Characters / The Victors Project: Districts Nine to Twelve and the Capitol

The Victors Project Character Index
Career Districts | Districts 3–8 | Districts 9–12 and Capitol | Fallen Tributes and District Citizens

"No one ever won the Hunger Games. Not really. We've honored those who fell. Sometimes, it's just as important to remember those who survive, who were forced to go on living."

— Peeta Mellark

District 9

"They send kids out into the tesserae fields every summer. Even the ones younger than reaping age. They have to pull the weeds and water the wheat if it hasn't rained enough. They drop like flies. Heat stroke. And more are sent in to replace them. We freeze in the winter, those of us who can't afford coal. We burn dung and try to make it last. You'll find them in dark corners, behind buildings. Dead from the cold. … And when our children go into the Games, they cry and run and hide and they die. They always die."

— Nolan de Naro

Districtwide Tropes

• Aloof Ally: Inverted, in that this is how District 9 views the other districts during the Mockingjay Rebellion, because District 9 did not receive any outside aid. Even decades after the rebellion, people in 9 are still unwelcoming to outsiders, because of their bitterness for being abandoned.
• Brutal Brawl: Donovan Haye describes the Battle of the Golden Field this way.
  Donovan: Well, we shot ourselves out of ammo until half of us were dead on both sides, then we rushed at each through the field. Was less a battle than a brawl, but there was no barkeep and no Peacekeepers this time to break it up. Fought like animals. With stones and sticks and hatchets.
• Child Soldiers: Many of the District 9 rebels were this.
  Donovan: Saw more kids die that day than I ever did in the Games. Good kids, too.
• Droit du Seigneur: Nolan also claims the Peacekeepers do this to those in District 9.
  Nolan: They take our wives, if they want them, before the first night and say it's their right. They give them back and tell us they're better broken in.
• Final Battle: The Battle of the Golden Field
• Made of Incendium: Elsie Mahon, a survivor of District 9's uprising, describes how it was a dry summer, so "the barley fields were going up like paper" from the fires set by Capitol bombings.
• Total Party Kill: None of the District 9 Victors survive by the story's end.
  • Wheaton is killed at a wedding reception as part of the Succession Crisis following President Lucius's death.
  • Evelyn and Nolan are killed in the Third Quarter Quell.
  • Ben is the first killed in the post-Quell Victors purge.
  • Abram is killed in the Final Battle between the District 9 rebels and the Capitol Peacekeepers.

Wheaton Vale (4th Games Victor)

• Badass Family: His father Barley was the highest-ranking survivor of District 9's combat troops, and held the train stations for a long time before being overrun by District 2, while Wheaton was the second Victor (after Ahenobarbus) to come across as a real contender from the very beginning.
• The Casanova: Becomes known in the Capitol as the "smoking hot, delicious, sexy volunteer." He maintains this reputation throughout his life, so much so that his "secret" is that he keeps a little black book of all his sexual partners, and by the time of his death, there are 966 entries.
• Children Forced to Kill: Eighteen when he enters his Games.
• Cynical Mentor: One of the most infamous ones. He is never there for Evelyn when she needs him after the arena and contributes fairly little to Ben's victory (besides advising him to play the audience).
• Disproportionate Retribution: On the receiving end of this, as President Lucius has his father killed out of personal pique, because Wheaton commits Loophole Abuse by volunteering for the Hunger Games to get his father pardoned, even though Wheaton was careful not to let the reporters know his motives for volunteering, and likely would have kept that on the down-low afterwards.
• Ear Ache: Lost an ear (and a kidney) in his final battle.
• The Hedonist: Embraces the pleasures of the Victor lifestyle more than most, to the detriment of his mentees. He's ultimately killed while at a A Party, Also Known as an Orgy.
• Innocent Bystander: Caught in the crossfire when Peacekeepers, targeting the orgy host for political reasons, come in guns blazing.
• Kill Tally: Four tributes — the District 3 girl, District 1 boy, District 2 boy, and District 7 boy.
• Loophole Abuse: Volunteers because he hopes to win a pardon for his father. Prior to a district having a Victor, a prisoner found guilty of sedition served as the district mentor. Once the district gets a Victor, the mentor is pardoned. Wheaton's father was the mentor for District 9, so Wheaton hopes to win the Games and get his father pardoned. Capitol officials ultimately defy this trope, by pardoning Barton Vale for sedition, but then executing him for all the other crimes he committed.
• Missing Mom: His mother is killed in a chemical weapons attack during the Darkness Days Rebellion.
• Mr. Fanservice: Consciously strips down to "the basics" while training in the Capitol, guessing correctly that there are cameras in the gym.
• One-Man Army: Takes on the boys from 1, 2 and 7 all at a time, after a fight that lasts twenty-seven minutes, stands victorious.
• Sinister Scythe: His preferred weapon in the Games.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: Becomes a lot more broken and selfish as the result of the Loophole Abuse above after everything he'd gone through beforehand.
• Ur-Example: First tribute ever to volunteer. This in turn makes him a Capitol darling, which leads many Capitolians to want to know more about him. The Gamemakers respond by holding the first ever tribute interviews, along with designated stylists.
  • His Games are also the first to include specific patron gifts for tributes.

Evelyn Morris (23rd Games Victor)

• After-Action Report: Her chapter focuses on her Victory Tour, and thus the story of her Games are told in reference to how the tributes in each district died.
• Ambiguous Ending: Along with Mitt, she is the only Third Quarter Quell tribute whose death is neither shown in the book (though her death is announced on the first night) nor described in any way in these stories, though it's implied Gloss kills her.
• Because You Were Nice to Me: After she becomes a Victor, she patronizes those who were nice to her and her family before she was reaped.
  • She also agrees to deliver a package, implied to be related to La Résistance, to a Capitol contact of Mags after the kind welcome she gets in District 4.
• Blackmail: Does this to Gloss when she discovers he is the Midtown Mincer.
• Children Forced to Kill: Sixteen when she enters her first Games.^note which means she is sixty-eight during the Third Quarter Quell.
• Cool Horse: Her first truly pleasurable experience during her Victory Tour is riding a horse in District 10.
• Cynical Mentor: By the 45th Games, she had long given up hope of bring any tributes home, and unlike many other mentors, puts little effort into even remembering their names. When her tribute in those Games dies quickly (after panicking and forgetting Evelyn's advice), she simply gets up and makes brunch reservations.
• Domestic Abuse: Suffered by Evelyn's mother, who often walks around town with a black eye and is described as having "married the man who raped her".
• Enemy Mine: The Careers tortured the District 7 tributes to death and then used their blood as war paint. Those in District 7 were therefore glad when Evelyn's bear trap messily killed the District 2 girl.
• Face Death with Dignity: Refuses to join the Victor conspiracy to break Katniss and Peeta out of the arena during the Third Quarter Quell and instead hopes for this. It's not stated whether this happens, as she is Killed Offscreen during the opening bloodbath (likely by Gloss).
• Fangirl: When they first meet it's revealed she respects Mags as the first female Victor and always awkwardly compared herself to her.
• Hated by All: In District 5, for killing their male tribute Solaris by putting a rattlesnake in his food. From the moment she arrives in District 5, she is slapped, spat upon, and has mud thrown at her. When she goes to bed that night, she checks it beforehand and finds it filled with garter snakes.
• Kill Tally: Three tributes — the District 8 girl (Cordelia), District 2 girl (Mercuria), and District 5 boy (Solaris).
• Middle Child Syndrome: Often described or noted as unexceptional, and has both an older brother and a younger one.
• Nephewism: Provided for her orphaned niece Shaleena throughout her life.
• O.C. Stand-in: First introduced in Catching Fire as District 9's female tribute in the Third Quarter Quell. No Name Given in the books.
• Opt Out: Though no fan of the Capitol, she chooses to stay out of the Rebellion's plots, even in the face of the the Quell, deciding she's too old and would rather Face Death with Dignity. She also refuses to help Matthias with his plan to kill Katniss.
• Overshadowed by Awesome: Honorius and Virtus won in the years before and after her.
• Serendipitous Survival: Despite being viewed this way by many, it's noted that she "isn't the stupid yet blindly lucky girl the cameras made her out to be."
• Sexless Marriage: Her "secret" is that all five of her marriages were this, because she did not want to risk having children who could be reaped.
• Shower of Angst: Goes in the shower to scream after receiving a full day of abuse from District 5.
• Stealth Expert: Her two major kills were placing a rattlesnake in Solaris's food and laying a lion trap that killed the female District 2 tribute.
• Team Mom: More weary and occasionally bitter than most examples, but she tries to be this to the male District 9 Victors, giving Nolan a shawl after his drug-induced victory speech and helping get sponsor money for Abram after the death of her own tribute.
• Thirsty Desert: The theme of the 23rd Games arena.
• Took a Level in Cynic: So many years of mentoring, as well as her own insecurities, take a heavy toll on her, to the point where she is resentful that Katniss and Peeta are allowed to both win the Games. By the time she dies in the Third Quarter Quell, she feels like a completely different character.
• You Should Have Died Instead: Many in District 9 wish Benji, her more handsome and accomplished district partner, had returned from the Games instead of her.

Ben Cooper (29th Games Victor)

• Anti-Mentor: Disregards the advice of both Wheaton (who tells him he should try to die quickly) and Evelyn (who told him to hide and avoid the Career pack). Instead, he runs straight for the Cornucopia, kills one of the Careers, and is invited to join their alliance.
• An Arm and a Leg/Ear Ache: Loses "a chunk out of my leg and part of my left ear" in his fight with a mutt-wolf pack.
• Battle Trophy: Kills an entire mutt-wolf pack and skins the pelt from the alpha male. He constantly wears the pelt throughout the Games and as a Victor.
• Because You Were Nice to Me: Kills the female tributes in his alliance quickly, since they are nice to him and flirt with him after he joins the Career pack.
• The Bus Came Back: After his victory, he is rarely seen again, only appearing at the Victor's meeting following President Lucius's death (in Antigone's chapter), mentoring Nolan, and attending the Victors talent show in Berenice's chapter, but he does not say a word in any of these appearances. He finally has a significant role again when he comes out of retirement to mentor Abram, forty years after his own victory.
• Category Traitor:
  • Allies with the Career pack and helps them kill several tributes, including is own district partner, who he personally kills as as a loyalty test.
  • His family was loyal to the Capitol during the Dark Days rebellion, so they are allowed to hunt wolves, which proves critical for Ben during his Games.
• Combat Pragmatist: Pretty often, especially when he poisons the Careers instead of taking them on directly. He later requests night vision goggles to hunt down the other tributes.
• Death from Above: Narrowly survives the girl from District 3 (his second to last opponent) trying to drop a rock on his head from the top of a very large tree. In retaliation, he cuts down the tree, killing her.
• Dude, Where's My Respect?: Not included in the memorial to rebel Victors, even though he was killed during the Quell robbing the tribute training armory to supply the rebels.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: Comes across this way when he mocks Alana's district partner for sacrificing an opportunity to defend himself by tossing her a weapon as the Careers reach him. He also dismisses his district partner as a sniveling coward before killing her.
• Fingore: Alana, the female District 7 tribute, throws at an axe at him and cuts off two of his fingers.
• Genius Bruiser: A highly skilled fighter, with a decent mind for strategy (such as when he uses Doll Eyes on the Careers after deliberately ignoring the more conspicuous nightlock berries).
• I Did What I Had to Do: Seems to be his attitude towards the Games. He doesn't take pleasure in the killing, but doesn't dwell on it either.
• In Medias Res: His chapter begins after he has killed the mutt-wolf pack, then tells the story of that kill, and then flashes back to his mentors' advice, getting reaped, and joining and killing the Career pack.
• Kill Tally: Eleven tributes (the highest of any outlier tribute) — the District 8 boy, District 1 boy, his District 9 partner (Pia), District 2 boy (Cicero), District 1 girl, District 2 girl, District 4 girl, District 4 boy (Codai, Briseis's cousin), District 10 boy, District 3 girl, and District 7 girl (Alana Mallon).
• Killed Offscreen: Abrams tells the Victor mentors of the Third Quarter Quell that Ben is killed while helping him steal a whole arsenal full of weapons from the Training Center. This sets off The Purge of Victors by the Capitol even before Katniss destroys the arena.
• Klingon Promotion: Kills the District 1 male tribute and is therefore invited to join the Career alliance.
• Luke, I Might Be Your Father: His "secret" is that he always wonders whether his one-night stand with Caramel Mills resulted in Abram's conception.
• Nemean Skinning: Constantly wears the pelt from the alpha mutt-wolf he kills. This ends up saving his life in his Final Battle against Alana.
• No Sympathy: For most, if not all, of the tributes he kills, including his own district partner. When the District 10 boy begs after a long chase, Ben tells him to shut up before finishing him off, as he's not looking to eat him or anything.
• No True Scotsman: During training, Alana calls him a traitor for trying to join the Career alliance.
  • On the other end of this, Ben considers District 4 "half-baked Careers", resents the District 4 boy (Briseis's cousin) protesting his inclusion in the pack and tortures him to death while he's paralyzed by the berries.
• One-Man Army: Amasses one of the largest body-counts in the history of the Hunger Games.
• Parental Substitute: Becomes something of a father figure to Abram, mentoring him during the Games and checking in on him in Victor's Village as he's recovering from the trauma of winning. Then again, there's a possibility he might really be Abram's biological father, though the story never confirms it.
• Pre-Mortem One-Liner:
  Alana: You traitor! Traitor!
  Ben: I think you mean, "Victor."
• Quirky Ukulele: Plays one during the Victors talent show after the 68th Hunger Games Victory Tour, suggesting he may have mellowed out in his old age.
• A Real Man Is a Killer: His father told him that you should look into the eyes of someone you kill.
• Refuge in Audacity: Yells to the Gamemakers that he'll wait for Alana at the Cornucopia and that they should lead her to him. Surprisingly, they oblige.
• Renowned Selective Mentor: He retires from mentoring once Nolan is there to take over for him, and his decision to step up as Abram's mentor after so long is seen as cause for interest and excitement. His reason for doing so can be seen above under Luke, I Might Be Your Father.
• Shoot Your Mate: The Careers make him kill his district partner Pia as proof of his loyalty and worthiness. Ben has little problem killing her, as she was "a sniveling coward from the start".
• Skewed Priorities: As the trumpets ring for him, signaling his survival, and he stands over the body of the last (out of at least eleven) tributes he killed, he muses that his prep team had better scrub Alana's blood out of his wolf pelt, or there'll be hell to pay.
• Tampering with Food and Drink: Puts doll's eye, tiny white berries that act as a sedative, into the salad they receive as a feast, and then kills the entire Career alliance.
• Took a Level in Kindness: Is much more sympathetic as a mentor than he was as a tribute, to the point where it almost feels like a Heel–Face Turn. Presumably being responsible for doomed kids for so long had its effect on him, like so many of the others.
• Tough Love: Raised in a household without much sentiment, to the point that his father didn't even say goodbye to him when he was reaped, having told Ben beforehand that he had already said all he had to say.
  Mr. Cooper: If you're picked, you fight like a man. You act like a man. You come home like a man. Understand?

Nolan de Naro (40th Games Victor)

• After-Action Report: His Games are shown during Victory recap/crowning ceremony.
• Brainwashed: After his defiant, rebellious outburst at the Victor recap/crowning ceremony, Nolan is much more pliant and amenable during his follow-up interview with Caesar. However, this wears off once the Victory ceremonies are over.
• Dropped a Bridge on Him: From the Capitol's standpoint during the Third Quarter Quell. Among Capitol gamblers, he was ranked up there with Katniss, Brutus, Gloss, Cashmere, Blight and Finnick as a favorite to win, but didn't make it past the bloodbath (killed by Johanna). That's because Johanna deliberately targeted him after realizing he was going to betray the rebel alliance and go after Peeta.
• Fatal Flaw: Ultimately hates the Careers and anyone who allies with them a little too much for his own good.
• Honor Before Reason: Nolan is so determined during the crowning ceremony to defend his personal honor and to shame the Career districts for being Les Collaborateurs of the Capitol that he doesn't consider the ramifications of his rebellious rant. His brother and sister-in-law are later killed, almost certainly in retaliation for this display.
• I'll Kill You!: Screams this at the Career mentors after the Careers brutally kill his tribute during the 45th Games.
• Kill Tally: Three tributes recorded (but the outlier pack likely killed more) — the District 2 girl, District 1 girl (Satine), and District 4 boy (Perry Flynn).^note In Fall Into the River, Woof says Nolan only killed two tributes. In Nolan's chapter, it's never said who kills Satine — either Nolan or Perry — though she's killed with a mace, Nolan's weapon of choice.
• The Leader: Of the outer district alliance, which he dominates with an iron fist.
• O.C. Stand-in: First introduced in Catching Fire as District 9's male tribute in the Third Quarter Quell. No Name Given in the books.
• Pet the Dog: While he isn't fond of Abram at first due to his (relatively) privileged upbringing, when it becomes clear Abram has a real shot at winning the Games and coming home, Nolan helps Ben and Evelyn gather the sponsorship money needed to make sure it happens.
• Rage Against the Heavens: Of all the Victors, Nolan is most unabashed about criticizing the Capitol.
• Rebellious Rebel: His "secret" is that he plans to kill Peeta during the Third Quarter Quell, because he so abhors outer district tributes who team with Careers (which makes you wonder how he got along with Ben). Johanna kills him before he has the chance.
• Sir Swears-a-Lot: So infamous for this that when Capitol kids curse, their parents ask if they learned it from Nolan. Nolan lets out a flurry during the 45th Games when the Career pack hang his mentee.
• Slobs Versus Snobs: The motif the 40th Games developed between the Career alliance ("the upstanding, patriotic, noble warriors") and the outer district alliance ("the animalistic, shirking barbarians").
• Supporting Protagonist: His Games are told from the point of view of Caesar Flickerman, who, after Nolan's initial interview, expects that his Angry White Man persona would get him killed by the Gamemakers immediately.
  Caesar was willing to bet he wouldn't be seeing Nolan on that stage again. A good show, but cannon fodder in the end.

Abram Mills (69th Games Victor)

• Accidental Murder: He'd only been trying to push away the first tribute (out of two) that he killed, but the boy fell off a cliff.
• All of the Other Reindeer: Because he was relatively fat and wealthy (for District 9), he was picked on throughout his entire childhood until he became a Victor and got ripped.
• Big Damn Heroes: Gets Connor to safety after the Quell arena is destroyed and kills a peacekeeper and a career trainee who were about to kill Lyme in Arrow.
• Blood-Splattered Warrior: Described as this during the Battle of the Golden Field.
• Call-Back: Following the Battle of the Golden Field, Abram's body is found "clutching a rock wrapped in his shirt." This is same weapon he used to kill the District 4 boy to win his Games.
• Chekhov's Lecture: Evelyn prattling on about her Thirsty Desert arena proves beneficial, as his arena is one as well. Also, during training he spends his entire time at the edible plant station to avoid the Careers, who were bullying him. Nice Job Fixing It, Villain!
• Children Forced to Kill: Eighteen when he enters his Games.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Although Character Development plays a part, he turns out to be a very good fighter, with the proper motivation, defeating the (admittedly malnourished and weakened) District 4 tribute with just a few rocks wrapped up in his shirt, and later mopping the floor with Peacekeepers during both the escape from the viewing center during the Quell and the Rebellion in District 9.
• Dark Horse Victory: His was considered the greatest upset in Hunger Games history. He only scored a 3 in training, and the betting odds of him winning were 390-1. Yet, he survived due to his knowledge of survival in the desert, the splintering of the Career pack, and Ben's provision of a venom cure.
• Formerly Fat:
  • Ironically, this happens after his Games win. After watching a TV show mocking his weight, Abram reaches a Rage Breaking Point, secludes himself in his mansion, and has an offscreen Training Montage. By the time his Victory tour comes, he has already replaced much of his fat with muscle, and he eventually comes to rival Brutus, Phoebus, and even Connor as the most muscular Victor.
  • Deconstructed by his "secret", which is that his body transformation does not cure his lingering insecurity, so the only women he trusts are prostitutes, because he at least knows why they are interested.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: Goes from being the fat tribute who only scored a 3 to the Frontline General of District 9's La Résistance.
• From Zero to Hero: From the perspective of District 9, he goes from the "fat rich boy", to unexpected Victor, to Rebel Leader. By the time he dies, he's their most revered hero and legend, and they build a monument to his grave and establish an honor guard in his memory.
• Improvised Weapon: He wins his games by using a shirt filled with rocks like bolas (something he repeats during the Rebellion), and in Arrow he rips off a staircase railing and impales a peacekeeper who helped massacre a group of District 2 rebels he and Lyme were trying to meet.
• Kill Tally:
  • During his Games, two tributes — the District 3 boy and District 4 boy.
  • During the Rebellion, lots and lots of Peacekeepers.
• Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe: His birth may be the result of a one-night stand his mom had with Ben Cooper. Even though Abram looks nothing like Ben and Caramel is a confirmed widow, the timing is close enough to make it a possibility. Ultimately, it's the reason why Ben comes out of retirement to mentor Abram.
• Momma's Boy: Caramel, his widowed mother who runs the district's leading chocolate shop, is his only friend growing up. After his victory, she is the only one who can truly console him. When Abram returns from the Capitol following the Third Quarter Quell, he finds her hanging from a tree with a death warrant ordered by President Snow himself. In the end, he's buried next to her after his own death.
• O.C. Stand-in: Katniss makes reference in Catching Fire to a Victor who only scored a 3.
• Rebel Leader: Along with Cotton, he is most responsible for getting the surviving Victors out of the Capitol following the Third Quarter Quell and back to their districts. Once he returns to District 9 and finds his mother dead, he rallies the people there against the Peacekeepers and leads the rebels to victory. He is ultimately found dead on the battlefield in the Final Battle in District 9 against the Capitol, and his body is personally carried back to and laid to rest at his mother's chocolate shop, where a monument is built and an honor guard is established.
• These Hands Have Killed: Horrified by his Accidental Murder of the District 3 boy, and how it makes him a murderer just like the rest of them, but is Genre Savvy enough to hide his face from the cameras so the audience wouldn't see his tears and take them as a sign of weakness.
• Together in Death: He's buried next to his mother after his own death.
• True Companions: With Connor Murphy, who mentors alongside him and later recruits him to the Rebellion, with Abram sacrificing an opportunity to rendezvous with the escape craft heading for District 13 with Haymitch and Cotton in order to go rescue Connor and some of the other rebel mentors.
• Young and in Charge: 24 years old when he leads the District 9 rebellion against the Capitol.

District 10

"Instead of fighting the Capitol or the rebels, District 10 had fought each other."'

Districtwide Tropes

• Bestiality Is Depraved: The Capitol has this stereotype of those from District 10, Anasazi and Settlers alike. This contributes to the Settlers' decision to turn on the Capitol during the Rebellion.
• The Cavalry: Once the Peacekeepers abandon the Settlers after the Death March into the desert, the Anasazi arrive to save them and together they wipe out the Peacekeepers.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: The ultimate defeat of the Peacekeepers is described as "not a battle so much as a brief massacre" and lasts for only four minutes.
• Death March: When the Peacekeepers realize that the Settlers have turned against them, they burn the settlements and march the Settlers across the desert for two days with just one water bottle per person. They plan to leave them stranded to die of thirst before the Anasazi put a stop to that.
• Divided We Fall: The Settlers and Anasazi fought each other in the Dark Days, and it is their beginning to make peace that gives the district more hope and strength.
• Everyone Has Standards: The entire district is abhorred at what the Capitol did to Danny and Elena's family, and that along with the Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal is what drives the Settlers into uniting with the Anasazi when the Second Rebellion starts.
• Evil Colonialist: The Settlers (at least initially). They seem to be racially "white", and they look down on and oppress the Anasazi. It's never said where they originally came from, but Bovina, when giving a history of District 10 to Enobaria and Beetee, says they arrived two hundred years before the Dark Days, suggesting they may have been among the white nationalists who migrated from the American South to what would become District 1.
• Heel–Race Turn: The love between Elena Perez (Anasazi) and Danny Hooley (Settler) begins this for the Settlers, culminating in them siding with the Anasazi against the Capitol during the Mockingjay Rebellion.
• I Surrender, Suckers: The Settlers act complacent and utterly defeated during the Death March, but once the Anasazi appear, they pull out all the weapons they are secretly carrying, and together with the Anasazi they wipe out the Peacekeepers.
• Insistent Terminology: Many in District 10 continue to refer to their home as Texas.
• Lingering Social Tensions: The love between Elena and Danny does much to heal the rift between the Anasazi and Settlers, but there "were still Anasazi who would still never trust anything to do with the Settlers and avoided all unnecessary contact," and there were still "Settlers [who] did not and would not see Anasazi as anything but a lower species, a subhuman mix of man and dog". Nevertheless, by the time of the Mockingjay Rebellion, tensions had sufficiently healed to the point that both sides fought together against the Capitol.
• Men of Sherwood: The large interchangeable mass of Anasazi and Settler rebels of District 10 don't get a Flawless Victory against the Capitol like District 3 does, but after a string of retaliatory executions, they lure the peacekeepers into a cunning trap and then take them out with low casualties, while most of the districts experience major losses of life.
• Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal: The Settlers are loyal to the Capitol during the Dark Days Rebellion but come to hate the Capitol due to the "crude and vile stereotypes about the District's affinity for animal husbandry becoming the staple of late-night Capitol television", Settler farms being confiscated to line the pockets of Capitol investors, and the deaths of so many children in the Games.
• Noble Savage: The Anasazi, who seem to be a Native American/Latin American blend and are portrayed as being very religious and in a far more positive light than the Settlers.

Bovina Martinez (12th Games Victor)

• Cool Big Sis: Is beloved by her younger twin siblings, the only members of the family not to shun her, largely due to being too young to understand the shame of being reaped.
• Cool Old Lady: Oldest living Victor following the Mockingjay Revolution. At the age of 83, she goes skydiving off the roof of the Remake Center.
• Due to the Dead: Every year she lays flowers on the grave of Jon Parsons (until the Capitol blew up the gravesite), the male tribute chosen by the Anasazi and approved by her to go into the First Quarter Quell.
• Fight Unscene: Her chapter focuses on her return to District 10 after her Games and says almost nothing about them.
• I Have No Son!: Her entire family disowns her after she is reaped, as Settlers believe only disloyal people are reaped.
• Iconic Outfit: Nearly every time she appears in the story, she is wearing a shawl.
• In-Universe Catharsis: After her mentee in the 45th Games is burned alive by the Career pack, Bovina calmly leaves the Control Center, walks into a park, and "massacres an innocent flowerbed".
  Bovina: I'm catharting!
• Kill Tally: Two tributes — the District 6 girl and District 4 boy.
• Loved by All: Among the Anasazi, Bovina is universally adored and called "Maria", after the ancient mother-goddess, because her Victor winnings for District 10 provided desperately needed food and medicine. Bovina is far less popular among the Settlers (see I Have No Son! below), though they warm up to her somewhat over time.
• May–December Romance: Had a long-lasting relationship with Raoul, the rebel soldier assigned to mentor her, who was at least twenty years her senior (making him more on the younger side of this, but still with a big age gap).
• Mighty Whitey: Though of mixed ancestry, she was raised as a Settler, but when her family rejects her after the Games, the Anasazi not only embrace her, they practically worship her, because her Victor winnings help feed them and provide them with medicine for the next year.
  Bovina: [E]ven the most secluded Anasazi tribe practically worshipped me as a goddess in human form for sixty years.
• Old Soldier: Despite being around 80 years old, she leads the Anasazi's charge against the Peacekeepers during the Mockingjay Rebellion.
• Rambling Old Man Monologue: Gives one as she testifies before Coin's Kangaroo Court that Jade was a rebel. She goes on for forty-five minutes.
  Bovina: Well, let's see. It all started back around the Fifty-First. I was at the doctor getting my bunions checked, there was this handsome orderly there with a name like Putnic. Parsnip? Something ridiculous. Anyway, like I said, my bunions had been acting up and I went in to get my back reset as well…
• Sole Survivor: The last remaining District 10 Victor by story's end and the only surviving Victor to have been born before the Hunger Games began.
• Surprise Witness: Makes a surprise appearance at Jade's trial to testify that Jade was working with La Résistance even before the Mockingjay Rebellion.
• Teacher/Student Romance: Develops a romantic relationship with her mentor, Raoul.
• Unlucky Childhood Friend: Her "secret" is that, along with loving Raoul, she is also in love with Mags but never has the courage to tell her.

Elena Perez (34th Games Victor)

• Big Damn Kiss: Has one with her boyfriend Danny on the reaping stage, assuming it would be a Last Kiss. This exposes their relationship to the whole district and caused a lot of dropped jaws.
• Big Damn Reunion: Has an unprecedented one with Danny in the Capitol when she wins her Games, in which they were reunited during her final interview.
• Break the Cutie: Is Happily Married with a family until her children are reaped for and killed in the Second Quarter Quell. This begins a Descent into Addiction for her, and two years later her husband Danny kills himself.
• Children Forced to Kill: Eighteen when she enters her first Games.^note which means she is fifty-nine during the Third Quarter Quell.
• Cool Big Sis: Takes on this role to the tributes she mentors, getting to know them as well as possible, focusing intently on their survival (to no avail). This ends though when her children are reaped and killed, and she descends into addiction.
• The Dead Have Names: Refuses to emotionally distance herself from her mentees despite their almost certain impending death.
• Deliberately Non-Lethal Attack: Chooses not to kill Brandon McNulty, her district partner, because she does not want to perpetuate the hatred between Anasazi and Settlers. Instead, she crushes his knee and leaves him for dead.
• Descent into Addiction: Elena turns to "cloudpowder" after her children are reaped in the Second Quarter Quell and killed in the arena.
• Florence Nightingale Effect: Elena and Danny fall in love when she nurses him back to health after he falls into a deep ravine.
• The Greatest Story Never Told: Dies trying to help Katniss and Peeta, imagining herself and Danny in them, but never has a chance to explain this to anyone, and dies wrongly thinking that she failed to make a difference.
• Happily Married: For fifteen years, but it doesn't survive the deaths of their children, with Danny spending months trying to snap her out of her depression before giving up.
• Heroic Sacrifice: At the Third Quarter Quell Cornucopia, she lunges at Gloss but is quickly cut down. This, however, allows Beetee to grab the coil of wire that Katniss would later use to take the arena down.
• Kill Tally: Just one tribute — Bear MacFarlene, the District 12 boy, who Elena killed by burying a tomahawk in his chest.
• Let the Past Burn: Her "secret" is that she burns all of Danny's and her children's belongings, "so she wouldn't have to live with their ghosts."
• Mama Bear: Fights hard but futilely to prepare her children for the Games after they are reaped, drilling them in combat and survival skills and begging Caesar to make them shine in the interviews.
• Mercy Kill: All the Victors agree before the Quell that Elena should die a quick, painless death at the bloodbath, so the "Capitol won't have the privilege of seeing her turn into another Annie Cresta".
• Nothing Personal: She and Bear MacFarlane tell each other that they have no desire to kill the other, but they both want to go home.
• Obnoxious In-Laws: Subverted. Their romance initially comes as an unwelcome shock to their families, but when Elena reveals during the interviews that she saved Danny's life, Danny's mother walks up to Elena's family, who were gnawing on tesserae rations, and awkwardly gives them a loaf of bread and a jar of beef-spread. This is one of the first displays of the healing that their love would bring to the district.
• O.C. Stand-in: First introduced in Catching Fire as District 10's female tribute in the Third Quarter Quell. No Name Given in the books.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Nearly a decade into her Descent into Addiction, long after she's stopped noticing or caring about what goes on in the Games, Elena is frightened enough by the violent attitude and racism of Roan Tully to lock the door of her (Anasazi) tribute in case he wants to try anything. Later, when the 3rd Quarter Quell is announced, she tells Bovina that she'll volunteer for her, if it comes to that.
• Portmanteau Couple Name: "Danlena". Created in-universe in the Capitol when Panem learns of the relationship between the Star-Crossed Lovers of District 10.
• Ritual Magic: The superstitions Elena tries to do this for her tributes every year — lighting candles, leaving offerings of food at the foot of the mountains, leaving a glass of bourbon by the pictures of the tributes she has failed to save, wearing a lucky necklace, and keeping a picture of Veala and Charlie with her. But every year it makes no difference and ends the same way, as revealed in Chaff's chapter.
  The vitals have flat-lined and Bovina gives her shoulder a quick squeeze she doesn't feel. Elena finishes out the year with her last tradition. She tugs the picture of her husband and children to her chest and sobs quietly.
• Star-Crossed Lovers: Ur-Example, before Katniss and Peeta. Elena is Anasazi, and Danny is a Settler. The two groups had long been very hostile towards each other, and Elena and Danny initially have to hide their love. However, Elena's victory—and her refusal to kill her Settler District partner—bring the two sides together, creating much warmer relations in District 10. The Capitol, therefore, decides to enforce this trope by reaping both of Elena and Danny's children. This leads to Elena's drug addiction and Danny's suicide.
• Thwarted Escape: She and Danny had planned to ask Bovina to help them sneak out of the district and run away into the wilderness following what would've been their final reaping.
• What You Are in the Dark: Elena finds Danny badly injured, alone and helpless after a hunting trip for Anasazi that his friends had forced him to come on. Elena could have easily killed him with no possibility of punishment, but chooses to save his life and nurse him back to health even before falling in love with him.

Roan Tully (58th Games Victor)

• Ain't Too Proud to Beg: Defied throughout his original Games, where he refused to ask Bovina for any help, even when he desperately needed it, because he refused to get help from an Anasazi. During the Third Quarter Quell, however, Roan finally begs Bovina for help when mutts come after him, but Bovina ignores his cries.
• And This Is for...: Shows a twisted, wordless version of this when he stabs his District partner seventeen times, once for every Settler child to go into the Games.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Only to the Capitol though. They consider him to be a "nice charming lad" who shouldn't have ended up in the Games (until he became a Victor) and mistake his frequent racist tirades towards Bovina and Elena for joking endearment.
• Category Traitor: Joins the Career Victors in looking down on the outer district Victors.
  Roan: Damn out districts. Always looking for a reason to play victim.
  Crystal: You're from an out district.
• Children Forced to Kill: Eighteen when he enters his first Games.^note which means he is thirty-five during the Third Quarter Quell.
• Cowboy: Comes from the wealthy ranch owners on the eastern plains.
• Death from Above: Rolled a few boulders onto the boy from 3 and the girl from 9 as they slept.
• The Dragon: Briefly serves as one to Matthias when they decide to kill Katniss together, and quickly turns into Dragon Their Feet.
• Executive Meddling: In-Universe. We see both sides of this when, while wandering through the Quell arena, he vows to kill Katniss for the camera's benefit. President Snow sends the Gamemakers a message ordering them to give Roan everything he needs. Plutarch then destroys that note, pretends it was lost in transit and ensures that Roan is quickly killed.
• Hated by All: When the surviving tributes go to District 10 to collect information about him, not only do the Anasazi hate him because of his flagrant, brutal racism, but even the other Settlers don't want to talk about him.
• Jerkass: One of the few, if not the only, unpleasant Victors who could honestly be described as this, instead of being a Magnificent Bastard, Jerk with a Heart of Gold, or Tragic Monster.
• Karma Houdini Warranty: After years of using racial slurs against Bovina (and Elena) and refusing to give her any credit for helping him (albeit very grudgingly) win his Games, he cries out for Bovina's help when he's cornered in the Third Quarter Quells arena. Bovina, sitting in the Control Center, simply picks up her stuff and walks away.
• Kill Tally: Six tributes — District 4 boy, District 10 partner, District 3 boy, District 9 girl, District 1 boy, and the District 2 boy.
• "L" Is for "Dyslexia": His "secret" is that he's so severely dyslexic that he is functionally illiterate.
• Misplaced Retribution: His above-mentioned And This Is for... moment.
• Not Enough to Bury: Going from canon, there's not much left of him once the Beast is through with him.
• O.C. Stand-in: First introduced in Catching Fire as District 10's male tribute in the Third Quarter Quell. No Name Given in the books.
• Oh, Crap!: Three of them, in fact.
  • When he was first reaped for the Hunger Games, the commentators remark that he resembles a lamb being led to the slaughter.
  • During the Third Quarter Quell, he has this reaction upon seeing Finnick foil his and Mathias's plan to kill Katniss.
  • Finally, he has a Freak Out when he smells the Gamemakers pumping the smell of bloody meat into the arena to attract a vicious muttation that's minutes away from killing him. When his attempt to escape brings him smack into a force field, all he can do is scream for help to Bovina, to no avail.
• One Degree of Separation: Crippled a stablehand by crushing his foot. That stablehand would later be reaped as the male tribute for the 74th Hunger Games, aka Katniss's Games.
• The One Guy: District 10's only male Victor.
• One-Man Army: As much of a Hate Sink as he is, the Capitol and the Careers are impressed by his victory, as he kills three Careers on his own: strangling the District 4 boy after a four-minute fight when he'd gone at him bare-handed, and taking on and killing the boys from 1 and 2 at the same time in a knife fight.
• Politically Incorrect Villain: Unlike many of the Settlers, his family never gives up their hatred of the Anasazi. Roan never wastes an occasion to call his fellow Victors Bovina and Elena "Sazi bitch" and "Sazi whore". As noted, this ends up getting him killed in the Games.
• Properly Paranoid: After allying with Matthias, he is reluctant to trust Finnick Odair to help them, but Matthias wants Finnick's celebrity and combat skills, and a few lies from Finnick assuage Roan's concerns. Once the Quell starts, Roan and Matthias find out the hard way that Finnick is very much a loyal Rebel, and one who now sees them as a threat.
• Rewarded as a Traitor Deserves: Despite his loyalty to the Capitol, Roan is thrown into the Third Quarter Quell to die.
• Rugged Scar: Has one across his face from the climax of his Games, during a knife fight between him and the Career boys from Districts 1 and 2.
• Sadist: His hatch is torturing Anasazi.
• Salt the Earth: After strangling the District 4 boy, who is guarding the Career supplies, and filling his pack with choice supplies, he tries to destroy or spoil everything else before some bat-mutts drive him away.
• Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: A rare outer-District child who enjoyed watching the Games in general, and the deaths of Anasazi tributes in particular. A surviving news broadcast of the reactions in the Districts from the 48th Hunger Games (when Roan was eight years old) show him laughing merrily as Brutus caves an Anasazi girl's skull in.
• Ungrateful Bastard: Viciously murders his district partner after she expresses happiness at his survival and shows him a watering hole she'd found. And when he wins due to Bovina's sponsor gift of a butcher knife, he continues to throw racist tirades at her, treat any and all Anasazi like dirt, and never acknowledge her role in his victory.
• Unproblematic Prostitution: Doesn't mind being pimped out by Snow, considering it to just be free sex.
• Victory by Endurance: Downplayed. To quote the story, after his final fight:
  Roan ended up with a pierced lung and broken ribs and a slash across his face that ran from his jaw to the opposite temple, but the cannon sounded for the boy from 2 first.

District 11

"In District 11, they are angry. They are always angry here."

Districtwide Tropes

• Animal Theme Naming: Several tributes are named after birds, including Wren (both the Victor and the tribute for the 57th Games), Robin (52nd Games), and Starling (62nd Games).
• Dying Alone: Common way for District 11 tributes to die, both because District 11 tributes tend to be loners and because several die before they're found by any other tributes. The girl in the 45th Games, Irri in the Second Quarter Quell, and Chaff in the Third Quarter Quell all die this way (though Chaff is killed by Brutus). Seeder barely avoids this fate in her original Games.
• Floral Theme Naming: Many residents of the District have agricultural names, including Millet (25th Games), Seeder (31st Games), Chaff (45th Games), Birch, Cornflower, Hyssop, and Irri (presumably short for 'irrigation', 50th Games), Sower (52nd Games), Abundance (57th Games), and Rue and Thresh (74th Games).
• Ineffectual Loner: They typically refuse to ally with other tributes –- even each other –- as a matter of district pride. This is likely why they only produce four Victors, despite their tributes being typically large and strong. Indeed, of their Victors only one — Wren — had an ally, and she was very reluctant to do so. Chaff also teams up with the boy from District 10 to loot the Cornucopia but is noncommittal about forming a permanent alliance, and his partner is killed as they flee.
  • Seeder provides some justification for Abundance's (57th Games) refusal to have sponsors. Abundance doesn't want to be beholden to anyone, and thus vulnerable to their sexual coercion if she does end up winning. Seeder shows approval for this strategy.
• Not Used to Freedom: Subverted! Despite decades of brutal Capitol rule, the people of District 11 collectively enjoy the full fruit—figuratively and literally—of their hard-fought freedom.
• Pyrrhic Victory: Subverted. Despite the high costs of victory, the people of District 11 are ecstatic to be free of Capitol rule.
  Their fields are ravaged. Their homes are cinder. Their silos are toppled. Their population is decimated. Their Victors are dead. But they are free.
• Total Party Kill: All of the District 11 Victors die within the final year of the Hunger Games (and in order of their victories).
  • Orchus, assuming he is the old man at Katniss and Peter's Victory tour, is executed after giving the protest whistle.
  • Wren commits suicide after learning she will be reaped for the Third Quarter Quell.
  • Seeder and Chaff are killed in the Quell.
• Walls of Tyranny: Erected around District 11 after rebels from there bombed the Eighth Games arena. They are finally torn down once District 11 gains its freedom.

Orchus (3rd Games Victor)

• Barehanded Blade Block: Catches a knife in midair that Ahenobarbus threw at an Avox.
• Canon Character All Along: It's strongly hinted that he is the old man from District 11 who gave Rue's four-note whistle during Katniss and Peeta's Victory Tour there and who was then summarily executed.
• Children Forced to Kill: Seventeen when he enters the Games.
• Cool Old Guy: Assuming he is the person mentioned under Canon Character All Along, then he has a reputation for this even before the incident that made him famous.
• Dumb, but Diligent: Not considered bright—largely because he didn't say much—but is remembered in his district as being very strong and a hard worker.
• Gentle Giant: Reportedly 6'5 and 245 lbs, but was uninterested in fighting and only won by accident.
• Kill Tally: One tribute — the District 4 girl.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: Ahenobarbus thinks this about him.
• Only One Name: His background is so obscure that his last name is not even known, even at his reaping.
• The Quiet One: Was not known to say much.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: Even in-universe people don't know what happened to Orchus. His "secret" is that he left District 11 for five years after the 17th Games to live in the wilderness. When he returns, no one recognizes him, and he chooses to live in obscurity. But see Canon Character All Along above.
• Wins by Doing Absolutely Nothing: Wins his Games without ever having moved from his initial plate. The other final tribute, a girl from District 4, lunges at him with a scythe, and he bats her away without seeming to realize the threat she posed. She then falls into a pit of sharpened stakes, allowing Orchus to win by default.

Wren Lessia (20th Games Victor)

• Always a Bigger Fish: Wren was in the midst of being drowned by the District 2 male tribute when the District 1 male tribute stabs him in the neck.
• Boom, Headshot!: Self inflicted, through her temple.
• Breast Attack: The District 1 male tribute cuts off her right breast.
• Children Forced to Kill: Eighteen when she enters her first Games.
• Cool Aunt: Her aunts taught her how to fight.
• Driven to Suicide: Likely because she learned she would be sent back into the arena at the Third Quarter Quell.
• Due to the Dead: For each of her tributes who dies in the arena, Wren takes a seed, whispers all the encouragements she wishes she could have said to them directly, and buries it in District 11.
  • In a darker sense, she also chooses to kill herself in the tribute graveyard, surrounded by those she failed to save.
• Fire-Forged Friends: Her alliance with Rem, the male tribute from District 7, who Wren describes as becoming like a brother to her.
• Isle of Giant Horrors: Her arena is a series of islands, each with different dangerous features. The island she and Rem camp out on is infested with mutts.
• Kill Tally: Two tributes — the District 2 girl and District 1 boy.
• Mutual Kill: Subverted in her final duel with the District 1 boy. Wren is willing to kill him, even though she knows this means he will kill her, but she surprisingly survives his attack. He doesn't survive hers.
• Self-Induced Allergic Reaction: Her "secret" is she eats nuts, which she's allergic to, anytime she wants to get out of a Capitol-mandated event.
• Sorry, I'm Gay: Rem hoped flirting with Wren would cause her to want to ally with him. Though that doesn't exactly work out as planned, she takes pity on him, and they end up forming the strongest alliance in their Games.
• Victory by Endurance: After being severely wounded by the District 1 male tribute, Wren lays bleeding for several hours until she hears the cannon for the female District 6 tribute, whose death isn't shown or explained.
• We Win, Because You Didn't: Willing to accept a Mutual Kill with the District 1 boy rather than let a Career win, and she is the first person recorded saying, "Anyone but a Career."

Seeder Crue (31st Games Victor)

• Anti-Mentor: Chaff completely ignores her advice about avoiding the Career pack and instead kills every single one of them.
• Big Eater: Her "secret" is she would gorge herself in response to her near starvation during her Games, only to throw up all the food out of shame (though not apparently due to weight concerns.) She breaks this habit after witnessing Haymitch's Descent into Addiction.
• Children Forced to Kill: Seventeen when she enters her first Games.^note which means she is sixty-one during the Third Quarter Quell. Though in her case, this is defied, as she is the only Victor who did not kill another tribute.
• Family Extermination: Both her father and brother are taken away for conscripted labor; her father returns medically lobotomized, and her brother never returns. Later, her husband is killed by Peacekeepers for being out past curfew.
• Handshake Refusal: Antigone (who killed Seeder's very first tribute) offers to shake her hand during the 45th Games when Chaff kills Antigone's tribute. Seeder completely ignores her.
  Antigone: Fucking lower district pride.
• Get It Over With: Asks Enobaria to kill her quickly. Enobaria obliges by stabbing her in the throat with a trident.
• La Résistance: After her husband is killed, Plutarch Heavensbee gives Seeder a discreet call recruiting her to join. She is among several Victors who sacrifice themselves to ensure Katniss survives and makes it out of the arena.
• O.C. Stand-in: First introduced in Catching Fire as District 11's female tribute in the Third Quarter Quell. It's also revealed here that she sent Katniss the bread after Rue's death, and it was her idea to send the sleep syrup to knock out Peeta.
• Odd Friendship: While she is generally hostile to Careers, she and Briseis usually comfort each other when their tributes die and bake each other muffins. She also sends Brutus orchids on his birthday and gets along somewhat well with Enobaria, largely due to Enobaria having ancestors from District 11 and having helped save them from a Reaver attack shortly after her victory.
• Rejected Marriage Proposal: Her live-in boyfriend had been asking her to marry him for ten years, but she continually refuses until Chaff's win, which makes her so happy that she proposes to him.
• Spider-Sense: Implied when she was reaped: "Some gut instinct warned her right before the name was pulled."
• The Stoic: After her father tells her not to cry when he is being taken away to forced labor, she never cries again. Even when her brother doesn't come back and her father returns as an Empty Shell. Even when she is publicly whipped. Even when she is reaped. Even through her Games. Even through the deaths of all but one of her mentees. Even when her husband is killed. Even when Enobaria is about to kill her.
  • Not So Stoic: Cries tears of joy and relief when Chaff survives his Games. And on her wedding day, some smoke gets in her eyes.
• Supreme Chef: The other Victors are constantly commenting on how delicious her baked goods are.
• A Taste of the Lash: Publicly whipped when she was thirteen after trying to steal a pomegranate for her father.
• Team Mom: Chaff calls her "Mama Seeder".
• Thou Shall Not Kill: Only tribute to win the Hunger Games without having any kills counted to her.^note Mitt didn't kill anyone either, but the Gamemakers added some Career kills to him to make him seem more exciting.
• Time Lapse: The Gamemakers do one of her during Games of her physically deteriorating due to starvation.
• Victory by Endurance/Wins by Doing Absolutely Nothing: Runs as far away from the Cornucopia as possible and keeps on running, such that no other tribute ever finds her. She survives on rainfall and the one pack of crackers Wren is able to send her. By the time the Games end, Seeder has slipped into a coma but nevertheless outlasts all of the other tributes for a record 44 days.

Chaff Habarti (45th Games Victor)

• An Arm and a Leg: The District 2 female tribute cuts his hand off, but this still doesn't stop him from killing her.
• Best Friend: With Haymitch.
• Bludgeoned to Death: Beats the girls from Districts 1 and 4 to death with a pipe.
• Camping a Crapper: Attacks the District 2 girl while she is going to bathroom.
• Children Forced to Kill: Eighteen when he enters his first Games.^note which means he is forty-eight during the Third Quarter Quell.
• Choke Holds: Chokes the District 4 male tribute to death while the boy from 4 is masturbating. He then beats the District 4 boy's corpse with a pipe in order to send a message to the Careers.
• Determined Defeatist: One of the Victors who knows of the conspiracy to break Katniss and Peeta out of the 3rd Quarter Quell arena, but according to Haymitch he didn't think that the Rebellion was strong enough to succeed yet.
• Dying Alone: His "secret" is he is afraid of this, and is therefore devastated when Peeta volunteers for Haymitch, because he knows this will happen to him. It does.
• Head Crushing: Kills the District 1 boy by crushing his skull with his one remaining hand.
• Kill Tally: Six tributes — the District 4 boy, District 1 girl, District 4 girl, District 2 girl, District 2 boy, and District 1 boy.
• Made of Iron: Takes down the entire Career pack, much of which he does with only one hand (see Pre-Mortem One-Liner quote). But the Victors are perhaps most impressed when he cauterizes his own wound without screaming.
  A Victor^*probably Honorius, based on context clues and process of elimination: By the State, Seeder. Your boy is something else.
• Mook Horror Show: Super strong, Nigh-Invulnerable killer slowly stalks through the shadows and kills off each person individually while an audience watches on the edge of their seats. Except in this case, the slasher is the hero.
• O.C. Stand-in: First introduced in Catching Fire as District 11's male tribute in the Third Quarter Quell. He's the last tribute to be killed by the Career pack. In the novel it says he is missing a hand, and this story reveals it was cut off by the District 2 girl.
• Polluted Wasteland: The theme of the 44th Games arena.
• Pre-Mortem One-Liner: To the District 1 male tribute, Chaff's final kill.
  District 1 boy: But … but … you have only one bloody hand!
  Chaff: One is all I need.
• Real Men Wear Pink: His sitting room has "delicate china figurines displayed on a cherry-wood cabinet".
• Scary Black Man: Particularly to the Careers.
• Switching P.O.V.: His Games are largely shown from the point of view of the different Victors watching their mentees from the Control Center. Only when he reunites with Seeder do we get his perspective.
• These Hands Have Killed: Once the immediate shock of winning his Games wears off, Chaff mourns for all the Careers he killed.
  Chaff: I'm alive. I'm alive and I killed so many. So many, Mama Seeder.
  Seeder: That's not on you. Not on you. All six of them volunteered. They knew what they was getting into. You don't beat yourself up over them, you hear?
  Chaff: I will. I will.
  Seeder: I know.
• Worthy Opponent: How the Career Victors view him, though Seeder refuses to accept their praise and Chaff develops a particular hatred for Careers.

District 12

"District 12 only gets a few months of warm, clear weather a year, and a couple weeks of that is ruined by the Hunger Games. The rest of the season is dedicated to grieving and trying to get on with our lives. Until next year."

— Camden Donner

Districtwide Tropes

• Butt-Monkey: Always used as the go-to example of the most pathetic district and tributes.
  [M]ost of the districts could comfort themselves with the knowledge that it could be worse. They could be district 6. Or 11. Or – heh heh, wink wink – District 12.
• Dark Horse Victory: Despite being the most disparaged district, it is tied with District 2 with the most surviving Victors following the Mockingjay Rebellion: three — Haymitch, Katniss, and Peeta.
• The Dog Bites Back: The perpetual underdogs, all of the District 12 Victors won their Games by making fools of the Capitol, with the last Victors, Katniss and Peeta, providing the spark needed to ignite the people of the districts into full revolt, leading to the end of the Hunger Games entirely.
• Floral Theme Naming: Many of its citizens are named after plants, including Poppy (10th Games), Wally (full name Walnut, 50th Games), Lil (full name Lilac, 57th Games), Katniss, and Primrose.
• High Turnover Rate: Ever since the death of Camden Donner, the first Victor of District 12, the escort of the District served as the mentor for its tributes, leading to this for the District's entire team. It wasn't until Haymitch that District 12 had a consistent mentor again.
• Protest Song: Its Arrow chapter is a set of new verses to "The Hanging Tree" added after the Mockingjay Rebellion.

Camden Donner (10th Games Victor)

• All of the Other Reindeer: Implied during the 11th Games, in which all of the male tributes who have Victors for mentors — Districts 1, 2, 4, 7 and 9 — form an alliance, but District 12 is excluded. This suggests Camden is not welcomed into the "Old Boys Club".
• An Arm and a Leg: According to his journal, Camden had half his arm torn off by a mutt "with a lot of hair and teeth" in the Games before receiving a sickle from his mentor.
• Captain's Log: Camden's chapter is told through his journal entries during his Games, alongside commentary from Peeta, Haymitch, and Johanna.
• Doomed by Canon: The first chapter of the first book mentioned that District 12 only had two past Victors and that Haymitch was the only living one.
• Driven to Suicide: After his sister Ryla was reaped for the 15th Games and then killed during the Bloodbath, he went home and killed himself by grabbing the electric fence around District 12.
• Family Extermination: His family signed the Declaration of Freedom on behalf of District 12 at the start of the Dark Days, so most of his family was either killed during the Dark Days Rebellion or was especially prone to be reaped. His uncle was reaped for the 7th Games, younger brother Thom for the 8th Games, his sister Ryla for the 15th Games, and his niece Maysilee for the Second Quarter Quell.
• Famous Ancestor: To Maysilee and her niece, Madge Undersee.
• Flaw Exploitation: Like future District 12 Victors Haymitch, Katniss, and Peeta, Camden won by finding a flaw in the arena or rules that the Gamemakers didn't intend. In Camden's case, it was a series of salt mines, where he was able to hide — and even escape from the arena — until all the other tributes were dead.
• I Did What I Had to Do: He didn't want to kill others but felt he had to to survive. Though he claims that killing proved easier than he expected, he has a Heroic BSoD after killing the girl from District 8.
  Camden: Does water wash away blood? It's not washing away.
• It Will Never Catch On: He and his district partner Poppy are the first to be dressed as coal miners, and he hopes this doesn't become a trend for future District 12 tributes. It does, making this more of a hope than a prediction.
• Kill Tally: Two tributes — the District 2 boy and District 8 girl.
• Practically Different Generations: It was noted that Camden was close in age to one of his uncles who died in the 7th Games, meaning there was a significant age gap between Camden's parents (or at least, one of his parents) and his uncle.
• Sinister Scythe: He was sent a sickle as a gift on the second day of his Games.
• Swiss Bank Account: His "secret" is that sets up a secret bank account for his family, and after committing suicide his brother Jon inherits it and opens up a sweetshop.
• Victory by Endurance: He stumbled across some old mines and stayed there until everyone else dies.
• We Hardly Knew Ye: Killed himself five years after his own Games and doesn't appear in any of the other Victors' chapters.

Haymitch Abernathy (Second Quarter Quell Victor)

• Best Friend: With Chaff.
• Critical Staffing Shortage: Technically in charge of District 12's Resistance cell, but, as per the books, it's unclear if that cell even has anyone besides Haymitch himself. This is perhaps why he comments that he has "nothing to report" during a Resistance meeting during Cecelia's Games as everyone else is describing how much rebel support there is in their district.
• The Dead Have Names: Remembers the names of all the 47 tributes who died in the Second Quarter Quell and the names and faces of all the 48 District 12 tributes whom he mentored, but his "secret" is that he cannot remember the color of his murdered girlfriend's eyes.
• Descent into Addiction: Was an alcoholic by the age of 18 due to a combination of what he went through during the Second Quarter Quell, what Snow did to his family, and the stress of mentoring and seeing all his mentees die year after year.
• Drowning My Sorrows: Is pretty clearly doing this in most of his scenes.
• Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy: Throws a knife at Justus from only three feet away and misses.
• Informed Attribute: Ares mentions that he has a forlorn, philosophical side (although the books and movies show some of this) that comes out when he's drunk.
• Kill Tally: It was already mentioned in canon that he was responsible for killing 2 of the 3 Careers (one of whom was Brock Burns from District 4) that attacked him in the arena, and it is likely that Gossamer's death (District 1) was attributed to him after the stunt with the forcefield.
• Rebel Leader: By the time of the Mockingjay Revolution, he seems to have replaced Mags as the lead Victor in La Résistance. This is likely because Mags has aged out of the role, and his role as Katniss's mentor gave him greater prominence.
• Recovered Addict: Zig-zagged. He goes back to drinking after the sobriety forced upon him by living in District 13, but he doesn't seem to be the fall-down drunk he once was.
• Rescue Arc: Among the Victors who go on the rescue mission to save Katniss from Luster and the "Snowmen".
• Sommelier Speak: Identifies various types of whiskey by their taste while blindfolded during the Victors talent show.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: With Blight's lover Jason during the one rebel meeting they attend together. Jason is hostile towards Haymitch, because Jason's cousin was a tribute who Haymitch wounded during the Second Quarter Quell (and then was finished off by Maysilee).
• "You!" Exclamation: Gives one when he sees Boudicca in Katniss's house.

Peeta Mellark (74th Games Victor)

• Ascended Fanboy: Downplayed, but long before his victory (and before he reached reaping age) he and his brothers would pretend they were Victors such as Brutus, Finnick and Gloss while wrestling together.
• Audience Surrogate: As the newest Victor and the motivator of the Victors Project, he is the conduit for learning all the Victors' stories.
• Dramatic Drop: Drops the cake he baked for Katniss's birthday when she tells him she's pregnant.
• Everyone Can See It: His attraction to Katniss is obvious to their mutual friend Madge (a distant relative of Camden), who offers to introduce them when their twelve, with Peeta turning red and refusing.
• Failure Montage: His chapter describes thirteen separate times he has ruined a cake.
• Forgotten First Meeting: First met Finnick when Finnick came to District 12 on his Victory tour. Peeta baked a cake in Finnick's honor. After tasting it, Finnick declares it to be delicious and slips Peeta a ten sesterce bill.
• Friendly Rival: With Mick Cahill, the best wrestler in The Seam, who is reaped for the 72nd Hunger Games and killed by Lupus, to Peeta's horror.
• It's All My Fault: His "secret" is he blames himself for Prim's death (though it's not clear why).
• Kill Tally:
  • From his original Games, two tributes — the District 8 girl (Trissa) and District 5 girl ("Foxface" Donovan), though the latter is completely unintentional on Peeta's part. It's possible he also killed the District 4 boy, who dies sometime during the bloodbath and Peeta takes his place in the Career pack.^note In the Recursive Fanfiction 74th Hunger Games, Peeta kills the District 4 boy, Sebastian.
  • From the Quell, one tribute — Brutus.^note In the movie, Peeta also kills the District 10 male tribute (Roan) at the Cornucopia during an off-screen underwater struggle, but Oisin55 follows the book in having Roan killed on Day 2 by mutts.
• Spill Stain Sabotage: Inverted. Rather than using food to sabotage something, he sabotages a cake at a Capitol party that includes a lifelike replica of the tracker jack hive that Katniss dropped on him and the Career pack.
• Trauma Button: Any type of high stress can cause him to relapse into the feral state created by the Capitol's torture.

Katniss Everdeen (74th Games Victor) — Unmarked Spoilers!

• Accidental Hero: Along from accomplishing everything that she'd intended for it to do in the books, her killing President Coin saves Jade's life.
• Badass in Distress: Kidnapped by Luster and the Snowmen.
• Call-Back: Her "secret" is that "everyone knows her secrets before she does", a line she says in Catching Fire.
• Demoted to Extra: Besides her own chapter and being a Living MacGuffin, Katniss is barely a presence in this story.
• Easily Forgiven: A squad of District 13 soldiers agree to rescue her, apparently holding no ill will despite her killing President Coin.
• Foregone Conclusion: Her safe return, both because of canon and because she is said to be at Johanna's funeral.
• Go-Karting with Bowser: Has a long conversation with Boudicca, which starts with mutual antagonism (once Katniss realizes who Boudicca is), but after Katniss defends Boudicca against Haymitch, they both tell each other their life stories and recognize they are not so different.
• It's All About Me: Johanna calls her out for acting this way towards Peeta and not recognizing that he too suffered great trauma (worse, given the jacking), and that many of his mood swings have little or nothing to do with their relationship.
• Kill Tally:
  • From her original Games, four tributes — the District 1 girl (Glimmer), District 4 girl (Baela Certes-Docker), District 1 boy (Marvel), and District 2 boy (Cato).
  • From the Quell, one tribute — Gloss.
  • During the Rebellion, several Peacekeepers in District 8 (including Abel Gavin), an unnamed Capitolian woman, and President Alma Coin.
• Living MacGuffin: Boudicca tries to have her killed, Luster kidnaps her, and the living Victors all launch a rescue operation to save her. All because she's "The Mockingjay". Even though the Rebellion is over.
• That Woman Is Dead: Inverted by rejecting her new identity rather than her old. After someone in District 12 calls her "Mockingjay", Katniss responds, "The Mockingjay is dead. I'm done singing other people's songs for them."

The Capitol

"Candy-colored buildings taller than the highest trees, silver domes, lights of every color, golden spires. The jewel of Panem. Where people are waiting to watch us die."

— Enobaria Malachite

Citywide Tropes

• Amazing Technicolor Population: According to Luster's account of District 1's history, Capitolians were this even before the conquest of the Districts and the founding of Panem.
• The City Narrows: The Honeypot, described to be "[t]he stinking slums of the Capitol, the industrial sector where raw goods from the districts were made into finished products".
• City Noir: Took on this feel as Mags traveled around the Capitol to find out the truth behind Wheaton's murder.
• Enemy Civil War: The Capitol descends into this after Finnick's revenge, in which thousands die, "more than were killed over the course of the Hunger Games twice over". So much so that the rebels take the Capitol pretty easily.
  Jackson: What happened here?
  Boggs: Tore themselves apart when they couldn’t do it to the districts anymore, looks like.
• First-Person Peripheral Narrator: Several Capitolians serve as this for the Victors' chapters:
  • Marty, a high school student who sponsors Vera.
  • Spartacus Brandybane, whose first Games as Head Gamemaker is Emrys's.
  • Capitol tabloid journalists report on the aftermath of Briseis's Games.
  • Caesar Flickerman, who provides perspective on Nolan's Games.
  • Justinian Trinkett, who sponsors and then rapes Maeve.
  • Carpathia Flickerman (related to Caesar by marriage), who is Circe's escort.
  • Inspector Ptolemy Boundaire, who investigates Crystal's suicide.
• Heel Realization: It's not universal, but after the Revenge of Finnick Odair has run its course, "the city has retreated back into their homes, horrified to realize what they are capable of."
• Internal Reformist: As in the books, there are plenty of them out there (although not that many compared to the total population), such as presidential candidate Julianna Carew, who hoped to abolish the Games through political channels, and resistance members such as Plutarch (and several members of his staff), Adonis Silvertree and casino manager Sabinus Snick.
• Killer Game Master: The Gamemakers enjoy doing this, either to keep the Games entertaining or to kill off undesirable tributes. The 21st Games take this up to eleven. Examples of the latter include the sinkhole in the 44th Games that killed all the Careers at the Cornucopia, and the 66th Games where create an avalance to kill Titus.
• Magic Plastic Surgery: Many of the Capitolians have extreme plastic surgery that, according to Enobaria, "are so grotesque and altered they almost seem a different species".
• Obliviously Evil: Many are blind to the horrors of the Games (although some of them willfully so) and the sexual slavery of the Victors until Finnick's broadcast.
  Every person in the Capitol reels back in horror. Most cannot believe it, refuse to believe it. The Capitol has always been progressive and open-minded when it comes to sex. But this? Sex slavery? No, it can't be. And with the President's approval, his implementation. Impossible. The rest of the Capitol is horrified for a very, very different reason.
• Soiled City on a Hill: How the District 2 Victors — even Boudicca — come to view the Capitol.
  Boudicca: Even in those last years, I couldn't see. I didn't want to see. Honorius and Virtus knew what the Capitol had become. Bloated, corrupt, greedy for more and more blood. There wasn't even a semblance to the honor anymore, to the hope that sacrifice would stave off war. They all knew, but I couldn't see it before it was too late.
• Ungrateful Bastard: A good chunk of the populaces of Districts 1, 2, and 10 remain loyal to the Capitol during the Dark Days Rebellion. However, the Capitol subjects them to the reapings (and later on to heavier taxes and tyrannical overlords) along with the people who actually rebelled. During the Mockingjay Rebellion, many of their descendants are all too aware of this and readjust their loyalties.
• Vice City: "The Revenge of Finnick Odair" makes clear the many vices committed by those in the Capitol.

Presidents

President Lucius

• Ambiguous Situation: It's unclear if he was slowly poisoned to death by Snow, who in a Meaningful Background Event is seen handing Lucius a cup of water as he announces the first Quarter Quell and then suffers a fit of coughing. Notably, Finnick doesn't accuse Snow of poisoning Lucius, but does accuse Snow of discretely poisoning Lucius's wife because she distrusted him (and with good reason).
• Death by Irony: Ahenobarbus notes that he choked on his own blood while the tributes were tearing into each other during the bloodbath of the 32nd Hunger Games. Even Ahenobarbus shows some satisfaction about this despite his general loyalty to the Capitol.
• Greater-Scope Villain: The Hunger Games were implemented under his watch, and Snow was always a favorite of his.
• In Memoriam: In-universe; the opera concert hall is named for him.
• Incurable Cough of Death: Lucius gives one during his announcement of the First Quarter Quell.
• Kick the Dog: His treatment of several Victors, including Wheaton, Gates, Camden and Seaward.
• The Lost Lenore: Visibly shows the impact of the death of his First Lady.
• Only One Name: Most likely subverted. Emrys' chapter makes a nod to "Lucius Agricola the Younger" being President Lucius' younger cousin, which implies that President Lucius' full name is 'Lucius Agricola the Elder'.
• President Evil: He's the president of Panem when the Hunger Games are approved, so it's pretty much a given.
• President for Life: President of Panem until he dies.
• Ruling Family Massacre: Within days of his death, both of his sons die "in tragic boating accident", and his grandsons disappear.

Interim Rulers

---

• General Ripper: General Hadrian Fife ordered horrific atrocities during the Dark Days Rebellion, advocates even harsher sanctions against the already oppressed districts, and commits murder to try and take over Panem after being forced out of office.
• High Turnover Rate: In the four years between Lucius's death and Snow's ascent, there are five presidents and a six-member council.
• Hope Spot: Just when the Council of Six "finally seems stable", two of them are assassinated by Fife and the rest are tricked or forced into surrendering their power to Snow.
• Not-So-Omniscient Council of Bickering: The Council of Six spends three years squabbling and maneuvering for power (such as the wife of one entering a bigamous marriage with another to try and secure his vote) before being supplanted.
• Reports of My Death Were Greatly Exaggerated: Fife is reported dead after the end of his presidency, but shows up later leading a coup.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: Hadrian Fife's predecessor as president is murdered and Fife is forced from power, but it's unclear if the three presidents before them (starting with minister of information and former pop star Ajax Applehurst) were also killed or merely resigned due to the dangers of the position.

President Coriolanus Snow

• Acquired Poison Immunity: Almost, but not quite. He drinks from the same poisonous cup he gives his daughter Persephone in order to avoid any suspicion. But the antidote he takes does not prevent him from developing bloody sores in his mouth.
• Answers to the Name of God: Within a few years of his assuming the presidency, his name is being used in place of God in several old sayings (eg. "Men plan, and Snow laughs"), and while this wasn't exactly new with people praying to the Capitol during President Lucius's reign, we never see any sign that previous presidents actually inserted their own names into those sayings.
• Bloodbath Villain Origin: First introduced at the Black Banquet Massacre, where he is a young intern and one of the very few survivors. It is strongly implied that he engineered the massacre and used Thisbe Everett as a scapegoat.
• …But He Sounds Handsome: Downplayed, but while disguised as a Peacekeeper commander in Cerulea's chapter, he comments about how "Coriolanus Snow" has been trying to restore stability to the Capitol while being undercut by his rivals.
• Calling Card: A white rose, which those who have "appointments" with a Victor carry to show they have Snow's mandate.
• Card-Carrying Villain: In all of his interactions with the Victors. He often makes it quite clear that he knows what he is doing is morally heinous and unfair, but is smiling as he speaks.
• The Chessmaster: Manipulates and kills countless people to climb through the bureaucracy to go from an intern to the president's aide to Secretary of State to member of the governing Council of Seven to President.
• Create Your Own Hero: His crimes cause a lot of people — from Victors like Blight and Honorius to average Capitolians and District dwellers — to join the Rebellion, who otherwise likely would have remained loyal. The fact that a lot of what he does (such as testing a biological weapon on District 7 and killing a lot of people Blight cared about, including his lover Jason) comes across as disproportionate and wasteful just makes it worse.
• Gaslighting: Heavily implied that he does this to Thisbe to either convince her to poison everyone at the Black Banquet Massacre or uses her as The Scapegoat.
• Hate Sink: Comes across as far more smug, petty and cruel than he did in the novels, which is really saying something.
• Kill Tally: Among those listed by Finnick include President Lucius's wife, the Secretary of State prior to Snow, Spartacus Brandybane, Seneca Crane, another Head Gamemaker, and his oldest daughter Persephone (for becoming too ambitious). He also orders the families of Haymitch and Johanna killed.
• Let's You and Him Fight: His strategy during the post-Lucius Succession Crisis. He allows his more powerful rivals fight it out, and then he takes over as the Sole Survivor.
• Murder Is the Best Solution: Believes in this strongly, and to an extent he's right. Threatening the loved ones of Victors keeps most of them in line, but when one outright defies him he tends to kill all of them. While it does send a message it also means he no longer has anyone to leverage against that Victor, making them a guaranteed rebel.
• Offing the Offspring: Killed one of his own daughters for being a political threat to him.
• The Peter Principle: Snow is arguably more cunning and effective killing his way to the presidency than he is at running a country.
• President Evil: As he was in the The Hunger Games series.
• Reluctant Ruler: Snow outwardly expresses little interest in becoming President following Lucius's death. But Ahenobarbus sees right through this and urges the other Victors to subtly support his rise to power.
• Royal Harem: Snow maintains one, which at one time includes Blight’s mother.
• Self-Serving Memory: Claims that he gave Mags permission to openly train tributes too easily and that he should have made her beg, ignoring that he practically forced her to the point where she was helping him achieve power when he gave her that concession.
• Shoot the Dangerous Minion: Has Spartacus and his own daughter Persephone killed, along with numerous others, because their competence and ambition automatically make them a threat.
• Shut Up, Hannibal!: Is on the receiving end of of this from Cora, when he tells her that her escape attempt/suicide won't accomplish anything. Notably it's one of the few verbal assaults directed at him that we don't see him make a snide comeback for, and in fact makes him lurch forward with anger or alarm.
  Cora: That's where you're wrong, silly little bird. That's why you will not win.
• Smug Snake: So much so that even as Finnick's revenge turns much of the Capitol against him, he just sits back in his presidential mansion and gives silent applause while not seeming to grasp his hopeless position.
  Cora: You … you …
  Snow: Bastard, yes I know.
  • A recurring hallmark of the series is his sadistic confidence that things are going alright even as he's giving his enemies more ammunition to use against him.
• Sole Survivor: One of the very few to survive the Black Banquet Massacre, since he didn't drink much alcohol in order to keep his head clear. Or at least, that's how Snow tells it.
• Villains Never Lie: Tells Mags that he was largely truthful with her when he masqueraded as "Commander Barrabas" (the only thing he lied about) and that he would honor his agreement to fund and support the Career training of District 4 tributes.
  Mags: You tricked me.
  Snow: I deceived you when it came to my identity and that alone. I told you I had people I wanted to protect and interests to preserve.
• With Friends Like These...: Calls both Spartacus Brandybane and Luster Lancaster friends, but really just seems to see them as useful vassals who he can have dangerous moments of pique against.

Hunger Games Officials

Spartacus Brandybane

• Career-Ending Injury: Was a successful hoverball player until a leg injury ended his career. But he went on from there to be a sportscaster, to a Gamemakers assistant, a Gamemaker himself, and finally Head Gamemaker.
• Corrupt Bureaucrat: Head Gamemaker of the Hunger Games, who gained that position by hard work and judicious blackmail and regularly fixes the Games to ensure that particular tributes are reaped and/or don't win. This is typically done on Snow or Lucius's behalf, but at least once (during the 52nd Hunger Games) this is for his own financial or political reasons.
• Doting Parent: A dark version, when his daughter asks for him to arrange her a night with Eamon and he assures her he will.
• Killed Offscreen: Finnick suggests Snow does this to him.
• Killer Game Master: Head Gamemaker from the 26th to 52nd Games.
• Rags to Riches: Goes from the slums of South Capitol to a successful hoverball player to a Gamemaker and then to Head Gamemaker.
• Spit Take: Does one when Eamon dresses as an Avox and infiltrates the Gamemaker box in the Training Center.
• With Friends Like These...: Finnick claims he may have been the only person Snow really saw as a friend but that didn't save him once he screwed up too badly and had been getting too powerful for Snow's taste.
• Young and in Charge: Became Head Gamemaker at the age of 27.

Illythia Bitter

• Butt-Monkey: She suffers a lot of humiliations and frustrations throughout the 55th Hunger Games. They tend to be deserved.
• Drinking on Duty: As the Games descend into more fiascos she's described as never being sober after the deaths of half the career pack, not even on duty.
• Killer Game Master: Head Gamemaker from the 53nd to 55th Games (she also did a lot of the arena design for the 56th prior to being fired).
• Meaningful Name: 'Bitter' well describes her feelings as the 55th Games become a disaster, and she is subsequently demoted.
• Never My Fault: Her refrain throughout Mitt's chapter, in which the Games were a disaster due to being set in Antarctica.
• Quickly-Demoted Woman: Serves as Head Gamemaker for only three Games, culminating in the disastrous 55th Games, which causes her to be demoted to shoveling horse manure.

Plutarch Heavensbee

• Badass Bureaucrat: Plutarch acts like a subservient Gamemaker and government cog, while aiding the rebellion in ways like convincing Snow to allow a sponsor gift to be sent to Abram and "losing" a letter Snow sent him demanding that Roan be given a special advantage in the 3rd Quarter Quell and sent after Katniss Everdeen.
• Et Tu, Brute?: Jade feels quite betrayed when he refuses to act as a Character Witness for her and defy Coin. However, Plutarch does arrange for Bovina to arrive as another Character Witness. He also tries to break Jade and her friends out of jail when Coin keeps illegally holding them prisoner.
• The Nondescript: Plutarch is nondescript by comparison, as Jason notes that he's one of the only people in the entire city who doesn't have any surgical alterations.

Augustine Pine

• Afraid of Blood: Faints when Virtus shoots several of the Sixatrons during his Victor's interview and is covered in their blood. A rather Ironic Fear for Pine, considering he is Master of Ceremonies for the Hunger Games.
• Game Show Host: Served as the first Hunger Games Master of Ceremonies until he died during The Purge following President Lucius's death.
• Killed Offscreen: Dies from a drug overdose shortly after President Lucius dies. At least, officially - Ahenobarbus half-seriously speculates that Caesar finally had enough of Pine and strangled him to death.
• Lack of Empathy: Displays little emotion besides amusement towards the deaths of tributes.
• Mean Boss: He's incredibly demanding and fires employees for minor infractions, to the point where his Establishing Character Moment has him viciously fire a young intern for his ludicrously precise coffee order^note "Hot coffee with exactly one and a half tablespoons of cream and two lumps of sugar and a dab of whipped cream with the gentlest sampling of chocolate shavings" not being up to his standards.
• The Primadonna: Much more so than Caesar was ever portrayed as being.

Caesar Flickerman

• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: After listing many of the terrible vices of the Capitol, the only dirt Finnick has on Caesar is that he "draws unflattering pictures of high society folk".
• Beleaguered Assistant: Starts out as this to Augustine Pine. When Pine is killed soon after President Lucius's death, Ahenobarbus speculates that Caesar finally strangled him to death.
• Consummate Professional: Takes his job very seriously and works very hard to project the right tone and to make the tributes feel at ease. Antigone is quite impressed when he keeps a straight face after Dido declares that she is secretly a duck.
• Dark Secret: A humorous but dangerous one — which is naturally revealed by Finnick, although Caesar survives the fallout unlike so many others: he draws caricatures of President Snow and other Capitol bigwigs and publishes them in an underground newsletter. Also counts as Hidden Depths.
• Even Evil Has Standards: His ever-present smile falters when he hears Roan throw a racist insult at Bovina for the first time.
• Game Show Host: Succeeds Pine as Hunger Games Master of Ceremonies. Caesar takes great pride in how he presents himself and makes sure the promotional part of the Games runs smoothly.
  Caesar Flickerman was the Escort of Escorts, the Man of the Games, the Face of Pageant.
• I Fight for the Strongest Side!: Following the Mockingjay Revolution, Caesar begins working for the new regime in hopes he will be spared from District 13's Reign of Terror.
• Klingon Promotion: Possibly. Augustine dies of a drug overdose during the post-Lucius Succession Crisis, but Ahenobarbus jokes that Caesar probably finally strangled him to death. Either way, Caesar takes over as Hunger Games Master of Ceremonies.
• Pet the Dog:
  • Often towards tribute who are especially scared and mute during their interviews. Caesar is occasionally regretful when he gets one who is clearly doomed and he senses could have been more than just a statistic in the Games. This kindness may be why he was not executed in The Purge that follows the Mockingjay Revolution, though Jade speculates that it's more his utility as a propagandist and interviewer that keeps him alive.
  • Even before he was Hunger Games host, he saves a lower ranking assistant from being fired by Pine over a slight. When Pine says he never wants to see the young man's face again, Caesar pretends to send in the paperwork for that order while really making a note telling that intern to change his face if he wants to keep his job.
• Punch-Clock Villain: Sees the Games as just a job, one he strives to do to perfection.

Benedictus

• Evil Counterpart: To the unnamed junior Gamemaker who helps rescue Enobaria in her chapter. Both Games workers (although Benedictus was an intern rather than a full-time Gamemaker) are former spies and rebel recruits of Plutarch who are involved in breaking an imprisoned Victor out of her cell, but the similarities end there. The other Gamemaker is loyal to Plutarch, is saving a Victor who Coin wants to assassinate, and apparently remained undercover in the Capitol during the Rebellion. Benedictus helps a Victor escape custody as part of a plot for Coun to kill her (although it fails), casually rats out Plutarch to someone who contemplated executing him (although she gets killed before having a chance to give that order), and may have been one of the Capitol rebels who fled to District 13, given his loyalty to and association with Coin.
• Jerk with a Heart of Jerk: He is impatient and patronizing, but he is introduced helping Jade escape from illegal imprisonment, only for it to turn out he is working for Coin and luring Jade and her friends into a trap.
• Karma Houdini: Nothing bad happens to him on page despite him being a smarmy, cold-blooded accomplice to Coin and her misdeeds.

District Escorts and Stylists

Madame Lucia

• The Ace: Stylist for fourteen Victors, including Silk, Blight, and Enobaria.
• Cool Old Lady: In her first (written) appearance in The Lumberjack and the Tree-Elf, she's about fifty-three (not terribly old but far older than the tributes and most of the other Distirct 7 entourage), designs a parade costume that puts Blight and Charlie in the map and is one of the first to see through Eamon's facade and call him out. She gets cooler with age, due to becoming involved in the Rebellion.
• Costume Porn: While all stylists are supposed to invoke this, she stands above the others by being The Ace and styling at least seventeen Victors.
• Defector from Decadence: Provides a safe-house in the Capitol for Victors during The Purge, which indicates that she is sympathetic to the Rebel cause, if not an outright Rebel herself.
• Eccentric Mentor:
  • Refers to herself in third person and is seemingly focused on her work but is a very insightful person and one of the first to really appreciate Blight and help him along the path to becoming a Victor.
  • Sees Enobaria's rage and conflict and tells her about how none of the Victors she's mentored have yet to understand what life as a Victor really will mean for them, and questioning whether Enobaria does (seeming to feel that she might be the first).
• A Glass of Chianti: Eats Eamon's fried tongue after it is removed when he's turned into an Avox. She "wash[es] it down with a District 1 merlot from the St. Martin's vineyards. An exquisite red wine with a rare cut of meat."
• Incoming Ham: How does she introduce herself to Blight and his prep team (as well as the readers)?
  Madame Lucia: Madame Lucia has come to prepare her tribute! Madame Lucia sincerely hopes that her prep team has done an adequate job, although judging by what they're wearing themselves, she finds that to be dreadfully unlikely.
• Innocently Insensitive: Tells Blight she was inspired for his costume by the "cheers of support" from his district, not initially realizing that they were actually homophobic slurs for people glad to see Blight going off to die.
• The Omniscient: Her "sources" tell her Eamon is betting against his own tribute and getting drunk.
• Screw the Rules, I Have Connections!: Got herself the job as District 7's stylist with no advance notice (and had the regular stylist sent elsewhere) when she heard Blight being called a Tree-Elf during the reaping recap, because "Madame Lucia gets what she desires".
• Sole Survivor: The only known (active) stylist left alive after the 3rd Quarter Quell, as Blight advised her it would be wise to take the year off, given what was coming.
• Teen Genius: She was Silk's stylist at the age of fifteen, and even then she dazzled with her costumes.
• Third-Person Person: She always refers to herself this way, saying "Madame Lucia" instead of "I".

Pan (District 2)

• Embarrassing Animal Suit: Dresses like a hair silver goat, with cloves and horns. When the Pan character first premieres, according to Granyte, "the look of Ahenobarbus's face is priceless."
• Legacy Character: The first Pan becomes the District 2 escort the year Granyte volunteers. Over forty years later, the Pan character is still District 2's escort when Enobaria becomes tribute, but the role is filled by another young man.

Carpathia Flickerman (District 5)

• Closest Thing We Got: She becomes Circe's mentor for several days of the Games when Emrys is hospitalized and Matthias is too drunk to function. She ends up doing surprisingly well at it.
• Finish Him!: Screams this as Circe holds a knife over her final opponent, the District 11 boy. Circe, however, cannot do it, so she leaves him to die in a burning building.
• Going Native: Learns all about District 5 once she becomes the escort for District 5, so she knows about Camper culture when Circe and Lazarus are reaped. To show support for them, she wears a diklo, a symbol of Camper culture. She also gets genuinely offended when Capitolians buy into the Magical Romani stereotype of Campers.
• Hidden Depths: Proves to be a surprisingly effective mentor, more so than either Emrys or Matthias. She figures out Circe's strategy of both collecting powders and poisoning the available food, raises money for her with Capitol sponsors and hosts a party in support of Circe and Campers. Emrys even turns to her for help in getting Circe a weapon to kill the District 11 boy. Despite all this, she still never understands the trauma and horror of the Hunger Games.
• In-Series Nickname: She prefers to be called "Thia".
• Obliviously Evil: Does not seem to recognize how terrible the Hunger Games are for the districts, though she does seem to have a momentary recognition when she sees that two Campers were purposefully selected for the 59th Games. She wonders what they did wrong, but then pushes the thought out of her head, because of course being selected as tribute is an honor.
• Odd Friendship: With Circe, the first (and only) District 5 Victor during her time as escort.
• Stepford Smiler: Partially faked high spirits seemingly go with the job of being an escort.

Tutti Marble (District 7)

• Broken Pedestal: Seems to admire and lust after Eamon, but her opinion of him sours after he makes a drunken fool of himself and it becomes harder to deny that he's sabotaging his mentee.
• Defector from Decadence: By the time the 3rd Quarter Quell and the Rebellion rolls around, Tutti has chosen to side with the Rebellion's cause and fight alongside her assigned district.
• Heel–Face Turn: Starts out as an unrepentant Hunger Games worker before she begins to develop some genuine affection and loyalty toward the District 7 victors and later becomes a full-fledged Rebel.
• Resign in Protest: She refuses to work during the 3rd Quarter Quell and reap any of the people she's spent so many years working with.
• Took a Level in Badass: Goes from being "the bubbling, oblivious escort" of District 7 for twenty years to one of the district's fiercest warriors during the Rebellion.
• Vague Age: Like many of the surgically-altered Capitol citizens, her exact age is unclear, although Madame Lucia, who's about as old as the Games themselves, mentions that she went to school with Tutti's mother.

Agrippina Flutter (District 8)

• Everyone Has Standards: She disapproves of how Hector's tight parade dress hurts Cecelia.
• Passive-Aggressive Kombat: She acts civil and earnest while getting in digs at Cora's fashion sense and her role mentoring doomed kids. After a few barbs, she'll stop pretending.
• Sadist: Cora is convinced that she knows how barbaric and unfair the Games are, but still enjoys them.

Hector (District 8)

• Pet the Dog: Hector is normally a slimy, insensitive diva, but he seems genuinely broken up by Cecelia being sent into the 3rd Quarter Quell.
• Smug Snake: Hector haughtily claims to be an artiste, but aside from how his job is just dressing up kids to get killed, some of the best costume suggestions for Cecelia and Circe come from other people who have to argue with Hector first.

Ambrosius Fife (District 12)

• Ass Shove: Smuggled a personal communicator into the Control Center during the 45th Games "in a place he'd prefer not to mention in polite company".
• Hates the Job, Loves the Limelight: Wants the fame and prestige of being an escort, but hates having to go to District 12 or taking on the responsibilities of being a mentor.
• Last Disrespects: Shows no care for the tributes under his charge, and expresses open relief during the 45th Games when his tributes are killed on the first day. He even blows kisses to Antigone and Ares as gratitude for District 2 killing his tributes quickly.
• Newhart Phonecall: Spends his brief time in the Control Center gossiping with different friends on the phone, with only his side of the conversation being heard.
• Reassigned to Antarctica: How he feels about being assigned as escort to District 12.

"The Revenge of Finnick Odair"

"Finnick smiles his angelic smile. Angelic like the spirit of death that descends on Egypt in the old religious tale to strike down the houses of the wicked. And so Finnick smiles and descends."

Licinia Mardew

• Buy Them Off: Gives Finnick a diamond bracelet worth a million sesterces after raping him.
• A Deadly Affair: Her husband likely kills her after learning that she raped Finnick and gave away their expensive family heirloom bracelet.
• Insurance Fraud: Stages a break-in to cover up for the bracelet she gives Finnick and collects the insurance on it.
• Uncertain Doom: Her husband repeatedly slaps her after Finnick reveals what she did. He then picks up a poker, but nothing else is said about her after that.

Kronos Vine

• Cop Killer: Kills one Peacekeeper coming to arrest him and injures another before being killed himself.
• Screaming Woman: His mistress is screaming during his gun battle with the Peacekeepers.
• Slipping a Mickey: Spiked Finnick's drink, even though he had already paid to spend the night with him.
• Stealing from the Till: Embezzles nearly 100,000 sesterces from his employer in order to pay for a night with Finnick.

Marina Grey

• He Knows Too Much: Drowns her housekeeper after she walks in on Marina and Finnick having sex and hides the body under the patio.
• Never Found the Body: Her body is never found following Finnick's revenge.

Sabinus Smithywick

• Driven to Suicide: Jumps twelve stories off his balcony after Finnick exposes his Dark Secrets.
• Fetishes Are Weird: Known to enjoy "activities usually consigned to the privacy of a bathroom."
• Kinky Spanking: Enjoys this while playing with himself.

Potoma Lewis

• A Family Affair: To an exaggerated level! Along with her husband, she enjoys relations with "her husband's brother, and her father-in-law, and several of his cousins, and has even dabbled around with her dear husband's elderly aunt upon occasion."
• Suicide by Pills: Kills herself this way after Finnick exposes her Dark Secrets.

Corvinus and Carellia Montpelier

• Confidentiality Betrayal: Corvinus goes searching for the three people he told his Dark Secret. Finnick reveals that it was Phaedra Monahan who told him.
• Hanging Around: Carellia kills herself this way.
• Parental Incest: They are father, daughter, and lovers.

Moesia Blackstone

• Bestiality Is Depraved: Has an overly loving relationship with her fancy hounds.
• Better with Non-Human Company: Finnick notes that she has never married and prefers the company of her animals.
• House Fire: A mob comes to rescue her animals and burns down her house.

Justinian Trinket

• Achievements in Ignorance: Discovered a highly profitable hangover cure due to a mislabeled prescription that he took along with some painkillers and a swig of tonic water.
• Bondage Is Bad: His BDSM fetish is highlighted in order to emphasize his moral debauchery.
• Driven to Suicide: Ends up alone in a hotel room, reflecting on what he's lost, and realizing that, contrary to his earlier beliefs, the Games never solved anything. As he looks at a vial of dirty morphling, noting that a gulp is enough to put him in danger of cardiac arrest, he bitterly toasts Maeve and then drains the vial.
• Even Evil Has Standards: He and his family are genuinely distraught over the Victors being reaped for the Third Quarter Quell. Justinian feels especially sad when Maeve is killed, even bursting into tears.
• Family-Values Villain: Becomes a Family Man, gets clean and sober, and quits gambling. But he still secretly maintains a sex bondage room for minors. Justifies it to himself, because none of the minors come from the Capitol but only the districts.
• Fan of Underdog: Comes from a family of Sixatrons. His father wins twelve million sesterces betting on Chevy winning the 28th Hunger Games, taking the family from Rags to Riches.
• First-Person Peripheral Narrator: Maeve's Games and her participation in the Third Quarter Quell are told from his perspective.
• A Fool and His New Money Are Soon Parted: During his lifetime, Justinian becomes wealthy after his father bets on Chevy, loses it by betting on a series of losing Careers, gets even wealthier by first betting on Maeve and then accidentally inventing a hangover cure, and then loses it all again after the Mockingjay Revolution. By the end, he returns to a motel in the Honeypot and purposely ODs.
• Forgotten First Meeting: Meets Maeve when she is a child in a home he raids for illegally producing morphling. When he hears her name announced at the reaping, he registers a slight familiarity but then brushes it away.
• The Gambling Addict: Continually bets on the Hunger Games and continually loses… until he returns to his Sixatron roots and bets on Maeve.
• Get Out!: His wife Arachne's final words to him, accompanied by a vase thrown at his head, after Finnick exposes his pedophilia to all of Panem.
• Hated by All: When Justinian's Dark Secret of pedophilia is revealed by Finnick on TV, it was described that "many in the Capitol feel physically ill" from how horrifying they found it, and his wife screams for him to Get Out!. Though Justinian himself survives the Capitol riots that follow the broadcast, his employees at the pharmaceutical company he owns are notably wary of him when he clocks in to work. His secretary deliberately avoids touching him, while other employees display rigid politeness at best.
• Karma Houdini Warranty: After decades of sexually abusing children, Justinian is finally exposed by one: Finnick Odair.^note Though Justinian never personally abuses Finnick. He prefers them even younger.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Subverted. After having night of violent, drugged-up sex with Maeve, he fears he may have gone too far and raped Maeve. He then realizes that he doesn't care if he did.
• Nouveau Riche: After his bet on Maeve in the Games wins him a lot of money, he becomes this, and his wealth only skyrockets when he accidentally invents a hangover cure.
• Off the Wagon: Spent most of his later life clean of morphling and alcohol (although at the cost of making him indulge his pedophilia more) only to relapse after his crimes are exposed by Finnick and the rebellion reaches his front doors.
• One Degree of Separation: Is Effie Trinket's uncle.
• Tantrum Throwing: After hearing "The Revenge of Finnick Odair", Justinian's wife Arachne throws a vase at him and tells him to Get Out!
• Trophy Wife: His first wife is this, described as "a smoking hot wife whose tits are the envy of all his friends", but she leaves him after he cuts off her bank account to prevent her from getting further plastic surgery.
• Villain with Good Publicity: Utterly adored by his neighbors, family, and all of his children's friends until Finnick exposes him.

Marcus Aerius

• The Don: Head of the Mavericks, which runs the spice and dreampowder trade in the Honeypot. Finnick claims he "put a hit out on nearly two hundred people in the past twenty years."
• Morally Bankrupt Banker: Is Vice President of the Bank of Pompey and uses his drug money to finance the bank.

Mindela and Miranda Pendleton

• Alliterative Family: Mindela and Miranda are sisters.
• A Family Affair: They are very comfortable sharing sexual partners.
• Honey Trap: They commonly rob those they are sleeping with, which allows them to pay for Finnick's services.

Benedicta Horton

• Framing the Guilty Party: Blames the Midtown Mincers for her husband's death.
• Inheritance Murder: Strangles her husband so that she can gain his inheritance.

Others Named

• Date Rape: Finnick witnessed two instances in which Flavius Bletchley spiked his date's drink and took advantage of them while unconscious.
• Sibling Triangle: Lucretia Bennett's husband only married her as a cover for his affair with her married sister.

Other Capitolians

Allana Corwesh

• Idol Singer: She's described as a famous and influential Capitol pop star. Her Beautiful Singing Voice is repeatedly commented on. Jason is dazzled when she asks his opinion on an important matter.
• Small Role, Big Impact: She only appears in one chapter, but she organizes and hosts a meeting of rebels where some important events occur.

Larissa Farrar

• Beneath the Mask: Larissa acts like an unintelligent "predatory harpy" who loves to mock or sexually harass the victors, but it's eventually revealed to be an act to hide her role in the rebellion.
  Cora: The girl whom I thought was a silly, simpering fool until she pulled off the mask and revealed the clever determined woman underneath.
• Stripperiffic: She's described to be "wearing an explosion of pearls and little else" in her debut appearance in Chapter 6 of Fall Into the River. She is wearing the same "outfit" when she meets Enobaria in Bonds of Blood.
• Uncertain Doom: She's presumably killed or arrested and tortured after Cora is tortured into naming her as a rebel several months before Snow's downfall. Eamon's chapter of The Victors Chronicles states that Lavinia "took the fall for Larissa"; it's not clear whether that means she got away after all.

Dr. Selene Finch

• Eye Scream: Victoria stabs Dr. Finch in the eye with a syringe.
• Morally Ambiguous Doctorate: She apparently has the title of "Doctor" but... well, she's very pro-Capitol.
• One-Shot Character: Dr. Finch only appears in Chapter 23 of Fall Into the River.
• Psycho Psychologist: Her Establishing Character Moment is her trying to indoctrinate a scared Cecelia with pro-Capitol propaganda.
• Terms of Endangerment: Dr. Finch calls Cecelia "sweetheart" while trying to inject a "special sleeping solution" that is allegedly supposed to help "clear her mind", but apparently gives Cecelia Past Experience Nightmares.

Madame Nigella

• Defector from Decadence: Samson's is a long-time favorite spot of the Victors, where they not only party but also hold clandestine rebel meetings. By the time of the Mockingjay Rebellion, the Madam Nigella of that time provides safe shelter to the Victors.
• Legacy Character: By the time of the Mockingjay Rebellion, Samson's is run by the fourth Madame Nigella.
• Miss Kitty: The owner of Samson's, a Capitol night club with many nefarious activities.

Adonis Silvertree

• Blue Blood: He comes from a Capitol family with a long history of fabulous wealth and influence.
• Family Extermination: His whole family is killed after his treason is exposed, except his daughter, Lavinia, who is turned into an Avox and is later placed in Katniss and Peeta's suite.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: He's an intelligent and dedicated rebel against Snow, but puts on a show of being an Upper-Class Twit who gets "outrageously drunk and high so that [his] father doesn't suspect [he's] doing something worthwhile with [his] life".
• White Sheep: Most of his family are immensely loyalist, but Adonis works hard to overthrow the Capitol's tyranny, and it's implied his child or children do as well.

Sabinus Snick

• Alliterative Name: Sabinus Snick.
• Honest Corporate Executive: He's the only casino manager in the Capitol who wants to end the Hunger Games and Snow's tyranny over the districts rather than continue to profit off them.
• Small Role, Big Impact: Snick only makes one appearance and has little dialogue, but he uses his influence with the gamblers to channel large amounts of sponsor money to tributes whom the rebellion hopes to recruit, several of whom become Victors.

Martinus "Marty" Spickle

• Accidental Hero: He considers sponsoring Vera but hasn't fully decided when his friend Silvanus comes into his sponsor booth and tries to change his selection to Achilles, the District 2 tribute. The two get into a fight, and Silvanus bumps into the machine, which chooses Vera. His sponsorship money is the largest donation Vera initially receives.
• Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!: When he finally meets Vera, he is disappointed by how traumatized she is, but he quickly moves on when Jules introduces him to Silk and Platinum.
• Big Man on Campus: Becomes this after Vera kills Achilles, who had been considered the top contender to win, and he becomes the top sponsor of the Victor of the 15th Games.
• The Bus Came Back: He returns in Phoebus's chapter as a sponsor for Creon, Phoebus's tribute, in Johanna's Games.
• Determinator: He's willing to do anything to make a difference by gathering as much money as he can from his friends and family to sponsor Vera a knife in her final stretch.
• Fan of Underdog: He is impressed by Vera during her interviews, and though he only somewhat accidentally became her sponsor, he still has a much higher opinion of her than his father or his friends do. And once Jules calls him for help, he fully commits to helping Vera.
• First-Person Peripheral Narrator: Of Vera's chapter and the 15th Games as a whole.
• Like Is, Like, a Comma: His thoughts show this form of pattern.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: His full name is Martinus, and only his step-mother Naenia really calls him that.
• Valley Girl: Minus the fashion obsession, he's pretty much the Spear Counterpart of this trope, complete with being a few bulbs short of a box (e.g. he doesn't know what camouflage is).

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