Characters / Se7en

Police Force

The Cops as a Duo

• Dirty Cop: While not as bad as many examples of the trope, Somerset and Mills do resort to some slightly underhanded methods in their pursuit of Doe, such as illegally tracking Doe's reading habits (the film was made before The War on Terror made invasions of privacy like this the rule rather than the exception) or bribing a homeless woman to provide false witness in order to secure a warrant to search Doe's apartment.
• Good Cop/Bad Cop: They never interrogate anyone jointly, but Somerset is very patient and soft-spoken in contrast to Mills's more aggressive, volatile demeanour. This is particularly evident when they are driving John Doe to the site of the last two victims.
• Old Cop, Young Cop: This trope was once called Somerset And Mills.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Mills and Somerset. The Blue is a fatherly mentor trying to harden the Red's heart to the harsh realities of life, and the young and emotional Red loses EVERYTHING to John Doe.

Somerset

Det. Lt. William Somerset

"This isn't going to have a happy ending."

Played By: Morgan Freeman

Dubbed By: Med Hondo (European French)

"Ernest Hemingway once wrote, "The world is a fine place and worth fighting for." I agree with the second part."

• Admiring the Abomination: Somerset doesn't quite 'admire' the killer, but he does recognize him as a Worthy Opponent who is not to be underestimated and ought to be treated with cautious respect.
• Badass Bookworm: Is a highly effective police detective who is as intelligent and well-read as the killer he's hunting. Proves this when he looks up anything covering the Seven Deadly Sins. He's also handy with a switchblade.
• By-the-Book Cop: More inclined to think about the legal aspects than Mills.
• Crapsack World: How Somerset sees the world around him. There isn't much in the way of evidence to prove him wrong.
• Cultured Badass: Somerset is Doe's equal in his knowledge of literature (e.g. being well-versed in the works of Dante) and religious philosophy, and managing to be a good cop for as long as he has in that city surely qualifies him as a kind of badass, even if he never actually demonstrates it on-screen. Needless to say, he enjoys reading and prefers drinking wine.
• Cynicism Catalyst: A retroactive example. Somerset explains to Mills that his whole life in the city gave him a pretty dark, pessimistic view of the world.
• Dark and Troubled Past: From the start of his pessimistic views of the world to how he convinced the woman carrying their child to get an abortion because he didn't want the child to grow up in a Crapsack World.
• Deadpan Snarker: In a more subtle, dry, and restrained way than Mills.
• Determined Defeatist: Where he is at the end of the film, deciding that the world being beyond saving is not an excuse to stop fighting for it.
• Foil: To Mills, who is a Hot-Blooded Manchild. Somerset is a calm professional who thinks before acting.
• Genre Savvy: He very quickly catches on that the murder case will be much larger than expected and tells the chief this shouldn't be his last case with only six days left until retirement nor should it be Mills's first and he's proven right at the end.
• Good Girls Avoid Abortion: Played with in his backstory. He made his girlfriend get an abortion and remains a very moral character - but he also deeply regrets his choice.
• Ironic Nickname: "Smiley" Somerset hardly ever does so.
• I Work Alone: Justified; Somerset is days from retirement, so really doesn't have the inclination to work with an inexperienced homicide detective whose personality is so different from his own.
• Knight in Sour Armour: Somerset is a pessimist but still a good man. Delivers the last line in the movie:
  Ernest Hemingway once wrote, "The world is a fine place and worth fighting for." I agree with the second part.
• Mirror Character: From the killer. Both of them are intelligent, well-educated, and cultured, and are both intimately aware of just how much of a Crapsack World they live in. Where they differ is in their respective approaches to trying to improve the world.
• Mysterious Past: How did he get such good connections to the FBI that he found out about the bureau using the library system to keep track of any potential criminal?
• Nice Guy: He's a pessimist but still a good man underneath it all.
• Retirony: Averted. When the movie begins, it's seven days until his retirement. And he survives with both his life and his sanity, unlike Mills.
• Tuckerization: William Somerset is named after W. Somerset Maugham, as he was screenwriter Andrew Kevin Walker's favourite author. Somerset Maugham's Of Human Bondage is mentioned in the movie.
• Worthy Opponent: Somerset recognizes the killer as an intellectual equal, and the killer seems to think the same.

Mills

Det. David Mills

"Who knows? So many freaks out there doin' their little evil deeds they don't wanna do... 'The voices made me do it. My dog made me do it. Jodie Foster told me to do it.'"

Played By: Brad Pitt

"You want me to agree with you and you want me to say, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, you're right, it's all fucked up, it's a fucking mess, we should all go live in a fuckin' log cabin." But I won't. I won't say that. I don't agree with you. I do not. I can't."

• Blood Knight: Mills wants to be this way, which is why he got reassigned to the city. While he does become it by killing John Doe, it's poisonous and completely destroys him.
• Book Dumb: Desperately needs Cliff's Notes to comprehend Dante.
• Cowboy Cop: He breaks down Doe's door and bribes a woman to say she reported suspicious noises from inside the apartment. Deconstructed by the end: his aggression and impulsiveness lead to him playing straight into the villain's hands and ruining his life in the process.
• Deadpan Snarker: And not that subtle about it, either.
• Despair Event Horizon: Mills spends the majority of the film as a Wide-Eyed Idealist, only to lose it all when John Doe reveals to him that he has killed Mills's wife and unborn child.
• Deuteragonist: He gets the second amount of screen time after Somerset.
• Downer Ending: He becomes the seventh and final victim of John Doe for the sin of Wrath. He has lost his wife and his unborn child, and, with them, his hope for the future, and while the outcome of his trial is uncertain (the Captain assures Somerset that the department will do its best to protect him), his career is without a doubt over, even if only by choice.
• Empty Shell: Courtesy of John Doe killing Tracy and Mills killing Doe in return. He looks catatonic as he’s being driven away.
• Fatal Flaw: His Hair-Trigger Temper proves to be his undoing when John Doe kills Tracy in order to provoke Mills into wrath. It works.
• Fate Worse than Death: John Doe seems to regard his ending as this. He's the only victim not killed by Doe.
• Foil: To Somerset, who is a calm professional who thinks before acting. Mills is a Hot-Blooded Manchild.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: Mills is very quick to anger and takes most things to heart, which John Doe uses to manipulate him.
• Hates Being Touched: By Somerset, anyway, during a really tense situation.
• Henpecked Husband: His wife invites Somerset to dinner without asking him.
• Heroes Love Dogs: Owns two dogs he affectionately calls "the kids".
• High-School Sweethearts: He was already in love with Tracy in high school.
• Hot-Blooded: Which leads to his Hair-Trigger Temper.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: As easily angered and snarky as he is, David is a good man at heart.
  • After bribing a homeless person to lie about calling the police about seeing suspicious behavior, he makes a point (while handing her the money) that she uses the cash to eat.
• Jerkass Has a Point: David may be a hot-blooded, immature Cowboy Cop, but he correctly points out that Somerset's cynical attitude isn't much better than the apathetic attitude of the city that Somerset decries. He also shoots down John Doe's claims that Doe's actions will change the world, saying (probably correctly) Doe will end up "a T-Shirt, a Movie of the Week, at best," and that Doe has delusions of grandeur.
• Leeroy Jenkins: Tends to rush into situations.
• Manchild: Mills acts like a teenager's idea of a cop, being an angry swearing Leeroy Jenkins eager to pull his gun.
• Politically Incorrect Hero: Mills may be a dedicated cop but he's also shown to be homophobic.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: The inexperienced, short-tempered Red Oni to Somerset's wiser, cool-headed Blue Oni.
• Sir Swears-a-Lot: Every other word is a curse, lending to his image as a Manchild and making him a good foil for Somerset.
• Thousand-Yard Stare: In the car at the end.
• Verbal Tic: Ends a good proportion of his sentences with "yeah?"
• Wide-Eyed Idealist: He tends to believe that the world isn't as crappy as Somerset believes. He most definitely isn't by the end of the film.
• Wrong Genre Savvy: He thinks he's a fierce, moral cop who will eventually triumph over evil. Most of this is right, but evil destroys him rather than the other way around.
• Unstoppable Rage: Invoked by John Doe. At the end of the film, John Doe kills Tracy in order to provoke him into becoming a victim of the deadly sin of Wrath.

Police Captain

Police Captain

"Wake up, Glimmer Twins- we got a winner!"

Played By: R. Lee Ermey

• Da Chief: It's pretty much his entire character.
• Knight in Sour Armor: Solemnly reminds Somerset that the world has always been this bad.
• Ladies and Germs: Played straight. It's R Lee Ermey, after all.
• No Name Given: It was 'Lucas' in an earlier draft, but here he's only known by his title.

California

California

Played By: John C. McGinley

• Blood Knight: As Somerset notes, he and the rest of the SWAT team love their job.
• Heroic BSoD: Witnesses the entire confrontation between Doe, Mills, and Somerset from a helicopter and is audibly horrified after Mills shoots Doe.
• Large Ham: He's all barking orders and yelling.
• Sir Swears-a-Lot: While he doesn't swear quite as often as Mills, he curses heavily in most of his screen time.

John Doe

John Doe (spoilers for his true identity)

John Doe

"It's more comfortable for you to label me as insane."

Played By: Kevin Spacey

"We see a deadly sin on every street corner, in every home, and we tolerate it. We tolerate it because it's common, it's trivial. We tolerate it morning, noon, and night. Well, not anymore. I'm setting the example. What I've done is going to be puzzled over and studied and followed...forever."

• Ax-Crazy: Violent behaviour combined with a calm demeanor to create a very disturbing man.
• Badass Bookworm: Is a sinister example of this - he's extremely intelligent and well-read, manages to pull off elaborate torture and murder sessions for his victims, and more than holds his own in a gunfight with two police officers.
• The Bad Guy Wins: Everything that happens goes according to plan, and he gets exactly what he wants without any karma biting back at him. Even his violent death is exactly what he wanted. The silver lining is that he will never be able to hurt anybody else, and he'll probably be considered as the maniacal sociopath he was rather than a source of inspiration.
• Bald of Evil: Has a shaved head and is an utterly loathsome monster.
• Batman Gambit: Doe's entire goal is to kill based upon the seven deadly sins, and his entire plan hinges on proving himself guilty of the sin of envy by killing Mills's wife and unborn child, thus intending to make himself the sixth victim at the hands of a vengeful Mills. Somerset rightfully points out that Doe's plan is only successful if Mills kills him.
• Believing Their Own Lies: John seems to have genuinely convinced himself that he's a noble crusader for morality instead of the twisted sadist he really is.
• Berserk Button: Mills's suggestion that his victims count as "innocent" immediately sends the Soft-Spoken Sadist into a loud Motive Rant.
• Big Bad: Of the entire film, of course.
• Black-and-White Insanity: Arguably. The film, however, does go out of its way to point out that John Doe isn't completely insane - which is in some ways even more frightening than if he was.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: John Doe believes that nearly all humans are inherently sinful, wicked, and deserving of death. He isn't completely self-righteous or hypocritical about it because he concedes that he too is full of sin and unworthy to live. However, he doesn't think that his murders make him sinful; he rather envies another man's happier personal life. It's beyond bizarre for a man who tortures and murders random people to believe that his biggest sin is envying another man's attractive wife and happy home life.
• Boom, Headshot!: His death, courtesy of Mills.
• The Chessmaster: All of this guy's plans are extremely well thought out and leave little to chance.
• The Chosen One: He believes he was chosen by God to carry out his killings to help cleanse the world of sin.
• Creepy Monotone: Tends to speak in this manner most of the time. It's seriously unnerving.
• Creepy Souvenir: Took Mills's wife's head as a souvenir.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: The murders he commits are all this.
• The Cynic: He has a pretty dim view of humanity, to say the least.
• Deadpan Snarker: As befits a character played by Kevin Spacey. However, Doe's snark is much crueler and even nightmarish at times.
  Mills: I seem to remember us knocking on your door.
  John Doe: Oh, that's right. And I seem to remember breaking your face. You're only alive because I didn't kill you.
• Dissonant Serenity: Tying in with his Creepy Monotone.
• Egocentrically Religious: Is on a self-appointed Mission from God to torture and kill people he has decided aren't worthy of life to protest his misanthropic view of humanity. He also uses false modesty and claims he is unimportant immediately before proclaiming that his work will be studied and remembered forever.
• Even Evil Has Standards: He attempts to invoke the Villain Has a Point trope by discussing how horrible his victims were, but it falls flat, as most of their supposed crimes (being overweight, being vain, working as a prostitute) are hardly the awful sins he makes them out to be, and Doe is several magnitudes worse than any of them.
• Evil Counterpart: For Somerset; the two are very well-read and believe that the world is an evil place, but they have conflicting views on how to deal with it.
• Evil Genius: He's very well-read in a variety of subjects, an exceptional planner and he's smart enough to evade capture right up until he turns himself in as well as keep all traces of his identity a secret.
• Evil Gloating: He brags about taking Tracy's "pretty head".
• Evil Is Petty: In addition to horribly murdering multiple people, he also deliberately vomits on a total stranger just for making small talk with him, for no reason than to be a dick.
• Evil Sounds Deep: A demonic serial murderer with a deep and cold voice. Being played by Kevin Spacey, this shouldn't be a surprise.
• Face Death with Dignity: Upon sensing that Mills is about to shoot him, Doe calmly closes his eyes before getting shot repeatedly by Mills, which is exactly what he planned for.
• Faux Affably Evil: John is a very polite fellow despite being a Serial Killer, yet his civility is shallow and all it does is highlight how utterly creepy he is. He retains this tone all while gloating to Mills about the murder of Tracy and her unborn child.
• Freudian Excuse: Averted in the film; John Doe's actions are not attributed to a past since he never gives one.
  • Played straight in the (non-canonical) comic books.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: He was just an average man with little to make him stand out before he embarked upon his killings.
• Green-Eyed Monster: At the end of the film, he admits that he is jealous of Mills's average life. This leads him to murder Mills's wife, and this, in his eyes, makes him guilty of the sin of Envy. Of course, given his agenda, he may have exaggerated his envy just for that purpose.
• Hannibal Lecture: "It's more comfortable for you to label me insane."
• Hypocrite:
  • Played with, in that John Doe sees himself as a sinner guilty of Envy who's ultimately deserving of death too (though not before having a chance to torture and kill others).
  • Let's see. He forces the Gluttony victim to eat to death, meaning he's partially responsible for the sin itself. The Greed victim is allegedly an Amoral Attorney, yet he employs one that actually comes across as smug and overstepping his legal boundaries. He also forces someone else to horrifically rape a woman to death, kills a completely innocent woman, and he sets himself up as the Envy victim in order to drive Mills to kill him. Meaning, even by his own logic, if we can call it that, he's damned to hell (not like he doesn't deserve it considering his atrocities, though).
  • When he justifies his murder of the Greed victim by saying he helped get rapists and murderers back on the streets, Mills points out he is a murderer himself but Doe is so wiled up in his monologue that he rolls right past it, seemingly oblivious. There's also the implication that he raped Tracy Mills, going by his "tried to play husband" statement.
  • He mutilates Pride's face just for taking some value in her own beauty. But given the nature of his notebooks wherein he rants about how pathetic the rest of humanity is in comparison to himself, even vomiting on a random pedestrian just for annoying him with small talk, and bragging to the detectives that his murders will be "puzzled over and studied and followed forever", he proves that his vanity exceeds any that he perceives in others.
  • His very status as a sadistic serial killer "punishing" those he has distaste for shows he is a very wrathful man.
• Insane Troll Logic: He has an...interesting sense of morality. He views the world as a rotten cesspool of sin that needs to be cleansed. To accomplish this task, he brutally and sadistically murders people for "crimes" ranging from being a drug dealer^note though said drug dealer was also responsible for sexually assaulting a minor to simply being obese and he claims to only care about his work and message, obscuring all traces of his true identity, yet openly brags about how his work will be studied and copied for years to come, altering the world. He also murders a defense attorney whom he claims put murderers and rapists back on the street, yet uses one just as amoral to negotiate his sentence, and he ignores the fact that he himself is a murderer, forcing a man to rape a woman to death, and that he brutally murdered Tracy, who was completely innocent. It's fair to say that John's mindset is pretty twisted.
• Institutional Apparel: He's wearing a bright orange prison suit for the final act.
• Invincible Villain: Seriously, he goes unopposed throughout the entire movie and everything works out in his favour.
• I Reject Your Reality: Leading to his insane "sinners must be punished" mentality.
• Karmic Death: Gets shot to death by Mills for murdering his wife and unborn child. However, this is exactly what Doe planned for in order for Mills to become the seventh and final sin Wrath.
• Kick the Dog: What he does to Tracy, an innocent young woman. That's low, even for him.
  • He literally kicks the Gluttony victim in his grossly distended stomach, causing him to internally hemorrhage and die (whilst throwing up as a result of the blow).
• Knight Templar: Somerset doesn't doubt he believed in all his 'preaching'.
• Lack of Empathy: He never express an even slight amount of remorse for what he's done. The fact that he claims that his victims were bad people is just an excuse.
• Malevolent Mutilation: His removal of fingerprints by shaving the skin off his fingertips. Shows up at the police station near the end of the film with his hands covered in his own blood.
  • Just imagine John Doe fingerprinting "HELP ME" with Victor's severed hand.
• Manipulative Bastard: Even with Somerset having worked in homicide in the city for a long time, and being farmiliar with Doe's inspirations (Dante, Milton), AND knowing that Mills is a hothead, Doe is able to change his plan on the fly after the detectives find his apartment, and twist both of them and the rest of the police department around his finger to complete his plan.
• Meaningful Rename: He takes on the name "John Doe" to fit his obscured identity as he wants all the focus to be on his actions. "John" is also a Biblical name that means "graced by God".
• Misanthrope Supreme: He clearly despises humanity, believing the only way someone could honestly say his victims were even remotely innocent despite their deadly sins was if the world was really that shitty.
  Somerset (reading one of John Doe's journals): "What sick ridiculous puppets we are and what gross little stage we dance on. What fun we have dancing and fucking. Not a care in the world. Not knowing that we are nothing. We are not what was intended."
• Mission from God:
  Doe: Don't ask me to pity those people. I don't mourn them any more than I do the thousands that died at Sodom and Gomorrah.
  Somerset: Is that to say, John, that what you were doing was God's good work?
  [Beat]
  Doe: The Lord works in mysterious ways.
  • Somerset points out that John Doe enjoys his work too much to have been 'forced' by God to do it.
• Mistaken for Badass: Towards Somerset and Mills. He admires the pair's apparent detective skill, not knowing that they actually use a shadow surveillance network to catch him. This admiration ends up saving Mills's life when Doe has him at gunpoint. On the flip side, this also puts the pair on his crosshair, leading to Doe killing Mills's wife and ruining his life.
• Mr. Smith: Obscures all traces of his real identity and uses the name "John Doe" as it's his message that's supposed to be important, not himself.
• Motive Rant: He launches into a truly epic one when Mills says that his victims were innocent:
  Doe: Innocent? Is that supposed to be funny? An obese man, a disgusting man who could barely stand up, a man who if you saw him on the street, you'd point him out to your friends so that they could join you in mocking him, a man, who if you saw him while you were eating, you wouldn't be able to finish your meal. After him, I picked the lawyer, and I know you both must have been secretly thanking me for that one. This is a man who dedicated his life to making money by lying with every breath that he could muster to keeping murderers and rapists on the streets!... A woman, so ugly on the inside she couldn't bear to go on living if she couldn't be beautiful on the outside. A drug dealer, a drug-dealing pederast, actually! And let's not forget the disease-spreading whore! Only in a world this shitty could you even try to say these were innocent people and keep a straight face. But that's the point: we see a deadly sin on every street corner, in every home, and we tolerate it. We tolerate it because it's common, it's trivial. We tolerate it morning, noon, and night. Well, not anymore. I'm setting the example. What I've done is going to be puzzled over and studied and followed… forever.
• My Death Is Just the Beginning: His own death is a part of his plan, and comprises one of the seven sins. He is confident that his killings will inspire a great deal of fascination, study, and, ultimately, a following, and that his influence will change the world. Mills counters, more plausibly, that John Doe's killings will only inspire a TV movie and a T-shirt logo, a la Charles Manson. Of course, Mills says this before the full extent of Doe's plan is revealed, so it can end up either way.
  • In a meta example, considering Doe and the film's climax is often cited as one of the most brutal and jaw-dropping spectacles in film history, John ended up being proven right to at least some extent.
• Narcissist: He has an absurdly inflated opinion about himself, believing himself to be leagues above everybody who crosses his path.
• Necessarily Evil: Thinks his actions are this. The reality is considerably less noble.
• Nightmare Fuel Station Attendant: An unnaturally calm, soft-spoken man whose demeanor doesn't even hide the deeply hateful murderer underneath, John Doe is one of the most disturbing serial killers in film.
• Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist: All his talk about cleansing the world of sin is just an excuse he gives himself. He does what he does because he's a sadistic monster.
• Nothing Is Scarier: None of his crimes are ever shown on screen, only the aftermath. Probably for the best.
• Offscreen Villain Dark Matter: Exactly how Doe survives, let alone funds his killings, is a mystery given the extent he has gone to bury his past. He has no issue renting out multiple apartments, filling his home with equipment for his killings, buying hundreds of journals, bribing cops for information, and paying five hundred dollars to a delivery driver. The Captain notes he must be independently wealthy but there's never any explanation in the film as to how since there are no employment records. Given Doe's extreme anti-social tendencies as described in his own journals, it would be difficult for him to have pursued a career in any highly competitive field.
• Ominous Mundanity: The name John Doe.
• Poetic Serial Killer: Chooses victims he views as guilty of one of the Seven Deadly Sins, then kills them in a manner that he thinks punishes the particular sin of which each is guilty.
• Politically Incorrect Villain: Implicitly targets Gould for his Jewishness (hence the "pound of flesh" comment on the murder site) and rapes (by proxy) a woman to death for being a "disease-spreading whore." He also targets an obese man out of nothing more than visceral disgust (even referring to said man as an "obese obscenity" in the comics).
• Principles Zealot: He will punish sinners, no matter who they are. Once he himself becomes guilty of envy, he willingly arranges for Mills to kill him.
• Psychotic Smirk: In the comic adaptations, an example of this appears on his face when Eli Gould is (reluctantly) going through with cutting into himself to fulfill the "pound of flesh" 'penance' for his greed.
• Pyrrhic Victory: Thanks to Mills lashing out in righteous vengeance by shooting him dead, thus becoming the Wrath victim, he has basically achieved his objectives of the seven deadly sins murders, at the expense of his own life.
• Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil: His comments about how he "tried to play husband" heavily imply that he raped Tracy before murdering her.
• Red Is Violent: Spends most of his runtime in an dark orange jumpsuit.
• Ridiculously Average Guy: There's nothing about John's appearance to hint at what a monster he is.
• Room Full of Crazy: His apartment is filled with instruments of murder, religious imagery hanging everywhere (including a neon cross over his bed), and shelves of journals containing his unfiltered thoughts.
• Sadist: It's very clear this is his main motivation for what he does, regardless of how much he claims otherwise. He himself admits that "there was nothing wrong with a man taking pleasure in his work." He also seems to be a fan of the trope namer.
• The Scourge of God: What he believes himself to be. Doesn't stop him from enjoying it, however.
• Serial Killer: Well, clearly. Technically, he directly murders Gluttony and Tracy Mills, murders Greed and Lust by proxy, and tortures Sloth unto the very brink of death. He also mutilates Pride, spurring her to kill herself, and is responsible for his own murder.
• Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness: Played up to eleven in the comic book prequels.
• Shrouded in Myth: Everything about Doe is a complete mystery.
• Sir Not-Appearing-in-This-Trailer: Kevin Spacey deliberately avoided doing promotion for the film, and his name was left out of the opening credits, and his voice was even replaced in trailers and promotions in order to keep John Doe's identity a secret until he is revealed.
• Slasher Smile: He displays some truly unnerving grins after turning himself in.
• Small Name, Big Ego: As noted above, he has a very high opinion of what he imagines his legacy will be. This is despite the fact that he's a low-level killer working in a nondescript city whose crimes, while certainly shocking and brutal, hardly took much in the way of intelligence or cunning. John imagines he's a revolutionary rather than the sadist he is.
• The Sociopath: Has an Old Testament outlook on humanity with zero compassion for his victims. He believes himself to be the start of a revolution rather than a depraved, delusional sadist who decided to get creative. And he manipulates people either by his Criminal Mind Games or by threats of force.
• Soft-Spoken Sadist: He has a calm, unassuming voice but as Somerset notes, he enjoys hurting people.
• Sophisticated as Hell: Both his journal entries and his speeches are a cringe-inducing mixture of grandiloquence and vulgarity.
• The Spook: We learn almost nothing about him. Not his backstory, not even his real name, just his message.
• Straw Nihilist: Being a Misanthrope Supreme whose final gambit is a Strike Me Down with All of Your Hatred! makes him this by default. Also, one of the journals in his apartment perfectly illustrates his pessimism.
  Somerset: What sick ridiculous puppets we are and what gross little stage we dance on. What fun we have dancing and fucking. Not a care in the world. Not knowing that we are nothing. We are not what was intended.
• Suddenly Shouting: When he turns himself in.
  Doe: Detective.
  Somerset: After this I'm gone.
  Doe: Detective.
  Mills: No big surprise.
  Doe: DETECTIIIIIIIIIVE!
• Suicide by Cop: He successfully manipulates Mills into murdering him.
• Tautological Templar: He thinks he's a man fighting for a better world when he's really just a sadist trying to justify his actions.
• Technical Pacifist: John Doe goes out of his way not to kill most of the victims himself. He makes them take their own lives, leaves them for dead, or forces someone else to do the killing; the exceptions being Gluttony (he kicked him in the stomach, causing it to burst), Pride, who he disfigures personally but doesn't kill, and Envy himself, in his murder of Mills's wife.. Even 'Wrath' was his own death at the hands of Mills
• Thanatos Gambit: His own death is the finale of his plan, comprising the last two sins. He himself becomes the Envy victim, being shot to death by Mills for murdering Mills's wife out of jealousy. Consequently, Mills, lashing out in righteous vengeance, has lost his wife, broken the law, and will be sent to prison, thus becoming the Wrath victim.
  Somerset: David. If you kill him, he will win.
• Theme Serial Killer: His crimes are based on invoking and "punishing" the Seven Deadly Sins.
• They Look Just Like Everyone Else!: He's an average-looking guy whom you wouldn't think twice about if you passed him in the street, yet he's also a truly monstrous serial killer.
• Villain Protagonist: Is this in the comics.
• Walking Spoiler: His appearance in the film's climax—both the actor portraying him and his actions while on-screen—makes him this.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: In his own mind, at least. He's completely prepared to die for his dreadful plan to succeed in full.
• Wicked Cultured: He's an avid reader of Dante, Milton, Geoffrey Chaucer, Thomas Aquinas and the Marquis de Sade and uses them as inspiration for his crimes. However, his understanding of them is surface-level at best, and despite (supposedly) being motivated by religious fanaticism, he only cites the most well-known Old Testament passages, such as Sodom and Gomorrah. For once, Mills wasn't entirely wrong about him.
  Mills: He's a nut-bag! Just because the fucker's got a library card doesn't make him Yoda!
• Wicked Pretentious: He uses his readings as shallow ways to rationalize his own sadistic urges, and his ramblings (both written and spoken) show how much of an immature, petty and self-important prick he is.
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Completely averted in the film but played straight in the graphic novel, where his early life is very much what you'd expect from a serial killer.
• Worthy Opponent: He seems to regard Mills and Somerset as this, telling them on multiple occasions how much he admires them. The effect comes across as creepy more than anything else.
• Would Hurt a Child: When he killed Tracy he also killed her unborn son. Something he never shows remorse for.
• Would You Like to Hear How They Died?: He taunts Mills about how he killed Tracy by beheading her and thus also killing her unborn child. It's also implied, given his statement that he "tried to play husband", that he raped her first.
• Xanatos Speed Chess: Mills and Somerset turning up at his apartment is unexpected and forces him to change his plans, but he adapts quickly and even incorporates both detectives into his Evil Plan.

Victims

In General

• Asshole Victim: According to the villain. His victims are chosen based on what he considers to be their (unforgivably) negative traits, although their "sins" range from being morbidly obese to being a drug-dealing pederast. The movie does not contain any indication that the victims for Gluttony and Lust were bad people in any way unless you take the villain's "Metaphorically True perspective" for gospel — or share his hatred of lawyers, obese people, sex workers, and vain women. The victims for Sloth, Greed, and Pride were nasty pieces of work, but what Doe put them through is so horrific it's hard to say if they deserved it.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: Many of John Doe's victims. There's the obese man forced to eat until he's so full that his stomach fatally ruptures when kicked, the lawyer forced to carve off a pound of his own flesh and bleed out, the drug-dealing child molester tied to a bed for an entire year whose mind and body have withered away to the point that the only thing separating him from a corpse is a pulse, the model whose nose is cut off and is forced to choose between a painless death by drug overdose or calling for medical help and live while disfigured, and the prostitute forced to have sex with a man with a knife attached to a strap-on.
• Malevolent Mutilation: John Doe seems to delight in invoking this with his murders.
  • The Gluttony victim is forced to eat spaghetti at gunpoint until he's so full that one swift kick to his abdomen causes his stomach to rupture, killing him almost instantly.
  • The Sloth victim is tied to his bed for an entire year, during which his body and mind atrophy beyond repair, but he is given just enough medical attention to keep him physically alive, and his hand is amputated for use in leaving a clue that links him to the Greed murder. By the time he is discovered, he has long since chewed off his own tongue.
  • The Pride victim has her nose cut off (to spite her face) and has a bottle of sleeping pills glued to one hand and a phone to the other, giving her a choice between committing suicide by overdose or calling for medical attention but living with permanent and obvious disfigurement. She chooses the former.
  • The Lust victim is forced to have sex with a terrified man wearing a strap-on with a knife attached to it, mutilating her genitalia beyond all recognition before she dies from massive blood loss.
  • Just imagine John Doe fingerprinting "HELP ME" with Victor's severed hand.
• Sadistic Choice:
  • The Gluttony victim is forced to eat spaghetti at gunpoint until he's so full that one swift kick to his abdomen causes his stomach to rupture.
  • The Greed victim is forced to mutilate himself at gunpoint.
  • A man is forced at gunpoint to kill the Lust victim by disembowelling her with a bladed codpiece.
  • The Pride victim has her nose cut off (to spite her face) and has a bottle of sleeping pills glued to one hand and a phone to the other, giving her a choice between committing suicide by overdose or calling for medical attention but living with permanent and obvious disfigurement. She chooses the former.
• Seven Deadly Sins: The central theme of Doe's choices of victims and how he "punishes" them.
  • Gluttony: A man whose sole crime was being morbidly obese. Doe forces him to eat a massive amount of spaghetti before kicking him in the abdomen, causing his stomach to burst.
  • Greed: A lawyer who got criminals acquitted for profit. Doe forces him to cut a "pound of flesh" off of himself. He slices off one of his love handles and bleeds to death.
  • Sloth: A man who squandered his potential by engaging in drug dealing and pedophilia. Doe chains him to a bed for an entire year, taking care of him and his affairs just enough that he doesn't die or get discovered. He becomes skeletal, deformed, and insane, and dies of shock in the hospital.
  • Lust: A woman who happened to be a sex worker.^note Although, one could interpret the actual victim to be the man who was forced to have sex with her, who was implied to be an adulterer ("He asked if I was married"). Though he lives, he is left thoroughly scarred for life. Doe forces a man to rape her to death with a bladed strap-on.
  • Pride: A beautiful model. Doe severs her nose, bandages her so she won't bleed out, and then leaves her with a phone and a bottle of sleeping pills, giving her the choice to call for help and live disfigured or commit suicide. She chooses the latter.
  • Envy: John Doe himself, who murdered Tracy Mills because he was jealous of her husband's normal life. As part of his plan, he is shot to death by Detective Mills.
  • Wrath: Detective Mills, who was quick to anger and killed John Doe, an unarmed prisoner, in a rage for killing his wife. Having already lost his wife and unborn child, he will likely lose his job and be traumatized for the rest of his life. Given the circumstances, he's not likely to go to prison, but there's no guarantee.
• Nothing Is Scarier: None of the murders are shown onscreen, only the aftermath, but it's more than enough to get across just how monstrous John Doe is.
• Undignified Death: John Doe puts a particular care in making their deaths (and resulting crime scenes) as degrading as possible. Gluttony is force fed spaghetti until he collapses, then he's kicked repeatedly to make his stomach rupture. Greed is forced to strip off and mutilate himself. Sloth is slowly turned into a living corpse, to the point that his inevitable death will be a release. Lust is raped and mutilated in a squalid bedroom. Pride has her face slashed and forced to choose between suicide and living disfigured, not to mention she's found almost naked in her bed.

Gluttony

Gluttony

Played By: Bob Mack

• Asshole Victim: Averted. He and Lust are the only ones of Doe's victims to not be this and it's clear Doe targeted him less because he deserved it and simply out of visceral disgust and sadism.
• Balloon Belly: Played for Horror. The victim is forced to eat spaghetti at gunpoint until he can't take it anymore. Then the killer kicks him and his stomach ruptures.
• Belly Mouth: The cover of the Comic-Book Adaptation's first issue features him with a massive fanged maw running across his stomach.
• Cold-Blooded Torture: What Doe put him through was horrific and all the more so given how long it went on. As if force-feeding the poor bastard to the point of physical exhaustion wasn't bad enough, Doe ran out of ingredients halfway through the fatal feast and actually went to the store to pick up more supplies just so he could continue torturing him.
• Creepy Souvenir: Doe keeps several empty cans of spaghetti sauce to memorialize the man's torture.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: He dies by having his stomach burst open from the inside.
• Death by Gluttony: Enforced by Doe. He is forced at gunpoint to eat spaghetti until he passes out, at which point the killer kicks his stomach and it ruptures on the inside.
• Faceplanting into Food: He is found face-down in a dish of pasta.
• Fan Disservice: The morbidly obese victim is naked on the autopsy table.
• Fatal Flaw: The comic reveals that the victim couldn't turn away food. John Doe exploited this to trick him into eating a laced pizza.
• Fat Bastard: Invoked by John Doe but ultimately averted. There is no indication that he was a bad person. The Comic-Book Adaptation reveals that he was a quiet man with major self-esteem issues who genuinely wanted to turn his life around, but didn't know how, and his struggles and insecurity about his weight are treated sympathetically.
• Force Feeding: The crux of his torture at the hands of Doe, being forced to scarf down plate after plate of spaghetti - hands-free - until he starts passing out. The comic expands on this treatment by showing that Doe also went so far as to shove a few forkfuls into the victim's mouth... complete with a stray cockroach.
• Gag Penis: It's easy to miss since it's never pointed out. David Fincher said in a commentary track that he felt bad for the guy who had to wear all the hot, heavy Gluttony prosthetics, so he figured they could at least give him a huge package.
• No Dead Body Poops: Averted. According to the police officers who found him, he'd been sitting in his own piss and shit for several hours by the time Mills arrived - their first good clue that the victim was dead.
• No Name Given: Only in additional materials is he given a name. Two, actually: Peter Eubanks in the Novelization, and Peter Eugene in the Graphic Novel.
• Posthumous Character: While none of Doe's victims are actually seen in the process of being killed, Gluttony was dead before the film begins.
• The Shut-In: Judging by the state of his home, Somerset speculates he was a bit of a shut-in.
• Tampering with Food and Drink: The comic reveals that Doe was able to subdue him by pretending to be a lost pizza deliveryman, trusting that the victim wouldn't be able to resist the chance to take the pizza off his hands; unfortunately for him, the pizza was laced with sedatives.
• Vomit Indiscretion Shot: In the comic book adaption, a huge plume of vomit shoots out of his mouth when Doe fatally kicks him.
• Weight Woe: Played for drama. According to the comics, he was a deeply depressed individual who had seen several family members die from obesity-related disorders and hated himself for not being able to change his ways, lamenting the fact that no matter how much he ate, he still felt empty.

Greed

Greed (Eli Gould)

Played By: Gene Borkan

• Amoral Attorney: According to John Doe, anyway; we know little about him as a person. The comic books elaborate further on this by demonstrating that Gould is indeed a greedy, self-absorbed scumbag with no interest in anyone who couldn't line his pockets immediately. Doe himself actually went so far as to test this tendency by posing as a potential client, only to be turned away as soon as the words "payment plan" were used.
  • It's never actually shown if Gould was this trope or not. Doe says that he thinks Mills and Somerset were secretly happy he was dead, but that could just be him assuming that two cops would hate any defense attorney.
• Asshole Victim: The cops generally have a hard time feeling sorry for the Greed victim, a defense attorney named Eli Gould who was (in Somerset's words) "infamous" for securing acquittals for presumably guilty defendants charged with violent crimes. A journalist at the crime scene even suggests that Gould's record might present a conflict of interest for the police department investigating his murder.
• Creepy Souvenir: A set of Gould's bloodstained legal textbooks are found in Doe's apartment alongside other trophies from his victims.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: He’s forced to remove a pound of flesh at gunpoint.
• Even Evil Has Standards: As the comics demonstrate, Gould might be a heartless defender of rapists and slumlords, but even he seems disgusted by having to deal with Theodore "Victor" Allen. At one point during their meeting in "Sloth," Victor asks what a pederast is; Gould wearily replies "It's what you are, Mr. Allen," and exits - leaving his client with the bar tab.
• Greedy Jew: The Greed victim is an amoral defense attorney named Eli Gould, an unambiguously Jewish name. However, his ethnicity is never explicitly pointed out. Our only clue to John Doe's implied anti-Semitism is the "One pound of flesh, no more, no less..." note left at the crime scene, a reference to Shylock's punishment for Antonio in The Merchant of Venice.
• Ironic Hell: During the "Sloth" issue, Victor hallucinates Gould in hell, forced to push a massive boulder alongside other boulder-wielding sinners - the classic ironic punishment for the greedy as envisioned by Dante.
• Lack of Empathy: In the comic book adaptation anyway. At one point, he's confronted by an impoverished woman being thrown out of her apartment by his current client, demanding to know where her children are supposed to sleep; Gould's only reply is a dead-eyed stare and a mutter of "Remove your hand from my coat."
• Punny Name: His last name is pronounced similarly to Gold, and he is the Greed victim.
• Sadistic Choice: He was forced at gunpoint to extract a pound of flesh from his body and eventually chose one of his love handles. As a result, he bled to death.

Sloth

Sloth (Theodore 'Victor' Allen)

Played By: Michael Reid MacKay

• Addled Addict: The comic books demonstrate that Victor was headed in this direction by the time Doe got a hold of him; already subtly pockmarked by years of barely-functional drug use, he was too spaced-out to recognize that taking a strange man home with him might be a bad idea...
• Alas, Poor Villain: He was a drug-dealing pedophile and is rightfully loathed by the police for that reason. Yet even they are left disturbed by Victor's absolutely hellish fate, even more so when they discover he's still alive.
• An Arm and a Leg: John Doe chopped off Victor's hand at the wrist and used it to plant fingerprints on a wall in Eli Gould's office.
• And I Must Scream: Spends an entire year strapped to a bed, drugged into semi-consciousness, and unable to speak; though Doe's photographs show Victor with his mouth gaping open as if to scream, no complaints over noise are ever issued by the landlord, meaning that he couldn't even call for help. Eventually, he's able to let out a cough and gasps for air, but by then, the damage to his brain and body is irreversible.
• Asshole Victim: Downplayed. While the other victims are debatable at best, Victor was indeed a drug-dealing pederast who'd also dabbled in armed robbery and assault. Nobody mourned his death, least of all the cops who found him, though they still found what happened to him to be completely horrific, even for someone like him. And to their horror, he wasn't quite dead yet.
• Auto Cannibalism: Over the course of the torture he was subjected to, Victor apparently chewed off and swallowed his own tongue - due to muscle spasms, because he was desperate for solid food after months of intravenous sustenance, or simply as an attempt to commit suicide.
• Body Horror: Victor could be the poster boy for this trope; horrifically emaciated after a full year of paralysis, he's covered in bedsores and wallowing in his own filth... and yet he's somehow still alive. Worse still, photographs left at the scene demonstrate Victor's gradual deterioration over the course of the year, his features visibly withering as drugs, starvation, and bedsores gradually eat away at him.
• Bound and Gagged: Is bound to his own bed, and while he doesn't have a gag in his mouth when he's discovered, there is a piece of cloth around the upper part of his head resembling a gag, suggesting that Victor was previously gagged at some point prior to the events of the film.
• Bring My Brown Pants: Played for horror. In keeping with the 'sloth' punishment, Victor was not allowed to leave his bed for any reason, and he was thus forced to simply soil himself - and lie there in it (although Somerset does mention that Doe inserted a catheter into his urethra to collect his urine). Suffice to say, thanks to the smells of excrement and putrefaction, Victor smelled absolutely putrid by the time his year of hell came to an end to the point that Doe had to cover the apartment in air fresheners just so he wouldn't arouse suspicion; when California finally whips the bed sheet off him, the stench is so horrendous that even Mills and Somerset are disgusted.
• Cold-Blooded Torture: To put it simply, after a year at the mercy of John Doe, Hell would probably be a welcome escape...
• Creepy Souvenir: His severed hand is found in a jar of formaldehyde at John Doe's apartment, as part of a collection of trophies. As Doe spends the rest of the movie fleeing the police, this is the last souvenir he's able to collect and keep.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: He is chained to a bed for a whole year and forcefully kept alive the entire time, even chewing off his own tongue.
• Cruel Mercy: Doe did everything in his power to keep Victor from dying until the very end, even dosing him with antibiotics to prevent his bedsores from getting infected. He's not even dead when the police find him.
• Disease Bleach: Prior to his capture, Victor was dark-haired. Following a year of torture, what little hair he still possesses is now tinged a sickly yellowish-white.
• Driven to Suicide: Chewed off his own tongue, likely in an effort to commit suicide.
• Empty Shell: After a full year spent being repeatedly drugged, bound to a bed, and wasting away into a husk of a person, Victor is barely even capable of screaming in agony; his doctor claims that his brain has been reduced to "mush" and that he wouldn't be able to speak even if he hadn't chewed off his own tongue.
• Fate Worse than Death: He goes through an entire year of paralyzed suffering (e.g., numerous bedsores forming, his body rotting into a corpse-like state), being sustained through large amounts of drugs, and amputation, and doesn't even get the relief of death. The novelization mentions that he died a couple of days after being admitted to a hospital.
• Faux Death: Just as the detectives are starting to relax, he wakes up and scares everyone to death.
• Frame-Up: He's finally discovered when his fingerprints are found at the scene of the Greed murder, briefly including him on the list of possible suspects. It's not until the police actually find Victor's body, minus one hand, and realize that Doe was just stringing them along.
• Getting High on Their Own Supply: A drug-dealer by trade, the comics demonstrate that Victor definitely isn't above using his own product, to the point that Doe is able to recognize four distinctive signs of long-term addiction just by looking at him - including the pockmarks from crystal meth, speed-induced deterioration of bone mass, the erosion of nasal cartilage due to cocaine, and the needle scars from heroin use. For good measure, crime scene photographs reveal that Victor's apartment is cluttered with what has to be several months' worth of drug paraphernalia, from crackpipes to used syringes.
• Mushroom Samba: According to the comics, Victor was subjected to this when Doe gave him a spiked heroin injection, sending him on a hallucinogenic journey to hell.
• Nothing but Skin and Bones: The state John Doe leaves him in; he's so gaunt and ravaged with bedsores that the police initially mistake him for a corpse. It's not until Victor lets out a cough and several gasps for air that they realize that he's still alive.
• Never Speak Ill of the Dead: Averted. Just before Victor awakens, SWAT team leader California says that he 'got what he deserved'. Even Dr. Beardsley says he "still has Hell to look forward to."
• Orgy of Evidence: Doe went out of his way to take samples of Victor's hair, fingernails, urine, and stool, along with photographs of the victim's horrific deterioration, just so the police could have enough evidence of what happened and how long it went on for. However, this isn't a prelude to a setup, but - as Mills puts it - a sign that Doe is toying with them.
• Slimeball: The comic book adaptation shows that, in life, Victor was an oily, ingratiating scumbag that few people could stand to be around for any length of time. Even his lawyer seemed genuinely irritated with him.
• Technically a Smile: Photos discovered at the scene of the crime reveal that, three days prior, Victor's torture had left his face frozen in a particularly agonized-looking grin. Thanks to all the drugs in his system, it's doubtful he was even able to control his facial muscles, and it only looks all the more disturbing given that his gums have started to recede, making his teeth look longer.
• Tongue Trauma: He chewed off his tongue long ago.
• Younger Than They Look: Is actually somewhere in his twenties or thirties, but after all the torture he's been forced to endure, he resembles a feeble old man.

Lust

Lust

Played By: Cat Mueller

• Asshole Victim: Averted. She was just a regular sex worker who Doe gruesomely murdered just because he was sickened by her, not because she deserved it.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: She's given possibly the most gruesome death in the whole film, being raped to death by a strap-on blade.
• Disposable Sex Worker: John Doe seems to have chosen her at random solely because she was a prostitute.
• Disproportionate Retribution: The poor woman was horribly raped (by proxy) and mutilated to death simply because she happened to be a sex worker, all of whom John Doe sees as "filthy, disease-ridden whores".
• Groin Attack: Victim of a fatal one.
• No Name Given: We never find out her name.
• Nothing Is Scarier: Almost nothing about her is revealed, not even her name, and (thankfully) we never get to see her body. This doesn't make her death any less disturbing.
• Out with a Bang: Played for Horror: her killer is forced to wear a strap-on blade while raping her, resulting in a good portion of her internal organs being horribly shredded.
• Rape by Proxy: Doe forces one of her clients to have sex with her at gunpoint.

Pride

Pride (Rachel Shade)

Played By: Heidi Schantz

• Asshole Victim: In the comics, she was definitely a nasty piece of work, neglecting her daughter and treating her underlings like shit.
• Bandaged Face: Found in this condition, having been brutally mutilated by Doe.
• Beauty Is Bad: Definitely Doe's perspective. In the comics, she's revealed to have been a beautiful model who was determined to make the lives of everyone around her into a living hell, relying on her looks and the status she earned as a result of them to escape repercussions.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: John Doe cuts off her nose while gluing a phone and sleeping pills to both her respective hands, offering her a Sadistic Choice between calling for help and living with her disfigurement or killing herself, and chooses the latter.
• Death by Disfigurement: Invoked with the victim, who killed herself.
  Dr. O'Neill: He cut off her nose.
  Somerset: To spite her face.
• Driven to Suicide: John Doe cuts off her nose and glues a phone to one hand and sleeping pills to the other. He is offering her the Sadistic Choice of calling for help (but having to live with her disfigurement) or killing herself. As proof of her vanity, she chooses the latter.
• Dying Alone: Assuming that John Doe left the apartment while she was still alive, she's the only victim that died without anyone else present.
• Empathy Doll Shot: Found lying in bed with a teddy bear by her side. The comics reveal that it actually belonged to her daughter.
• Facial Horror: Nose severed by John Doe, before being bandaged up and given the option of death or life spent in ugliness.
• Fatal Flaw: Her vanity proved to be her undoing.
• Fate Worse than Death: Invoked. The victim prefers committing suicide than having to live disfigured without her nose.
• Ironic Name: Her surname is Shade while her sin is usually associated with Lucifer, whose name means "bringer of light".
• Light Is Not Good: She's found in a brightly lit apartment with white as its main color, which is appropriate for the sin associated with Lucifer.
• Nasal Trauma: Nose cut off by John Doe.
• No Name Given: Subverted. While her name is never spoken in the film, the bottle of medications she used to commit suicide with has her name Rachel Shade written on it.
• Parental Neglect: In the comics, she barely gives enough of a damn to dismiss her daughter from her presence.
• Punished with Ugly: John Doe cuts up the face of this beautiful but vain woman and makes her choose between suicide and life with an ugly face. She chooses suicide.
• Red Shirt: She receives considerably less focus than Gluttony, Greed, Sloth, and Lust, and her scene is quickly overshadowed by the Envy/Wrath climax of the film.
• Suicidal Sadistic Choice: Doe disfigures a beautiful but vain woman, then gives her the choice: sleeping pills to kill herself or a phone to call for an ambulance. We figure out what choice she made as the police are examining her corpse.
• Tear Off Your Face: Has her face mutilated and nose cut off by John Doe.
• White and Red and Eerie All Over: She's found dead in an apartment with white walls and furniture, completely pristine if not for the red of her blood.

Envy (Spoilers!)

Envy ("John Doe")

Played By: Kevin Spacey

See "John Doe" above.

Wrath (Spoilers!)

Wrath (Det. David Mills)

Played By: Brad Pitt

See "Mills" above.

Others

Tracy

Theresa 'Tracy' Mills

"I hate this city."

Played By: Gwyneth Paltrow

"I can't be a burden- especially now. I know I'll get used to things. I guess I wanted to know what someone who lives here thinks."

• Ain't Too Proud to Beg: She begs John Doe to spare her and her unborn child. It doesn't work.
• Decapitation Presentation: Averted. Her head is cut off, but only Somerset sees it. The viewers don't.
• Good Girls Avoid Abortion: Tracy considers getting a secret abortion because she doesn't want her child to grow in a Crapsack World. She probably decided to keep it as she begs for her unborn child's life when John Doe is about to kill her.
• Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: She's blonde and a fairly likable character in the film.
• High-School Sweethearts: She was already in love with Mills in high school.
• Killed Offscreen: By John Doe, right before he turned himself into the police, in fact.
• Morality Chain: Tracy is one of the few people Mills isn't a jerk to. When he finds out that John Doe killed her, Mills shoots him.
• Nice Girl: One of the most decent, polite characters in the film. Despite a minor moment of insensitiveness (asking Somerset why isn't he married soon after meeting him and inviting him to dinner without asking Mills), she's a friendly person overall.
• Off with His Head!: Gets decapitated by Doe in order to goad Mills into shooting him to death.
• Stepford Smiler: She plays up the optimistic housewife role when her husband is around because she knows how stressful and demoralizing his job can be. But she later meets with Somerset at a diner and confesses to hating the city, and is unsure if she wants to bring a baby into such a Crapsack World.
• Targeted to Hurt the Hero: Gets killed by John Doe in order to torment Mills.
• Too Good for This Sinful Earth: Probably the kindest character in the movie, she dies a brutal and horrifying death at John Doe's hands.

Talbot

District Attorney Martin Talbot

"This will be the very definition of swift justice."

Played By: Richard Roundtree

• Deadpan Snarker: He has some of the best lines despite his minimal appearances.
• Deal with the Devil: At least in his view, that's what agreeing to John Doe's demands (via his lawyer) amounts to. But he and the police do so in order to discover the location of the last two victims.

Man in Massage Parlor Booth

Man in Massage Parlor Booth

"But that's life."

Played By: Michael Massee

• Being Evil Sucks: He hates life as a pimp and the atrocities he witnesses, but he doesn't see any way out of it.
• No Name Given: He is never identified, and the credits only identify him as 'Man in Massage Parlor Booth'.

Crazed Man in Massage Parlor

Crazed Man in Massage Parlor

"He had a gun! He made me do it!"

Played By: Leland Orser

The man John Doe forced to kill the Lust victim.

• Heroic BSoD: After John Doe forces him at gunpoint to rape the Lust victim to death, he is left traumatized and descends into deranged rambling at the end of his interrogation.
• Madness Mantra: Has a couple.
  GET THIS THING OFF OF ME! GET THIS THING OFF OF ME! GET THIS THING OFF OF ME!
  Please help me ... please help me ... please help me ...
• No Name Given: In the exact same manner as the Man in Massage Parlor Booth.