Characters / Red Dead Redemption - Protagonists

This is a partial character sheet for Red Dead Redemption and Red Dead Redemption II. Visit here for the main character index.

John Marston

John Marston

"Every man has a right to change, a chance of forgiveness."

^{Click here to see him in Red Dead Redemption}

Portrayed by: Rob Wiethoff

"People don't forget. Nothing gets forgiven."

An orphan of Scottish descent, John Marston ran away at a young age to live on his own, soon finding himself in the company of Dutch van der Linde. Raised like a son by the outlaw and his growing gang, John was a loyal follower for many years, until rising tensions and a job gone wrong saw him left for dead by his so-called family. Embittered by the betrayal and looking for a second chance, he married his sweetheart Abigail and settled down as a rancher with their son, Jack - until one day, a group of government agents came to him with an ultimatum...

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• The Ace: He’s an extremely accomplished gunslinger and horse rider who is basically a One-Man Army who can cut down swathes of gangs, lawmen and even the Mexican army. There’s a reason why Ross wanted him to hunt down the rest of the Van der Linde Gang because he’s the right man for the job.
• Ace Custom: His Cattleman Revolver - a darker-colored, extremely worn model with a bone grip.
• The Alcoholic: 1899 John loves his drink, most nights in the first few chapters he can be found getting drunk with Bill and Javier in camp.
• Action Dad: John's defining trait is his devotion to his family. The very reason he's going on a long, violent quest across New Austin, Nuevo Paraiso, and West Elizabeth to hunt down his former gang? The BOI has them trapped in a Gilded Cage and he wants to set them free.
• All for Nothing: How he ultimately views his time as an outlaw in the Van der Linde gang by I. When Javier Escuella asks if the lives they lived together meant nothing to him, he responds with saying that all they did was make excuses for robbing and killing people.
• Amazon Chaser: Abigail used to ride with their gang and is even more of a verbal badass than John is. She's also the one who kills Agent Milton in the prequel.
• And Now for Someone Completely Different: Is the playable character in II's epilogue. In a roundabout way, he is this for Arthur in the same way as Jack was to him.
• Anger Born of Worry: Has some harsh words for Jack after saving him in "Spare the Love, Spoil the Child". Considering that the kid tried to hunt and take down a grizzly bear by himself, it's quite justified.
• Annoying Younger Sibling: Arthur, who was also adopted by Dutch, initially views him as this in II. Arthur is the most consistently responsible of the group which clashes heavily with John, an irresponsible man who neglects his own family. John's character development into a better man allows them to eventually heal their rift, to the point Arthur is willing to give up everything to help John escape to a better life.
• Anti-Hero: John is an Anti-Hero no matter how you play him, but the Karma Meter makes it somewhat difficult to ascertain exactly what Anti-Hero he is. A player who does consistently good deeds, along with Marston's willingness to help people in need and motivation for the main story to make him more of a Knight in Sour Armor or a light Good Is Not Nice Pragmatic Hero. A particularly nasty player can make him a Pay Evil unto Evil Unscrupulous Hero or even a Villain Protagonist.
• Art Evolution:
  • The trailers for the first game had a noticeably younger-looking John. He was aged up for the final game.
  • In II, John's default appearance in 1907 is vastly different from pre-release screenshots; in the final game, the cowboy outfit has some minor changes here and there, his build is slightly larger, he sports a longer beard, and his hair is now black, short, and relatively well-maintained.
• Armor-Piercing Response: Has one with Bill Williamson after catching him in Mexico. Before executing him, Bill tells John he was "always a traitor, you bastard orphan!" How does John respond? "And you was always a dumb, inbred hick!" before he puts a bullet in Bill's head.
• The Atoner: It's right there in the title. He hunts down the remainder of his former gang members as means of atonement for his time as an outlaw and keep his future safe.
• Back from the Dead: A non-canon example. In Undead Nightmare, John returns to the world as a zombie.
• Badass Bandolier: Not at first, but you can get one. It's more than just cosmetic; purchasing it allows him to carry more ammunition.
• Badass Boast: "You'll be the first to know when I kill you, I promise."
• Badass Cape: The poncho outfit, which is a Shout-Out to the Man with No Name's outfit in the Dollars Trilogy.
• Badass Longcoat: Quite a few of his outfits and his main outfit during the bulk of the story in II is his gray shotgun coat with black lining.
• Bad Liar: If the player takes their time when they find Dutch on his base in I, his response to John telling him the place is surrounded is to mention how John was always a bad liar. In the prequel, we see how bad he is at it. Agent Milton instantly sees through the sarcastic "Rip Van Winkle" remark when asked for a name, and in the epilogue of II John's lack of knowledge about everyday farm stuff and his skill with guns and horses speak much louder than his sob story about losing his wife's family inheritance to her brother - and it would've helped if he could at least remember the fake name he's supposed to be giving.
• Bag of Spilling: At the start of Redemption, John doesn't have any of the weaponry he had in 1899 or 1907, and his Dead Eye and shooting skills have worsened dramatically. However, it's understandable, given he spent the years up to 1911 quietly tending to his farm and avoiding conflict.
• Barbarian Longhair: John is almost always seen with collar or shoulder-length hair.
• Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Despite the scars and nearly blind eye he received from being mauled by wolves, he’s still a damn attractive man and still has many ladies falling for him.
• Beardness Protection Program: In 1907, his default look consists of a level 4 beard and short hair, and he and his family use fake names.
• Beware the Nice Ones: He's generally a pretty pleasant guy, despite this he does have his limits and will not hesitate to threaten those he feels aren't holding up their side of the bargain.
• Book Dumb: He never got a proper education, but is a fast learner, quickly mastering ranching tasks under Tom Dickens' and Bonnie's tutelage. In II, Arthur calls him dull and it's slowly revealed that John has few skills beyond shooting. That said, he's rather articulate, thanks to Dutch, and uses fairly specific and advanced words, such as reticence. He's also mistaken for being a city boy by both Bonnie and her father due to how enigmatic and well spoken he is, and Bonnie doubts whether he can even ride a horse. In the epilogue of II, his journal is fairly well-written, even considering how good of a writer Arthur was, and he frequently waxes on about philosophical subjects. Ultimately, though, he's not as book smart as his son is, and Jack is often required for more technical documents.
• Boring, but Practical: His heist plans in the second game are this compared to Dutch's, being comparatively low-risk and high-reward, but lacking in the spectacle and grandiosity. Had the gang stuck to more plans like these, they might not have suffered as much as they did.
• Bounty Hunter: In Red Dead Redemption, he's been tasked by the Bureau Of Investigation to track down Bill, Javier, and Dutch, though in more of a Boxed Crook way than for money. In Red Dead Redemption II, Sadie takes him bounty hunting with her to help him earn money in order to pay off his mortgage on the ranch. In both games, he can also take individual bounties in order to earn money.
• Brilliant, but Lazy: The prequel reveals that he's naturally talented at learning things and learned Dutch and Hosea's teachings at much faster rate than Arthur. Too bad he’s not interested in some of the things he’s learned like literature and he quickly forgets what he learns in favor of gunslinging and even then his hiatus from it for four long years turned him rusty, but he quickly regains them and even improves.
• Broken Pedestal: He used to be supremely loyal to Dutch. However, his faith is shaken when Dutch supposedly abandons him during the botched Saint Denis bank heist, and is shattered when Dutch definitely abandons him when he's shot during the raid on the army train. Even in the epilogue years later, John’s viewpoint of Dutch had changed dramatically.
• Butt-Monkey: He gets insults hurled at him at every possible chance by both Abigail and Arthur. When you first meet him, he’s been mauled by wolves, and then after Arthur rescues him the first thing Abigail does is insult him.
• Character Development: Actually undergoes this in the prequel, where his character is a sharp contrast from the John Marston we knew. Initially, John started off as rather hot-headed and often apathetic towards his family, even leaving the gang for a whole year. However, as time passes, he starts to take his role as a father much more seriously after Jack's kidnapping and tries to spend more time with his family. It's probably best shown in their living arrangements, in the first couple of chapters Abigail and Jack sleep separately from John on the ground while he sleeps on a cot in a pretty big tent. By the end of the main story, they're all sleeping in the same area and Abigail sleeps in the bed while John sleeps on the floor. In the epilogue, John still retains his hot-headedness, which makes him struggle in trading his outlaw life for a one of normalcy, as he often tries to solve problems with violence. It's only after Abigail and Jack leave him does he mature more and more, realising that he will always be a danger to his family if he doesn't change.
• Characterization Marches On: Reverse example. In the first game, John was shown to be a very well-educated and suave character who had a rather eloquent vocabulary, part due to Dutch's teachings. The prequel establishes that he was very much a Book Dumb outlaw that had very limited knowledge or education of finer virtues, and had a far more simple way of speaking.
• Chick Magnet: Bonnie MacFarlane is implied to have a crush on him. Mr. Geddes' wife also tried to invite him over in an attempt to cheat on her husband, and many prostitutes go over to him when he enters a bar. Abigail is real lucky to have been the one John fell in love with. Arthur even lampshades it at one point.
  Arthur: "Little Johnny Marston. So popular with the ladies."
• Chronic Hero Syndrome: Should the player feel so thus inclined in the Stranger missions. According to Abigail in the epilogue of II, John has a bad habit of taking up his guns in defense of others, thus blowing his cover as a civilian and forcing the Marstons to constantly be on the move.
• Combat Pragmatist: Because of how limb damage works in the first game, John can cripple his targets from afar by shooting them in the leg, crippling it and slowing them down; if the opponent has a weapon, John can shoot both legs, forcing the opponent to stand their ground. Needless to say, this makes chasing down escapees much easier. In fact, even Javier can be forced to slow down this way, showing how far John is willing to go to capture him.
• Crippling Overspecialization: In 2. He's amazing with a gun, and an incredibly quick learner, yet mostly ignored everything Hosea and Dutch taught him, in favor of further honing his gunslinging, hence why he's mostly used as a gunman, and not really brought along for other things. Though by the time the player catches up with him, be it 1907, or 1911, he's significally more well-rounded.
• Cowboy: Not particularly at first, but during the game you pick up a lot of cowboy skills. Justified, since it’s been years since he was a gunslinger and he’s gotten rusty.
• Dark and Troubled Past: His prostitute mother died during childbirth, his father was an alcoholic who died when John was a young kid, forcing him to live as a street urchin, eventually getting caught stealing and nearly getting hanged as a young teenager before Dutch found him.
• Deadpan Snarker: It helps him keep his sanity with all the nutcases he encounters.
• Death Equals Redemption: In his final stand with Edgar Ross, it's implied that John knows that he won't make it out alive. With a bloody ledger marked both by his time as an outlaw and as Ross's lackey, John saw that as long as he's alive, his family will never have a peaceful life. Thus, he willingly gives up his life in hopes that both he and, more importantly, his family would be redeemed of his past crimes.
• Death Seeker: At the start of Redemption. He pretty much allows Bill to shoot him, admitting as much. Though given that he's being sent on what's basically a suicide mission spanning two countries, with zero intel, one can't blame him for wanting to give up. He gets over it after Bonnie saves him though.
• Deuteragonist: To Arthur Morgan's protagonist in II.
• Decomposite Character: The first game implies that he was the Token Good Teammate of the gang who was slowly hated for wanting to turn his life around while also being the most educated, and Abigail's comments further imply that owning a ranch was his dream as she describes Bonnie McFarlane as a "perfect rancher's wife" which is what John has always wanted while she seemed to always have doubts about leaving their life behind. The second game however gives many of these supposed qualities to other characters: Arthur got his education with John being shown to lack any interest in thinks outside of being a gunslinger while also being the one who starts doubting Dutch and the gang the most; Javier is the Token Good Teammate due to being the most reluctant out of Dutch, Bill and Micah; and it turns out that it was actually Abigial's dream to be a rancher with John being doubtful that they can actually escape their past.
• Deconstructed Character Archetype: Of an Action Dad. Sure, he is all kinds of badass, but that doesn't a good father make.
  • When he found out he had a son, he didn't take it well and ignored him to avoid settling down.
  • His impulsive antics mean he's away from home a lot. They also mean he's terrible at hiding, and by extension that the Marstons have to move a lot.
  • Having grown up as a gunslinger, it's just about all he knows; he has almost nothing in common with Jack.
  • He's The Stoic with a Hair-Trigger Temper, and doesn't really react to his own violent antics - which naturally comes off as straight up sociopathy to his son.
  • His stoicism leads to all sorts of Poor Communication Kills.

that Jack misreads the intended message.

• Determinator:
  • He fights countless crooks, bandits and even a Mexican army, all to save his own family.
  • Taken to Eleven in the prequel. One of the game's first missions is rescuing Marston after he doesn't come back from scouting: you find out his horse was eaten, he got mauled by wolves and was stranded in a blizzard for two days with no food. All after getting shot escaping Blackwater with the gang. Over the course of the game he gets held hostage, thrown in jail and shot again during the last train robbery. John Marston, simply put, is one tough son-of-a-bitch. Lampshaded by Marston himself.
    Marston: And Arthur always says I'm lucky!
• Disappeared Dad: Before he was the textbook example of a Papa Wolf, he straight up abandoned his family for an entire year since he believed Jack wasn't his son.
• Disney Death: Although those who played Redemption 1 know that he survives, after he is shot and falls off from the train during the gang's final robbery, Dutch claims that John didn't make it. He later returns to the camp, proving how far Dutch has fallen from the man who looked after his own.
• Dissonant Serenity: Deconstructed. Tries to act friendly and jolly with Jack... after killing three men in self-defense when Jack was mere feet away. In a Surprisingly Realistic Outcome, Jack is clearly traumatized by his father showing no emotion after murdering three men.
• Disproportionate Retribution: He'll sometimes dish these out to demonstrate his Hair-Trigger Temper. The first thing he does when he steps foot in Mexico is kill three random people for taking his hat (though to be fair, they were harassing him a fair bit even after he tried to reason with them).
• Dying Moment of Awesome: Dies in a shootout with an Army contingent manned by Ross all by himself, to give his family time to escape.
• Driven to Suicide: He admits to Bonnie that he may have intentionally gotten himself shot at Fort Mercer, which is somewhat understandable, given that the mission he was forced into taking (tracking down 3 extremely dangerous outlaws alone, with literally no intel outside their general location, nor any decent weaponry), was pretty much a suicide mission to begin with.
• Even Evil Has Standards: He may be an Anti-Hero and a former outlaw, but even he has limits that he wouldn’t cross.
  • When ordered to burn down a village by de Santa, Marston is clearly against the idea but is forced to go along with it to maintain the support of the Mexican army. Afterward, he's pretty disgusted at himself while everyone else is happily pillaging.
  • In the prequel, he's disturbed by the way Dutch kills Angelo Bronte by drowning the man and feeding his body to an alligator. He later elaborates to Arthur, explaining he's either disturbed at the brutality of the method or Dutch's growing unpredictability.
  • Even in his days as an outlaw and a negligent father and husband, he still has scruples that he never breaks. While leading a small portion of the gang in a train robbery, he tells his teammates to not kill any of the innocent passengers inside. Likewise, he’s annoyed if Arthur snipes one of the shepherds he was trying to steal sheep off of, asking him if that was necessary.
  • Like Arthur, he's downright disgusted by the revelation that Jeremiah Compson was a former slave trader.
• Experienced Protagonist: John Marston was a bandit and gunslinger long before the start of the first game, so he is an adept outdoorsman, capable rider and knows his way around a shootout, though he has gotten rusty. He is a crackshot and brawler who is familiar with explosives and no stranger to all manner of theft and violence. He's fairly well-educated to boot, considering his lot in life and the era he lives in.
• Expy: Played with, as he resembles Red Harlow physically but not in personality.
• Extreme Doormat: He's no pushover, but John is often subjected to verbal abuse, insane rants, manipulation, and unfair transactions, concerning his missions for important NPCs. He suffers stoically because he needs to earn their favor in order to track his targets. This is best characterized in Nuevo Paraiso, where he works for both the detestable, inhumane Allende and the obnoxious, insufferable Reyes. The Mexican army missions are immoral and occasionally even obvious setups, while the rebel jobs tend to pit John against the entire army while Reyes takes all the credit for John's heroics. Both men string John along, forever promising information that never seems to come because they know he will leave Mexico as soon as he has his men and they will be deprived of their best agent. Ultimately, Allende entraps John and tries to have him killed after finding out he's been Playing Both Sides, while Reyes, who also knows this, follows through on his end of the bargain.
• Facial Horror: At the start of 2, he's first seen with his face covered in blood and fresh scars, and spends most of the first chapter with bloody rags covering half his face. Even when they heal, the scars are still quite nasty-looking, and unevenly stitched-together in the earlier chapters.
• Face Death with Dignity: Once Uncle kicks it, he knows he won’t be getting off the ranch alive, and that even if he did he and his family would be hunted down until he wasn’t. So he sends them away, looks through the barn doors to see what exactly is waiting for him, and tries to take out at least a few before going down himself.
• Fastest Gun in the West: Can be this, thanks to his Dead Eye skill.
• Fatal Flaw: His Hair-Trigger Temper and Chronic Hero Syndrome combined. In II, Abigail says that these two traits make it hard for the Marston family to settle down to have a normal life, as John will often resort to violence which ends up attracting attention to themselves and forces them to move again and again. The two flaws are what motivate John to join Sadie and Charles to kill Micah, despite Abigail's protests, which ultimately leads to the FBI discovering John and ultimately killing him.
• Flanderization: His inability to swim in the first game was clearly to explain the Super Drowning Skills stopping players from exploring areas players weren't meant to reach (yet). In II, not only is he incapable of swimming, it's implied he's afraid of water.
• Forgiven, but Not Forgotten: A source of friction early on in II between him and Arthur was when he left the gang for a whole year and abandoned Abigail with baby Jack. While most of the gang forgave John, it took some time for Arthur to let bygones be bygones.
• Gameplay and Story Integration: To prevent the player from going outside the map, John dies instantly (or near instantly in II) when he goes too deep in water. In-universe, John just never learned how to swim.
• Good Parents:
  • To Jack. He's caring, stern, and tries to set him on the right path.
  • II reveals it didn't come naturally to him. It took him getting kidnapped for his inner Papa Wolf to emerge. And even then, he's still pretty bad at parenting Jack for about a decade. But he at least tries. It isn't until the final stretch of I where he truly becomes a good parent.
• Good Scars, Evil Scars: While he can be good or evil depending on how you play, he sure didn't get them "falling over in church", as he puts it. II reveals that he got them in 1899 from a wolf attack.
• Guns Akimbo: In the epilogue of ‘‘II’’, he can dual wield sidearms.
• The Gunslinger: Deadeye lets him make pinpoint shots at a rapid pace.
• Genius Bruiser:
  • Quite intelligent, though he'd never admit it.
  • Averted somewhat in 1899, where John, despite his gunslinging skills, and (how he actually acts, and what he actually does), is seen as rather dumb by the rest of the gang, at least at the start of the game.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: One of his biggest flaws. He doesn't resort to violence as a first resort, and generally prefers to reason with or intimidate people, but if pushed too far he won't hesitate to ice you. A band of three Mexican hoodlums who swiped his hat and relentlessly harassed him found out the hard way. The prequel establishes that the restraint he shows in I is something he patiently and painstakingly trained for the sake of his family, ever since Abigail left him for three months because of one heroic shootout too many.
• Handicapped Badass: There are several hints that point to John being either nearly or completely blind in his left eye. He's still quite a sharpshooter, however. He even quips, "Looks like I got my eye back" once you’ve killed a few people in Dead Eye mode. Hell, if it wasn’t for that eye he’d be a better gunslinger than Arthur.
• Happily Married: He absolutely adores his wife. In contrast to every other Rockstar protagonist out there, he turns down every other woman's advances without hesitation, always remaining faithful to her.
• Heel–Face Revolving Door: He'll assist any side that helps him get the men he wants, especially in Mexico where he’ll side with both the Army and the revolutionaries for his own ends. Nonetheless, he openly disapproves of the brutality that both sides engage in.
• Heroic Neutral: Just wants to be left alone with his family. This particularly comes up in the Mexico arc, in which he repeatedly asserts that he's not interested in politics, works with whomever he thinks will best help him get to Williamson and Escuella, and repeatedly expresses cynicism about both sides. This makes him the subject of several "The Reason You Suck" Speech from many of the participants who have chosen a particular position. But his cynicism ultimately proves well-founded, since when the rebels finally take over they turn out to be just as bad as the government they replace.
• Heroic Sacrifice: He allows the government to kill him, so his wife and son can live the rest of their lives in peace. But he doesn't go down without taking a few with him.
• Heterosexual Life-Partners: Has this dynamic with Arthur. In spite of the vitriolic bickering they constantly throw at each other, they always have each other's backs no matter what. It reaches the point to where everyone turns on Arthur, John still has his back till the very end and is one of the most incredibly affected by his death, to the point where he tracks down his Arch-Enemy and kills him.
• Hidden Depths: While he is pretty bad at expressing his emotions, he does have a romantic side. This is perhaps best seen in the mission "A New Future Imagined" - he takes Abigail to Blackwater, gets their picture taken, and then they go watch a show together. After this he borrows a boat, rows some distance out into Flat Iron Lake, and proposes to Abigail.
• Honor Before Reason: Goes on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge against Micah with Sadie and Charles to avenge Arthur despite knowing that if Micah dies, it will bring attention, but given everything Micah did, you can hardly blame him.
• Iconic Attribute Adoption Moment: Near the end of the first part of the Epilogue, he finally gets his iconic bounty hunter outfit that he wears for most of the first game.
• Iconic Outfit: His signature denim vest, hat and striped pants combo. The undershirt varies by game, and is either beige or off-white. Interestingly, despite wearing it prominently in the promotional art for II, it doesn't appear until the final quarter of the story.
  • 1899 John has his tailcoat, gray gambler's hat and unbuttoned shirt/vest combo, very reminiscent of Landon Ricketts' getup.
  • 1907 John also has his red/white striped shirt, black coat and newsboy cap combo, with short hair and a thicker beard.
• Immigrant Parents: He’s actually half-Scottish as his father was a Scottish immigrant. The first time he mentions it he notes that his father was actually born on the ship over and never set foot in Scotland, but played it up for all it was worth.
• Innocently Insensitive: To Jack. He pokes fun at him for his constant reading, but it's more because John's barely literate, and because he wants Jack to focus on becoming a rancher.
• Informed Flaw: In II, other gang members frequently call him stupid and treat him like he's a complete idiot when there's actually little in-game proof of this. While he isn't book-smart, and does occasionally goof off in camp, when it's time to get serious he proves to be extremely intelligent, and the few heists he plans are actually pretty clever, and innovative. In fact, the only reason they go wrong is for things he couldn't possibly have known about or had control over. The claim that's he's somehow stupid is made even more baffling when you also realize that he's one of the very first characters to realize Dutch is losing it, and to consistently call him out on it.
  • Several people, including John himself, mention that he's completely blind in one eye, yet it is never actually seen affecting his life.
• In-Series Nickname: He has multiple in II, with "JM" and "Scarface" being the most common.
• Instant Expert: Despite having zero experience in ranching, he’s able to pick it up pretty quickly while working on the Geddes’ ranch.
• I Owe You My Life: He develops this attitude towards Arthur, who allowed him to escape the outlaw life, to the point he risks blowing his cover to avenge him by going after Micah Bell.
• It's Personal: He develops this towards Micah Bell not only for ruining the gang that was his family, but to avenge Arthur.
  • Averted in I. John makes it clear that he takes no joy in hunting down Bill, Javier, and Dutch, only doing so because of the federal government's coercion. He tells Javier as much after capturing him.
• Jerkass Has a Point: In the epilogue of II, when John tells Abigail that Jack witnessed a shootout and she yells at him, he points out there was literally no other choice. Regardless of how you try to handle the situation, it will end with John shooting the three.
• Jerkass Realization: Jack being kidnapped leads to John realizing how bad a father he's actually been and he begins to start making amends after getting him back. Particularly when Jack talks excitedly about how "Papa" Bronte taught him lots of Italian words and introduced him to tasty foreign dishes like spaghetti. The realization that Jack's captor acted more like a proper father then he ever has clearly unnerves him.
• Karma Houdini Warranty: Ross considers his murder at the hands of his men to be this, since he would otherwise have avoided hanging for his many crimes. Depending on how honorable you play him during his Redemption Quest, he can be more or less right.
• Kick the Dog:
  • During the Shady Belle shootout, John curses Kieran and wishes that they never took him in the gang, presumably accusing him of ratting them out to the O'Driscolls despite Kieran having obviously been killed.
  • While riding back from Strawberry after shooting three hostile men in front of Jack, John can reprimand Jack for being "soft". He also repeatedly belittles his love of reading.
• Knight in Sour Armor: Reyes even calls him a romantic trying to be a cynic.
• Last Stand: Mows down a full army of bad guys before finally meeting his end, all to save his family.
• Lean and Mean: He has a significantly skinnier frame and build compared to Arthur, but it doesn't make him any less effective in close quarters combat. His time on Pronghorn Ranch demonstrates that he is absolutely vicious in a fist fight for a man of his size. After Anthony Foreman is captured in the epilogue for a bounty, he initially mistakes John for Arthur, but realizes his mistake and notes that the latter was "bigger".
• Lightning Bruiser: In the mission Old Habits, he defeats a Laramie in a fight within 25 seconds.
• Living Legend: John graduates to this status over the course of I as he becomes increasingly famous for his deeds in capturing or killing his former gang members, and there's even a fame meter that measures how well-known Marston is. As his fame gets higher on the meter, NPCs will acknowledge John in towns and will start treating him differently. The mysterious stranger in the "I Know You" stranger mission even notes that John has become famous for his exploits. Jack maintains the same fame meter when you play as him, and NPCs will often assume he's his father. This implies that, even three years after John's death, his deeds are still famous across the region.
• Made of Iron: The guy got shot, survived being mutilated by wolves, survived falling off a train after being shot again, survived being brutally mauled by a grizzly bear, and manages to get shot yet again. During a random talk in the camp, Bill even expresses a little envy about the impressive amount of scars John received during the years. Even when he gets killed by a hail of bullets, the fact that he was still standing for a number of seconds before giving in just speaks volumes of what a tough son of a bitch he is.
• Manly Tears: If he kills Javier instead of capturing him, he takes Javier's body to the jail cell for a moment and weeps (even from his dead eye) in regret for what he had done. The fact that Javier was a Nice Guy and a friend who had saved John's life from a wolf attack that had nearly blinded him before his Undying Loyalty to Dutch became his downfall makes this scene even sadder if you've played RDR2.
• Master of the Mixed Message: One of the many causes of Jack's issues. One moment he says he loves Jack & Abigail, the other he is making fun of Jack's hobbies and disappears from home. Many of the discussions between him and Jack in the epilogue of II tend to be written so that John's innocent words come off as unintentionally dismissive to Jack.
• Meaningful Name: A john is a hooker's client, and his wife Abigail was a hooker before she conceived Jack.
• Mr. Fanservice: His facial scars do nothing to convince anyone otherwise. The epilogue of II even has him shirtless while building the Marston ranch. Arthur can tease him over this.
  Arthur: "Little Johnny Marston. So popular with the ladies."
• Multiple-Choice Past: The Strange Man mentions that John was shot during a ferry raid, implying that this is the same robbery John was telling Landon Ricketts about. Comes the prequel, and it's revealed that John did get shot during the raid..... just not left behind. The robbery he was actually left to die on was an attempted robbery of an army train. He got shot in the shoulder and fell off.
• My Greatest Failure: Leaving his family for quite some time while living life as an outlaw, as Jack is without a father, and Abigail is without a husband. The entire goal of Marston in the first game is to do the government's dirty work just so he can see his family again to apologize.
• Nature Lover: During II he can wax poetic to Jack about how much he loves the great outdoors.
  Marston: "Pretty countryside, ain't it? The grass and the light...there's a lot of ugly in this world, but there sure as hell is a lot of beauty. You'll see it better when you get older. It's tough at your age. Just...land and light, but to me? It's life. I can't explain it."
• Nice Guy: By the time of the first game, he has grown into one of these. He generally tries to be cooperative with those he's working with and displays a large amount of restraint and patience, not to mention being a very loving father and husband.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
  • Might have brought Pinkertons back to the camp after he returns to Beaver Hollow after the gang's last heist. Given how Arthur left a trail and Micah is a rat it's not 100% certain if this is the case however.
  • Killing Micah for revenge eventually put Ross and Fordham on his trail, resulting in the events of the first game.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished:
  • You feel doing all of those good deeds and side stories, don't you? Ross says Hello. John Marston is quite possibly the Trope Codifier. All the good deeds he does throughout the game... are undone when Ross and his men come to kill him.
  • It gets even worse with the context of II revealed. It turns out that killing Micah to avenge Arthur's death is what caused Ross to pick up John's trail in the first place, essentially meaning every death in Red Dead 1—including John's—is the result of trying to do right by Arthur. Seriously. Made even worse by the fact that Charles will postulate that Arthur didn't care about revenge at the end of his life if you went high honor, meaning that Arthur may very well have disagreed with John's decision, as it put Ross on his tail.
• Nostalgia Filter: Possibly In-Universe. The gang's fall is a rough one, and by the time he leaves the gang he is seriously fed up with Dutch's poor decision making and false promises, and believes that Dutch was Evil All Along yet managed to cover it up. Yet by 1911, he thinks fondly of him, remembering him as a man who started off as good but slowly went insane. This is demonstrated by John in his journal admitting he wanted to kill Dutch at Mount Hagen in the epilogue of II, in contrast to him clearly not wanting to by I and giving Dutch several chances to come peacefully during their confrontations. It's possible that seeing Dutch beyond his Despair Event Horizon in 1907 made him realize that the man he really has a problem with is Micah, and sees Dutch as another victim of his. It helps that Dutch briefly comes around and shoots Micah during their Mexican Standoff.
  • Interestingly, however, it appears this does not extend to Bill, who John basically describes as having been just as insane and violent as he was in 1911, and Javier, who he describes as a "creep".
• Nominal Hero: His targets and the people he takes down in their path are outlaws, killers and tyrants, and his allies are lawmen, oppressed peasants and honest farmers, but John is hardly concerned with order or justice. He simply wants to finish his mission and return to his family, and he does plenty of dirty business along the way.
• Not in This for Your Revolution: He only starts to openly work for the rebels after Allende and de Santa tried to screw him over and Reyes saved him. Otherwise, he treats them as a means to an end, though he's somewhat sympathetic towards Luisa.
• Oblivious to Love: He never seems to notice that Bonnie's holding a torch for him. Or if he does, then he doesn't mention it.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: After he is shot during the army train robbery, he walks a few miles back to the camp despite being wounded, and manages to (possibly) avoid the Pinkertons and the Roanoke Ridge law enforcement during this trip. The Pinkertons appear shortly after John suggesting he may have been spotted and followed, but it's not 100% clear.
• Older and Wiser: In I he's noticeably calmer and more sensible than the last time we see him in II. Although he hasn't aged that much, (only 4 years,) he is still far less impulsive and isn't above the idea of dying to protect others.
• Once Done, Never Forgotten:
  • His former gang members love to bring up that Abigail, his wife, was the gang's resident prostitute. John himself doesn't care.
  • Another one is the fact that he can't swim, something that the rest of the gang pick on him for.
    Arthur: "Just go play with the kid. Teach him how to swim...oh wait, you can’t."
  • Some members of the gang, especially Arthur and Micah, like to remind John he was nearly wolf food.
    Herr Strauss: (screaming in pain from a bullet wound)
    John: "It's just a scratch, shut up!"
    Arthur: "You can talk. We all heard you whine about a little knick from a wolf."
• One-Man Army: He, by himself, fought off bandits, rebels, wolves, cougars, and the Mexican and US Armies (if only).
• The One Who Made It Out: Once he learns of his disease, Arthur decides to help John and his family to leave the outlaw life behind. While it requires Arthur's life, the plan works out and John is one of the few members of Dutch's first gang to have a happy ending (for a few years, at least).
• Outlaw Parents Want Good Kids: He and Abigail made Jack unaware of their profession, especially in regard to the days of Dutch's gang.
• Outliving One's Offspring: It's not brought up much, but John and Abigail had a daughter who died of fever sometime in the time skip between the games.
• Over-the-Shoulder Carry: If he kills Javier instead of capturing him, he will carry Javier's body sorrowfully in this manner: once in bringing him into El Presidio's prison cell for a moment to weep silently over him there before going after the arriving army reinforcements; and once again when he returns to the cell and carries the body outside before handing it over to Ross and the authorities as proof (although John does get a "What the Hell, Hero?" from Fordham, who had expected him to bring Javier in alive). John also does the same thing if Javier is captured alive, in order to bring him into the same prison cell.
  • John can also do this to the wanted criminals he hogties in order to bring them in alive for the rewards.
• Palette Swap:
  • Adult Jack is just John with a different head and voice.
  • 1907 John in II zig-zags this. He has a slimmer build than Arthur and his own animations for movement, but examining the model shows his body is just Arthur's but scaled down, and he reuses a ton of animations with him - in some circumstances his animations actually revert back to Arthur's^note Such as at the ranch and while walking in Heartland Overflow's water. His hair is also Arthur's but recolored, and he reuses Arthur's vomiting sounds if he eats a poisonous plant.
• Papa Wolf: Very protective of his son.
  • When he finds out that Jack went hunting a Grizzly by himself in "Spare the Love, Spoil the Child", he wastes no time setting off to find him. In the final shootout, he flips out at the attacking US soldiers as they try to harm his family. And he ultimately allows himself to be killed to give them a chance at a life without Ross and his cronies coming for them.
  • In the prequel, when Jack gets abducted by the Braithwaites, John is absolutely pissed off.
    Marston: I'm gonna let fly at those sons of bitches.
• Paper-Thin Disguise: Pretty much everyone who knows his real name thinks this of his "Jim Milton" alias in II. Hell, even those who have never met him clearly see through the act.
• Parental Abandonment: His mother died in childbirth, and his father died when he was 8, leaving him to grow up in an orphanage until he met Dutch.
• Parental Neglect: In the prequel, he's unintentionally neglectful to Jack, being often too busy with work to spend time with him. However, with advice from Arthur and Jack being abducted by the Braithwaites as a wake-up call, he decides to take more time off to be a proper father. It still takes him almost a decade to fully clean up his act, however.
• Perma-Stubble: He's almost never seen without at least some hair on his face - only when wearing the "gentleman's attire" or in the epilogue of II does he ever exchange it for another style.
• Politically Correct Villain:
  • Even if you play him as a bloodthirsty outlaw, not only is he unfailingly faithful to his wife, their marriage is one where both are equal.
  • Dutch taught John a lot about inequality, back in 1899 he lived in a multicultural camp, and one of his closest friends is half-black half-native American. As such, even a low-honor John holds no racist views.
• A Real Man Is a Killer: One random discussion with Jack at the ranch suggests John sees things this way. Jack is worrying about having to eventually kill a cow he's taken a liking to, but John says he doesn't need to kill anything until he's ready to. Jack mentions he's sorry for not being able to turn off his emotions, to which John responds with something along the lines of "You actually can and someday you'll have to".
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Frequently on the receiving end of these from his allies, especially when traveling together between objectives during a mission. The subject is usually a fair criticism of his flawed morals, sociopathy, and selfishness from upstanding characters like Bonnie, the marshal and Ricketts, or when lowlives and thieves like Irish and West Dickens call out his hypocrisy for looking down on their dishonest ways. However, John isn't afraid to call out his former friends' flaws and is even willing to give a scathing speech because of how they abandoned him.
• Tranquil Fury: His default mode in Redemption. He's got a hell of a temper, and doesn't hesitate at all to just shoot people that annoy him, but he very rarely raises his voice, or loses his calm.
• Retired Outlaw: He simply wants to live his days out in peace with his family, having been disillusioned with the outlaw life he grew up with years ago. The epilogue to II reveals it took him a few years - in 1907 he still was very willing to grab a gun. He only decided to fully retire once Abigail left him.
• Retired Badass: Along with retiring from the outlaw lifestyle, by 1911 it appears John had finally left gunslinging behind as well, which explains why his Dead Eye is back to level 1, and why he only has his Cattleman Revolver at the start of Redemption.
• Revenge Before Reason: Against Abigail's wishes, he joins Sadie and Charles in pursuit of revenge on Micah. This inadvertently brought Edgar Ross on his trail.
• Rugged Scar: Covered in em'. As he says, he certainly didn't get them "falling over in church". II reveals that he got them after being attacked by wolves.
• Screams Like a Little Girl: In the epilogue of II, he emits a high-pitched scream whenever he gets into long falls.
• Same Character, But Different: The first game and its tie-in material paint John as being the only rational one in the gang, disliked by his two "brothers" due to Dutch's Parental Favouritism and who noticed Dutch's insanity first. He was also said to be very romantic and have an eloquent vocabulary. A lot of these traits were given to Arthur Morgan in II, and John instead goes through Character Development from an immature Jerkass who doesn't care all that much for Abigail or Jack, to a caring parent for his son that does everything he knows how to bond and protect him. That being said, he does notice Dutch's gradual slip into madness and becomes more rational in response to it, meaning the tie-in material isn't too far off the mark.
• Seduction-Proof Marriage: He will never even consider cheating on Abigail. Any and all suggestions from anyone else are gently turned down. Subverted in II however, where a drunken John may end up flirting with Karen, with the justification that he and Abigail aren't married, in spite of having sired Jack with her.
• Self-Deprecation: In II one of his "Antagonize" lines has him insult his target's appearance, saying that he may have scars but still looks better than them.
• Self-Serving Memory: In the first game, some of the comments that John makes about Dutch, Bill, and especially Javier are inconsistent with what's portrayed in the prequel, making it seem like John remembered the fall of the gang to be worse than it actually was.
  • John claims that Javier was a "cynic and creep" who didn't care about anyone else besides Dutch, almost the complete opposite of what we see in II. John also claims that Javier "went crazy" when the gang started to fall apart, when in reality it's more like Javier Took a Level in Jerkass.
  • John claims that Bill left him to die alongside Dutch and Javier, which is untrue as Bill was on the train when John fell off after being shot in the shoulder.
  • John claims that Dutch "went out and shot a bunch of people unfair like". While not completely untrue, he's saying this as if Dutch went on a killing spree. In reality, the only people Dutch unambiguously shot and killed "unfair like" were Heidi Mccourt and Leviticus Cornwall.
• Senseless Sacrifice: His Heroic Sacrifice to give Abigail and Jack a better, safer future... The three-year-later epilogue reveals that Abigail soon died anyway (implicitly of Death by Despair from John's death) and Jack became an unhappy Last of His Kind whose only reason left to live is Revenge on Ross (thus becoming an outlaw himself, exactly what John didn't want, in the process). May be semi-subverted, though, if you see a certain Grand Theft Auto V Easter Egg ^note Heavily implying that Jack became a successful writer (his childhood dream) after all and vindicated John's legacy. as canon.
• Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness: Lampshaded by Bill Williamson - John was always one for "fancy words." Subverted in II, when it's revealed that in 1899, John didn't have that great a way with words.
• Single-Target Sexuality: The only woman he fell in love with was Abigail, to the point where no matter how low his honor is and how many prettier women (mostly prostitutes) hit on him, John remains faithful to her. The only time in both games we can see him show any interest in another woman is when he gets drunk and pulls Karen on his lap in a camp event in II.
• Sixth Ranger: He was the first person to join the Van Der Linde gang after it was formed by Hosea, Arthur, Dutch, and Miss Grimshaw.
• Significant Wardrobe Shift:
  • He puts on Arthur's hat when he's on his way up Mount Hagen to kill Micah, and also puts it on before his first playable gunfight in the Epilogue
  • After Abigail and Jack leave him early on in the Epilogue, he puts on his signature Cowboy Outfit, seemingly for the first time, as he joins Sadie as a bounty hunter
  • At the tail end of Redemption, after Dutch's death and the return of his family, John is stuck wearing the Rancher outfit, since his days of fighting appear to be over.
• Sleeves Are for Wimps:
  • His signature vest is more or less a green(ish) jean jacket with it's sleeves cut off. As the epilogue in II shows, apparently this is how it came by default, as it was an outfit Abigail bought for him
  • The "Walton's Gang outfit" in I turns this up to eleven, as even the undershirt has no sleeves.
• Son of a Whore: Like his son after him.
• Sophisticated as Hell: That's what happens when you cross Book Dumb with Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness.
• Spiteful Spit: If Marston kills Javier instead of capturing him, he will spit on Javier's body. But he's shown wiping his eyes as if he's crying, implying that he's genuinely regretful having to kill him.
• Suicide by Cop: It's a Heroic Sacrifice, but still. He felt that he and his family's safety were mutually exclusive.
• Super Drowning Skills: He never learned to swim. The gang actually makes fun of this in II.
• Supporting Protagonist: He becomes the playable protagonist in the epilogue of II. Even before that, he has a prominent role in the story.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: Leaving a massive trail of bodies on Mount Hagen to get to Micah was bound to draw attention to John.
• Tall, Dark, and Handsome: He's above average height for the timeframe at about 5'10", and a black-haired, ruggedly handsome man. Many ladies can agree.
• Terrible Artist: While Arthur's skills with a pencil are above average for the time period, John's drawings (and even writings) in II's epilogue look very simplistic in comparison.
• Taking You with Me: Knowing that he is going to die and has to die for his family, Marston is damn well not going down alone.
• Too Dumb to Live:
  • In the first game's Nuevo Paraiso segment, John helps both sides of the civil war and never thinks it could backfire on him. While his working for the army is justified since they make (empty) promises of helping him track down Bill and Javier, many of the rebel missions involve him risking his life for no reason besides feeling sympathy or being browbeaten into it by Luisa or Ricketts. It leads to Allende trying to have him killed. While it's likely he would've tried to off John regardless, his openly helping the rebels means that the guy is incentivized.
  • In the beginning of the first game, he strolls up to Bill's fortress and demands he surrender. When Bill tells him to leave, he tries to outdraw three men with guns already aimed at him while his sidearm is still in its holster.
• Took a Level in Badass: As a young man John was a talented gunslinger, but not much else. A small pack of wolves going after him left him on the brink of death, a far cry from the guy who would hunt massive cougars and bears, not to mention survived countless gunfights and a military revolution.
• Took a Level in Kindness: Young John treated Abigail badly and didn't even believe Jack was his son at first. Come I and John is a loving family man who would do anything for the ones he loves.
  • The player can see much of this slow, organic development throughout the course of II, particularly if they spend a lot of time in camp. John can be found brushing Jack off when he wants to play and even having his wife and kid sleep on the floor of their separate tent. Later you can see Marston using tree branches to swordfight with Jack, teaching him how to carve arrows and asking him about his feelings after a traumatic event. In later campsites you find him sleeping on the floor, with Abigail using the bed. He also grows a sense of humor and learns to take himself less seriously - he reacts poorly and boorishly to teasing in the prequel, a far cry from the ever-polite cowboy of the original.
• Tragic Keepsake: Two from Arthur: his hat which he passed on to John before staying behind to fend off the Pinkertons and the engagement ring he gives Abigail. It's the one that Arthur gave to Mary that John found in his things.
• Undying Loyalty: Even though their relationship is a bit strained at the beginning of II, by the end he looked up to Arthur and was more loyal to him than he was to Dutch. He always has his back, even when no one else does. Even after he died, John always thinks of him and remembers everything he taught him.
• Unreliable Narrator: Due to the noticeable amount of changes II made to the lore around his time with Dutch's gang, John comes off as this in I. His stories leave out a lot of the positive memories of his time in the gang, focuses on Dutch's Just Like Robin Hood aspects, downplays and avoids mentioning his own crimes, and paints Bill and Javier as being worse than they actually were. While this is simply the result of Early-Installment Weirdness, it does make it seem like John is trying to make himself more sympathetic to others, and/or that he's in denial about actually missing that lifestyle.
• Villain Protagonist: If you play as him with low honor. Arguably counts as this in the Nuevo Pariso chapter while he aids Colonel Allende, though he only works for him in order to find Javier and Bill and it's clear he's disgusted by the crimes he and his army commit.
• Virtual Paper Doll: He has all of Morgan's customization options in the epilogue of II, with even more added in.
• Vocal Evolution: In RDR 1, John speaks with a very suave and reserved tone that reinforces his relaxed attitude. In II, John's voice is much raspier, cracks quite a bit more, and is more loud and brash in his way of speaking. John's changed voice may have to do with his actor taking up smoking during the gap between the first and second games, much like how Dutch's voice got higher after Benjamin Byron Davis quit during that same time.
• Warrior Poet: He's a surprisingly eloquent speaker, something that Bill Williamson points out.
• We Used to Be Friends: To Dutch, Bill and Javier. While he does take all of them down, and is understandably disgusted by the myriad horrible things his old friends have done, he pretty clearly doesn't enjoy having to kill them, and has a lot of regrets over how things ended.
• Wild Card: In Mexico, he's willing to work with whomever he thinks can get him to Williamson and Escuella and continually makes it clear that he has no personal stakes in the civil war.
• With This Herring: He's sent after a fortress full of outlaws by Ross with nothing but a revolver. He doesn't even have a rifle, which John somewhat lampshades by saying he feels better after Bonnie hands him one.
• What the Hell, Hero?: He is told off by Fordham for bringing in Javier's corpse to the authorities (if the player kills Javier), saying that he expected Javier to be "looking very... healthy".
• Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: He’s pretty uncomfortable around water no thanks to his Super Drowning Skills. In II, he can be heard breathing heavily whenever he’s close to a large body of water.
• You Don't Look Like You: A relatively minor example. The 1907 John uses a Palette Swap of Arthur's hair, and as such he looks a bit off when seen from certain angles. His cowboy outfit also has minor changes made to it, but given there's 4 years between games it's not impossible for it to have gone through changes in the meantime.
• Younger Than They Look: Despite being one of the younger members of the gang, he looks closer to Arthur's age despite being 10 years younger than him, though in all fairness, it's mostly the facial hair and the scars that make him look older.

Arthur Morgan

Arthur Morgan

"You know, all that ever mattered to me was loyalty. It was all I knew. It was all I ever believed in."

Portrayed by: Roger Clark

"Listen to me. When the time comes... you gotta run and don't look back. This is over."

Born of Welsh descent, Arthur was left an orphan when his father was arrested for larceny. Taken in by Dutch, Arthur became one of the first members of the Van der Linde gang, as Dutch's right-hand man and his most loyal follower. In 1899 after a job in Blackwater gone horribly wrong, the gang was forced to flee further East into civilization. There, Arthur's faith in the man whom he called father and the decisions he makes begins to be tested.

---

• Abusive Parents: Implied. Arthur's parents are long dead by the events of the game, but while he reminisces on his mother's death with a measure of sadness, his only comments on his father's death is regret that it didn't happen sooner. However, he does keep a picture of his father at his bedside, implying a degree of fondness for his father. There is also Dutch, who serves as his surrogate father, who is initially supportive and affectionate to him but becomes increasingly erratic and abusive towards him as the game progresses and ultimately turns on him and attempts to kill him.
• The Ace: Arthur is, quite simply, incredibly talented and skilled in almost everything he does, especially when it comes to combat. He is the best gunslinger in the gang (with only Micah, John, and Dutch approaching his prowess), skilled enough to defeat some of the best duelists in the West, and, thanks to his imposing stature and skill, the best hand-to-hand fighter in the gang as well. He is also the gang's go-to expert with explosives and safecracking, and is no slouch at horseback riding either. This extends to skills outside of combat as well – despite his claims that he's a poor hunter and fisherman, Arthur is fully capable of catching all of the legendary animals and fishes in the game. While he certainly never received a formal education, his simplemindedness is largely an act; Arthur is also incredibly talented at writing and sketching, and shrewd in a way that translates both into combat and the rest of his life. This still discounts the various other skills he displays (herding, poker, self-surgery etc), which is uncommon considering that other gang members, such as John and Bill, only really know how to shoot and little else.
• Alas, Poor Villain: No matter which route he goes in, Arthur’s death is always tragic, even if he’s played with low honour. Notably, if you play Arthur at his most villainous, choosing to go back for the money, before he dies, his final words are begging for Dutch to kill Micah, who really betrayed the gang. Even at his potentially lowest, Arthur genuinely loved the people in his gang.
  Arthur: Not Molly, Dutch. HIM! Kill HIM! Not Molly, not Miss Grimshaw, not even Colm… it’s HIM. You let him damn us all, Dutch.
• Affably Evil: Despite being an outlaw, he is quite chummy and outgoing to people, especially to Nice Guys like Jean-Marc and Arturo Ballard. Even in Low Honor he is generally congenial to his fellow gang members, their allies and even civilians in cutscenes.
• A Good Way to Die: Strongly invoked when finally succumbing to tuberculosis with high honor. When all is said and done, Morgan lays down and dies watching the sunrise, at peace with himself for having helped John survive to live with his family.
• All for Nothing: His sacrifice to give the Marstons a normal and secure future comes to naught when Edgar Ross comes knocking, kickstarting the events of the first game that ends in tragedy for the family. That said, it wasn't all for nothing for Arthur himself, provided the player went with the high honor route and allowed Arthur to die on his own terms.
• All There in the Manual: Arthur's extended thoughts and feelings can only be accessed from his journal, which goes into more detail about his life.
• Animal Motifs: If you're honorable, Arthur will be symbolized by a beautiful buck, often seen as a symbol of "spiritual awakening", which reflects Arthur choosing to become the good man that he is inside. If you're dishonorable, he'll be a twisted black furred coyote, which are often compared to sinister tricksters, reflection of a low honor Arthur's twisted morality. They both appear in the end credits; and at his gravesite, either the coyote or an eagle, which symbolizes the importance of honesty and truthful principles, hangs around and cannot be killed.
• Anti-Hero: Although he sometimes helps people out of the goodness of his heart, Arthur usually only gives aid if he's reimbursed in some way, regardless of the level of honor he has.
  • If the player has maintained high honor throughout the game, however, Arthur can become a Knight in Sour Armour who uses what little time he has left to atone for his misdeeds (getting Mrs. Downes and her son out of the mines to start a new life), and will help John and his family escape from the outlaw life so that they can have a peaceful future.
• Anti-Villain: He's an outlaw and a hardened criminal but, despite this and depending a lot on how you play, he's sympathetic. Also, he tends to fight against much worse people.
• Art Evolution: Arthur looks like a 40-ish thug in the first trailer he appeared in, but slowly turned into a Hunk as production progressed.
• The Atoner: Regardless of how you play him, Arthur will attempt to reform after getting diagnosed with an at-the-time fatal disease. This culminates in him defying Dutch and helping John Marston escape the outlaw life.
• Audience Surrogate: As the protagonist and playable character of the story, he is more or less the personification of what the player would be if he were living a western adventure with his companions, especially considering that Dutch is not a very eloquent leader. In fact, part of the reason for Arthur Morgan's popularity is that he actually reflects the average mindset of the players if they were in his situation: he's cynical, conflicted in his decisions, realistically thinks about the future, among other things. If that is not enough, Clark wanted to portray a character that was complex enough for the player to choose his path and still make sense. He initially faced difficulty with this concept, as the high honor performance was different to the low honor, but he reminded himself that Arthur was a complex character who could easily contradict himself.
• Badass Boast: Two of them, one in each choice you make in his final story mission regardless of honor:
  [if you go with John] "I'm coming with you. I'm gonna get you out of this bullshit if it's the last goddamn thing I do!"
  [if you go for the loot] "DUTCH! MICAH! COME AND GET ME, YOU BASTARDS!"
• Badass Bookworm: A contrast to Book Dumb John, though not to the extent of Jack. With a pen and a notebook, Arthur can do wonders.
• Badass in a Nice Suit: In Chapter 4, though he and the other gang members wear black tuxedos to a party at the Mayor's house in Saint Denis, there are times when he can wield a gun and shoot enemies while in the same tuxedo.
• Badass Longcoat: Can wear from a variety if the player chooses, and canonically starts the game in a practical, thick, knee length, blue coat to deal with the cold of the mountains the gang escaped through.
• Bald of Evil: If the player has Arthur's head shaved, in addition to playing him as low honor.
• Bash Brothers: With the rest of the gang's gunmen except Micah. He's especially this with John since the two joined the gang earlier than the majority of the other members and basically grew up together. They even call start calling each other brother in Chapter 6.
• Beard of Evil: If the player grows out Arthur's beard while playing Low Honor.
• Beard of Sorrow:
  • In the prologue, where the gang is on the run in the freezing mountains after losing their money and several members in a failed robbery, he grew out a decent sized beard and can’t shave it until he gets to Horseshoe Overlook.
  • While recovering after kidnapped by O'Driscolls, Arthur grows out his beard significantly. His beard also grows in length in time-skips after certain story events, such as Jack's kidnapping or Kieran's death.
  • He grows his beard out in Guarma after losing Hosea and Lenny in a botched bank heist, although it may also be due to lack of razors on the island.
• Been There, Shaped History: If you complete Sister Calderon's quest chain, and see her near the end, it's implied she becomes Mother Superior in the first game.
• Being Evil Sucks: Arthur has no real love of the outlaw life, only doing it because of his loyalty to Dutch and his love for the gang and his hatred of modern civilization.
• Berserk Button: During Chapter 2 a bar fight breaks out in Valentine between the gang members and a few locals. Arthur is quite content defending his fellow gang members, right up until his opponent calls him "pretty boy". He nearly beats the guy to death.
  • An alternative interpretation to the above is that Arthur (being a member of a close-knit multiethnic gang who practically consider each other as family) doesn't take well to said family members being verbally or physically victimised - the street brawl with the giant thug begins after he picks a fight with Javier shortly before cussing a slur at him then ragdolling Javier against a table, which undoubtedly plays a decisive part in Arthur's eventual beatdown of the man. In a more general outlook on his personality (and in spite of his outlaw background), Arthur has a keen sense of justice (which is much more apparent on high honour playthroughs) and plenty of optional side-missions and spontaneous random events involve him intervening to save or protect innocent civilians at little to no potential self-gain.
• Big Beautiful Man: Like CJ from San Andreas, you can fatten Arthur up, although it's extremely hard. You pretty much have to eat enough high calorie food items each day to do so. While CJ's obesity is strictly played for laughs, even at max weight Arthur is still an undeniable Hunk. Until he's diagnosed with tuberculosis which causes him to suffer rapid weight loss.
• Big Brother Bully: Downplayed Trope. Out of everyone in the gang, he loves mocking and ribbing on John the most due to John's stupidity and shortcomings. He slowly grows out of this as John starts cleaning up his act to the point where he actually starts respecting and praising him. He also enjoys teasing other gang members like Bill and Sean.
• Big Brother Instinct: Towards John. His anger for Marston's attempts to leave the gang sound very much like a resentful older brother's. Later on, during his dying days, he subtly coaches John on how to do right by his family and what kind of man to be. Marston seems to pick up on this: in RDR1 he speaks similarly to Arthur and is much more stoic, in contrast to the earlier, more fiery man who couldn't think of a comeback when insulted.
• The Big Guy: The most capable and active member of the gang, he's also aptly one of the stockiest, next to Charles who (occasionally by Arthur's own admission) is arguably physically the strongest member of the gang, and Bill.
• Big Sleep: At the end of Chapter 6, a high-honor Arthur gently shuts his eyes as he succumbs to TB while watching the sunrise. After all the pain and exhaustion he's been through, it's as if he's drifting off into a deep and eternal golden slumber.
• Blood from the Mouth: The earliest hint that Arthur won't survive this story is when he starts coughing up blood and collapses.
• Bond One-Liner: Arthur can spout off a few of these to a bunch of the foes he's killed. In one example, he hears a Lemoyne Raider talking to a bunch of other Raiders with a tall tale about his near-death experience he had when he was nearly blasted by a grenade "in the summer of '62"; once his tall tale is finished, Arthur can blast them all to kingdom come.
  "Ain't gonna live to tell this tale."
• Boom, Headshot!: If a low honor Arthur helps John escape, Micah shoots him in the face as he calls Micah a fool.
• Broken Ace: Arthur is an accomplished gunslinger, hunter and even has shades of a skilled artist and a Warrior Poet. However, this is overshadowed by his own self-loathing and the tragic mistakes he made in the past.
• Broken Pedestal: Perhaps the most tragic part of the Trauma Conga Line that is Arthur's life is his relationship with Dutch. Arthur is extremely loyal to Dutch and believes in his abilities while loving him as a father figure. Realizing he was a destructive monster who possibly never loved Arthur in return gave him an existential crisis. In fact, one of his final words to Dutch is a weak and tearful "I gave you all I had."
• Byronic Hero: Arthur is... troubled. He's an unrepentant criminal with no desire to change his lifestyle yet everything he does is to take care of his own. He is also constantly stressed, mainly because every plan that his gang has to make money usually brings in a ton of unnecessary heat or fails entirely, forcing his gang to relocate. At several points he can apologize to his gang for being so angry all the time; and if he kills a lot of innocents he can confess to Sadie or Tilly that he doesn't know why he does it, he loses control of his anger.
  Mary: There's a good man within you... But he is wrestling with a giant.
• Calling the Old Man Out:
  • Being with Dutch since the start of the gang has earned him the right to speak plainly to the boss. He often uses this privilege to question or argue some of the crazier schemes or darker deeds Van Der Linde cooks up. Reaches its high point during the finale, when Arthur finally has enough of Dutch's continual lying and crossing the Moral Event Horizon.
  • In a more lighthearted example, Hosea accidentally offends Charles while discussing the plight of a native tribe and deflects it by claiming he was merely simplifying it for Arthur's sake. Arthur scolds Hosea for blaming the slip up on him and reminds Charles, who is new to the gang, that Hosea is a career conman and not to accept any lies or excuses from him.
• Can't Hold His Liquor: An early mission involves him and Lenny heading to the local bar to relax; unfortunately, the two are ridiculous lightweights and quickly end up drunk, and Hilarity Ensues.
• The Caretaker: Morgan can bring dead animals and other supplies back to Dutch's camp. Doing this improves the gang's morale, while ignoring them results in hunger and complaints. They can never die from hunger, so the player isn't forced to help them if they find something more interesting to do.
  • He also seems to have a thing for wanting to take care of women in need, especially widows. He helps Abigail with Jack early on in the game and says in his journal that maybe he should have married her because he could provide for them. He goes out of his way to help Mary with her family who doesn't like him even though she married another man. He and Sadie genuinely bond over the course of the game and he helps her get the men who killed her husband. When Micah flirts with the girls, he'll tell them to let him know if he's bothering them again. He also teaches Charlotte to hunt and take care of herself after her husband died and last but not least goes above and beyond to help Mrs Downes and her son out of the situation he got them in even though he knows she doesn't like him. In the epilogue, she runs a successful golf course that she bought with the money he gave her.
• Celibate Hero: He could bed a lot of women if he wanted to, but he remains loveless throughout the whole game. The lewdest thing he does is go on a cheesy date with Mary. When you get solicited by prostitutes, your choices are "reject" and "decline". It's probably a combination of still being in love with Mary and his other confirmed relationship ending in tragedy. At some unspecified time before the events of a game, he had a son with a woman named Eliza. He came to visit them one day and found their graves (they had been killed by robbers over $10) and never really got over it.
• Character Development: Arthur's Undying Loyalty to Dutch and Fatalist attitude about himself and life all come crashing down in Chapter 6 when Dutch continually becomes more and more unhinged and when Arthur gets diagnosed with tuberculosis. Realizing that even if his life can't be changed but others can, he resolves to help John and his family as much as he can in getting the hell out of this life and finding a new one. The high-honor ending leans towards Heel–Face Turn, and the low-honor one is more of a Villain's Dying Grace.
• Chick Magnet: Played with. Mary, Sadie, Mary-Beth, Karen, Tilly, and even the widow Charlotte all seem to hold affection for Arthur.
• Combat Pragmatist: Depending on how you play as him, Arthur will resort to sneak attacks, firebombing, explosives, and poison-laced projectiles to win a fight. He even lampshades this in a conversation as he usually tries to shoot people in the back in order to get things done.
  • His fist-fighting style is this, which John uses as well later on. If the player is near some furniture or a wall during a fight, he will take the opportunity to smash their heads into it. Sometimes, this kills his opponents.
• Comic-Book Fantasy Casting: Arthur bears quite a striking resemblance to Chris Pine, mixed with a young Clint Eastwood.
• Contrasting Sequel Main Character: Or prequel in this case. He differs from John Marston in various ways.
  • The first game starts off with John Marston as a former outlaw who has to hunt down former members of his gang. Arthur Morgan, on the other hand, starts off as a member of that said gang.
  • While Marston is a Nice Guy even if some of his methods are underhanded, Arthur comes off as more of a Jerk with a Heart of Gold. In contrast to the level-headed and patient John, Arthur is more hot-headed and snarkier than John ever was, and is more likely to resort to violence.
  • John is Happily Married to Abigail despite his former life as an outlaw, considering Abigail was part of the Van der Linde Gang as well. Arthur, however, has a strained relationship with Mary Linton, as he's sadly unable to balance his life as an outlaw and his devotion to Mary. Tragically, he never fully mended the fence with Mary before his untimely death.
  • Relating to the above, Arthur is different from John in that he's never able to let go of his life as an outlaw until it's too late. Unlike John who's able to abandon his former life to the point that he's willing to hunt down his former gang members, Arthur is far too deep in Dutch's influence to truly find balance between a normal life and that as an outlaw, which is what causes his deteriorating relationship with Mary. He even scolds John for daring to walk his own path by leaving the gang for an entire year, and holds a minor grudge against him as a result. It's only after the discovery of his illness and broken faith in Dutch that he decides to die his own way, by giving Marston a chance to live a normal life with his family.
  • Both John and Morgan ultimately die defending the Marston family. But while John dies from his wounds, Arthur instead succumbs to his tuberculosis or is finished off by Micah.
  • Arthur is fairly cultured for an outlaw and has artistic talents; while he's an absolute beast in a fight, he doesn't really enjoy neither violence nor the thrills of high-risk heists, he's the first to admit that he only thinks that outlaw life is the life for him because he dislikes being tied down to societal norms and being able to wander the wilderness as he pleases. It's very likely he could thrive as a civilian with enough effort, but nothing and no one can convince him to leave the gang, not even a chance to survive his illness. The closest he gets is when he tells Mary to give him some time to save some money and tie up loose ends and then they can get married. John, on the other hand, has few talents and lacks his son's appreciation for literature. His true skill is with a gun, which he can't use legally and the epilogue makes it clear that being a rancher was Abigail's dream, not his. He eventually leaves the life out of love for his family.
  • This even apparent in their character designs. Arthur is built like a brick wall, which is useful for someone heavily involved with a variety of gang activities, including hunting and intimidation, while John is fairly skinny, fitting for someone who mostly serves as a gunman, but not much more. The pre-release material depicts Arthur with short hair and some stubble, while John lets his hair grow out and his facial hair, while not long, is still noticeably longer than Morgan's. While accidental, even their earliest promotional designs progressed in the opposite direction; John was noticeably younger in the early trailers for I before being aged up for the final game, while Arthur looked slightly older and a lot rougher before he was made to look younger for the final game.
  • A more humorous example is their swimming capabilities. While John can't swim even if his life depended on it to the point he will sink like a sack of bricks, Arthur is at the very least decently capable of swimming.
  • Arthur spends the prequel surrounded by comrades and blood brothers, often spouting a philosophy of absolute loyalty, and pondering it as the gang falls apart. John, on the other hand, is mostly on his own during his mission for the Bureau of Investigation, trying to keep new associates from getting too close to him while hunting down the very men he and Arthur once called family.
  • John is certainly a Deadpan Snarker when the situation calls for it, but he's relatively solemn, even rude, compared to Arthur. Arthur Morgan is pretty gregarious and amicable, especially among friends. This is fairly justified, as Arthur Morgan, for much of the game, is living the life he chose with the people he cares about, while John is dragged back into a world he left behind on a lone suicide mission because the government essentially has his family at gunpoint. He works for his family's safety, not his own ideals. It's understandable why the man might not be in particularly high spirits.
• Convenient Terminal Illness: Arthur is in his last stages of tuberculosis during the last mission. He buys time for John to get away to his family, fighting off the Pinkertons and Micah, only to succumb at the end assuming Micah doesn't finish him off.
• Cool Big Bro: He had a history of being one toward Jamie Gillis, who looked up him up until finding out about Arthur's outlaw lifestyle. Arthur even openly told Mary that he always liked Jamie and patches up with him after halting Jamie's suicide attempt.
• Cool Uncle: A non-biological one to Jack, especially in the early chapters where John is more neglectful.
• Cruelty Is the Only Option: No, you can't get out of collecting Thomas Downes' debt no matter how sorry you feel for him, and there's no way to stop Arthur from beating the crap out of Thomas during the mission. Arthur has to catch Thomas's tuberculosis to kickstart his Character Development and to finally rebel against Dutch.
• Cultured Badass: He references classic literature like Romeo and Juliet. He's also appreciative of photography and is an excellent draftsman.
• The Cynic: Much like Hosea, Arthur never held any delusions of his gang being possibly more than just a bunch of killers and thieves. In some of the optional conversations he can have with Mary-Beth, he reveals his acceptance of the fact that the age of outlaws is coming to its end, and that gangs like the Van der Linde gang will no longer have a place in an increasingly civilized world.
  Arthur: "Our time has pretty much passed."
• Dark and Troubled Past: The man's life is never-ending misery, plain and simple. Beaten half to death by his father as a kid, spent most of his childhood a street orphan after his beloved mother died, kidnapped and brainwashed into a thug who knows nothing but violence by Dutch. His adulthood wasn't any happier, losing his one chance at happiness when his child and lover were murdered. And that's not even getting into what actually happens to him in the game...
• Dead Man Walking: Arthur's fate is sealed the minute he gets coughed on by Thomas Downes in Chapter 2.
• Deadpan Snarker: The man is a downright riot to listen to, especially if you have him act like a complete Jerkass to the rest of his gang.
• Death by Irony: Cruelly so. Arthur Morgan, the rough-and-tumble gunslinger in his prime who risks his life for the Van der Linde Gang every day, wastes away thanks to a lingering, debilitating disease — one he contracted from an innocent man, unable to defend himself, that he accidentally killed — and for maybe the first time becomes truly afraid to die. Settling down in a hot and dry climate to slow the spread of the disease, as the doctor suggests, is impossible; Arthur can never return to New Austin, as it's patrolled incessantly by lawmen who'll shoot him on sight, and he only took the role of Strauss's debt enforcer in New Hanover because the Blackwater fiasco forced them to rely on it for income.
• Decomposite Character: In I, younger John was described as hot-headed and arrogant but also very romantic and possessor of a fine vocabulary, as well as being the second-in-command to Dutch. Going by what's shown in II, those latter traits would better describe Arthur than the standoffish and inarticulate John, who's portrayed more as a favored henchman than a right-hand man.
• Deconstructed Character Archetype:
  • Of the Villain Protagonist from your typical Wide-Open Sandbox. Once again, Rockstar Games shows us, as in Grand Theft Auto IV and Grand Theft Auto V, how depressing the life of our Villain Protagonist could be from their respective context. Sure, he may not have had a choice in the beginning, but his acceptance of being the "bad guy" leaves him feeling pretty shitty about himself. Reading his journals reveals that he is also under a lot of stress and that he feels that he can't help prevent everything from spiraling out of control. After he finds out he's dying, then he's wracked with guilt; desperate to make what amends he can, having realized that all he's done has not been worth it. The final nail in the coffin is if the player chooses to help John and has good karma, his last words will be "I tried. In the end... I did." Arthur may be a killing machine with over dozens, perhaps hundreds of kills to his name, but the game goes to great lengths to detail how toxic and harmful living a life of constant conflict is for anybody. Even if you're a particularly nasty player, not in any way is Arthur's lifestyle treated as something awesome. As a result, he dies as he lived: fighting petty, pathetic criminals who are worse than him.
  • Like John, he's one of an Action Dad. How do you balance between a loving, long-distance relationship with your girlfriend and her son, and an unpredictable criminal lifestyle in the 1800's? You don't.
• Defiant to the End: If he helps John escape with low honor, Micah will finish him off with his revolver. Arthur isn't fazed, calling him a fool and telling him that they're not that different, before getting shot.
• Definitely Just a Cold: Whenever other gang members ask if he's okay during a coughing fit, he just answers that he's fine and it's nothing; even in Chapter 6 as the cough worsens, his eyes redden, his skin drains of color and he begins to waste away, Arthur still refuses to discuss it. The only people he's open about it with are Sister Calderon, Charles, Rains Fall, and, in an optional camp interaction, Mary-Beth — to everyone else, it remains an unspoken, uncomfortable truth (or, in Micah's case, a source of mockery and bullying).
• Delayed Diagnosis: He contracts tuberculosis during the mission "Money Lending and Other Sins", but isn't officially diagnosed until near the end of the game and ultimately passes away from his illness.
• Determinator: Due to doing all of the things he does while dying of tuberculosis, Arthur would rival Old Snake in a "most strong-willed video game protagonists ever" contest.
• Did Not Get the Girl: Mary loves Arthur dearly, but doesn't want to be with him while he's still riding with a gang. He promises once he gets enough money he will run away with her. Though she still loves him, she breaks things off with him for good via a "Dear John" letter once word reaches her of the gang's botched robbery at Saint Denis. Tragically, Arthur is in the final stages of tuberculosis by the time he receives the letter, and either succumbs to it or is killed by Micah shortly after turning on Dutch and trying to leave, meaning he never got the chance to patch things up with her. She's seen in the credits crying at his grave.
• Dies Wide Open: He dies looking at the sunset in both high honor endings.
• Don't You Dare Pity Me!: He's rather annoyed when Sadie wants to give him the role of supporting sniper due to his raging tuberculosis, claiming he can still fight.
• Doomed by Canon: Since he's never mentioned in the previous game, things presumably do not work out well for him. Ultimately, he ends up dying from tuberculosis regardless of whether or not Micah finished him off.
• Doomed Protagonist: In an early Chapter 2 mission, he goes to retrieve a debt from a very sick-looking man. He eventually loses his temper and beats said man down, who then coughs right into his face. It's then revealed much later on that the man passed his tuberculosis onto Arthur, and since the game takes place in 1899, roughly fifty years before the development of antibiotics, this ultimately seals his fate by the end of Chapter 6.
• The Dragon: He's practically third in command after Hosea. He subtly takes over his role as the Only Sane Man after his death, ascending to this.
• Dragon with an Agenda: An interesting case. Once the gang is in Beaver Hollow, Arthur remains loyal to Dutch and goes along with the plan, even though he disagrees with it - his honor determines whether he's keeping up appearances or is genuine. Regardless, he starts doing things behind Dutch's back: throws Strauss out, grants leave to Swanson and Trelawny, attempts to deescalate the Wapiti-US Army feud and actively plots to help the Marstons leave.
• Due to the Dead: In spite of the circumstances he finds himself in, Arthur takes a moment to cradle his fallen horse and thanks it. Also on the receiving end of this, when he and Miss Grimshaw are found dead by Charles Smith and laid to rest, Arthur on a quiet hilltop, in a grave that perfectly faces the evening sun, which is "exactly where he would have wanted to be." Even more so is that his grave is adorned with a bunch of flowers if he was played honorably through to the end.
• The Dutiful Son: Arthur is this to Dutch and his gang, while John is the irresponsible prodigal son who, prior to the events of the game, abandoned the gang and then returned a year later. Arthur is very much still holding a grudge against John for his actions by the beginning of II.
• Dying Alone: In the High Honor ending, after he has successfully convinced Dutch to abandon Micah and leave, the villain spares Arthur instead of shooting him and runs off, allowing him to spend his final moments alone on the mountaintop, content that he has sacrificed himself to help John escape and secure a better future for his family, and watching the final glimpses of the sunrise at dawn, shortly before passing away from tuberculosis.
  • The same can also apply if Arthur returns to Beaver Hollow for the money in High Honor mode, but with Micah knifing him in the side and Arthur fighting back by slashing out the villain's left eye before being stopped by Dutch. After Arthur reiterates that Micah is the rat, Dutch walks away, and Micah takes the money from Arthur before following after Dutch, leaving our protagonist to watch the sunrise in his final moments alone before succumbing to his TB and injuries.
• Dying for Symbolism: Arthur's slow demise from tuberculosis in Chapter 6 mirrors the gang's similar decline as the surviving members are left divided and awaiting the inevitable. As soon as Arthur bites the dust, the gang is all but destroyed.
• Dying Moment of Awesome: He makes his last stand against the treacherous rat Micah Bell. It's made clear that if Arthur wasn't dying of late-stage tuberculosis and badly injured, Micah would have folded quicker than Superman on laundry day. And if Arthur has high Honor, he succumbs to his tuberculosis while watching the sunrise one last time, dying a redeemed man.
• The Dying Walk: Well, more like Dying Crawl: If the player chooses to go with John, Arthur, already in the final stages of tuberculosis, is critically wounded by Micah and lies dying while convincing Dutch that Micah is the rat. If Arthur's honor is high, then after Micah leaves him to die alone at the summit of Grizzlies East, Arthur gives off a smile, content that his efforts to get John to safety are all Worth It; he gets up and crawls over to the edge of a cliff, where he relaxes and gets to watch his one last sunrise before succumbing to TB in a Big Sleep.
• Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette: After contracting tuberculosis Arthur's complexion grows notably more pale, eye sockets darkening, and his eyes become bloodshot.
• Everyone Has Standards/Even Evil Has Standards:
  • While he might be an outlaw who robs and kills for a living, he has a very low opinion of racism and doesn't hesitate to voice his disgust towards such subjects as slavery or the Klan.
  • He’s also surprisingly progressive in terms of women's suffrage, believing that they should be allowed to vote because he thinks that anyone who's dumb enough to want to vote should be able to.
  • When he and Sadie go into town for groceries and deliver Pearson’s letter, he berates Sadie for wanting to shoot the shopkeeper. While they are outlaws who rob people, he understands that there are people who are trying to make an honest living for themselves without taking advantage of others.
  • While collecting the debt from Gwyn Hughes, he was appalled when he revealed that he was gonna get the loan by digging up a dead body full of jewels and seemed a bit hesitant in assisting him.
  • He utterly loathes Leopold Strauss's loan sharking and being forced to be his debt collector. This is probably not helped by the fact that Arthur contracts tuberculosis from a man he is sent to collect a debt from.
  • He's shocked by Dutch strangling an old woman to death because she pulled a knife on him and wanted to extort more gold out of him. If his honor is high, it's because he's unsettled by Dutch being so willing to murder people lately, and if his honor is low, it's because he's taken note of Dutch's erratic demeanor and Sanity Slippage. Granted, she most likely would have sold them out anyways, but it doesn't take away Dutch's brutality in putting down an old lady.
  • He is disgusted by Micah's bloodlust and wanton sociopathy. Should the player start killing innocent civilians wantonly in the open world, then he'll bring up in one of his chats with Karen and reveal he's deeply disturbed by it.
  • He outright calls the Murfree Brood evil, and is outright disgusted by their atrocities.
  • He also has a soft spot for animals. He loves horses, and will dote on his horse if he reaches a high bond level with them. He also has a low opinion of animal abusers, reacts with shock and disgust when he and Charles come across the seemingly meaningless slaughter of a herd of bison and if the player has him shoot a lot of animals without collecting their resources, he'll mention during one of his chats with Mary-Beth that he's deeply troubled by the fact that he's started killing animals for no reason.
  • While he is willing to hurt women (he's not naive enough to believe they won't try to kill him), he still tries to avoid doing it and is disgusted by men who beat women. He calls a drunk an animal when said drunk punches Karen.
  • He's also deeply respectful of Native Americans and has deep sympathy for their plights. He refuses to brandish a weapon in the reservation and doesn’t antagonize anyone there, regardless of honor level. As such, he’s disgusted and furious at Dutch for taking advantage of their plights for the law to focus more on attacking the Indians and not the gang. It is probably a result of his best friend being Charles Smith.
• Even the Guys Want Him: Frequently gets males—random citizens and secondary characters alike—complimenting him in-game about how rugged and manly he is (if they're not calling him "pretty boy" or "effeminate"). In real life, he's one of those male video game protagonists guys are comfortable going gay for.
• Evil Is Petty: Arthur seems to hold a grudge against Thomas Downes for preventing him from killing Tommy and will antagonize him if he meets him again in Valentine. When Strauss sends him to get Downes' debt, he cruelly taunts him that he's not such a "do-gooder" and beats him up, which fittingly ends up infecting Arthur with tuberculosis. He is also uncharacteristically petty and arrogant in regard to Downes’ family, boldly claiming to his widow that he doesn't feel bad about killing people and threatening to kill his son, although he does apologise and attempt to repent in a High Honor route.
• Face Death with Dignity:
  • As he's struggling to keep Agent Milton's gun off his face, Arthur just shuts his eyes and waits for him to pull the trigger. He survives with Abigail's help.
  • Already stricken with tuberculosis and having a short time to live, he helps John escape from Micah and the Pinkerton gang and chooses to stay behind to fight them off while buying the Marston family time to flee and start a new life. In the High Honor ending, after having emerged victorious while getting wounded himself, Arthur, content that he has sacrificed himself for the Marston family, uses his final moments to relax peacefully and watch the sunrise, and to let nature take its course with his tuberculosis.
  • With low honor, Arthur manages to retain his dignity in his final moments if he helped John because even if it was his final act, he managed to do something good with his life. He faces down Micah without flinching, calling Micah a fool for thinking they are somehow different before Micah kills him. Averted if low honor Arthur goes for the money however. His final moments are spent trying to crawl away before Micah finishes him off by stabbing him in the back.
• Face of an Angel, Mind of a Demon: To most of the strangers that see him, Arthur looks like a rather nice, decent-looking ruggedly handsome guy and they will often tell him that he looks like a good person, despite him telling them that he's a bad man. Regardless, they often ask for help from him. But what these strangers don't know is that he's an outlaw who has killed many people in the past, and players can make him be absolutely ruthless, from shooting someone's horse in the head, to making him beat up and lasso an elderly lady and feed her to the gators, or shooting every person that he sees in the head after greeting them, setting a farmer's entire house and his livestock on fire, or scolding and kicking dogs, all for no reason. It doesn't help that many players put in a lot of time making Arthur look very dashing and well-dressed, yet they play him as an unfeeling, unhinged murderer with no regards for other life. He'll eventually bring this up to Mary-Beth about his sudden killing sprees, not understanding why he's throttling ladies, instantly shooting any man on sight or harming animals who aren't bothering him, thinking that he might be going crazy or insane and feeling like he's not even in control of his own body anymore. Even if his honor is high and he has killed a lot of hostiles, such as lawmen or rival gang members, he just says the same thing to her.
• Face of a Thug: Well, he's actually a TEXTBOOK thug and certainly looks the part, (it's possible to be both conventionally handsome and intimidating; if he has an unkempt, scruffy appearance, while he isn't ugly, his face looks less friendly and more thuggish) but for all his flaws he's still a good guy, especially if you keep your honor up.
• Failure Hero: The whole game is already a Trauma Conga Line for the Van der Lindes, but Arthur definitely gets it the worst.
• Fatal Flaw:
  • His temper and over-reliance on violence is even worse than John's. This causes his undoing, as he decides to beat up a sick man, who in turn gets him sick.
  • His Undying Loyalty is simultaneously his best and worst trait, which Blind Man Cassidy lampshades. On one hand, he never betrays his friends and sacrifices his life for John and Abigail. On the other, his loyalty to Dutch means he passes up multiple chances to get out of crime and live happily with Mary, and he can't bring himself to betray Dutch even when it becomes clear the man's last screws are coming loose. It takes a Convenient Terminal Illness for him to finally decide to kick Dutch to the curb and start helping people like he wants instead of following Dutch's increasingly-deranged ideology.
  • Self-loathing is another major one. Actions may speak louder than words, but just listen to how he talks about himself in front of the mirror and how quick he is to reject compliments. Explains why, despite his sharp tongue and belligerent personality, he's often a pushover for those he cares about, such as Dutch above.
• Facial Horror: Arthur in the final stages of Tuberculosis. In an instant he turns deathly pale, gets so thin that he looks like a skull, with bloodshot eyes, dark bags under his eyes and sometimes flecks of blood around his mouth from coughing.
• Fat Bastard: Low honor + overweight Arthur = this. Made impossible once his tuberculosis gets bad, however.
• A Father to His Men: Arthur cares for the other gang members as they are the only family he has and will not think twice to throw his life for them. He provides them with food, help them in personal tasks and much more. It is because of this that by Chapter 6 many begin to side with him after Dutch becomes increasingly unstable.
• Fire-Forged Friends: With Eagle Flies, Rain Falls and the rest of the Dakota tribe really. He goes from being indifferent towards their plights, to becoming one of their closest friends and allies.
• Foil: Ultimately, Arthur is what Dutch pretends to be; a honorable outlaw who rebels against a corrupt government with a ragtag bunch of True Companions at his side, and as Dutch slips ever further from the ideal, Arthur proves himself to be better than he thought. Eventually, Arthur dies meaningfully, allowing John to escape the gang, while Dutch kills himself upon realizing the futility of everything he'd done. It's especially obvious if you play Arthur with high Honor.
• Forgotten Fallen Friend: Sadly falls straight into this due Rockstar never building a narrative back in RDR1 that John had a member in the gang that ultimately ended up being his one true brother who sacrificed himself to give them the life we see in 1.
  • However to the game's credit, it does give an explanation, in the Epilogue John confesses to Mary Beth that he is always thinking of Arthur, but it's too painful for him to talk about him (and true to his word, even in the Epilogue he seldom talks about Arthur, and only in rare circumstances. Usually only to the strangers you met as Arthur). So it's likely John did think about Arthur quite a bit in 1, he just didn't speak about him to avoid bringing up painful memories. It's possible that John alludes to Arthur during a conversation with the Marshal.
  • Also, John quotes Arthur when he says "keep on riding and don't look back".
• Friend-or-Idol Decision: Played with. During his final confrontation with Dutch and Micah at the camp, John recovers from his Disney Death, and he and the others are attacked by the Pinkertons led by Agent Edgar Ross, who force Arthur and John to flee to the mountains. Once John learns that his family is safe at Copperhead Landing, he wants Arthur to protect him; Arthur, however, wants to return to the camp with the key Abigail had given him to get the money from the chest to spite Dutch and Micah, but John says that he might be killed by the Pinkertons if he heads back to his family alone. Here, the player is faced with two options: "Go with John" or "Go for the loot". If Arthur decides to go with John, he'll have to fight off the Pinkertons a bit while escorting John before stopping, saying he can't go any further due to his now-advanced tuberculosis, before handing John his hat and satchel. On the other hand, if Arthur decides to go for the money, he will part ways with John and hand him his hat and satchel, making sure that John will survive. However, when Arthur returns to Beaver Hollow and takes the money from Dutch's chest, Micah knifes him in the side, critically wounding him; and depending on what you do with his honor, he takes the money from Arthur either before the latter succumbs to his TB and his wounds or after Micah kills him.
• Good Is Not Soft: Outside of gameplay, Arthur does not hold back insults and speaks his mind when he needs to. Gameplay-wise, you can potentially have the highest honor possible, and still kill anyone who's a threat to you if left to your own devices.
• Go-to Alias: He uses a few over the course of the game, although the gang's go-to one for sending and receiving mail is "Tacitus Kilgore".
• Green-Eyed Monster: A lot of his issues with John towards the beginning of the game is pure jealousy. John gets to be with the woman who loves him when he can’t be with Mary and gets to be a father which is something he also desperately wants a second crack at while John ignores the both of them.
• Guns Akimbo: With a second holster, he can equip two sidearms in this fashion.
• Handicapped Badass: The last sections of the game will be spent while Arthur is dying from tuberculosis. It won't affect the gameplay and he will kick just as much ass though.
• Hates Everyone Equally: Don't mistake his disgust towards xenophobia for heroism; he's just a misanthrope who thinks almost everyone is awful, regardless of sex or race. He gets called on this bullshit at high honor by many people near the end of the game, since for all his evil he's still shown more love to others than most of the other cast combined. Of course, in Low Honor, you get the impression that Arthur really and truly hates everyone he meets.
• Hates Their Parent: All Arthur has to say about his biological father is that the man didn't die soon enough.
• Heartbroken Badass: While Mary Linton broke his heart, Arthur can ultimately agree to help her. All while lamenting that he wished she had run off with him.
• Heroic BSoD: Gets this after Dutch tells him that John, the man whose life Arthur was trying to save before dying himself, was killed by the Pinkertons. Fortunately, Dutch is lying.
• Heel Realization: While the entirety of the plot post-diagnosis is a moral reckoning for Arthur, he becomes especially disturbed over the course of "Money Lending and Other Sins" at what a brute he's become enforcing Strauss's loan sharking operation, and the things it has driven others to do in desperation (selling valuables, grave-robbing, stealing from their loved ones, prostitution). The final client, Arthur Londonderry, is revealed to have worked himself to death trying to pay off the debt, leaving a widow and a fatherless son that can't do it for him; Arthur, haunted, seems to realize in that moment that he's no better than the men who killed Isaac and Eliza for a paltry sum of money. There are options to either help them financially or absolve the debt, but he cannot bring himself to collect what he came for, and when he returns to Beaver Creek, he throws Strauss out for good.
• Heroic Build: Has a slim waist with defined abs to match his broad shoulders and long muscular legs at "perfect weight" and can be quite heroic if played with high honor.
• Heroic Sacrifice: The final mission sees Arthur sacrifice himself for the security of the Marston Family. To what extent he does this is up to the player, as he can either make a final bid for Dutch's money and part amicably with John, or stick with John till the bitter end and die holding off his pursuers.
• Heroic Self-Deprecation:
  • No matter how consistently high your honor is, Arthur never misses an opportunity to voice his self-loathing.
    Arthur: "No wonder they all leave you, you sour-faced idiot."
  • In fact, this is a gameplay mechanic - certain hotel rooms allow you to talk to a mirror, which results in Arthur insulting himself.
• Heroic RRoD: He is told that he has a chance of surviving his sickness if he goes someplace warm and relaxes, he instead chooses to help John and his family escape; which ends up sealing his fate but allows him to die content.
• Hidden Depths: Invoked. Arthur loudly presents himself as a dumb brute. Almost no one believes this, but Morgan himself is privately so self-deprecating that he's often surprised by this. Judging by his journal entries he is an eloquent writer (especially saying he never went to any sort of formal school and didn't learn to read until he was 15) and a fairly good artist - there's even a button prompt to draw interesting sights on the trail. Although he doesn't understand a lot of it, he's also drawn to artists and eccentrics such as Albert Mason, Charles Châtenay and Marko Dragic, even forming genuine friendships with the former two.
  • Despite dismissing any notions of politics as foolishness and being a little reticent to join a suffragettes' caravan (he's not opposed to women voting, just voting in general), he admits with bemusement in his journal afterward that he got a kick out of seeing all the men of Rhodes get so furious, and felt proud to be a part of the protest.
    "I don't know much about good causes, nor the joys of democracy, but I enjoyed my little experience riding alongside them. World certainly is changing fast."
  • In general, despite many of his grievances with modern society, Arthur shows an adventurous curiosity, even starts finding some joy in it. He enjoyed driving a train, trying out a toy boat, etc.
• Hidden Heart of Gold: Towards most of the strangers, he will usually mock or scoff at them but ultimately agrees to help. In one case a black doctor has his wagon stolen by a bunch of racists, after hearing that the doctor was working for free to help people, Arthur tells him to wait and goes off to retrieve his wagon without promise of pay or reward, he simply does it out of the (small speck of) goodness in his heart.
• Honorary Uncle: To Jack.
• Hope Spot: Going with John while in High Honor mode creates one in the ending when Arthur is about to be killed by Micah, but convinces Dutch to abandon the villain and leave, after which Micah spares him and runs off. It looks like Arthur has triumphed and is gonna live after all... except that he only has about a minute left until tuberculosis claims his life, but not before he makes sure his dying moments are spent peacefully and looks at the sunrise for the final time.
• Hunk: Doesn't matter how hairy, dirty, or fat you make him, Arthur is a damn good looking man. Just don't call him a Pretty Boy. Then he gets tuberculosis and his once good looks vanish in a few weeks.
• Hypocritical Humor: For all his playful pestering about Marston's scars, he himself seems to ignore how he himself has a scar between his lower lip and jaw.
• I Can Still Fight!: Says this word-for-word in the "Red Dead Redemption" mission when Sadie asks him if he's going to be alright in covering her as a sniper backup while still riddled with TB.
• Iconic Outfit: His black hat, blue striped shirt, brown jacket and black pants. The jacket comes and goes and is replaced with a large blue one in cold climates.
• Incurable Cough of Death: Arthur is diagnosed with tuberculosis, and his coughing gets progressively worse by the final mission. By the end, he ultimately succumbs to it.
• Inopportune Voice Cracking: During the final part of the mountain fight if he went with John, while Arthur is crawling for Micah's revolver, when he says, "In the end, Micah... despite my best efforts to the contrary..." his voice becomes so strained and choked up from his disease that it makes a high-pitched squeak on the word "Micah" and continues squeaking the rest of the words before returning to a normal strain with "...it turns out I've won." Must have been the Sad Battle Music when Roger's Arthur voice tries sounding strained while trying hard not to cry.
• Intergenerational Friendship: He forms a real bond with the old war veteran Hamish Sinclair, formed from both of their love of hunting and fishing and of Arthur's genuine respect for the man.
• Ink-Suit Actor: The box art and official game website show him bearing a striking resemblance to his voice actor Roger Clark. His resemblance is also shown in this way earlier in the game.
• In the Back: If Arthur has low honor and decides to go for Dutch's loot, he ends up getting fatally stabbed in the back by Micah.
• Ironic Death:
  • He actually notices this himself and writes it in his journal. As an outlaw, he has survived tough weather, countless shootouts and animal attacks... and his death comes in the form of a very ill man coughing on him.
  • In Low Honor, his death is due to Micah, the guy Arthur hated from the beginning, deeming him no better than himself and killing him with pistols or knives.
• I Owe You My Life: He firmly believes that saving a life forms a bond. While he's hostile to Kieran Duffy from the outset, he warms up to him once the former O'Driscoll saves his life, sincerely thanking him afterwards; after Kieran's death Arthur laments in his journal that he's deeply saddened that he wasn't able to return the favor. Arthur also warmly calls Eagle Flies his friend when he saves him after Dutch tries to leave him behind at the refinery.
• I Will Only Slow You Down: Fully invoked in the finale of Chapter 6 if he decides to help John to safety.
• Jerkass: The player can have him antagonize his own gang so relentlessly that Arthur ends up getting sucker punched into unconsciousness and thrown out of the camp for his troubles. And the cruelty is not limited to the gang, you can antagonize and terrorize anyone (even little Jack) as much as you want.
• Jerkass Has a Point: If the player has Arthur antagonize a member of the gang, he often has some very valid criticisms of that character and their actions throughout the game (especially if he antagonizes Dutch or Micah). He even has a point on the more likeable gang members, like when he criticises Hosea for his failed plans or Swanson and Uncle for being lazy and useless.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Despite his actions as an outlaw, and misanthropic demeanour, he genuinely cares for the gang and can perform good deeds if the player chooses to.
• Karmic Death: In an early mission, Arthur beats up a sickly man to the point where he dies from his injuries, said sickly man gives him tuberculosis which ends up killing him, unless you end the game with low honor. Also, in one camp interaction toward the end of Chapter 2, said sick man's widow visits Horseshoe Overlook and tells Strauss that her husband died due to the sickness and the beating delivered by Arthur; in an Ironic Echo, if Arthur has high honor, it will be a beating (this time delivered by Micah) combined with the same sickness that ultimately does him in. In Low Honor, where he likely murdered hundreds with his pistols and knife, it'll be Micah's pistol or knife that sends him to hell.
• Kick the Dog: Even in a High Honor playthrough, there are a few moments where Arthur will still act like a bastard:
  • After kidnapping Kieran, Arthur casually threatens the terrified young man with violence and torture.
  • During the first train robbery at Colter, he will kill the train conductor by throwing him off the train to his death (though for what it's worth, the conductor will do the same to him).
  • He more or less batters debtor Thomas Downes to within an inch of his life, and even suggests that Downes sells his wife or family to repay his debt to the gang.
  • During the Valentine train robbery, he will brutally beat and threaten civilians who hesitate to give up their valuables.
  • In "A Strange Kindness", he is apathetic to the German family's plight and Charles has to force him to help them out, and even then Arthur continues to complain about wasting time.
  • He threatens to kill Archie Downes for a perceived slight, even emphasizing the fact that he was more or less responsible for his father's death and that it will bring his mother even more grief.
  • While holding a guard hostage while braking John out, he forces the guard to apologise to Sadie for pointing a gun at her and forces him to count to the time limit in which he would be killed.
  • In-camp, when Grimshaw verbally or physically abuses the girls, Arthur never calls her out or defends them, implying he condones her behaviour or couldn't be bothered to intervene. It's not like he's unaccustomed to confronting gang members, as he will scold Micah or Bill if he sees them harass other members. If he chooses to antagonize Grimshaw, he will instead mock her age, her lost relationship with Dutch or accuse her of mismanagement but never about the girls, except in Chapter 6 when he suggests she has Sanity Slippage after killing Molly.
  • Another in-camp inaction; when he sees Bill, Sean, Javier and Jack harass Kieran, he ignores it at best or, if he “greets” Kieran afterwards, joins in on the bullying at worst.
• Knight in Sour Armor: John was a romantic trying to be a cynic - Arthur is The Anti-Nihilist pretending to be a Straw Nihilist. This duality and refusal to accept that he has a heart is a big part of his arc. In the end, for all his outward misanthropy and lack of faith in anything, even a low honor Arthur goes down fighting for love by trying to keep the gang safe and securing a future for the Marstons, hoping it will mean something.
  Arthur: Love makes us do crazy things, more so than hate.
• Laser-Guided Karma: Arthur's assault of Thomas Downes leads to him contracting tuberculosis. In High Honor, the disease ultimately kills him. In Low Honor, it weakens him enough so that Micah could do the honors.
• The Last Dance: Helping John escape is seen as this for him, knowing he has little time left thanks to his illness.
• Laughably Evil: If you have Arthur spam the "Antagonize" option, you could have a whole game's worth of sadistic comedy gold.
• Lean and Mean: Low honor + underweight Arthur = this. Enforced when Arthur gets tuberculosis and is stuck underweight, however the player is also encouraged to redeem themselves with the diagnosis, optionally downplaying the "mean" part.
• Life Will Kill You: Arthur has been through all sorts of shootouts, robberies, and fistfights as an outlaw but an infectious disease is what does him in at the end.
• Like Father, Unlike Son: Arthur's adopted father, Dutch, turns out to be a Broken Pedestal.
  • Symbolically, Dutch dies falling off a mountain, ostensibly killed by John, while Arthur (with high honor and having helped John escape) dies on top of one after saving John.
  • Also with blood family, Arthur's biological father was abusive whereas he loved his son Issac very much. He couldn't be there in the way he wanted due to his lifestyle but financially provided for him and his mom before they were killed over $10. He only ever brings him up twice (and the one time he actually goes into the details, it's an optional mission) because it's still too painful for him.
• Long-Haired Pretty Boy: While he (arguably) doesn't pull the look off quite as well as John does, he certainly doesn't become unattractive if his hair is grown out.
• Made of Iron: Aside from being your typical video game protagonist, being able to shrug off an infinite amount of gunfire barrages and beatdowns, what makes Arthur stand out is that he's able to do all of that while days away from succumbing to tuberculosis.
• Man Bites Man: If he went for the loot in High Honor mode, then he manages to bite Micah's hand before punching him, right after stabbing him in the eye with his knife.
• Manly Man: A big, strong, handsome, sharp-witted One-Man Army outlaw with Dark and Troubled Past and a soft side who casually charms almost every woman he comes across.
• Manly Tears: Sniffles and looks misty-eyed after Eagle Flies dies and he parts ways with Charles.
• Miles to Go Before I Sleep: After a lifetime of thieving and killing, contracting tuberculosis spurs Arthur, especially a high honor one, into doing as much good as he can, and he refuses to go down until he's finally either killed or succumbs to the TB.
• Misdirected Outburst: Optional dialogue with the rest of the gang reveals that he has a lot of pent up anger and frustration over their circumstances and the changing world around them. Should the player kill animals without collecting their resources or murder innocent strangers indiscriminately, Arthur will frame those actions in these conversations as him losing control of his temper and lashing out against people and creatures who don't deserve it, something he is deeply ashamed of and disturbed by.
• Momma's Boy: While he talked bad of his father and thinks of him as a "no-good bastard", he never speaks badly of his mother and unconditionally thinks greatly of her and keeps a flower by his bed because she thought of it as a symbol of good luck.
• Mr. Fanservice: Arthur has been said to look like a combination of Chris Pine, Brad Pitt, Chris Hemsworth, Leon Scott Kennedy and a young Clint Eastwood. A tall and broad shouldered man with chiseled features, broad sun-kissed arms, gentle blue eyes and a pleasant Southern drawl, Arthur gets attraction from men and women both in-game and out. And then you watch him contract TB and slowly wither away to skin and bones.
• Muscles Are Meaningless: Arthur is the same gameplay-wise even when stricken with terminal tuberculosis that makes him Nothing but Skin and Bones, though his Cores do drain much faster. Then again, he's clearly shown being overpowered by a random soldier right before Eagle Flies has to rescue him and later against Agent Milton until Abigail saves him.
• Must Make Amends: A high honor Arthur will do things like giving Edith and Archie Downes money to escape Annesburg and live a decent life, or absolving the debts of Strauss' debtors, all while refusing to accept thanks because of his actions leading to their suffering in the first place.
• My Greatest Failure:
  • Accidentally beating the sick-and-dying family man Thomas Downes to death over a debt is this for Arthur, for different reasons depending on his honor; at high honor, it's for finally making him realize just how often (and how badly) he's ruined innocent lives, with the Downes family just being the biggest and most obvious. At low honor, it's because it's how Arthur contracts tuberculosis, signing his death warrant. Made clearest by the following sidequests revolving around the Downeses, as well as the speech (both honor variants) he gives Strauss upon kicking him out of camp after finishing the Debtor missions.
  • Years before the game started, Arthur never forgave himself for not being there when his ex-girlfriend and their son were murdered in a home robbery. Arthur discusses the subject as little as possible, but once he tells Rains Fall it's clear how much of Arthur's character traces back to this one loss.
• My Master, Right or Wrong: Arthur's loyalty to Dutch is one of his flaws. At worst he voices discontent about one of Dutch's plans, but Arthur follows with it anyway. He doesn't move past this until late in the story.
• Nature Lover: Loves and appreciates the prairie just as much as John does and shares his disgust with Dutch over having to visit Saint Denis. It's one of the reasons he stays in the outlaw life.
• Never My Fault: While he can feel remorse, he frequently blames Micah, Dutch and Strauss for directing his actions, such as claiming that Micah put a spell on him or banishing Strauss for his debt-collecting.
• Nice Guy: Eventually develops into this after being diagnosed with tuberculosis. He becomes more emotional and polite, less sarcastic, develops a selfless side, and openly shows more care and compassion than ever before.
  • Playing High Honor right from the beginning can also make him into this.. Well, nice as he can be, considering you can still kill and antagonize if you feel the need.
• Noble Demon: Arthur is front and center about his status of being an outlaw but doesn't allow it to compromise his morals and standards. Most evident in a high honor playthrough, where the Sister tells him that for a bad man he always seems to be smiling and helping those less fortunate than him.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: Not visually, but he shares one important detail with Doc Holliday, a gunslinger who participated in the O.K. Corral gunfight. They both died of tuberculosis at age 36.
  • In both personality and appearance to an extent, High Honor Arthur has a lot in common with Ulysses S. Grant. They both live around the same time period, both have very progressive views for their time, and both die of a terminal illness (Grant had throat cancer from smoking cigars most of his life), and spent their last days working hard to help those they cared about. Also like Arthur, Grant was a very skilled horseman, writer and artist who showed signs of depression.
• Noodle Incident: Much like John’s history in the first game, a lot of the events in Arthur’s life are left ambiguous, especially the timing. How long has he been having doubts about Dutch? What were he and Hosea working on in Blackwater? How long ago did he and Mary break up? Abigail who’s only been with the gang for five years knows her. One big aspect of his life in particular is left really ambiguous, his son Isaac. He tells Rains Fall that the boy died a long time before the game without going into specifics. He says that the kid's mother Eliza was only 19 but it’s never said how old Arthur was when the boy was born. He would have been about the same age Jack was in the first game if she and Arthur were the same age. We don’t know how old the boy was when he died either. Arthur just says Isaac was a good kid.
• Not Afraid to Die: Tragically averted. Arthur Morgan is not a man who scares easy: America's deadliest predators don't give him much pause, and he doesn't worry about getting slashed or shot in a fight. But he knows full well he cannot do anything to save himself from a drawn-out, emasculating death by a lung infection, and worse, he dreads what kind of judgement he might face because of the life he has led. He admits to the Sister that he knows his doom is close and it's the one time in the game he looks actually vulnerable.
• Not So Stoic: It's pretty clear that despite the cold, indifferent front he puts up, there's certain parts of the outlaw life that weigh heavily on Arthur's conscience.
  • He's pretty disgusted at the work he has to do for Strauss's loan-sharking side business, to the point that Arthur throws Strauss out of the van der Linde gang himself, after Strauss starts exhorting people who are so desperate that they literally work themselves into the grave in order to get the money back.
  • If he beats Dutch in a horse race, Arthur will be noticeably moved when Dutch tells him that he's more than like a son to him.
  • Arthur is justifiably horrified at the way Dutch exploits the Wapiti tribe's struggle with the Army in order to take the attention off the gang. It's one of the very few times that Arthur vocally voices his disgust at what he and the gang are doing
  • A side-mission has a rare moment that Arthur is panicked, to the extent that he is briefly frozen in shock, when he is confronted by a snarling lion.
  • During his visit to Winton Holmes' camp to retrieve the debt he owed Strauss, he and Winton go to a dark cave to hunt a cougar whose pelt is good enough to repay the debt. When Winton gets killed by the cougar, his voice trembles and becomes incredibly nervous. He’s alone in a dark cave with a Cougar preying on him, and while he has the courage to not leave the cave until the Cougar's gone, anyone can tell that he’s terrified of it.
  • Towards the end of the game, if you helped Sister Calderon and have high honor, Arthur will sit down with her at a train station and confess his fears about his inevitable death. The expression he wears, couples with the way his voice shakes, show that despite how much Arthur says he's perfectly fine with dying for the gang, the prospect of dying to TB terrifies him, to the point where it sounds like he's pretty close to tearing up.
• Not The Illness That Killed Them: In the low honor endings, he's killed by Micah instead of his tuberculosis.
• Nothing but Skin and Bones: When his tuberculosis worsens, Arthur is forced below underweight, thinner than the game mechanics normally allow.
• Obfuscating Stupidity:
  • Arthur presents himself as far more single-minded and brutish than he really is. He often reflects privately, either in his journal, or in internal monologues with far more eloquence than he voices to others. Many people note this in the game too.
  • In a more direct example, a story mission in Rhodes has Arthur and Hosea disguise themselves as traveling moonshiners. Hosea is quick to assign Arthur the role of a dumb mute, and teases him for playing the character well.
  • A later mission in Saint Denis has him posing as "Arthur Callahan" — a dimwitted, casually racist, nouveau-riche loudmouth who struck it big in the oil fields — to rob the Grand Korrigan riverboat of its casino profits. In spite of his misgivings over the plan, he plays the role to the hilt.
    Javier: [Dressed as a guard] Maybe we could still blend into the crowd when it all goes crazy.
    Arthur: Which it surely will... [As they approach the casino floor] TO THE BARRRRRR, SEÑOR!
• Oh, Crap!:
  • Arthur has this when the doctor in Saint Denis tells him that he's diagnosed with tuberculosis and that he's going to die sooner or later. The expression on his face is a clear indicator that his days are numbered and that he must make amends quickly in order to die without any regrets.
  • He also goes through this again during the side mission, "He's British, of Course!" when he finds himself up agains a real live Lion.
    Arthur: SHIT!
• One-Man Army: He's the player character of an action-packed shooter, of course he is. It's made especially evident, however, since Arthur's fellow NPCs actually can die in shootouts, resulting in a Non-Standard Game Over, which makes Arthur the one individually responsible for the whole Van der Linde gang, which is already the most Badass Army in gaming history.
• Only Sane Man: Has all the common sense in the gang that Hosea hadn't taken already. It starts out rather comical, as he loudly gripes about being a Beleaguered Assistant to Dutch's delusions of grandeur, but it slowly gets quieter and more serious as Dutch becomes more deranged and refuses to listen to Arthur's advice; he can see perfectly well the gang is in deep trouble, but he can't get Dutch out of his downward spiral long enough to do anything about it.
• Open Secret: Given Arthur's steadily-worsening cough and the time it takes for him to finally see a doctor, it's hard not to wonder if at least SOME of the gang already suspected Arthur has TB.
• Outliving One's Offspring: Had a son named Isaac with a waitress. One day, he came to visit to find they had both been killed by a robber over 10 dollars.
• Pajama-Clad Hero: During Chapter 3, when he is captured by the O'Driscolls and stripped to his union suit (which kinda looks like pajamas), he can cut himself free and cauterize the gunshot wound; he can then use this to his advantage by killing the O'Driscolls who attacked him and getting his weapons back before escaping... all while still in his union suit.
• Papa Wolf: When the Pinkertons catch up to him during a fishing trip with Jack, Arthur’s first instinct is to put himself between them and the boy. When Jack gets kidnapped later on, Arthur is nearly as incensed as John.
• Paper-Thin Disguise: When he's "Arthur Callahan". Using your actual first name as an alias isn't the smartest move.
  • In missions, Arthur's disguise usually only amounts to a black bandana over his lower face, which becomes even more absurd when he robs the bank in Saint Denis, where everyone except him and Dutch wear bags that cover their entire heads.
• Pay Evil unto Evil: Kicking out Strauss despite the man's loyalty to the gang and being one of the last source of income shocks a few people in the camp, as they don't know if they'll be next. Strauss however was a cruel loan shark and Arthur realized he can't muscle out decent folks for him anymore.
• Peaceful in Death: In one of the High Honor endings, after having been terribly wounded by Micah and left to die alone, Arthur, content that he has given John and his family a better future, crawls over to the edge of a cliff and huddles up against a giant rock there to spend his final moments at dawn. Seconds later, however, his tuberculosis is taking a hold of him as he is being suffocated and struggling to breathe in agonizing pain. As his gasping is slowing down, he turns his head around to catch a glimpse of the sunrise for the final time before slowly letting out his last breath as his eyes gently close in a Big Sleep, dying with a peaceful expression on his face.
• Pet the Dog: Even at Low Honor, there are still a couple moments where Arthur shows he still has a heart:
  • Arthur usually hates the many Rockstar trademark eccentric strangers he comes across, however he reluctantly admits that even he liked the hot air balloon pilot and gives Sadie a What the Hell, Hero? for getting him killed.
  • He seems to have a soft spot for Mary's brother Jamie. If he chooses to rescue him, he lets Jamie hug him and tries to tell him that it's his dad that's the problem, not him. Jamie also muses that Arthur was the one who taught him to ride a horse.
  • After helping him desert the Army, he gives Captain Monroe enough money to start a new life.
  • Similarly, while kicking Strauss out, he will still hand him some money before forcing him to leave.
  • Arthur will still help John, Abigail and Jack escape the Van der Linde gang and make sure they are provided for no matter his honor level.
  • He automatically offers to give Meredith, the girl the Murfree Brood captured, a ride home, a stark difference from his previous reluctance to help the German family.
• Perma-Stubble: Until the "Extra Clean Shaven" option is unlocked at the barbers, he's always got at least a little stubble on him.
• Platonic Life-Partners: He and Sadie are this by the end of the story. They develop a close friendship, especially when taking into account that the story takes place over just a year, at most. Near the end of the story, Sadie refers to Arthur as, "the best friend I've got", "the only one" among the gang that she can trust, and "the best man" she's met since her husband.
• Politically Correct Villain: He's a felon alright, but he sure as hell ain’t prejudiced. He never sees any problem with other minorities, treats women without a trace of misogyny, and is willing to help out a tribe of Indians who are under attack by the Army. His two closest friends in the gang are black. This trope is probably the one good thing he learned from Dutch.
• Politically Incorrect Villain: Granted, he shows slight signs of xenophobia. When meeting Mr Wrobel and the German family, he repeatedly grumbles that they can't speak English. He also refers to Angelo Bronte as a "greasy-haired European".
• Precision F-Strike: Despite having a potty mouth, he rarely says some sort of version of the word "fuck". He can say it as part of one of the bawdy camp songs and calls the Murfree Brood "kin-fucking bastards" but never says it otherwise.
• Real Men Get Shot: During Chapter 3, he gets knocked out and captured by the O'Driscolls. He tries to escape, but gets shot in the left shoulder and captured again. After being tied up and tortured and denied food, he escapes again and deals with the (now hours old) gunshot wound by cauterizing it with black powder. After recuperating for several weeks at camp, he's back in action good-as-new.
• Real Men Wear Pink: Frequently chronicles his story in his journal and can be played as well-groomed and well-dressed.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: The blue to Micah's red in High Honor. While Micah is wild, violent, unpredictable, sadistic and homicidal, Arthur is a Byronic Hero who tries to be rational, cordial, polite, empathetic and compassionate, especially after he is diagnosed with turberculosis. This trope is even represented on both men's shirts: while Micah's shirt is red, Arhur's shirt is blue.
• Redemption Equals Death: Upon discovering that he had contracted tuberculosis, he decides to spend his last days helping Marston have a future with his family. Having wasted his whole life in Dutch's thrall, moving on from one blunder to the next, Arthur decides to have one real moment of control in his life and do the right thing.
• Redemption Rejection: Similarly, upon discovering that he had contracted tuberculosis, if Arthur continues to terrorise people and commit Low Honor actions, karma would literally bite him in the form of Micah Bell.
• Reincarnation: Arthur is implied to be reincarnated as one of his spirit animals in the epilogue.
• The Reliable One: Dutch's premiere muscle, and with good reason. Over the course of the story, Arthur loses Dutch's favor over Micah.
• Religious and Mythological Theme Naming: His full name is Welsh in origin: his first name, "Arthur", fits in with the legendary King Arthur, and his surname, "Morgan", fits in with the sorceress Morgan le Fay. Of course, his name can be more meaningful depending on what you do with his honor meter. His old horse, Boadicea, is also named after a mythological British royal. She was a Queen in the first century AD who led an uprising against the Romans.
• Reluctant Psycho: A Low Honor Arthur can admit in several conversation, mainly with Mary-Beth, that he's terrified that he's losing control as he doesn't have a good explanation for why he's killing so many people and animals. Of course for some players this can be triggered by accident even when they are playing a High Honor Arthur.
• Remember the New Guy?: The biggest example of this in RDR2. Despite Arthur's importance to the Van der Linde gang and the close familial relationship he had with Dutch and the Marston family personally, he's never actually brought up in RDR1 itself by the surviving members of the group. The game's epilogue handwaves this with the Marston family where it's revealed that John and Abigail had simply never truly gotten over Arthur's death, and thus avoid bringing him up due to their sorrow.
• Retired Outlaw: He wants to be this, and at one point tries to convince Mary that he's close to putting his violent life behind him. The problem is that Dutch's poor leadership constantly pushes the gang into more dangerous situations despite Arthur's attempts to fix things and even if the gang did have a way to escape the law Arthur wouldn't have lasted long due to having TB.
• Revenge Before Reason: His one true example of this in the game comes right before his death, if you choose to "go for the money". The game treats it as a dishonorable act, as it's something Arthur is doing for himself, rather than helping John and his family, with what precious little energy he has left; it's clearly not about the money, either, because Arthur doesn't even have the time to count it, let alone spend it. This option is about one thing and one thing only — using his last moments alive to put Micah and Dutch in the ground next to him.
• Sad Clown: From the beginning, Arthur is as quick with the one-liners as Rodney Dangerfield. In another era, he would've made a successful comedian. He's also deeply self-loathing, and while he often puts up a jovial front, his true feelings about himself and his life reveal themeselves frequently.
• Secret Secret-Keeper: He says in his journal that he's figured out that Bill is hiding some huge secret (likely that he's gay) about himself but doesn't know what it is and doesn't press it. He doesn't believe it's his secret to tell. Though it's also shown that some people in the gang have their suspicions too, John and Charles can both imply that they think he's gay.
• Secretly Dying: He tries his best to hide his condition from the rest of the gang, but does give in once he enters the final stages of illness.
• See You in Hell: He delivers this line to Micah if he helps John in a Low Honor route:
  Arthur: Damn us both!
• Self-Deprecation: Look at Arthur in the mirror and he'll sigh while calling himself ugly. Oh shut up, Arthur, we all know you're a Hunk!
  • He also brushes off people when they compliment him on the good things he does, or tell him what they like about him. His self esteem is rock bottom.
• Servile Snarker: While he often questions and argues with Dutch, Arthur ultimately obeys him unfailingly — until his old friend's sanity declines, at which point he begins to act independently to try to help John and his family get out of the gang and stop the harm Dutch is causing, which Dutch sees as undermining his authority. That doesn't stop him from getting a few good jabs in here and there.
• Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness: Despite being a textbook thug, his words are fancier than even John's!
• Sharp-Dressed Man: In Chapter 4, he and the other gang members are dressed up in black tuxedos when they head for the Mayor's house in Saint Denis for a nighttime party.
• Single-Target Sexuality: Despite being a bonafide Chick Magnet, he's faithful to Mary, even though they're long broken up and could never be together. He did have a relationship with another woman at some point as they had a kid together.
• Sociopathic Hero: Depending on how you play with him, and if you are sadistic enough to perform acts of senseless violence ala Grand Theft Auto, Arthur may very well be the poster boy of this trope. He could even mention that he might be going Ax-Crazy and feeling like he's not even in control of his own body anymore.
• Sophisticated as Hell: He has an insanely thick southern accent and a sailor's mouth, but damned if he ain't cultured.
• Sour Supporter: He may always anticipate the worst and vocally complain when plans go south, but he's Dutch's most loyal follower and would ride with him into the gates of Hell. This becomes deconstructed over the course of the game — as the reality of their situation sets in, he goes from playful skepticism to genuine, impassioned concern, especially since Dutch, always accusing him of "doubt", is getting more and more reckless and can't seem to acknowledge what a mess he's dragged everyone into. By the end, after his TB diagnosis and the slow dissolution of the gang, Arthur is disillusioned, urging everyone he can to leave, and trying to stop Dutch from dooming the Wapiti; Dutch, meanwhile, convinces himself in his paranoia and insanity that Arthur is a snake that "turned on" him, not a devoted son that he drove away.
• Southern Gentleman: He’s polite to most women, though it ultimately depends on the player. He also has an amusingly elegant vocabulary clearly inspired by Dutch.
• Strong Family Resemblance: As seen by the picture next to his bed, his dad looks almost identical to him.
• Supporting Protagonist: To John. In the grander narrative, this game is as much his as the first. Arthur’s actions are the catalyst to turning John into who he is in the first game and leading him to his own Heroic Sacrifice.
• The Team Benefactor: Due to Gameplay and Story Segregation, while it's suggested to be a team effort In-Universe, if you want to maximize the camp's features and looks, Arthur will be the one supplying 99% of the capital, and 100% of the materials.
• Took a Level in Kindness: Invoked in chapter 6. Once Arthur is diagnosed with tuberculosis, he can reach the maximum level of honor and the game nudges the player towards redemption, allowing you to forgo payment in the remaining sidequests and absolve debts.
• Tsundere: If you play at high honor everyone can see his grumpy and cynical bad man act is as fake as it gets. He really does like helping people that need it and is extremely loyal to those he loves. Some (Mary-Beth, Mary, Karen, Charles, Sister Calderon and/or Reverend Swanson) will even call him out on this to his face. He's pretty much incapable of admitting this and would rather people saw him as a cruel jackass to the end even if it's as far from the truth as it can get.
• Two First Names: "Arthur" and "Morgan" can both be used as given names.
• Undignified Death: He survives countless gunfights and near-death scenarios, only to be killed by... a relatively common disease from the 20th century, tuberculosis. To make things worse, he contracted it because of his own impatience in dealing with a sick debtor who coughed all over him after being beaten up. His death is slow, painful, and completely unavoidable. However, he subverts this by making sure his last moments aren't in vain.
  • In both endings, Arthur takes quite a beating from Micah. This can be taken further if the player has low honor: in the Loot ending Micah stabs and kills him while he is crawling away, and should you help John, Micah shoots him in the head with his revolver. With a high honor, however, Micah just leaves, which results in Arthur lying down to look into the sunrise before dying in peace with himself.
• Unflinching Walk: In the second trailer.
• Uptown Boy: While he and Mary are both Hypocrites about each other's families (his being the gang, hers being her dad and brother), the big conflict between the two of them is that she comes from money and he doesn't. Rich women in the late 19th century didn't have the luxury of marrying for love and she ultimately marries a more "suitable" man. He even tells Mary Beth that she gave him more time than she should have given the class circumstance.
• Vengeance Feels Empty: A firm believer of this. He considers it a game for imbeciles and constantly tells people that. He only takes revenge once, and that’s on Colm O'Driscoll for torturing him and killing Kieran, and even then he quickly moves on and states that it doesn't make the gang's current problems any easier.
• Verbal Tic: If you don't mind liver poisoning, take a shot every time Arthur says "Boah," especially if you have a male horse. Also, god forbid, "Sure".
• Victorian Novel Disease: Viciously subverted—Arthur's tuberculosis definitely affects his appearance for the worst, and the player's cores drain faster to represent his decreasing physical ability.
• Villain Protagonist: He is a merciless member of an outlaw gang, and you get to play as him as such thanks to the honor system. If he sticks to high honor by the ending, his last talk with the nun makes him realize that he doesn't have to be a villain at all for what time he has left.
• Villain's Dying Grace: A Low Honor Arthur can do this by choosing to save John rather than head for the money. He will still end up killed by Micah, but has a less painful death and gets to tell to rat bastard that they’ll meet again in Hell.
• Virtual Paperdoll: The most customizable Rockstar protagonist since CJ. His hair, beard, clothes, and even weight can be changed by the player.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: With most of the gang no less! Despite all his ribbing (particularly with John, Sean, Swanson and Trelawny), however, he truly loves them all. Micah being the only exception. He's especially this with John. He's pretty vicious to John about his treatment of Abigail and Jack but he does end up sacrificing himself so John can try to live a normal life.
  • It's notable that the only one he actually hates and only helps out of his sense of duty is The Mole.
• Weak, but Skilled: Despite dying from tuberculosis and thus slowly becoming physically weaker in the process, he's still a great gunslinger and fighter. Most impressively, Micah's still unable to beat him in his last minutes alive because of this.
• What Beautiful Eyes!: His blue eyes are so pretty that even the bartender in the Rhodes saloon calls them "fascinating".
• What the Hell, Hero?: After she stirs up the O'Driscoll's while Arthur is on his hot balloon ride, Arthur chews out Sadie because her actions accidentally got the balloon's owner, Mr. Bullard-whom Arthur was just taking a shine to-killed.
• Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: Downplayed since he's able to pull himself together, but pretty much we see Arthur show any fear (outside of the "I'm afraid" scene) is when he gets shaky and nervous while piloting a hot air balloon soaring through the clouds. Justified since pretty much everyone was terrified of heights back then, as planes and skyscrapers were unheard of.
• Wicked Cultured: He is Dutch's son, after all. Most evident in his journal, where he proves to have an impressive vocabulary, a decent grasp on literature and pop culture, and ample drawing skills.
• Worf Had the Flu: Or tuberculosis, in his case, and he still gives Micah some trouble. In his prime, Arthur would've probably flattened the guy easily.
  • Similarly, shortly before his fight with Micah, Arthur is unable to overpower Agent Milton, and was nearly killed in their power struggle before Abigail saved Arthur. Lampshaded by Milton
    Milton: “Hehe, you’re losing your strength, Mr. Morgan.”
• Wouldn't Hit a Girl: While he can attack women in gameplay, be they hostile or not, Arthur doesn't directly attack a woman in the game's story, outside of Ellie Anne Swan and Edie Porter. He threatens a reluctant female passenger in the train robbery by hitting her husband and he calls Dutch out for killing their greedy guide in Guarma. He isn't stupid enough to think all women are angels, however, and is fine with letting Dutch manhandle Catherine Braithwaite.
• Wouldn't Hurt a Child:
  • Not even if they're robbing him — the game won't let Arthur shoot at Cleet the cutpurse while chasing him in Saint Denis. Considering how the entire Van der Linde gang rides out with a vengeance when Jack is kidnapped by Lady Braithwaite, and the disgust they show towards her for involving children, it's likely that this is a rule that Dutch and Hosea ingrained in all of their men.
  • Arthur is very protective of Jack in general; he's the only one at camp you can't yell at to wake him up when he's sleeping, and the player has to go out of their way to potentially antagonize him. When riding with Charles in "A Strange Kindness", Arthur will note with special disgust that Milton told him while Jack was in earshot how the Pinkertons had tortured and killed Mac Callander.
• You Are Better Than You Think You Are: Constantly subjected to this, if the player has good honor. In the most notable instance Arthur will be told this by Reverend Swanson or Sister Calderón^note Depending if a certain sidequest has been completed at Emerald Station - before they leave, they tell him that he still has time to good in the world and that he should, which inspires Arthur to go and help John and spurs his Heel–Face Turn right before he dies.
  • By the end of the main story, just about every other character will tell this to Arthur who has high honor. His final ride to camp, Arthur reflects on each time another character has called him a good man.
  • Later, when their relationship is on better terms, he gives a combination of this trope and a Get A Hold Of Yourself Man to John where he argues his biggest problem with John is that he's not acting like the man he could and should be, especially since he's got a family to look after, and encourages him to be better.
• You Can't Fight Fate: Nope, you can't do anything about Arthur contracting tuberculosis. The mission where he gets it is mandatory and in the end, he will die. Whether he succumbs to it, or dies from the hands of Micah, depending on how high or low your honor rate is.
• Your Days Are Numbered: Being diagnosed with tuberculosis in 1899, when antibiotics have yet to exist, is not a matter of if you'll die, but when.
• You Shall Not Pass!: Rather than risk the both of them being caught and killed, Arthur decides to stay behind and hold off the pursuing Pinkerton agents so John can escape.
• Younger Than They Look: He's actually only in his thirties, but looks about a decade older unless you REALLY keep him well groomed. He can look even older depending on how the player customizes him (particularly by having him grow out his beard), and by the end of his story, his terminal illness has taken such a toll on him that he could pass for a man in his fifties. Justified Trope since living in The Wild West (and pre-industrial times in general) is notoriously harsh, and the rough life of an outlaw even more so. Doctors have confirmed that the effects of tuberculosis have also been depicted in all their undignified detail.

John "Jack" Marston, Jr.

^{Click here to see 12-year-old Jack}

^{Click here to see 16-year-old Jack}

^{Click here to see 19-year-old Jack}

"My name is Jack Marston - you knew my father."

Voiced by: Josh Blaylock (RDR I), Marissa Buccianti (child, RDR II) and Ted Sutherland (teen, RDR II)

"I guess there's only room for one hero in this family."

The son of John Marston and Abigail Roberts, Jack was born into an outlaw's world, staying at camp with his mother while his father went out robbing with the Van der Linde Gang. Not wanting their son to grow up the way they did and face the prospect of an early grave, John and Abigail tried their hardest to make sure he grew up educated and respectable. Unfortunately, by 1914, circumstances left him in just such a position, drifting across Mexico, the last living relic of the age of gunslingers...

---

• The Aloner: Justified given that the age of outlaws is practically over by 1914, so it makes perfect sense why Jack is a traveling loner. Along with his mental health issues, losing his entire family by age nineteen didn’t help his case. Apart from the few side mission characters (who are more so acquaintances than friends), Jack is on his own for the most part.
• Ambiguously Trained: How Jack Marston became as good a gunslinger as his father, John Marston in only three years is shrouded in mystery.
  • It could be implied that he did nothing but train his shooting skills for three years straight and perhaps hunted and camped in Tall Trees for long periods of time alone to hone his gunslinger skills.
  • Unfortunately, this possibility would only added more weight to Abigail’s severe depression after John’s death, as she would be constantly worried about Jack going off on his own. As such, the two would become more and more distant from one another.
• And Now for Someone Completely Different: You play as him after the "final" mission of I.
• Anti-Hero: Where he falls on the spectrum depends on how the players plays him, though as long as he isn't killing people randomly he will stay within this trope. However while the Stranger missions show him to be a kind person willing to help others, the fact remains that Jack is usually played as a hardened killer.
• Arch-Enemy: It's Edgar Ross .
• Armor-Piercing Response: Has this against Edgar Ross's threat of killing him in 1914.
  Edgar Ross: And I'll shoot you like one too you little piece of trash! Now get out of here, before I kill you as well!
  Jack Marston: I ain't going nowhere, old man!
• Badass Bandolier: Inherited from his father.
• Badass Bookworm: He's a literary scholar who wanted to be a writer. He's also becomes an outlaw because he wanted vengeance for John's death.
• Badass Mustache: He sports a mustache and goatee combo as an adult.
• Berserk Button:
  • Do NOT insult his dead family. Whether it be directly or indirectly. Edgar Ross and determinately, Mario Alcadle, learn this the hard way.
  • Lawmen, and civilization in general is something Jack hates.
• Best Served Cold: It takes three years, but he does avenge John's death by filling Ross with lead.
• Beware the Quiet Ones: Is a man of few words, but that doesn't stop him from being able to put a bullet in someone whether he's insulted or is being paid to.
• Book Ends: Retroactively invoked in the prequel. He kills the murderer of his father in the location when he first met him as a child: A river.
• Bounty Hunter:
  • Becomes one after killing Ross. As it’s one of the few ways to make Jack more money, should the player choose so.
  • Ironically, it is Sadie Adler who suggested that even a twelve year old Jack could do it, In the epilogue of II where she herself was a bounty hunter by 1907. It can be inferred that given the circumstances along with Jack’s penchant for violence and his gunslinger skills, he took Sadie’s words to heart to be a bounty hunter.
• Break the Cutie: At the beginning of II, he's a Keet, but by the end, he's devolved into a jaded and quiet recluse.Given everything he went through as a child, it’s justified. It gets much worse during the events of I.
• Broken Ace: Has mastered gunslinging, horse riding, hunting, survivalism and many, many more things by the tender age of nineteen, not to mention being quite book-smart. However, all the trauma of his past has caught up to him, and he's basically a depressed, lonely drifter, living a lifestyle that won't even last through the decade. An Easter Egg in GTA V implies that Jack eventually became a writer, although the canonical status of that is debatable.
• Broken Bird: A lot of Jack's dialogue in combat remarks on how little he has left to live for. The three years since John's death have done much to erode his idealism.
• Blood Knight: Enjoys getting into gunfights and duels. Whether it be for bounty hunting as his job, or helping others. However, it’s implied there’s a dark reasoning behind this.
• Cannot Talk to Women: His attempts to pick up girls in the first game are incredibly pathetic, when played with low honor. "They tell me I’m at my sexual peak, sweetheart!" and "How about it, miss? You and me? I like an older woman." Come to mind as some of his most awkward moments. On the contrary, a high honor Jack Marston consciously chooses not to engage with women. As with high honor, Jack takes on a more depressive personality and considers himself too broken for any meaningful relationship.
• Character Development: Of the negative kind. In 2, he starts as an optimistic and cheerful 3 or 4 year old kid. But by 1907, he is a quiet, distant, and likely depressed. His issues have only gotten worse by 1911 and by 1914, he became a gunslinger, the very thing John and Arthur didn't want him to be. Becomes more positive after the events of the story if he truly does become a writer, if one believes that a certain Easter Egg is canonical.
• Cheerful Child: In II.
• Child Prodigy: A better reader than his father at the age of four.
• Childish Tooth Gap: If you use first person while conversing with Jack at II, you’ll see that he’s missing a tooth.
• Chronic Hero Syndrome: If Jack is played having High Honor, it seems like he has shades of this. Helping out strangers wherever he can sounds an awful lot like his pa in 1907.
• Cop Hater: Absolutely detests law enforcement and government agencies of any kind, for understandable reasons.
• Composite Character: Retroactively becomes one In-Universe after II. As an adult, he has his father's looks and personality^note Which was at least partially molded by Arthur but Arthur's intelligence. Even his default outfit is a combination of the clothes John and Arthur wear; the hat, shirt and belt are John's, while the brown/beige jacket, black pants and boots - while not an exact match - seem to be based on Arthur.
• Cruel Mercy: One way to interpret Jack's decisions should he let Edgar Ross's family live. After they guide him straight to the man himself, he kills Edgar and leaves the wife and brother to live with the loss of their loved one, just like he's had to for three years, and with the knowledge that they led Edgar's killer straight to him.
• The Cutie: Naturally, as the only child in the Van der Linde gang.
• Cynicism Catalyst: His father, John Marston’s death as well as the rest of his family dying including Uncle, his dog Rufus, and his mother Abigail. Additionally, the decline of Beecher’s Hope in only three years, is the reason why Jack is so cynical by 1914.
  • The collapse of the Van Der Linde gang is also another reason. Losing what was essentially his family, then going on the run, and never being able to stay in one place for long has made Jack a cynic with terrible self esteem by the time he's a pre-teen.
• Deadpan Snarker: Seems to have inherited this from both his parents, to the point where some of his dialog would easily rival theirs in snarkiness. The biggest notable example is his response to Edgar Ross's wife after she tells him to be careful about the dangerous river.
  Jack: I sure will ma'am, and don't worry about a thing. I'm sure your husband will be just fine...
• Death Seeker: Heavily implied by his dialogue in gunfights. As he will usually shout something along the lines of “Go ahead! I got nothin’ to live for!” May also be a motive as to why Jack takes revenge on Edgar Ross for killing John. If he (Jack) avenges John it will feel good, if he dies trying, at least he’ll be with his family. While the GTA V Easter Egg hints that he managed to find peace despite this depression and took up writing again, the canonical status of that is debatable.
• Deconstructed Character Archetype: As pointed out in Expy, Jack has all the makings of a classic Western protagonist due to being a wandering gunslinger with no friends and a tragic past. In free roam players can have Jack travel across the US and Mexico helping people and hunting criminals as a bounty hunter, further showing his similarities to characters from this genre like the Man with No Name. The deconstruction comes from the fact that players get to see exactly what could turn someone into this type of character and how unfulfilling it is, since there is ultimately very little to do after completing the game, as well as how anyone choosing to be this would have to be a Death Seeker with severe depression.
• Dramatic Irony: For all of John's effort to escape Dutch's gang and gives Jack a normal life, Jack grows up to be almost exactly like Dutch; a well-read outlaw with a very low view of the government.
• The Drifter: After the events of the game, Jack has abandoned the ranch (outside of his bedroom being a game save spot), and spends his days doing odd jobs, bounty hunting, and helping odd folks out to make money.
• Drowning My Sorrows: It's implied in one side quest, “The Prohibitionist”, that he's become a very heavy drinker.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: Debatably. If one takes the Easter Egg in Grand Theft Auto V as canon, it suggests that he finally got his dream of becoming a writer.
• The Eeyore: Granted, losing your father to an unscrupulous government agent and having his mother die three years later when you're a teenager will do that to you.
• Emo Teen: Downplayed. He comes off as an angsty teenager, but it's clearly a side-effect of his depression. Possibly best exemplified in the epilogue of II where conversations with him tend to be short and he has a tendency of staying quiet during them. He'll react more strongly if antagonised, however.
• Establishing Character Moment: When we first meet him, he's nervous around John and basically has to be given permission to go and hug him. And when asked how he's been doing, Jack instead apologetically admits to the livestock dying or getting stolen under his watch, firmly showing him as a major "Well Done, Son" Guy despite John clearly just wanting to know if he's okay and is just happy to see him again.
  • By the time we see Jack after the time skip to 1914, he’s just finished burying his mother and putting his father’s hat on. Coupled with his angry and silent demeanor, it shows what Jack has become after losing his family. An outlaw driven by revenge.
• Expository Hairstyle Change: In the epilogue, his hair has grown long and he now has a beard and goatee.
• Expy: He looks a lot like Inigo Montoya. Now, what are both characters' motivations?
  • Characterization wise he bears similarities to Red Harlow, being a young outlaw hellbent on avenging his parent who was killed by a man of influence. Interestingly, in one mission he tells John that he read a story about "a brave man who hunts the man who killed his father". This would possibly suggest that the story of Red Harlow may have resonated with Jack after his father's death.
  • Interestingly, he's also extremely reminiscent of many classic Western protagonists, even more so than John and Arthur. He's a loner, drifting through the West with nobody and nothing to his name, helping those that need helping, and shooting those that need shooting. This is especially similar to Clint Eastwood’s “Man With No Name” in the Dollars Trilogy.
• Fastest Gun in the West: Just like pa. It's implied he did nothing but train his gunslinging skills for three years.
• Foreshadowing: Woo boy, there’s a lot.
  • Wishes to be a gunslinger at four years old. Fifteen years later, he's a master gunslinger just like his father.
  • The above is made even worst by Abigail's response to her son's declaration, as she states he would become a gunslinger "over [her] dead body". The first time we see Jack in his gunslinger outfit, in 1914? He's standing above his mother's grave.
  • Although not said by him, Sadie says that bounty hunting is legal work and even a twelve year old Jack can do it. Seven years later, it’s Ross who is being bounty hunted by Jack, although in revenge illegally.
  • In the mission “Wolves, Dogs, and Sons” Jack playfully suggests that both he and his father would be “The most wanted men in the West!” After John’s brutal death, depending on the player, Jack can turn out to be absolutely right. Since him getting into bloodthirsty shootouts with the law are more in character to Jack than John. Commit enough mayhem, and Jack can have a bounty worth tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in 1914. Worst of all, wearing a bandanna negates honor loss so Jack can gleefully commit as many crimes as he wants and still have perfect honor. Most wanted man in the West indeed...
  • In that same mission, he mentions that he can teach himself how to shoot and doesn’t need his father. Guess what Jack did for three long years after John’s death...
  • In "The Last Enemy that Shall be Destroyed" he says that he'd like to see "the day where John Marston stops shooting", Jack was definitely haunted by what he said to John that day for the next three years...
  • Similarly, the exchange after has Jack telling John that airplanes can turn men into angels. Three years later, Jack helps a man construct a makeshift plane in Mexico, where it unfortunately crashes. Jack really did see that machine turn a man into “an angel” that day.
  • Jack's parents say that while they want him to lead a different life than the outlaw path they lived, they call his stories and books silly. Given that Jack was given mixed signals about his dream for all of twelve years straight, after his family died he largely gave up writing to be a gunslinger, Bounty Hunter, and a wanderer who does odd jobs for money.
  • As a four year old, Jack meets his arch-enemy Edgar Ross by a river. The Pinkerton Detective tells Jack to "enjoy his fishing, while he still can." Fifteen years later, they meet again at a river when Ross is duck hunting, only this time Jack wants revenge for Ross killing John. Ross is brutally gunned down by the man he crossed badly all those years ago. Enjoy your hunting Ross, while you still can...
• Freudian Excuse: Murder a lawman? “You killed my Pa!”
  • Although he was too young to remember it, John disowned him and refused to believe the kid was his for Jack's few first years. While he truly loves his son, John constantly dismisses Jack's favourite hobby of reading as stupid and has a tendency of just disappearing from Jack's life for long periods of time. As a result, the two have nothing in common, and Jack seems to think that his father actively dislikes him and makes some extremely reckless, dangerous, and even outright stupid decisions in an attempt to please him... and when John angrily points out said stupidity, the rift between them just widens more.
  • While Arthur and John are calm, respectful and friendly to their horses, Jack is almost abusive, and yells at them when he thinks they aren't doing their best. However, looking at his past with them, it's actually quite understandable. In the epilogue at age 12, it's possible for him to be bucked off while John is teaching him how to ride, an experience which probably would leave a sour taste in his mouth. At age 16, a horse he was using while hunting got mauled by a bear leaving him alone and defenseless against said bear, and when John later sacrifices himself, Jack seems to believe that had his horse been faster, he and Abigail could've saved John.
• Fridge Brilliance: Jack discreetly kills Ross in a duel as an act of vengeance for John’s death. In-universe, it can be implied that Jack realized how Ross and the Government found John after he took revenge on Micah seven years prior. As John left a massive pile of bodies to get to Micah before killing the man, that’s bound to draw attention. By simply asking for information on Ross’s whereabouts in a “kindly” way- Jack remained under the radar until he filled Ross with lead. Furthermore, Jack never told his name or a false alias to anyone before meeting Ross to duel. As such, tracking him down would be nigh-impossible which is supported by how he doesn't get a bounty.
• Friendless Background: The first four years of his life was being raised by a gang of outlaws, then another eight years moving from place to place as his family tried to avoid the law, and while he then spent four years on the ranch it was far enough from Blackwater that it was unlikely he made any friends during that time. Then his father was killed and he apparently dedicated the next three years of his life into training so he could get revenge. While on Pronghorn Ranch there was another boy around his age, but since that was the son of the owner while Jack was the son of a employee it's unlikely they would have spent much time together.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: Goes from a harmless, geeky teenager to an expert gunslinger, a survivalist and a dangerous outlaw in three years. Considering that he’s got nothing better to do with these gunslinger skills, he more than likely becomes a bounty hunter in Mexico to use them. Jack Marston went from being unable to kill a single bear at sixteen, to being fully capable enough to where his kill count can reach the dozens or hundreds.
• Generation Xerox: He not only has his father's sharpshooting skills, but has his equipment as well. He even looks exactly like his father. He also shares a lot of personality traits and skills with Arthur, who helped raise him as if he was his biological nephew.
• Good Scars, Evil Scars: He got these from a bear he tried to hunt on his own.
• Good Samaritan: A high honor Jack Marston has shades of this when he helps out strangers.
• The Gunslinger: The last one left by 1914, and a damned good one at that.
• Heartbroken Badass: Is very capable of kicking ass on his own. However, in-game dialogue makes it crystal clear that Jack is suffering from severe depression and heartache from losing his entire family. Additionally, there’s sheer loneliness from being completely alone in the almost completely dead Wild West.
• Hereditary Hairstyle: In the epilogue, Jack's hair has grown rather long, becoming shoulder length and right parted. In fact, it's exactly the same hairstyle as a young John Marston’s shoulder length hair in 1899. This implies that Jack wanted to imitate his father’s 1899 appearance to better fit the image of a very dangerous outlaw.
• Heroes Love Dogs: As a kid, Jack seems to have an affinity for dogs. In II he befriends a stray dog that Dutch names "Cain", and could often be seen playing with him until Cain is presumably killed by Micah in Beaver Hollow. When settling down with his parents, they adopt another dog named "Rufus", who presumably passes on in the years between John and Abigail's deaths. He also has the choice to pet dogs when roaming free in I.
• Heroic Bastard: Technically. John and Abigail didn't officially get married until Jack was 12, so he's a bastard during the event of the second game.
• He Who Fights Monsters:
  • If you decide to turn Jack into a full-on desperado, there's a chance that an NPC challenges him to a duel for killing his father. If accepted, Jack'll make fun of the stranger's dead father, presumably before killing him as well.
  • If the player kills Ross's wife and brother, Jack is actually performing a worse act than Ross did. While a backstabbing prick, Ross didn't kill anyone "innocent" at Beecher's Hope (though not for lack of trying), as both John and Uncle were former criminals and Abigail & Rufus survived the attack and died of unrelated reasons years later. By contrast, Ross's wife and brother are completely innocent.
• Hunter Trapper: One of the only ways an High Honor Jack can make money is by selling the fur and meat of the animals he hunts. While this doesn't change his status as The Aloner and Broken Ace, if that's all a player has Jack do than it's a far better fate than becoming a bounty hunter or an outlaw as that is an occupation his parents would have been more proud of.
• Iconic Outfit: Not as iconic as those worn by John and Arthur, but Jack wears his father's hat, a white shirt, a light brown jacket, black pants, a red bandanna, black boots and his father's gun belt.
• I Coulda Been a Contender!: Had dreams of being a writer, or a lawyer, having the intelligence and creativity for both, but his family's death seems to have ended any hopes and dreams he had for the future. Apparently, Zig-Zagged, if the book titled "Red Dead" by J. Marston that you can find in Grand Theft Auto V counts as canon and not just an Easter Egg.
• I Take Offense to That Last One: In the side mission “Eva in Peril”, Jack frees her from her abusive pimp, Mario Alcadle for $200. As it turns out, Mario tracked her down and murdered her in cold blood and was burying her in El Selpulcro. Jack was very angry at this for obvious reasons but there was one thing that Mario said which REALLY enraged Jack. It was him justifying his murder of Eva because she was “just a whore.” Jack took that as an indirect insult to his dead mother, Abigail Marston who was a former prostitute, which ends up being the point where all bets were off and he wanted Mario dead. Since insulting Jack’s family does not bode well with him at all.
• Informed Flaw: In II, Abigail temporarily snaps and says she can't put up with the disgust and hatred 4 year old Jack shows her anymore. For all the player knows, however, he's the sweetest child on the face of the earth. May be a nod to how players disliked his 1911 self in the first game, and it's likely that the stress of her life had made Abigail rather angry before Jack said or did whatever set her off.
• Improbable Aiming Skills: Holy shit. Jack is just as accurate and deadly as a marksman as his father and uncle Arthur were.
• Irony: One of the random conversation between him, his mother, and Hosea in II is him wanting to be a gunslinger, which Abigail highly objects to, and John doesn't want him to Turn Out Like His Father, and Arthur explicitly, in no uncertain terms, tells him "Don't be like me". He becomes one out of his own choice later in his adult life, though depending on his honor there is bonus irony in that he can become a heroic bounty hunter who helps the law on occasion instead of an outlaw.
• Jock Dad, Nerd Son: Jack is fairly passive as a young man, preferring to read his books, unlike his barely literate outdoorsman father, which creates a fair bit of friction between them, since neither can really relate to the other.
• Jade-Colored Glasses: After everything that happened from the events of RDRII and the first RDR, it totally makes sense.
• Jumping Off the Slippery Slope: From a player's moral perspective. With John's death, Jack takes it upon himself to end Ross's life once and for all. While Ross is a corrupt scumbag that deserved to be gunned down like a dog, the player also has the option to kill his wife and brother, who had nothing to do with his crimes. Either way, Jack has essentially doomed John's efforts to keep Jack from becoming like him.
• Keet: As a Cheerful Child in II.
• Kick the Dog: His default dishonorable dialogue choice when talking to women in I is to aggressively flirt with them and then humiliate them, making him the only Red Dead protagonist to do so, since Arthur still has feelings for Mary and John is Happily Married to Abigail.
• Knight Errant: Played straight if you save all of the Stranger missions for Jack after he kills Ross. Jack at this point is aimlessly wandering around the country without a purpose or much reason to live. However, once you take on the stranger missions it reveals that Jack is actually the same good man his father was. Sure, Jack is a hardened and lonely gunslinger at heart but he is always willing to help people with almost no complaints.
  • This becomes a Justified Trope because John wouldn’t have time to do any of the Stranger missions on his quest except for the side mission “I Know You” which is exclusive to him and "Jenny's Faith" as she would not be able to survive for three years straight in the desert by herself.
• Last of His Kind: Last living Marston, last of the Van Der Linde gang unless you count the likes of Mary-Beth, Pearson, Charles, Sadie, Tilly, Rev. Swanson, and possibly Trelawny, who got out by Red Dead Redemption II's climax and, fitting in the game's theme of the end of the Western era, one of the few Western gunslingers left by the game's end, if not the very last one.
• Like Father, Like Son: He couldn't be any more similar to John if he tried. That said, he actually turns out more like his Honorary Uncle Arthur than his dad, due to his high intelligence and love for books, awful self-esteem, cynical worldview, even worse temper than his father, incredible talent at every single activity he attempts, and his perpetual inability to find a purpose for living.
• Meaningful Name: Because Jack is usually a nickname for John, he's likely named after his father, symbolizing his eventual fate of becoming an outlaw like John.
• Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe: Is most likely John's child even though he doesn't like it at first. Out-of universe, people have noted that in I he bears some resemblance to the other members of the gang, such as Dutch or Javier.^note In II, the improved graphics help him look more like John & Abigail Regardless, John is considered his real dad and the games never delve into this.
• Manipulative Bastard: And a clever one at that. In the Epilogue in 1914, he successfully manipulates a Government Agent, Ross’s own wife, and Ross’s brother to divulge the location of Edgar Ross without gaining any suspicion to himself. All under the pretense of sending him a “message”.
• Misplaced Retribution:
  • Can kill both Ross's wife and brother, despite both being completely innocent and only related to Edgar by family - in fact, if they are killed Ross never even finds out about it, so their deaths will be for nothing.
• Morality Pet: He's one to almost everyone in the entire Van der Linde gang, even Bill.
  • When he gets abducted by the Braithwaites, the entire gang come storming the Braithwaite mansion out for blood.
• My Name Is Inigo Montoya: "My name is Jack Marston. You knew my father."
• Nature vs. Nurture: Heavily implied. As a little boy, he outright stated that he wanted to be a gunslinger when he grows up. This is possibly because because his father and his uncle figures like Hosea and Arthur were gunslingers themselves and he himself has read books about gunslingers like Otis Miller and Black Belle. However, even the gunslingers he grew up being raised by wanted him to not become one himself. As such, his parents did their best to raise him properly and instilled in him the dream of becoming an author instead. When they died, he lives out this childhood dream of his against their wishes.
• Nice Guy/Affably Evil: Jack has an honor meter like John, and any stranger mission you might complete as Jack has him acting in a mostly affable manner towards the non-playable characters, as John tends to act even with low honor.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: In the side mission “The Wronged Woman”, Jack helps out a woman named Clara Laguerta in Blackwater, who claims that she was seduced by her employer, Harold Thornton, and is now pregnant with his child. Thornton fired her once it was apparent that she was pregnant, and he has since become an alcoholic.
  • Jack goes to the bar and confronts Harold on this, in which he denies everything Jack said. Jack keeps insisting otherwise pissing Harold off, and Harold decides to duel the young man to the death. Naturally, it doesn’t end well for him, as Jack unloads his gun into him, killing him. So Jack gives the money off of Harold’s dead body to Clara who claims that she’s upset that it ended that way and she’ll attend his funeral.
  • A couple days later, Jack visits the cemetery where Harold’s wife, Elizabeth Thronton is mourning her husband’s death. Jack awkwardly listens to Elizabeth say that Harold was a good man and didn’t deserve to die. Furthermore, Clara attended the funeral and was laughing, meaning she used Marston to con an innocent man out of his money. Unlike Ross or Alcadle, Harold had no reason to be killed and his blood was shed over nothing. Nice one, Jack.
• Noodle Incident: Whatever the hell Jack Marston from 1911-1914 did to become as good a gunslinger as his dead father is completely shrouded in mystery. If anything, the entire three year time skip is completely elusive other than Abigail and Rufus dying at the end of that time period.
• Not Even Bothering with the Accent: Apparently four year old Jack's actress couldn't do a southern accent.
• Off the Grid: Lives this way in 1914 due to wandering the countryside, and keeping a generally low profile.
• One-Steve Limit: To a horse named Brown Jack. With regards to the Red Dead series as a whole, to Red Dead Revolver's Jack Swift.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: His name is John Marston, Jr, but everyone calls him Jack.
• One-Man Army: Just like his father, he is able to absolutely decimate enemies in huge numbers with frightening efficiency.
• Outlaw: Becomes a VERY dangerous outlaw by the end of the game who can, and will kill without any question or remorse. Even to the point where his ruthless efficiency and skill could even rival that of Micah Bell, and in the first game there's no limit to the bounty he can receive. His total body count could possibly reach the HUNDREDS if a player free roams as Jack a lot. However he doesn't get a bounty for killing Ross, his brother or his wife implying that he actually gets away with it.
• Pay Evil unto Evil: Kills Edgar Ross for using and betraying his father John to his death three years earlier.
• The Quiet One: In 1907, he doesn't talk much even if John tries to strike a conversation with him. His responses are usually short and quick, and he tends to stay quiet if you try to continue the conversation by pressing "Greet" again. By 1911, he has a more loving relationship with his parents and talks more to them. It all comes crashing down by 1914.
• Rags to Riches: Jack starts out as a toddler in the Van der Linde gang with nothing but the clothes on his back. By 1911, he’s still presumably not that wealthy and only worked/hunted for food but likely has a small allowance at age sixteen. By 1914 however, he inherits everything in his father’s possession- including his money. Said money could be several thousand dollars worth depending on the player. Given that Jack takes up a bounty hunting job in Mexico after killing Ross, it’s safe to say that he’s financially secure with several thousand dollars and hundreds more coming in.
• Renaissance Man: Deconstructed. At age 19, Jack has mastered the arts of hunting, gunslinging, horseback riding, outdoors survival, and just about every other thing his father mastered over the course of his decade-long career as an outlaw in three years. However, it's implied that Jack feels like he has nothing to live for, so he likely spent the entire three years doing nothing but training these things.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Before Jack avenges his father's death, he will deliver a short, but scathing line to Edgar about how he killed John "like a dog" and that he never truly gave him a second chance despite doing everything for him.
  Jack: You killed my father! (...)You killed him, I saw you! (...) You sent him to do your dirty work, then you shot him like a dog!
• Tragic Keepsake: Inherited all of his father’s possessions after John’s death.
• Revenge by Proxy: If the player chooses, Jack can kill Ross' wife and brother before finally finding the man himself.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Massively deconstructed. Before John's death, Jack was a kindly, idealistic young man with dreams of being a writer. In the epilogue where you play as Jack, it's revealed that he's become a jaded, berserking outlaw who drifts from place to place with an unknown body count, haunted by his past, and ultimately has very little reason to live. In short, Jack ended up becoming everything his father didn't want him to be. And just to drive it further, even if Jack does manage to get his revenge on Ross and his family, he is remembered by the masses as a hero who brought some dangerous criminals to justice, John is remembered as a brutal outlaw who learned the hard way that justice is inescapable, and Jack spends the rest of his days as a depressed, wandering loner with his life completely ruined. There is no happy ending for Red Dead Redemption. However, if one takes it as canon, one can find a book titled Red Dead by J. Marston in Grand Theft Auto V, it's possible that Jack managed to find some peace and become a writer after the events of the game.
  • Even in game, to an extent, Jack at least has the side missions to keep him occupied and limited company with others. Assuming if one considers Jack doing the side missions after killing Ross canon.
• Self-Serving Memory: Claims he saw Edgar Ross shoot his father. This cannot be true, as Jack was not present during John's execution and Ross only fired at John BEHIND the lawmen, instead calmly smoking a cigar while primarily his army ended John and not him personally. The newspapers that mention how Ross took credit for killing Dutch's gang may be behind this.
• Sole Survivor: As of 1914, he's this for the Marston family, and potentially for the entire Van Der Linde gang as well, since Sadie, Charles, Mary-Beth, Swanson, Pearson, and Tilly were last checked upon in 1908, while Karen and Trelawny's whereabouts are left unclear.
• Son of a Whore: Just like his father.
• Spoiled Brat: Abigail gets seriously fed up with 4 year old Jack's seeming ungratefulness in II, though there's little evidence of him being like this. It's not played for laughs, she really is sick to her stomach of being a mother and it's possible that Jack's lack of awareness of how difficult their life is meant he unintentionally upset her. They both grew out of it though.
• Stockholm Syndrome: During his time as a hostage of Angelo Bronte in II Jack was treated very well by his captor, who fed him spaghetti as well as teaching him some Italian words. He naturally had a very pleasant experience and even came to refer to him as Papa Bronte, which naturally made John very uncomfortable. Thankfully, Jack seems to have completely forgotten the experience by 1907.
• Super Drowning Skills: Just like John, Jack drowns instantly if his nose goes below water.
• Supporting Protagonist: Once John Marston dies, he's the playable character.
• Tagalong Kid: He grew up among the gang and is present in the prequel as a four (or three, depending on the month when he was born) year-old.
• Token Good Teammate: The only member of the Van der Linde gang to not be a criminal during the gang's heyday, though this is more of his age. By the time we see him again in 1914, Jack's become just as dangerous an outlaw as the gang his family used to run with.
• Took a Level in Badass: Before John's death? A bookish, somewhat awkward teenager, always getting himself into trouble. After John's death? He's become a badass, just like his father, who hunts down and murders Edgar Ross in a duel as an act of vengeance. Unfortunately, this is the polar opposite of what John wanted his son to be.
• Took a Level in Cynic: John's death and the three hard years that followed turned him from an aspiring writer into a remorseless killer. However, he can remain a good man at heart if the player so desires.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: The bigger he got, the less nice he became. It culminates in becoming a ruthless and self-hating outlaw who can potentially kill innocent people without blinking and, unlike his father, has no family to look after or fight for.
• Too Dumb to Live: Hunting a GRIZZLY BEAR by himself after only going hunting twice in 1911 was just outright stupid. If John wasn’t there to save his ass, Jack would be bear chow. It’s implied that this isn’t the first time something like this has happened, as Jack makes stupid reckless choices to earn his father’s approval. When John points out said stupidity, the rift only grows between the two.
  • By 1914 however, Jack can kill Grizzly Bears effortlessly in massive numbers to make loads of money. Within three years, Jack went from being unable to kill a bear and getting some scars as a result, to being able to kill multiple without breaking a sweat.
• Tragic Dream: He had two different dreams that fit the critera:
  • He wishes to be an author, being raised with education by Hosea and Abigail to steer him away from being a gunslinger. But this dream was never meant to be after what happened to John, although if one takes it as canon, an Easter Egg in Grand Theft Auto V does imply he was able to move on, as Franklin owns a book named Red Dead by J. Marston.
  • One of the random conversations with Hosea and Abigail in above example is him wanting to be a gunslinger, but Abigail, Hosea, and even Arthur himself wants him to grow up normal. Due to trauma, he eventually became the thing he wished to be at four years old.
• Tranquil Fury: His rage is boiling yet silent as he confronts Edgar Ross in the epilogue ready to avenge his father's death. In fact, he keeps his rage toward Ross under the radar from his family, talking in the usual stern but amicable way he usually does. It’s only when Ross not only mocks John’s death with zero remorse, but also insults and threatens to kill Jack too if he doesn’t shut the hell up, where Jack ultimately decides that Ross should be killed.
• Trauma Conga Line: Has had a very tough life, from being born into and raised by a violent gang, at high risk of being killed as said gang is being tracked by law enforcement and several other factions, being abducted at one point, having a largely absent father in his early childhood, having several 'aunts' and 'uncles' either drop like flies or become Ax-Crazy, risking losing both his parents several times while as a young child, losing his younger sister to cholera, growing up mainly as he and his parents are on the run and is forced to use a pseudonym, being held hostage by the government along with his mother, experiencing the army coming down and brutally killing his father and the closest thing he's ever had to an uncle, and losing his mother three years later, thus being the only surviving Marston. It's no wonder he Took a Level in Cynic and is heavily implied to be suffering from depression.
• Turn Out Like His Father: Jack becomes a gunslinger like his father, who didn't wish for him to become one. Whether or not he is becomes an outlaw after killing Ross depends on the player though, as his shooting skills can be used solely for hunting and heroic deeds if the player chooses.
• Used to Be a Sweet Kid: The prequel showed that he's absolutely adorable. Played with in that he's still a Nice Guy, just that he Took a Level in Cynic after the crap his family had gone through.
• Vengeance Feels Empty: In contrast to John, there isn't much that motivates Jack, outside of exacting vengeance on Ross. When he accomplishes exactly that, he goes back to his aimless career as an outlaw and wanderer. Grand Theft Auto V implies that he was able to move on and start a normal life as a writer, although it's canon status is debatable.
• Vigilante Man: Seems to be a primary character trait of Jack by 1914. A skilled warrior who travels and wanders the land helping out either strangers or defending himself using any means necessary.
• Vocal Dissonance: Because of the age dissonance mentioned under Younger Than They Look, his high-pitched voice feels a bit off - the voice suitable for a 16/19-year boy sounds odd when he looks like he's in his thirties.
• Vocal Evolution: His voice in the epilogue is a bit deeper and angrier-sounding, to go with his more cynical personality.
• Walking the Earth: After killing killing Ross and avenging his family, he's left with nothing to do but wander the land in a world that has no place for people like him.
• Was It Really Worth It?: It’s implied silently by Jack after killing Edgar Ross in 1914. After killing the man, Jack looks down at his father’s gun and Ross’s dead body in an almost questioning way- but has a silent realization. While he avenged his father's death, he has become an outlaw gunslinger driven by vengeance. Something that his family didn’t want him to be.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: He constantly tries to emulate and impress John as a way of getting his attention or so he could stay home. Even when he was four, his bio even outright states that one of his biggest wishes in life is to spend more time with his father.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: While Jack becoming a wandering gunslinger, a bounty hunter, and staying in Mexico a little while to avoid arrest for Ross’s murder is the general consensus among players, the rest of Jack’s life is left elusive. Essentially to the point that players have lots of theories and speculation on the matter as it is open to interpretation. While the “Red Dead Redemption” book Easter Egg in GTAV seems to hint that Jack ended up as a writer in the end, it's debatable as to whether or not that reference is canon.
• You Killed My Father: So he kills Ross back. And if the player wants, his wife and brother as well.
• Young Gun: When he's sixteen he fights with his father against the US Army, and he's only nineteen when he becomes a playable character.
• Younger Than They Look: After the Time Skip, no one can tell he's nineteen – in fact, he doesn't look a day under thirty. Gameplay-wise, this is due to the devs reusing John's character model and modifying his face to look somewhat different. In-story, it's to show how much his father being killed and his mother dying from sickness have taken their toll on him, not to mention his lifestyle as a drifter under the harsh sun of New Austin, West Elizabeth and northern Mexico.

Red Dead Online protagonist (the Drifter)

"I know you're innocent... Well, not perhaps exactly innocent, but not guilty of what you were accused."

—Jessica LeClerk

Some time in the 1890s, Phillip LeClerk was shot and killed by agents of a criminal conspiracy in Blackwater. Looking for a convenient patsy for their assassination, the conspirators found one in the form of a quiet, mysterious drifter that had come into town not long before. Their associates shot dead by the law, this drifter would spend six months working a chain gang, waiting to be hanged - only to be rescued by Phillip's widow, Jessica. Her only request? Help her find the men who ordered her husband's death, and put them in the ground...

---

• Action Girl: If you're a high honor female.
• Bounty Hunter: Can become one if the player so chooses as part of the Frontier Pursuit update. As the bounty hunter, the player can either bring in the criminals dead or alive with corresponding changes in honor.
• Cool Old Guy: A High Honor player can be this since the protagonist can be 60 years old if they desire.
• Dark Action Girl: If you're a low honor female.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: The male protagonist is approximately 6'3" and the female protagonist is about 5'9". Despite these heights being above average by nowadays standards (let alone the late 19th century), the protagonist is still about the same height as other characters.
• Heroic Mime: They won't talk to anyone and the Dialogue Tree from single player is replaced by emotes. However, they make small noises, mumbles and yells when controlling their horse, although none of them are actual words.
• Hillbilly Moonshiner: They can become the owner of a moonshining business if the player so chooses.
• Hired Guns: Act as Mrs. LeClerk's henchman at the start of the game. In addition, they also frequently sell their service to various interested parties, which is the basis for the Stranger missions.
• Hunter Trapper: Can become one as the trader role if the player so chooses. They have to hunt animal carcasses and bring in tanning equipment so their business partner Cripps can make sellable products out of them.
• Mysterious Past: The only backstory the player learns is why they were in prison and that they were considered suspicious due to prior criminal acts alongside their status as The Quiet One. No other details are given such as how they got so good with firearms or what their criminal past is.
• Not Me This Time: Part of the reason why they make for such a good scapegoat is that they are already on the wrong side of the law before the events of the game. However, they are not responsible for the murder of Philips.
• Purely Aesthetic Gender: There are no gameplay differences between male and female players. They all have the same health, stamina, and dead eyes stat. The only differences are in clothing, hairstyles and emotes, though, much like the Grand Theft Auto Online Protagonist, some characters have varied dialogue depending on sex.
• The Quiet One: Is canonically a person of very few words. Multiple characters comment on their quietness and it's a plot point that they got arrested for keeping to themselves too much around the time of Phillip's murder. They do try to speak during one stranger encounter, but get interrupted before they can get the word out.
• Scapegoat: The protagonist was arrested for a murder they did not commit, and are tasked to bring down the real culprits by any means necessary.
• Young Gun: They can be as young as 18 years old, not unlike a certain famous outlaw from the Old West.