for someone as obnoxious as her, but it contains some unnerving parts to it.
• Spanner in the Works: Had it not been for Evelyn discovering Tari talking to Masa, MD-5’s plan might have gone off without a hitch.
• Strong and Skilled: Part of the reason why she's almost unstoppable with the new abilities Sheridan gave her is because she already had gaming experience beforehand, something which Tari never got to genuinely develop.
• Villainous Breakdown: Evelyn does not take her defeat in "Soft Lock" well, as she ends up a screaming wreck and briefly tussling with Tari as she's trying to retrieve MD-5's cartridge.
  Evelyn: This was my special day, and you! Ruined! EVERYTHING!
  • She then has another one as Tari gets the high ground after regaining her Meta Runner abilities.
  • And finally, when she loses everything and goes to jail, she sobs hysterically.

Dr. James Sheridan

Dr. James Sheridan

"My life's work is almost complete! Lucks is finally going to see the fruits of my research, and more importantly, I'm not going to be fired! (laughing) Wait, I probably shouldn't have said that..."

^{Click here for his Season 1 appearance}

^{Click here for his true appearance}

Voiced by: Anthony Sardinha

First appearance: "Wrong Warp"

A TAS Corp scientist who seems to have some sort of involvement with Tari's past.

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• Abusive Parents: He's Tari's creator and he calls himself her dad. And he's also trying to use her for his nefarious schemes.
• Actor Allusion: A villain played by Anthony Sardinha using mind control technology? Sounds like a certain funk group...
• Ambiguously Brown: He has a fairly dark complexion. Oddly, his Season 3 appearance (or rather, his avatar) gives him lighter skin.
• All Your Powers Combined: Via his server, he has access to items and worlds from all 7 major games that have appeared throughout the series, specifically the enemies from Ultra Jump Mania, several guns from Battle Blaze, Tempest spells, cars from Turbo Crash 9, some sort of item from Pocket Gakusei, Hidden Heroes blades and a lot of melee Skybreakers weapons. Downplayed, as he doesn’t properly use them as weapons, instead dispensing them so the Meta Runners can kill each other with them.
• Archnemesis Dad: More of an Archnemesis Creator, but he still fits the bill. He made Tari specifically to take down Lucks, and now that she unwittingly did her job, he spends the rest of the season trying to decommission her in order to put her brain functions back into Lucinia. He even tasks Evelyn, who makes her hatred of Tari crystal clear, with stabbing his creation so she will bleed out the data he needs. During the finale, he even calls himself Tari's Father, only to be verbally-berated by Tari for saying that.
• Asshole Victim: Even more than Lucks. Nobody misses him by the end of Season 3, not even Tari.
• Ax-Crazy: The guy is a complete nutjob to say the very least.
• Bad Boss: He very frequently treats the Lucks AI incredibly poorly, constantly abusing him, and in a Freeze-Frame Bonus in the sixth episode of Season 3, has an actual achievement made for people who kill said AI in the simulation.
• Berserk Button: Don't compare him to Lucks. He doesn't like that very much.
• Beware the Silly Ones: Yes, Sheridan can get a chuckle out of fans thanks to his wacky jokes and loony demeanor, but then again he's a Mad Scientist who plans on warping every Meta Runner in Silica City into his server.
• Big Bad: He becomes the main antagonist after killing Lucks, with his efforts to use Tari as part of his schemes driving much of the final season.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: Following the explosion, his Sanity Slippage seems to have taken a toll on his morality, with him claiming that he just wants to help people during his announcement of Global Warp Technology. Despite having made the Meta Runners he already captured fight to the death.
• Catchphrase: He often brags about how he's going to "change the world".
• Character Death: After Marco gets his hands on him in the final episode, he becomes the second character to unambiguously die (for real, this time) after Lucks.
• Chekhov's Gunman: He initially seems to be a lowly TAS Corp scientist who had an involvement in Tari’s past. He ends up turning out to be the Greater-Scope Villain of the entire series.
• Composite Character: More-so Sheridan's revealed in Season 3 to be a "Composite Expy" of both Kayaba and Sugou: two Antagonists from Sword Art Online.
• Contrasting Sequel Antagonist: Lucks was a cold, demanding Bad Boss who spent the first two seasons trying to abuse Tari's warp power for his company’s benefit and understand how it works. Sheridan, on the other hand, is a talkative Mad Scientist whose sanity had completely gone down the gutter and is the one who freakin' developed that power and is perfectly capable of surgically installing the warp function into three people within the span of one week.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: He gets electrocuted to death by multiple meta bugs all at once.
• Dark Reprise:
  • A remix of his theme (named “Pairing”) starts playing when he's calling Evelyn in The Stinger of Season 2, then just before the camera pans to his scarred face, the music puts harsher emphasis on the percussion as Sheridan is revealed to be alive and is the new Big Bad of the series.
  • As he reveals his grand plan of warping everyone in the world into his simulation via his Global Warp Technology, a far more intense version of his theme (named “Sheridan’s Plan”) plays throughout the entire sequence.
• Deconstructed Character Archetype: Of Motherly Scientist. In Meta Runner: Source and the flashbacks of Season 1, it's shown that Sheridan was a good father towards Tari, as well as Lucinia, who helped him in Project Blue, showing he was in good terms with his creation and wanting to revolutionize the gaming industry, even though he accidentally admitted that the project will also keep his job. It was eventually revealed that not only he was the one who murdered his ex-boss, but also created Tari as a means to take down Lucks and his company.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Subverted by the time of Season 3 begins. He does cares about Tari during the development on Project Blue, but the first episode of Season 3 shows that she was just a tool for him to kill Lucks and revive Lucinia. In the finale, he outright tried to have her killed when she gets in his way.
  • His relationship with Lucinia is more ambiguous, if not Deconstructed. The two seems to get along in the prequel comic book, going as far as to use Tari to revive her when she's in a coma. However, the fact she was turned into an emotionless enforcer, it's clear that subverted Sheridan's possible care for her, only seeing her as his servant.
• Evil Counterpart: He fulfills Sofia's role of the computer genius that overlooks the events in the game his team is warped in and tells them what to do from afar. This comes to a head in the final episode, when he and Sofia directly instruct Lucinia and Tari (respectively) in their battle.
• Eviler than Thou: Masa states that he's this to Lucks after he first makes him and Belle fight their friend Lucinia.
• Evil Sounds Deep: His disguised voice sounds much deeper than normal.
  • Evil Sounds Raspy: His actual voice after the accident is extra raspy.
• Expressive Mask: His helmet in season 2 features a mask with a glowing blue, emoji-esque face that can display various expressions.
• Facial Horror: "Fatal Error" reveals Sheridan to have suffered burn marks over the left side of his face.
• Faux Affably Evil: He tries to play the Nice Guy during his Season 3 appearances, but the lengths he's willing to go to get his way are extremely immoral and he gets really irritated when he talks about the lab incident and when he doesn't get his way.
• Fourth-Wall Observer: Is the only character to properly break the fourth wall in the series, with one of the achievements in his simulation being “Unpause the video and stop reading these”.
• Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse: The fact that Sheridan mentioned how Lucks stole the credit of his Meta Runner arm shows that even before the lab incident, Sheridan was already an petty and self-absorbed man who only concerns his work, and the incident just made him From Bad to Worse.
• Good Scars, Evil Scars: The reveal that he's the Greater-Scope Villain in "Fatal Error" is topped by a shot of his half-burned face.
• Gory Discretion Shot: We don’t see the entirety of his corpse after he gets fried in the finale, but given what we do see, that’s probably for the best.
• Greater-Scope Villain: As it turns out, he was the true creator of the Meta Runner arm, Lucks just stole all the credit from him. Aside from that, as the mastermind behind Project Blue, he is the indirect perpetrator of Lucinia’s near-death, which would end up being the reason Masa started butting heads with Lucks and formed MD-5 in the first place. Project Blue was also the cause of Tari’s creation, and indirectly Theo entering the real world. In other words, Sheridan is responsible for literally everything that happens in the series.
• Hidden in Plain Sight: Not only is he revealed to be the “Annoying Neighbor” from “Firewall”, but he made several blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameos throughout the rest of the season in that disguise. Two of the most important ones: in “Soft Lock”, he bumps into Masa while Horizon Stadium is being evacuated, which implies how he put the hacking device on his Meta Runner arm, and earlier in “Fatal Error” when he looks towards the camera as Tari and MD-5 flee from the crime scene he orchestrated.
• Hypocrite: He claims to Tari that she took down Lucks when in reality he did most of the work by hacking into Masa's Meta Runner arm and forcing him to kill the latter.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: He gets electrocuted to death by a handful of his own meta bugs. On top of this, his action of (presumably) selling one to Masa for him to use in his match against Marco would end up being part of his downfall once Marco properly gets to him.
• Ink-Suit Actor: Outside of his black hair and lightish-brown skin tone, Sheridan overall seems to bear a close resemblance to his voice actor Anthony Sardinha, not counting his hologram.
• Jerk with a Heart of Jerk: He tries to convince MD-5 that he does care for Tari and Lucinia and want to help them. And while he does want to revive Lucinia, it's made obvious that he only cares about using her for his own selfish desires.
• Knight Templar: He believes what he did is to change the world... When all he did is to make others suffer.
• Laughably Evil: Unlike Lucks, who was dead serious about his experimental work, much of Sheridan's mannerisms and interactions with the people he recruited/captured is played for Black Comedy.
• Laughing Mad: He was seen laughing uncontrollably while trying to put together Project Blue. This is likely due to stress, excitement, fear of getting fired, too much coffee, or some combination.
• Leitmotif: His titular theme plays whenever something involving either him or Project Blue is on screen. Gets a Dark Reprise upon The Reveal at the end of Season 2 and yet another with the reveal of his grand plan in the third to last episode of Season 3.
• Lotus-Eater Machine: He is able to surgically modify Masa and Belle's brains and forcefully warp them into his simulation. He later manages to warp other Meta Runners from all around Silica City en masse with Evelyn's help, and eventually, Meta Runners around the entire world. His gaming PC could barely handle containing all of their consciousnesses without exploding.
• Mad Scientist: Downplayed. He is clearly very passionate about his Project Blue and was working on it for a shady corporation, but he still shows a pleasant personality and is only stressed out from being overworked. Played straight following the revelations in "Fatal Error".
• Make Way for the New Villains: Downplayed. Lucks' death allows Sheridan to take center stage as the Big Bad of Season 3, but based on Lucks' last words, Sheridan was acting behind the scenes from the start.
• Malevolent Masked Men: Most of his appearances in season 2 are spent wearing a helmet, with his face (and identity) obscured by an emoji-like mask.
• Manipulative Bastard: He manages to "convince" Masa to be brainwashed by threatening to send him back to his Guilt-Induced Nightmare.
• Missing Steps Plan: His ultimate goal is to pull in every Meta Runner into his private server to become a part of Sher Corps' Meta Runner Team to do... something. He clearly had little clue as to why he was even doing all of this in the first place since by this point he already killed Lucks and thanks to MD-5 TAS Corp had been decommissioned. One could have chalked this up to either Exhaustion-Induced Idiocy or Didn't Think This Through.
• Motive Rant: Has one in the third to last episode of Season 3 as he reveals his Global Warp Technology, which also doubles as a Villainous Breakdown.
  Dr. Sheridan: Greetings, citizens of… well, everywhere! My name is James Sheridan. Dr J. Sheridan, and today, I am announcing the launch of both Sher Corp and our flagship product! […] Introducing; Global Warp Technology! […] What’s the price of this grand new product, might you ask? Well, nothing! You see, I just want to help people. […] See, you all thought that Lucks was the visionary, but, he wasn’t! I AM! I invented the Meta Runner arm! Oh, didn’t know that, did you? All he did was slap HIS STUPID LOGO on it, and take all of MY CREDIT! Well, I hope this demonstration helps everyone realize… just how much, I am going… to change… the world…
• Mr. Exposition: He is the one who explains how the world of Meta Runner works through a flashback at the very beginning of the first episode.
  Dr. Sheridan: Video games are everything! Jobs, entertainment, lifestyle, it’s the engine that powers society itself and to make it in this society, you need to win, a lot. Be it in FPS games, platformers, Battle Royales, you name it. There are gamers who train every waking moment of their life in hopes of becoming the best. And at the top of the food chain, you have Meta Runners. People who are willing to replace their limbs just for a boost in accuracy, dexterity and performance. With legions of fans who adore them, Meta Runners are the best of the best.
• Must Have Caffeine: He has a serious coffee addiction. When putting together Project Blue, we see that he has empty cups of coffee scattered across his office. When talking to Evelyn at the end of Season 2, we see that he's still on it.
• Nice Guy: At least in the past. Dr. Sheridan used to be a fairly decent and overall pleasant man, and proved to be one of the nicest people at TAS-Corp alongside Lucinia and Bo. Unfortunately, this personality didn't last for long...
• Non-Action Big Bad: Sheridan's incredible skill over technology gives him Reality Warper level control over his own private server and allows his team to cheat in Skybreakers without consequence, but once an opponent manages to physically reach him, there's not much he can do. He only barely manages to escape Masa's grasp when the MD-5 leader breaks free of his control and Marco finding his location ensures his demise.
• No Social Skills: He has shades of this, clearly unable to understand normal social cues or personal relationships with the rest of the characters. This is probably amplified by his Sanity Slippage and his Lack of Empathy. This is more noticeable in Season 3.
  • The first example comes when he presents torturing the A.I. Lucks to Belle and Masa. Judging by how chipper Sheridan is and not forcing them to take part of it immediately, he believes that the hyperventilating Masa is excited for his turn in torturing Lucks. In reality, Masa is panicking over imagining the rotten corpse of Lucks.
  • Even if he tries to "reassure" Masa and Belle that the controlled Lucinia is herself, he poorly tells them that at least she can play video games. When he giddily asks if that is something, it clearly shows that he doesn't understand the emotional grief Belle and Masa have to endure, and they are horrified that Lucinia can't even talk or express herself without all of her memories. Made worse with Belle tearfully pleading Lucinia to say something and Sheridan doing nothing to comfort her.
  • He doesn't realize the distress of people who are caught in his experiment and even mistakes himself being wanted as becoming more famous than Lucks. The most glaring example is him forcing all the Meta Runners in his captivity to fight each other with the implication that he thinks they are having fun. Not helped when he thinks this is regular "video game stuff" and his insistence of wanting "to help people".
• Not Quite Dead: The Stinger for "Fatal Error" reveals that he has survived the explosion and is now working with Evelyn to enact his master plan.
• Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist: Even more so than Lucks, if that's even possible. He keeps claiming his actions will change the world, but in the end, it causes more harm than good.
• Odd Name Out: In comparison to all the other villains in the show, Sheridan has a fairly exotic name.
• Pay Evil unto Evil: Kills Lucks at the end of "Fatal Error." This would've been a complete favor for MD-5, had Sheridan not framed Masa in the process.
• Psychopathic Manchild: His response to Masa and Belle's refusal to join his team is a very childish "WELL I DIDN'T WANT YOU ANYWAY!"
• Red Herring Shirt: He appeared as Masa's annoying neighbor before his eventual reveal in the stinger for "Fatal Error"
• Revenge: The major factor that pushed him to enact his evil plan was Lucks stealing the credit for the Meta Runner arm away from him.
• Sanity Slippage: The explosion has not been kind to him as he has gone insane as a result as seen in The Stinger in "Fatal Error"—which is saying something given the implications that he was slowly becoming unhinged already.
• The Sociopath: Why did he warp Silica City’s Meta Runners into his server? So that he can test Global Warp Technology by forcing everyone to murder each other.
• Take Over the City: Sheridan plans for everyone in Silica City to be warped into his server. And soon, the entire world as well.
• Talkative Loon: His debut in season 3 has him going on long rambling tangents while not letting anyone get a word in edgewise and its made clear he has more than a few screws loose.
• They Called Me Mad!: The very first lines of Meta Runner: Source have him recounting how everyone laughed at him and called him a failure as he's putting Tari together, implying that his skills were doubted in the past.
• Tom the Dark Lord: While he admittedly has the most exotic last name of the current villains, his first name, James, is arguably the most basic of the first names of all the villains, ESPECIALLY given how he somehow ends up even worse than Lucks in terms of the sheer scale of his plan.
• Teleport Spam: His avatar has the ability to teleport digitally, which he uses a lot.
• Virtual-Reality Warper: Has full control over the environment in his server, as well as the avatars of anybody within.
• Visionary Villain: He sees himself as a revolutionary who will use the Meta Runner arm and the Global Warp Technology to change the world.
• Walking Spoiler: He's still alive, and the true villain of the show, lethally taking Lucks' Big Bad position.
• We Can Rule Together: He persuades Evelyn to join him so she can have her revenge on Tari. Lampshaded in the title of the song for this scene in the soundtrack, which is "Pairing".
• Your Soul Is Mine!: Part of his ultimate plan involves putting dozens of Meta Runners in his server by having their minds forcibly transferred into digital copies of them, leaving their physical bodies to slowly die.

Lucinia

Lucinia Porter

"And besides, you're one of the most talented speedrunners I know... Hell, you're a lot better than me, that's for sure."

^{Click here for her Season 1 appearance}

Voiced by: Amber Lee Connors

First appearance: "Wrong Warp"

A TAS Corp Meta Runner who went missing about a year prior to the start of the series. She was Belle's girlfriend and Sofia's sister.

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• Brainwashed and Crazy: It seems that missing most of your mind makes it easier for someone to control you.
• Came Back Wrong: Thanks to more of Sheridan's dangerous experimentations (and a botched attempt to bring her fully back), she challenges Belle and Masa in their "training" as bascially a robot for Sheridan to control, with none of her consiousness or memories of her friends. She also doesn't talk outside of saying Sofia's name once after hearing her sister's voice in "Dead on Arrival".
• Fake Arm Disarm: When Tari saw Lucinia in episode 10, she was seen missing her Meta Runner arm. This was caused by the lab accident where an explosion was caused by Sheridan's program overloading the system.
• Good Scars, Evil Scars: The left half of her face was burned from the explosion, though the damage is very minor compared to Sheridan.
• Greater-Scope Paragon: Her presumed death caused everything in the series, including Tari’s creation and thus Theo entering the real world, and the formation of MD-5.
• Ink-Suit Actor: Seems to greatly resemble her voice aress Amber Lee Connors.
• Morality Pet: When Belle was loyal to TAS Corp, she never stopped thinking about Lucinia.
• Nice Girl: She was the glue that held her team together and they all miss her very much.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Lucinia volunteered for Sheridan's experiment because she wanted to help out. We all know how that went down.
• Not Quite Dead: "Fatal Error" reveals that after the explosion, she was physically healed, but her mind was shattered into several pieces, with some being sent into TAS Corp's servers while others merged with Tari.
• Official Couple: With Belle.
• Plot-Triggering Death: Her assumed demise led to Masa forming MD-5, and she is later revealed to be alive and enfused with Tari.
• Small Role, Big Impact: She hasn't had a major role in the story so far, but her disappearance kickstarted the whole plot by causing Masa to leave TAS Corp and found MD-5 to fight them back.
• Spanner in the Works: Due to the lab accident, her mind was blown to bits and was scattered across TASCorp's servers. One memory would end up wandering into the corrupted Ultra Jump Mania and reveals to Theo how to perform a certain wall clip and another mind fragment would temporarily merge with Tari in "Hidden Heroes" and gives her a last second skill boost to overpower Evelyn. Both end up contributing to TASCorp's eventual downfall.
• The Stoic: She became this in Season 3 thanks to only being partially revived.
• Straight Gay: Unlike Belle, whose mannerisms and habit of calling Tari "babe" give some... heavy implications, Lucinia interacts with people normally in what little we see of her, making the revelation that they're a couple all the more surprising.
• Walking Spoiler: Not as much as Dr. Sheridan, but a lot of her backstory and her impact on the characters contain some pretty heavy spoilers.

MD-5

Masa Shimamoto

Masa Shimamoto

"Get up. Take a deep breath. Games are all about making the right decisions at the right time. Clear your mind and focus. The right actions will come to you."

^{Click here to see his pre-Season 2 appearance}

Voiced by: Brendan Barry-Cotter

First appearance: "Sequence Break"

The leader of MD-5.

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• The Ace: He shows a lot of skill during his Battle Blaze match in Tari, barely giving her a chance to fight back for the first couple of matches. He also holds his own extremely well in the Tempest tournament, only being beaten out by Belle in battle, and even then it was through distracting him by forcing him to defend Tari from her.
  • In Episode 11, Masa is forced to use a one-hand controller after Lucks shot his Meta Runner arm off, and still cleans house in a War Tech Fighters match.
• Authority Sounds Deep: He has a very deep voice that helps establishing him as a serious, strong and experienced leader.
• Body and Host: A downplayed, technological example: Dr. Sheridan hijacks Masa’s arm at the ending of season 2, using it to kill Lucks while throwing off the matter of blame for the murder. Arguably, Masa himself did this to Marco earlier in the season, as while he didn’t explicitly take control of Marco’s extra arms, both he and Sheridan used the same strategy of sneaking a “Meta Bug” onto their victim’s mechanical implant.
• Broken Pedestal: Subverted. As implied in episode 10, then revealed in Episode 12, what kindness he had towards Tari and Theo went out the window upon learning about Tari’s involvement with the Project Blue incident, and in turn, Lucinia’s apparent death (despite Tari stating she had no idea about it), and Theo being (unwillingly) used by Lucks to spy on MD-5 and expose Operation Silent Demon to him, which adds to his initial reluctance to rejoin Lamar and Sofia when they find him.
  Lamar: “What about them?” They’re stuck at TAS Corp being used by Lucks as human shields! They’re our friends, and they’re in danger!
  Masa: They are not our friends! Theo was a spy, and Tari was involved with that... Project Blue and Dr. Sheridan!
• Combat Pragmatist: Is willing to fight dirty when the need arises. During his match against Marco, he activates a device to disable the latter's extra arms to buy enough time to land a killing blow.
• Defector from Decadence: He used to work at TAS Corp as a team captain, but later turned against the company after suspecting Lucks of murdering the recently missing Lucinia. His attempt to hack into Lucks' private servers for evidence against him led to him being decommissioned, leading to him forming MD-5.
• Fake Arm Disarm: Ends up losing the lower half of his Meta Runner arm after Lucks shot it off in Episode 10. He also loses his new arm after it after attacking Sheridan and overloaded his mind control chip but it got taken by Marco and put in storage in the finale.
• Freudian Trio: Excluding Tari and Theo, with the MD-5 group, he is the down-to-earth and fairly strict Superego.
• Heroic BSoD:
  • As revealed in the Season 2 premiere, he took MD-5's defeat at the hands of Lucks hard; he quickly abandoned Lamar and Sofia, and six months later, is now dueling low-tier gamers for money with a one handed controller.
  • And he goes through this once again at the end of the same season when he loses control of his arm and ends up unintentionally killing Lucks... right after MD-5 talked him out of shooting him.
• Irony: He ends up having to cheat by using a device to cripple Marco in order to win a new Meta Runner arm. Dr. Sheridan ends up using a similar device to take control of his new arm and frame him for Lucks’ murder.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Lamar even Lampshades it, pointing out that he may be an edgy loner, but he cares about his friends.
• Made of Iron: The finale shows that he survived a screwdriver through the neck followed by the mind-control device in his skull exploding with enough force to knock out Sheridan from a fair distance away.
• Meaningful Name: His name is possibly derived from Nintendo greats Masahiro Sakurai and Shigeru Miyamoto.
• Not So Above It All: When Masa (initially) refuses to believe that Belle has changed, he takes an almost childish enjoyment out of muting her "Reason You Suck" Speech.
• Perpetual Frowner: He always keep a serious attitude and doesn't smile very often.
• Rage Breaking Point: After Sheridan revealed to Masa that he made him kill Lucks, Masa's anger reaches its peak as he proceeds to charge at the crazed scientist in a fit of rage, only to be held back as he lashes out at him.
  Masa: You... made me... A MURDERER!!!
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: His eyes completely glow red when warped.
• Rock Bottom: Is very clearly here in the beginning of Season 2, to the point that he runs away and makes a living off of dueling low-level gamers, and resorts to cheating to get a new Meta Runner arm in episode 3.
• Serious Business: Your first clue that Masa's like this is that he replaced his entire arm with an enhanced prosthetic, rather than just from the elbow down.
• Stern Teacher: While he is rather merciless against Tari in their Battle Blaze match, he's more than willing to help her get into a proper mindset for the match once she teleports into the game.
• Trapped in Another World: Has his brain surgically modified by Sheridan to trap his mind in his simulation.
• Trauma Conga Line: He's put through the wringer in all three seasons. In the show's backstory alone, he's decommisioned to cover up Lucks' involvement in what happened to Lucinia. Then, in Season 1, he gets his arm shot off when MD-5's plan to expose TAS Corp is found out. In Season 2, he's forced to kill Lucks by Dr. Sheridan, putting him at a real risk of going to jail for murder. In Season 3, he and Belle are kidnapped by Dr. Sheridan (aka the same guy that made him kill a man) and mind-controlled into fighting their friends. And even though both Lucks and Sheridan are defeated and Belle and Lucinia are together again by the end, he still loses his arm again.

Sofia Porter

Sofia Porter

"You went into the video game! That's unheard of!"

^{Click here to see her pre-Season 2 appearance}

Voiced by: Hayley Nelson

First appearance: "Sequence Break"

The tech-savvy member of MD-5.

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• Break the Cutie: Ends up suffering from this in Episode 10 upon learning about her sister, Lucinia's, death. This is rather viciously notable, as aside from a brief moment in Episode 5, we never see Sofia emotionally down.
• Delinquent Hair: The left side of her head is shaved off.
• Freudian Trio: Forms one with the other MD-5 members except Tari and Theo, in which she is the enthusiastic and usually cheerful Id.
• Genki Girl: She seems pretty excitable, as seen during her first interaction with Tari in the fourth episode.
• Goggles Do Nothing: Downplayed. She does wear her goggles on her eyes while she's working on Masa's cybernetic arm, but most of the time she wears them on her forehead, or, starting in Season 2, around her neck.
• "Hell, Yes!" Moment: Her reaction to Marco coming to the rest of MD-5's rescue in the S2 finale, in noticeable contrast to everyone else's... less certain faces.
• Hidden Depths: Episode 5 of Season 3 shows her to have a thing for buff fish people.
• Ink-Suit Actor: Outside of a punkish half-buzzcut, Sofia pretty much looks dead on like her voice actress Hayley Nelson.
• Large Ham: Because of her energetic nature, she can get quite intense.
  Sofia: We call ourselves MD-5, and our mission is to... TAKE DOWN THE EVIL CONGLOMERATE TAAAAAAASCOOOOOOOORP!
• Nice Girl: A bit hyperactive, but Sofia is kind, helpful and cheery.
• Playful Hacker: She programmed the defense systems of a bunker, and happens to mod games in her spare time. One such mod displays character information, such as age, health and temperature. In a First-Person Shooter.
  Tari: Why do I need to know what his breath smells like??
• Stepford Smiler: Normally acts all hammy, but she's hiding her depression from the belief that her sister is dead.
• Your Makeup Is Running: When she finds out the truth behind her sister's death.

Lamar Williams

Lamar Williams

"I'm a bit of a player, you know what I'm sayin'?"

^{Click here to see his pre-Season 2 appearance}

Voiced by: Anthony Sardinha

First appearance: "Bad Split"

The anime-loving third member of MD-5.

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• Big Brother Instinct: Acts rather protectively of both Tari and Theo, usually being the first to worry when either of them are in danger, and often spending time with and working as a tag team with Theo.
• Big Damn Heroes:
  • He rescues Tari from TAS Corp in the fourth episode.
  • He saves Tari again in the sixth episode of the final season after escaping Sheridan's server lobby while forcefully warped, no less.
• Cool Car: Has one he uses in Episode 4, decorated with Nova Explorers decals, bright orange neon lights, and also comes with hard light bumpers.
• Deadpan Snarker: He falls into this from time to time.
  Theo: Tari's a super genius!
  Lamar: Well... you're driving on the wrong side of the road, super genius. Can I have the controller back?
• Freudian Trio: Of the MD-5 members without Tari and Theo, the easygoing but capable of being serious Ego. Although he leans more towards Id than Superego.
• Gratuitous Japanese: He does this during Episode 6.
  Lamar: NANI?! What the hell just happened?!
• Nice Guy: Obsession with anime aside, Lamar is a forgiving guy who cares about his friends.
• The Nicknamer: He calls Theo "little man". He also sarcastically referred to Tari as "super genius".
• Otaku: Is a big anime fan, from his streaming username being "AnimeKing20" to playing anime games (Such as one called Nova Explorers and another called Pocket Gakusei) to owning a lot of body pillows. One might say he's the Meta Runner version of Fishy Boopkins.
  Tari: How many do you have, exactly?!
  Lamar: Don't worry about it.
• Plucky Comic Relief: Shares this role with Theo in the series, being one of the main sources of comedy in this dark and serious world.
• Sir Swears-a-Lot: Uses rather coarse language on several occasions, on a wider variety than Belle for reference. Though he's much kinder than her.
  Lamar: Damn, that's an interesting way to say thank you to someone who just saved yo' ass.
• Support Party Member: His role in Skybreakers is Support, letting him heal allies and deploy springs that provide mobility.
• Trapped in Another World: He briefly gets warped into Sheridan’s server by Evelyn. Thankfully, he manages to escape and sneak onto Evelyn’s ship in to help Tari.

Other

Bo

Bo

Click ^here to see her appearances on TAS Corp billboards.

Voiced by: Elsie Lovelock

First appearance "She has an announcement to make"

An A.I. character who works for TAS Corp. She also serves as the mascot and host for advertisements for the Australian YouTube channel, GLITCH.

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• Advertised Extra: She was supposed to have a bigger role in Season 1 but it never came to be, causing her to be relegated to just have cameo appearances according to Deleted Scenes from Meta Runner Season 1.
• The Cameo: Pretty much her role in the show. She also made a cameo in the pilot for Sunset Paradise.
• The Ditz: She is often forgetful.
• Nice Girl: She is one of the few people (such as Belle) working for TAS. Corp are actually nice.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: Nobody knows what happened to her after Lucks' death and TAS. Corp's disbanding.

Marco

Marco

"Well, it's been a pretty good game, boys, but all good things must end eventually..."

Voiced by: Jason Marnocha

First appearance: "Unreal Engines"

The four-armed boss of the Rustworks, an arena where players compete for a chance to win big, at the risk of losing more than their pride.

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• Ace Custom: Unlike the other Meta Runners who all sacrificed one of their arms to get an artificial one designed to make Gaming more efficient, Marco carries around a bulky backpack designed and built by himself that comes with a second set of robotic arms to help give him an advantage in gaming by serving as a Player Two, stating that he doesn't trust mass-produced corporate technology. This allows him to be the only other Gamer to be immune to Sheridan's cyberattack that caused all other Meta Runners to have their minds sealed away inside of his private server.
• Ascended Extra: After his one major role in "Unreal Engines", Marco disappeared from the series up until "Fatal Error". From there, he became one of the main characters in Season 3.
• Benevolent Boss: He treats his workers fairly, and is horrified to find them affected (read: left paralyzed and basically dying) by Sheridan's cyberattack.
• Big Damn Heroes:
  • Shows up at the end of "Fatal Error" to help MD-5 escape the police, although it was only so that they would pay him back for Masa cheating at the game.
  • He, with the help of Sofia, ends up tracking down Sheridan’s location, provides Sheridan a Curb-Stomp Battle and finally ends up being the one to actually kill the bastard.
• Fake Arm Disarm: Implied to be a common event in his arena, with his Establishing Character Moment having a nameless Meta Runner beg Marco not to take his arm before being taken away and Lamar gambling his own arm to win a new one for Masa.
• The Immune: Because Marco's arms weren't created using Sheridan's technology, he can't be forcibly warped into Sheridan's server.
• Ink-Suit Actor: Marco's face resembles that of his voice actor, Jason Marnocha.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: He's portrayed as an unpleasant man right from the start being very antagonistic towards MD-5, but when Sheridan strikes, he warms up to the gang and it's even shown that he cares about his co-workers.
• Multi-Armed and Dangerous: Always equipped with two extra robotic arms attached to a machine on his back.
• Multi-Armed Multitasking: Playing co-op games without a partner doesn't slow him down, his robotic arms act as his Player 2. Masa exploits this by disabling the arms at a critical moment, leaving Marco's car unable to move as Masa drops a boulder on it.
• Pay Evil unto Evil: Downplayed given how Marco is more of a Jerk with a Heart of Gold Anti-Hero, but it still counts. In the finale, he ends up outright frying Sheridan alive with some of Sheridan’s own meta bugs before pushing him into his own server to both guaranteed Sheridan’s death and destroy the server itself.
• Properly Paranoid: He made his robotic arms from scratch because of his distrust of corporate technology. This ends up protecting him from being warped into Sheridan's server.
• Sore Loser: He doesn't take his defeat by Masa well, and that's before he suspects he cheated. Which he was right about.

Sheridan's A.I. assistant

A.I. Lucks

Voiced by: David J.G. Doyle

First appearance: "Power Down"

An artificial, purposefully flawed duplicate of the real Lucks made by Dr. Sheridan for the sake of his amusement.

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• Chekhov's Gunman: He’s ultimately the one who helps Tari find a way to live on even after reviving Lucinia in the finale.
• The Chew Toy: Is very often at the end of abuse by Sheridan.
• Dartboard of Hate: He's very often the subject of abuse by Sheridan. In this case, the person who he's meant to imitate is already dead and often serves as more of a way for Sheridan to rub in his dominance.
• Death Equals Redemption: After Sheridan dies and the server begins the collapse, A.I. Lucks uses what little time he has left in life to help Tari continue the process to revive Lucinia and give her a hint to save herself and Theo.
• Dying as Yourself: As Sheridan's server is collapsing, the A.I. Lucks was freed from Sheridan's control and his personality changes into a slightly friendlier version of the real Lucks. After giving Tari hints, he wishes her good luck before walking into the void and getting deleted.
• Extreme Doormat: To the point where he's the complete opposite of the real Lucks, allowing Sheridan to torture him all he wants.
• Grew Beyond Their Programming: Originally designed to basically be a punching bag for Sheridan to take out all his frustration on, this Lucks does seem to be developing feelings, as evidenced when he feels bad for Belle and Masa when they are in Sheridan's captivity while Sheridan himself isn't looking. That's not even getting into his words of encouragement to Tari at the end.
• Imposter Forgot One Detail: The original Lucks had a beard stubble, but this copy of him has no facial hair.
• Ironic Echo: Repeats the actual Lucks’ line about TAS Corp nurturing the gifted to Tari to showcase his Heel–Face Turn.
• Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal: Downplayed, since Sheridan was already killed by Marco at that point, but he hints at a possible way for Tari to survive after reviving Lucinia, something Sheridan would never have allowed, after gleefully admitting how degrading it was being the crazed scientist's punching bag.
• Nice Guy: In stark contrast to the original Lucks' cold, oppressive attitude, this copy of him is overly friendly to everyone, even Belle and Masa, and not caring if people mistreat him.
• Through the Eyes of Madness: Due to his guilt, Masa sees this Lucks as a zombie with a bullet hole where he was shot.

Satsuki-Chan

Satsuki-Chan

Voiced by: Amber Lee Connors (Season 2), Elsie Lovelock (Season 3)

First appearance: "Transfer Student"

An NPC who originates from Nova Explorers and was added to Pocket Gakusei for a crossover event. Tari ends up being forced to date her in order to get in contact with MD-5 while at TASCorp.

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• Back for the Finale: She returns in the series finale to help Tari fight the brainwashed Lucinia.
• Expy: Basically a copyright-friendly version of Hatsune Miku.

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