Characters / The XCOM Anthology Set

Main Protagonists

The central characters of The XCOM Anthology Set and the main characters overall.

The Commander

• Ascended Extra: The in-game Commander is an avatar for the player to step into. Here, they have a fleshed out backstory and personality, and a role very independent of the XCOM storyline.
• Adaptational Job Change: Retroactively, but XCOM: Chimera Squad establishes that Jane Kelly is responsible for post-War XCOM operations. Here, the Commander retains that role while Jane moves on to take up a job in the fine arts.
• Affectionate Nickname: Gingersnap, an irony, given that their favored confectioneries are chocolate chip cookies.
• A Father to His Men: The Commander greatly cares for the welfare of their troops, which is part of the reason they fight alongside them in battle.
• Author Avatar: Definitely takes a trait or two after the aforementioned, if the sheer amount of pop culture references are any indication.
• Babies Ever After: With Jane, as exemplified by their daughter, Annette.
• Big Good: In charge of the XCOM and Resistance overall, and the one charged with leading Earth to victory over the Elders.
• The Chains of Commanding: Played with. The Commander believes that losing the first war with the aliens was their fault and that all the deaths that occurred afterwards are on their hands, but on the other hand, XCOM itself suffers surprisingly few losses under their stewardship.
• Childhood Friend Romance: With Annette Durand.
• Commanding Coolness: Their name says it all.
• Close-Range Combatant: Zig-Zagged. They prefer fighting in close-quarters due to the usage of a shield and psionic powers, but can fight capably at range by using those powers in more distanced applications.
• Eagleland: Grew up in Kansas alongside Bradford and Annette Durand, and is mostly Type One, with a few hints of Type Two.
• Expy: To Captain America. They're mentioned as wearing his Infinity War-era uniform and possessing a shield with identical properties to Steve's famous shield. That said, Steve exists within the story, so it's clearly not the same uniform and shield.
• Frontline General: Personally goes out into the field alongside their troops.
• Good Parents: To Annette, well, though given the Commander's personality, they tend to teach Annette more...outlandish things, like lockpicking, mind-control techniques, and how to improvise weapons out of household supplies.
• The Gadfly: In general, the Commander acts as such, doing zany things on a fairly consistent basis just because.
• Generation Xerox: Is the second Commander of XCOM, succeeding their mother, Angela Weaver, who led the Bureau's incarnation of XCOM. That said, they're far more comical and lighthearted than Angela was.
• Happily Married: To Jane, sometime in the future. They've been married for at least eight years by the time Ranger On The Edge Of Forever rolls around, and over fifteen in the framing device of series overall.
• Has a Type: As exemplified by their relationships with Annette Durand and Jane Kelly, the Commander apparently prefers women who have substantial degrees of Action Girl and Blood Knight as core parts of their personality.
• Hidden Depths: They can play the piano, bake (courtesy of Ramirez teaching them), enjoy contemporary real-world pop culture and possess a love of music. They're also a pretty good dad to Annette Zhang Kelly.
• The Hero: The main character of the entire series.
• I Was Young and Needed the Money: Though not particularly embarassing, the Commander worked as a hairstylist in Las Vegas during their youth, which isn't exactly expected of humanity's top pick for kicking the aliens off the planet.
• It Amused Me: The main reason for letting dumb things happen around the ship.
• Lethal Chef: At first. The only positive thing James Ramirez has to say about the Commander's first attempt at baking cookies is that they didn't burn down the kitchen.
• Legacy Character: Is the second Commander, succeeding their mother, Angela Weaver.
• The Lost Lenore: Annette Durand is this.
• Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me: Just like Cap, the Commander possesses a shield that's practically unbreakable, and uses that to full effect.
• My Greatest Failure: Everything related to Annette Durand, her transformation into the Assassin and all the pain and heartbreak that followed.
• Non-Entity General: Zig-Zagged, the Commander is referred to exclusively with non-binary pronouns (they/them) and are never explicitly referred to as a man or woman, with any story from their perspective either being in second-person or continuing to present the Commander in a gender-neutral light.
  • That said, they do have a very distinct personality as a Frontline General Gadfly and have a very distinctive origin story and storyline of their own, so they're not just a living plot device as per the game.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: Everyone refers to them as Commander. Except for Jane, who refers to them as Gingersnap, and their daughter, Annette, who refers to them as Dad.
• Older Than They Look: The Commander is roughly the same age as Bradford, give or take, but being in stasis for twenty years and being augmented to some degree by Asaru means they're still as youthful as they were in 2015.
• Psychic Powers: Is an extraordinarily powerful psionic, as per the game. That said, they seem to use them much differently than in-game, with their powers manifesting more like The Force than the mind-control abilities they are in-game.
• Sad Clown: A good chunk of their gadfly-centric behavior is this. Deep down, the Commander greatly regrets Earth falling to the Elders, the untold numbers of people who died because of the war, and Annette Durand's mutation into the Assassin and the suffering she endured afterwards. They act the way they do to convince everyone else that they're okay, which Bradford and Jane figure out isn't true.
  • As the series progresses, the Commander slowly pulls themselves out of it.
• Second Love: With Jane Kelly.
• Throwing Your Shield Always Works: Will cheerfully attack opponents at range by way of psionically guiding their shield into their target's face at high velocities.
  • When they get their hands on the axes from Alien Hunters, they use a similar method to hit people with them.
• Trademark Favorite Food: Chocolate Chip Cookies, which makes their nickname of Gingersnap an irony.
• Worthy Opponent: To Angelis, who has held a substantial degree of respect for them since the 2015 invasion.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: The Commander and Bradford are more or less polar opposites, but they're the best of buddies nonetheless, having known each other since high school.

Colonel Janeth "Jane" Kelly / Rabbit

Jane, circa 2054

• Absurdly Elderly Mother: Downplayed, but Jane is thirty-nine going on forty by the time she has Annette, and she's in her forties and fifties during the raising of the aforementioned.
  • Which comically means she has a lot more in common with her mother-in-law Angela Weaver than she thinks.
• Action Girl: Like the rest of her team, and every other female XCOM operative who goes out into the field.
• A Day in the Limelight: While she's not an extra by any means, being the deuteragonist and all, she's not the main focus of TFTWSOTA, given that it's an anthology and thus the focus jumps from character to character, meaning that she might be relegated to a supporting role or cameo in a given story with someone else as the focus, or not appear at all.
  • Conversely, Ranger On The Edge Of Forever has Jane and her future counterpart serving as the central focus.
• Adaptational Job Change: Post-war, she gives up the military life and opens up a dance studio, in comparison to her canon counterpart who continues on with that career, as per the events of XCOM: Chimera Squad.
• Adaptational Personality Change: Her canon counterpart is a fairly straight-laced, military woman through and through. While she's still a capable military girl in the context of the Anthology Set, her persona trends far more towards artistic and she desires to leave the military life the moment the aliens are defeated.
• Affectionate Nickname: Rabbit, the product of her escaping the Blacksite by way of running through a hail of gunfire without getting hit once.
• Ascended Extra: In-game, Jane is Mauve Shirt who might not even show up at all. Here, she's one of the main characters.
• An Arm and a Leg: ROTEOF reveals that Angelis severed Jane's entire left arm, which has since been replaced with a prosthetic. It differentiates her 2046 counterpart, who has the arm, from her 2036 counterpart, who doesn't.
• Artificial Limbs: Due to having her left arm hacked off during Operation Leviathan, Jane sports a robot arm in place of it.
• The Baby of the Bunch: Menace Team's core lineup considers her to be this, given that she's the canonical final member of the team to have joined, constantly referring to her as their "little sister" and other such adjectives. Perhaps ironically, at thirty-five, Jane is actually the oldest of the group when one accounts for the others' actual ages, which correspond to their real-life counterparts.
• Babies Ever After: Post war, she and the Commander have a daughter, Annette Zhang Kelly.
• Blood Knight: She enjoys a good fight.
• Brainy Brunette: Not up to the level of say, Lily, but she's up fairly competent intellect-wise. Jane's not stupid by any means, but having her education cut off at age thirteen due to half of Ireland being eviscerated does a number on one's educational journey. Zhang filled in what gaps he could, but for the most part, she's self-taught on a number of topics.
• Bruiser with a Soft Center: Her day job involves kicking alien ass from one side of the planet to the other. She spends a lot of her off-hours dancing and hanging out with friends.
• Character Tics: Just like Ash Ketchum, she's fond of inverting her cap from front to back to signify getting serious.
• Close-Range Combatant: It's her thing, given that she's a shotgun-wielding Ranger who totes around a blade.
• Dark and Troubled Past: Her parents were killed when she was thirteen during a Terror Mission in Ireland that XCOM failed to stop, leaving her an orphan. XCOM, and by extension, the world, fell soon thereafter, and she only survived the days afterward because Shaojie Zhang found her and raised her as his own child. After he died, she was left directionless and lost until she was "adopted" by the future Menace Team and joined XCOM alongside them.
• Deuteragonist: While the Commander is the main character of the series and its driving force, Jane is of equal importance and is featured just as much.
• Fighting Irish: The most prominent example, quite understandable given that she's both the Deuteragonist and through-and-through Irish.
• Fish out of Temporal Water: During The Ranger On The Edge Of Forever. Present!Jane is shocked (in a good way) that she achieved her dream of opening a dance studio, married the Commander and had a daughter, while Future!Jane has been retired from XCOM for about ten-odd years and isn't exactly enthused about returning to the days of the war.
• Good Parents: To Annette. She's somewhat more "realistic" in her parenting, compared against the Commander, opting for more practical things like how to cook, survive in the wilderness, operate firearms and hotwire vehicles. She leaves formal education to the professionals, though.
• Good Scars, Evil Scars: She has a few, here and there, products of living in a dystopian world.
• Hidden Depths: Is an extremely talented dancer and greatly loves the art of dancing overall, being versed in a number of dance types. She also yearns to open a dance studio one day, which The Ranger On The Edge Of Forever confirms that she eventually did.
• Happily Married: To the Commander, after Operation Leviathan in late 2037. They're going seventeen years and counting by the time the 2054 narrations begin.
• Iconic Item: Retains the baseball cap her in-game counterpart has.
• Intangibility: Prefers Wraith Armor for it's ability to invoke this trope.
• Lethal Chef: Lost and Abandoned implies Jane is this, at least at that point in time.
  • She has grown out of this by the time she's become a mother, as per Annette's thoughts.
• Master Swordsman: Her shtick, when she's not using her shotgun. It puts her on par with the Assassin.
• My Greatest Failure: Has two of them, the death of her parents during a Terror Mission gone wrong, and the death of her adopted father figure, Shaojie Zhang.
• Noodle Incident: Here and there.
  • Apparently did something to the DJ after he hit on the Commander one too many times for her liking.
  • Also the time she got in a fistfight with a Sectopod and won. She ended up hospitalized for a month afterwards.
  • Whatever happened the first time she met the Berserker Queen.
• Out of Focus: Downplayed, given that she's the Deuteragonist of the series, but the anthology nature of the series means that she - like everyone else - is prone to vanishing for a stretch while other characters take center stage.
• Second Love: She's this to the Commander, given that Annette Durand is The Lost Lenore for them.
• Shell-Shocked Veteran: She hides it well, probably because she has The Commander And Annette to keep her steady, but between losing her parents, her surrogate father, witnessing a number of her friends die in the war, in addition to her own brushes with death and losing an arm, Jane has a justifiable fear of going into battle ever again and takes the first opportunity to retire from XCOM and reintegrate into civilian life.
• Screaming Birth: Well, more like "swore epically in Gaelic and made death threats while giving birth to Annette", but it's the same principle.
• Shotguns Are Just Better: Jane has a deep-seated love of shotguns, at least partially rooted in the fact that she was too tiny to wield anything heavier during her youth and was thus trained in the usage of such by Zhang.
• Trademark Favorite Food: Cookies, in all shapes, sizes and forms.
• Violently Protective Girlfriend: Can and will drop everything if the Commander is threatened.
  • One prominent example occurs during Lost and Abandoned, where she held Elena at swordpoint when the former made it very clear she was willing to shoot through the Commander to get at Mox.
  • Her enemies eventually figure out this and turn it against her, with Angelis cutting her left arm off because of it.
  • She went after the Resistance DJ for hitting on the Commander one too many times over the radio.
• Women Are Wiser: For the most part, she's more level-headed than the Commander.

Spoiler Character / Annette Zhang Kelly

• A Day in the Limelight: As the series narrator, she is completely absent during the events recounted, only appearing in the narrator-focused segments set in 2054. ROTEOF compensates for this by elevating her to being part of the main storyline in the 2046 sections of the story.
• Affectionate Nickname: Butterscotch.
• Brainy Brunette: Just like her mom, but perhaps more-so given that she has a chance for a formal education.
• Child Mage: Is a psionic, just like the her dad.
• Cheerful Child: Almost never without a smile, and is just happy in general.
• Constantly Curious: Has a vested interest in history, particularly the entirety of the War with the Elders, getting her hands on any and every artifact of the war she can. It eventually leads her to become the series narrator.
• Dead Guy Junior: Yes. On one hand, Annette Durand, on the other, Shaojie Zhang.
• Deadpan Snarker: Just like her parents, though possibly more so.
• Framing Device: Serves as one for whole series, which is her recollections of XCOM's war with the Elders, as put together from her interviewing surviving members of the organization and recovering artifacts from that time period.
• Fighting Irish: Given who her mother is, she definitely would qualify if she ever went down the same path.
• Generation Xerox: Looks like her mom, for the most part, though her personality puts her more in line with her dad.
• Innocent Swearing: Her very first word at the age of three was not a very nice one.
  • Averted with her present-day incarnation, who swears about as much as her parents.
• Psychic Powers: Just like her dad, who is mentoring her in the usage of said abilities.
• Trademark Favorite Food: Butterscotch, hence her nickname.
• Walking Spoiler: She's the Commander and Jane Kelly's daughter, and thus living proof that they made it through the war okay.
• Wise Beyond Their Years: She has the maturity to put the Anthology set together in a coherent fashion at thirteen, running interviews and accessing old video and audio logs to get all the sides of the story.
  • Her four-year old self immediately figures out that 2036!Jane isn't her mother, though she continues to treat her as she would her actual mother, since it's simply a younger version of her mom she's interacting with.

XCOM - Command Staff

Jonathan-John Quimberly Bradford / Central

• The Alcoholic: The most prominent example, though given what he goes through on a daily basis, it's not hard to understand why. To wit, he has a minifridge stocked with drinks on the Avenger's bridge, and is generally never without a drink close at hand in any case.
• Affectionate Nickname: Has many. Bradyboo, Johnny Sweaterseed, Drunky, among others.
• Ace Custom: His famous assault rifle, Mimsy.
• A Day in the Limelight: While he has his moments, the Bradford Goes Bananas series of chapters in Tales are dedicated solely to his perspectiv of XCOM.
• Berserk Button: For unknown (and likely comedic) reasons, he despises Titanic, it's most famous song in particular, going so far as to tackle someone singing it.
• Butt-Monkey: To frankly comedic levels. XCOM's first incarnation was destroyed when the Council sold them out, he spent the last twenty years on the run and drunk as a skunk, he lost his beloved sweater, he's a terrible leader, no one appreciates his attempts to fly the Avenger and his subordinates barely respect him. And on top of that, he gets shot, stabbed, blown up and beaten about like he's the worlds most alcoholic punching bag.
• The Comically Serious: His attempts to be a serious military man onboard a ship "held together by hormones and bloodlust" are exactly what make him so hilarious.
• Drives Like Crazy: Everyone hates it when he flies the Avenger. Melissa takes over after he takes a rocket to the face, to almost unanimous adulation. He eventually returns to the role, to the opposite reception.
• Embarrassing Middle Name: Quimberly. He would prefer everyone forget it's part of his name.
• Got Volunteered: Into being a male stripper during his youth, courtesy of the Commander. He enjoyed the job and kept it up for over a decade, so it isn't so bad.
• Hidden Depths: Is surprisingly versed in XCOM and alien lore, probably because his grandmother regaled him with stories of the Bureau-era's incarnation of the organization in his youth.
  • He's also an alcohol aficionado, enough that he and Moxxi sometimes work together in the bar.
• I Was Young and Needed the Money: Zig-Zagged, he worked as a male stripper in Las Vegas during his youth. Conversely, he greatly enjoyed the job and reportedly still has his old uniform, even bringing it out on "special nights" with Volk.
• Insistent Terminology: His name vacillates between Jonathan Bradford and John Bradford. Apparently, both are part of his actual name.
• The Lancer: Serves in this role to the Commander, and his serious personality mostly puts him in stark contrast to the Commander's more comedic one.
• Legacy Character: To his grandmother, who was the Bureau's incarnation of Central. She passed down her sweater to him, and after he was recruited into XCOM, he even got her job!
• Made of Iron: This man took a rocket to the face and came out of it alive and mostly none-the-worse for wear. That said rocket was fired by Claptrap may have helped his survival chances.
• Noodle Incident: Got arrested sometime in the 1990's when he broke into his ex-boyfriend's house to steal back his sweater, which he apparently left behind during a dramatic breakup sequence. Only he and the Commander and Future!Jane know the exact specifics. He also once locked Big Sky in a closet and hijacked his Skyranger so he could have "relations" with his sweater, which is probably why Melissa is so hostile to him.
  • The box in his room that he uses for uh...reasons. Julian had to torch it with a flamethrower.
    • The time he attacked Volk in full-sight of his men to get his sweater back. Reportedly, it was like watching a Tough Mudder race gone wrong.
• Only Sane Man: Sees himself as this.
• Running Gag: Him being witness, participant or victim of one of XCOM's zanier stunts. And of course, him losing his sweater.
• Serious Business: His famous sweater, period. Given that it's a family heirloom that's at least seventy-five years old and the only thing he has left of his grandmother, who once held the same rank and title he did and used that sweater during her days in XCOM, he may be justified in it.
• The Stoic: He tries his best to be this, which is a holdover from his days in the military, though it doesn't work out much.
• The Straight Man: Either this of The Comically Serious, depending on what day and story it is.
• Sitcom Archnemesis: Does not get along with Melissa at all, mostly because they're at opposite ends of the piloting skill spectrum, and also because he tries to help her out with the Skyranger, which she is very adverse to.
• The Woobie: Let's see...the incarnation of XCOM he served with was destroyed to the last man, with him, the Commander and Geist being the only remaining members of it, he spent twenty years and counting as an outlaw, he's aware that the war with the Elders is a losing one, and he repeatedly loses his sweater.

An-Yi "Lily" Shen

• Affectionate Nickname: Lil, usually from Melissa.
• Ace Custom: ROV-R, as per game canon, and her custom assault rifle, "Heidi".
• Action Girl: Downplayed, given her role involves building things, but push comes to shove, and she's an amazing fighter, using her gadgets and wits to keep her enemies down.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Is a sweet, loving woman who happily helps wherever possible. Also had a traitor to XCOM executed by way of tossing him over the side of the ship while it was in flight.
• Broken Bird: The death of her father during the Resistance's attack on the Avenger broke her inside. It took Melissa's intervention to drag her out of it.
• The Engineer: As always. She's easily the most competent tech on the entire ship, and for good reason.
• Generation Xerox: To some extent. She's Chief Engineer and the best tech in XCOM, as her father was.
• Making Love in All the Wrong Places: In engineering. All over engineering. Also the Skyranger, though that's kind of justifiable, given that Melissa lives there. Also once on the Avenger's deck.
• Missing Mom: Her mother died before the 2015 invasion.
• My Greatest Failure: Her dad's death.
• Not So Above It All: While she's not The Stoic by any means, she doesn't exactly get in on XCOM's more comical exploits. But sometimes, she does.
• Sex for Solace: Did this with Melissa as part of her grieving process regarding her dad.

Richard Tygan / Hamburglar

• Crazy-Prepared: Apparently anticipated the possibility of hostiles boarding the Avenger and prepared accordingly, if the custom-built proximity mines he has stored in his lab which then get used on the Hunter when he sneaks into the ship are any indication.
• Omnidisciplinary Scientist: Toyed with. Like his in-game counterpart, he's primarily versed in matters biological, but the war forces him to step out of his comfort zone, though he acquits himself well in those matters.
• Non-Action Guy: Doesn't go out into the field, as per his in-game version. That said, he fends off the Hunter by mining the vent he drops down from.
• Trademark Favorite Food: ADVENT Burgers. He's the one responsible for stuffing the wrappings into Bradford's console. He also spends his time in the Black Market trading Codex Brains for cases of the stuff.
• The Stoic: Generally stays out of XCOM's odder stunts, and most of their antics in general.
• Trapmaster: Apparently has custom-made proximity mines lying around in his lab, to discourage the curious. Like say, the Hunter.

Melissa Gaskarth / Firebrand

• Affectionate Nickname: 'Lissa', courtesy of Lily.
• Ace Pilot: Is a piloting savant, and most at home behind the wheel of a vehicle in general. She can even fly the Avenger with substantially more competence than Bradford.
• Ace Custom: The Skyranger, which she calls The Valiance. It's apparently the same model of Skyranger from Enemy Unknown, rebuilt from the ground-up into the XCOM 2 incarnation.
• Disproportionate Retribution: Fond of handing this out to people who tinker with the Skyranger without her permission.
• Ink-Suit Actor: In a sense, she's described as looking exactly like Karen Gillan.
• I Call It "Vera": On one side, her Skyranger, The Valiance, on the other hand, her custom-made revolver, Salena.
• Lipstick Lesbian: Is somewhat more concerned with her appearance than Lily.
• Lives in a Van: Technically the Skyranger, which is justifiable, given that she scavenged it from a junkyard, rebuilt it from scratch and it's been her home for several years before she even became a part of XCOM.
• The Precious, Precious Car: The Skyranger, which she obsesses over to a frankly comedic degree.
• Revolvers Are Just Better: Has one she calls "Salena". It's capable of taking down a Muton with a single shot, and was personally built for her by Lily.
• Serious Business: Her love for Ozzy Osbourne. She plays his music all the time (though she does listen to other artists) and somehow scrounged up Ozzy-related merch. It's apparently the only thing she plays on the Skyranger during ops, and she'll cheerfully attack anyone who tries to change the music.
  • The Skyranger. Unless you're Lily or Foley, touching the Skyranger without her permission is grounds for being shot at.
• Shout-Out: Her last name references Alex Gaskarth, lead singer of All Time Low.

XCOM - Menace Team

As A Whole

• Amazon Brigade: The whole lineup.
• Beware the Nice Ones: They're a cheerful bunch of real-life singers, who also happen to be fearsome alien killers.
• The Ace: XCOM's best soldiers, period.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: Not exactly nobody, given they're all famous in real life to some extent, but they went from being singers to the bane of ADVENT - and by extension, the Elders - existence as a result of their livelihoods (and most likely, their friends) being wiped out during the invasion.

Chrissy Costanza / Roses

• Dark and Troubled Past: Given that her two other band members are nowhere to be seen, it's a fair bet as to guess what exactly pushed Chrissy to abandon a life of singing and become an alien Hunter.
• Blood Knight: Cheerfully enjoys spilling alien blood, and often immediately resorts to violent solutions.
• Cloud Cuckoo Lander's Minder: Is technically battle partners with Carly, and therefore keeps an eye on her in the fray...and off the battlefield.
• The Engineer: Of the two specialists on the team, she's the more technically-inclined member of the team. While she generally prefers using her tech to hurt people, she's just as versed in jacking into an ADVENT System as she is at ensuring an alien dies a grisly death via her Gremlin.
• I Call It "Vera": Her Gremlin is called "Annie", mirroring the real-life Chrissy's love of the eponymous League of Legends character.

Carly Rae Jepsen / Queen

• Beware the Silly Ones: Not that this stops her from being a fearsome combatant, or dropping all pretenses of silliness and just outright going nuts, like that time she stabbed a human trafficker forty times with her Skulljack.
• Blade Enthusiast: Possesses a blade hidden in her shoulder armor, and twirls it around when bored.
• Cloud Cuckoo Lander: Yes, yes, and yes. She's prone to spouting non-sequiturs, has extraordinarily skewed priorities and randomly breaks into song.
• Expy : Of Brittany S. Pierce from Glee.
• I Call It "Vera": Uses the Boltcaster in combat, and calls it "Bolty".
• Improbable Aiming Skills: Is supremely talented with the Boltcaster, which is understandable, given that the weapon is extremely punishing if she misses.
• Kindhearted Cat Lover : As with her real-world incarnation, Carly has a cat by the name of Jupiter. He apparently keeps her bunk warm while she's away on missions.
• The Medic: For better or worse (or much worse, which is how it usually is), she's in charge of making sure no one on her side dies.
• TheOptimist : Easily the most cheerful member of the team, probably because she's also the most divorced from reality.

Lynn Gunn / Mirrors

• Emo : Sort of. The real-world Lynn Gunn is fairly gothic in nature, so her Anthology incarnation follows those cues.
• Demolitions Expert: Easily the most skilled with explosives in terms of Menace, and probably XCOM as a whole.
• Mad Bomber: When she really gets into the heat of battle, she becomes this.
• Stuff Blowing Up: Firmly believes that explosives are the be-all-end-all solution to the alien problem.
• The Straight Man: Played with. She's somewhat less humorous than her other teammates, but she's not averse to engaging in fun.
• Uncertain Doom: Not her, but like the other team members who are part of a band, her bandmates are nowhere to be seen.

Hayley Williams / Daydreamer

• More Dakka: Contrasts against Lynn in that where Lynn believes explosives are the answer, Hayley believes that bullets are the answer.
• Shipper on Deck: Openly ships the Commander and Jane, and started the betting pool regarding the topic.
• The Sixth Ranger: Was not present in initial versions of the Anthology Set, and was retconned in later.
• Uncertain Doom: Not to her, but to the Anthology Set's incarnation of her real-world bandmates. They're nowhere to be seen, which probably indicates they went down the same path as everyone else's bandmates.

Ellie Goulding / Lights

• Friendly Sniper: When she's not being a know-it-all, anyways.
• Insufferable Genius: For a given definition. She's not stupid, not by a long shot, and she's fairly intelligent, but the trope stems from the fact that she has an almost annoying predilection for saying something which then comes true, like predicting the Commander and Jane becoming a couple, figuring out exactly what the Avatar Project entails, that Annette Durand is the Assassin, and where the Warlock lives.
  • She even declares that she's "always right", which none of her teammates contest. Ever.
• Stealth Expert: Easily the sneakiest of the team, probably because she fights at extreme range and is therefore largely removed from the battle.

Taylor Swift / Catastrophe

• Deadpan Snarker: As per her real-world incarnation.
• Friendly Sniper: When she actually bothers to snipe, that is. Taylor's far less inclined to actually use her sniper rifle, preferring her pistol instead. On the other hand, considering the kinds of shots she lands, it may be justified.
• Improbable Aiming Skills: Can nail people at fairly improbably ranges with her revolver/mag pistol/plasma hand cannon.
• The Gunslinger: Prefers to use her sidearm over her sniper rifle in practically every situation, though that doesn't preclude her from using the rifle when the situation calls for it.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: Downplayed, but present, with Ellie. They're technically both snipers, but have diametrically opposed combat philosophies, not that it stops them from working together. Off-duty, they're quite friendly, though they keep up some friendly ribbing due to how different they fight despite being grouped in the same class.

The Resistance - Leaders

Konstantine "Volk" Volikov

• Anti-Hero: Not a particularly nice guy, unless you're Bradford, and he hates aliens with a burning passion and only tolerates the Skirmishers because it would make his boyfriend very sad if he didn't. That said, he's just as committed to fighting the Elders as everyone else.
• Cold Sniper: Is this, for the most part, referring to sniping as "hunting".
• Improbable Aiming Skills: Of course he is, though he doesn't put it on display very much. That, and, the Reapers had to get it from somewhere.
• Fantastic Racism: Hates Skirmishers, and aliens in general, as per his in-game incarnation.
• Noodle Incident: Apparently met Bradford in a strip club the latter was working at, by way of beaning him in the head with a quarter. He considers it to have been a "romantic" moment.
• Not So Above It All: He outright enjoys seeing Bradford get flustered when something goes comedically wrong during an XCOM op.
• Old Soldier: Roughly the same age as Bradford, more or less. He just happens to have aged more gracefully.
• The Straight Man: has very few comedic moments, unless Bradford's around.

Betos

• Cloudcuckoolander's Minder: Is the more stable of the Geist-Betos duo, and thus gets this role by default.
• Interspecies Romance: With Geist.

Geist

• Adaptational Personality Change: His canonical incarnation differs substantially from his Anthology persona.
• Boldly Coming: The first on-screen character to get together with an alien.
• Casanova Wannabe: Has a reputation for hitting on basically anyone who so much as breathes in his direction.
• Chivalrous Pervert: The man loves sex, makes no secret about how much he loves naked people, immediately hits on Betos the instant he lays eyes on her...and turns out to be a loving and caring boyfriend who respects boundaries and treats his girlfriend with respect.
• Dark and Troubled Past: Sort of. He was part of the Enemy Unknown era of XCOM, which ended poorly, to say the least. He came out of the assault on XCOM HQ with psionic powers and amnesia, and spent the next twenty years either wandering the earth or killing aliens. That said, he's totally fine with his past and doesn't brood about it at all.
• Hidden Depths: He has a truly staggering knowledge of psionics and alien anatomy. He's also intimately familiar with how XCOM operates, mostly because he was an actual member of the organization.
• Interspecies Romance: With Betos. His Templars are surprisingly supportive of it, probably because it means he's less inclined to hit on one of them. And because she totally, eagerly, reciprocates.
• Lovable Sex Maniac: It's kinda his thing.
• Let's Get Dangerous!: Sex is on his mind like, ninety percent of the time...but the other ten percent, he's doing his part to wreck the Elders' plans.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: Not even he knows his actual name.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: Killed the Warlock in a Wizard Duel, which unfortunately, didn't stick because of the latter's Resurrective Immortality.
  • Spends all of Lost And Abandoned trashing a blacksite adjacent to the meeting site.
  • Survived the XCOM Base Defense during Enemy Unknown.
• Shrouded in Myth: While he was a member of XCOM's Enemy Unknown incarnation, his role within the organization is a mystery to most. Some say he was one of the very first XCOM psionics, others say he was an ADVENT experiment who believes he was part of XCOM, and a few think he's just a man who gained powers one day and then promptly began fabricating a backstory to make himself look better. As it turns out, he was the 2015 version of XCOM's psychiatrist, but an administrative error meant that no such position was formally registered, explaining why Bradford doesn't recognize him.
  • As for how he got his powers, no one's really quite sure. Theories range from him falling into a vat of elerium, to drinking the blood of an Elder (never mind that one hasn't been seen in person for over a decade), to sheer dumb luck. Geist maintains that he was tested for psionic potential by Vahlen and was in the middle of having his powers unlocked when XCOM HQ was attacked.

The Informant

• Big Good: As per usual.
• Hidden Depths: In a sense. He has a secret love of the Twilight and Fifty Shades of Grey franchises. He's also multilingual and able to speak the alien languages, which is fairly important for a guy like him.
• The Mole: Operates as one for XCOM, acting from the inside of ADVENT to pass along supplies, intel and other state secrets to the Resistance.
• Not So Above It All: What else do you call sneaking into the Black Market in the dark of night to purchase Fifty Shades of Grey merch?
• Only Sane Man: To his misfortune. He seems to view his role in the Resistance's monthly meetings as being a glorified chaperone whilst The Commander/Betos/Geist/Volk squabble.
  • He routinely confronts the Commander on the more...outlandish things the Resistance does. It usually doesn't work out, because the Commander either allows the aforementioned outlandish things to keep going, or was the source of it in the first place.

Xenon The Antiquarian

• Arms Dealer: Besides firearms, he also sells more mundane-ish things like porn, sex toys, household supplies, entertainment media, food, clothes and toiletries.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Shoplifters will be jumped by Thaddeus, his janitor-slash-security guard. Or fed to Mr. Tickles, the Bog Monster who lives in the very back of the cavern.
• Collectorofthe Strange: As per his in-game incarnation. For whatever reason, he also accepts Codex Brains as cash.
• Cloudcuckoolander : As per the game he hails from.
• Everyone Has Standards: He detests the alien occupation of Earth and cheerfully sells to the Resistance. Apparently, Earth's fall resulted in the death of most of his original client base, which probably explains his anti-Elder stance.
• Fluffy the Terrible: Thaddeus the Janitorial Golem, who cleans the shop and squishes any unlucky ADVENT kill teams that find the place. And Mr. Tickles the Bog Monster, who provides "services" to various customers with his tentacles and once ate the Hunter when he had the misfortune of finding the place.
• The Little Shop That Wasn't There Yesterday: Only members affiliated with the Resistance can find (and safely) enter his shop. Anyone else gets mulched. That said, deserting ADVENT/Aliens are allowed entry, often exchanging their gear and intelligence for safe passage to the Resistance.
  • Asaru comes and goes from the shop as he pleases, though his visits are fairly infrequent.
• Noodle Incident: Someone sold out the location of eight ADVENT Blacksites in exchange for twenty cases of Enemy Unknown-era Sectoids that had been "aging" in the back of his shop for who knows how long. He considers it to have been a good deal.
  • That one time the Hunter found his shop. It ended with the eponymous Chosen being eaten by Mr. Tickles and never again returning to visit the place. Also that other time Asaru visited the shop.
    • The only reason he's the current proprietor of the Black Market is because the last owner got eaten by a pack of Chryssalids. Xenon openly laments that even in a dystopian world such as XCOM, he still had to sign paperwork to get the market turned over to him.

XCOM - Other Soldiers & Staff

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Soldiers

Canonical XCOM Troops (Pratal Mox, Elena "Outrider" Dragunova, Julian "King Julian" Shen)

• A.I. Is a Crapshoot: Julian, again.
• The Atoner: A large part of Pratal's personality and storyline revolves around this, mostly because he murdered Elena's sister and seeks to make amends.
• Character Development: As Annette's interviews indicate, all three of them eventually develop into better people.
  • Mox finds the redemption he's sought, and is forgiven by Elena to some degree for his part in Kestra's death.
  • Julian becomes a nicer person in general.
  • Elena grows past her irrational hatred of Mox and learns to be civil with him.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: Julian, mostly because he makes no effort to be even remotely friendly with anyone.
• Hates Everyone Equally: Julian hates basically everyone else in the cast and is very open about it.
• Hypocritical Heartwarming: As far as Julian is concerned, only he is allowed to injure or kill a member of XCOM, never mind the fact that he has a restraining bolt in his programming that prevents him from doing exactly that.
• Incoming Ham: Julian does this all the time, the product of using King Julian from the Madagascar franchise as a role model.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: A very tiny one, but Julian genuinely cares for his sister. Even if he'd rather not show it, like, at all.
  • Elena is at least somewhat grateful for Mox saving her ass during the Lost and Abandoned mission.
• Large Ham: Julian, as if his moniker of "King Julian" didn't give it away.
• Revenge Before Reason: Elena during the Lost And Abandoned mission. She's so hell-bent on making Pratal pay for the death of her sister that it nearly derails the negotiation process. It takes Jane holding her at swordpoint and Mox (as per canon) sacrificing himself for her to get her to slightly break out of it.
• The Resenter: Elena despises Pratal, because he killed her sister.

The Avengers (Tony Stark, Steve Rogers, Bruce Banner, Thor, Natasha Romanov, Clint Barton, Wanda Maximoff, Carol Danvers)

• Power Trio: Steve, Natasha and Wanda, when they comprise the Wraith-One subset.

Hunter Two-One (David Foley / Sarge, Jake Dunn / Corporal, James Ramirez / Private)

• Almighty Janitor: Ramirez, as per his status as a player character in Modern Warfare 2.
• Hidden Depths: Ramirez can bake, the knowledge of which he passes on to the Commander during their attempts to court Jane.
• The Main Characters Do Everything: Invoked Trope. Foley (somehow) knows damn well that Ramirez is the main character of the game he hails from, and puts that to good use by ordering him to do anything and everything. That and he outranks Ramirez by about four or five ranks, being a full fledged Colonel whilst Ramirez is still a Lieutenant.
• Like a Son to Me: Foley treats Ramirez as such...which probably also explains why he orders him around all the time.
• Noodle Incident: About half the things they do.
• Only the Chosen May Wield: May touch, but it's the same principle. Foley, for reasons probably chalked up to him being a huge mechanical engineering geek, is the only person allowed to touch the Skyranger outside of Lily Shen.
• Odd Friendship: Foley with Melissa. He shoots things, she carts him around so he can shoot the things that need to be shot, and they work on the Skyranger together and she trusts him to keep an eye on it in her absence.
• Take Up My Sword: James invoked this after his sister died during the Gatecrasher op. Prior to that, he was content to work in the havens and do his part to make everyone's lives a little brighter, after that, he signed onto XCOM.

Task Force 141 (John Price, John "Soap" McTavish, Simon "Ghost" Riley, Gary "Roach" Sanderson)

• Affectionate Parody: Of the Call of Duty fanbase in general. They're irreverent, reckless, and always itching for a fight.
• Blood Knight: Practically a requirement when one considers how they hail from the Call of Duty franchise.
• Destructive Savior: While they're competent at their job and always complete their mission, the concept of subtlety or anything even remotely resembling such is lost on them. As such, the Commander usually deploys them into missions where no one will mind enough explosions to make Michael Bay weep with joy.
• Noodle Incident: Two, the first being an incident with the Hunter uploading porn to the Avenger's computers, and the second, involving the flooding of an ADVENT Blacksite with tapioca.

The Vault Hunters (Lilith, Roland, Mordecai, Brick, Axton, Maya, Salvador, Zer0, Gaige, Krieg, Athena, Claptrap, Tiny Tina, Stompy The Stomper, Moze, Amara, Zane Flynt, FL4K)

• Cloudcuckoolander: The whole team, with Tiny Tina as the most notable standout.
• HumongousMecha: Stompy The Stomper is a hijacked Sectopod stolen from the ADVENT Forge.
• Lethal Klutz: Claptrap, which sometimes works out in their favor.
• Noodle Incident: The aforementioned hijacking of Stompy the Stomper, along with the one time they flooded a Blacksite with nineteen tons of tapioca.

Hyperion (Wilhelm The Enforcer, Nisha The Lawbringer, Aurelia The Huntress, Timothy Lawrence)

• I Did What I Had to Do: As far as the Commander is concerned, they're allowed to do whatever they want on missions, as long as the target ends up dead. Collateral damage and civilian casualties are not a concern.
• Token Evil Teammate: They get sent on the "dirtiest" missions, and frankly, they're happy to do so. It gives them the freedom to do whatever they want, so long as the job gets done.

Normandy (Garrus Vakarian, Ashley Williams)

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Engineering (Handsome Jack, Rhys Strongfork)

• Evil Genius: They come up with the weapons of war needed to fight ADVENT, like acid bombs, gas bombs, SPARKS, wacky armor, the works.

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Science (Jemma Simmons, Leo Fitz)

• Mad Scientist: Downplayed, but they do come up with some interesting things in the name of stopping ADVENT.

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And Everybody Else... (Moxxi, Patricia Tannis, Karin Chakwas)

• The Bartender: Moxxi, as per her canonical Borderlands incarnation.
• The Medic: Patricia and Karin, in a more full-time role. They man the infirmary and keep people in it from suffering more than they already have.

The Aliens - Main Characters

Angelis

• Big Bad: As the leader/empress of the Ethereal Empire, it's not really a big surprise.
• Galactic Conqueror: Earth is just another in a long line of conquests.
• Not-So-Harmless Villain: While the specifics are still Noodle Incident territory, she did not go down without a fight during Operation Leviathan, managing to slice off Jane Kelly's left arm in the fighting.
• We Can Rule Together: Offers this to the Commander during the final battle, as per-game canon. They refuse.
• Worthy Opponent: Views the Commander as this, with her respect being rooted as far back as destroying the Underground Alien Base during Enemy Unknown.

Advent Speaker

• Evil Counterpart: To The Informant, at least as the "face" of ADVENT. There's no indication that he does anything other than his traditional mouth of sauron activities.
• Mouth of Sauron: As per his in-game incarnation.
• Noodle Incident: Was once crushed by an ADVENT Priest that had the misfortune of being flung into the stratosphere during an attack on the Avenger. He refused to step outside for more than two months, and commissioned an umbrella made purely out of alien alloys to avoid a similar incident.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Does this whenever things go wrong for him.

The Assassin / Annette Durand

• And I Must Scream: Annette has spent the last twenty years trapped in her body, watching as a homicidal Elder-worshipping persona uses her hands to kill people.
• Ascended Extra: Not that the Chosen are extras by any means, but she's arguably the most important of the Chosen as far as the story goes.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: Though she takes great pains to hide it, the Assassin is this, mostly because Annette didn't go along willingly with the Elders' plans for humanity.
• Body Horror: Annette Durand and the Assassin look and sound nothing alike, which makes one wonder exactly what was done to make her that way.
• Combat Pragmatist: Sometimes. She favors stealth, a grappling hook, sudden moves and ambushes, but isn't above dropping the smoke and mirrors and going for a good old fashioned duel.
• Death Seeker: Not the Assassin herself, but rather, her original personality, Annette Durand. The instant XCOM severs the Elders' link to her, Annette seizes the initiative and kills herself.
• Driven to Suicide: Again, not the Assassin, but Annette. The Assassin's occasional reckless behavior and very pronounced weakness to long-range weapons is the result of Annette trying to find a way to get herself permanently killed.
  • She does this more permanently when the Elders lose their grip on her after XCOM destroys her sarcophagus.
• Do Not Go Gentle: If Chapter 16 is any indication, the Assassin put up one hell of a fight before [spoiler:Annette retook control of her body and killed herself.]]
• Dying as Yourself: Annette is practically ecstatic to go out while being in control of her body once more.
• Evil Counterpart: To Jane, given that they're both shotgun-wielding melee fighters who specialize in close range combat. The revelation that she's Annette Durand drives it home further, as they both have personal connections to the Commander.
• Fighting from the Inside: There are a few hints that Annette is still in there.
• Heroic Suicide: After her Sarcophagus is destroyed, Annette retakes control from the Assassin and kills herself to prevent the Elders from continuing to use her against the Resistance, but not before sharing a tender last moment with the Commander.
• Honor Before Reason: Can be baited into an open one-on-one swordfight if one throws down the gauntlet. This is apparently the result of Annette using the Assassin's pride as a warrior against her.
• The Lost Lenore: Not the Assassin herself, but her original personality, Annette Durand.
• Noble Demon: Avoids targeting innocents and unarmed opponents, which is the result of Annette influencing the Assassin's personality to be slightly less homicidal and more honorable.
• Posthumous Character: Her namesake's interviews in 2054 reveal that she's dead.
• The Rival: She and Jane consider each other to be this.
• Resurrective Immortality: As with all Chosen, she has this, to Annette's dismay, as it prevents her suffering from permanently ending.
• So Proud of You: Part of her final exchange with the Commander involves this.
• Split Personality: The end result of being subjected to the experiments that turned her into the killer she is today.
  • The Assassin, borne of her transformation into a puppet of the Elders, is the dominant personality.
  • Annette is in the metaphorical passenger seat, at least until XCOM destroys her sarcophagus and gives her the opening needed to seize control of her body again.
• Split-Personality Takeover: Annette is able to invoke this during quiet moments, but only for brief periods of time. It's made more permanent when XCOM storms the Assassin's stronghold and destroys her sarcophagus, resulting in Annette wresting control away from the Assassin and killing herself in the process.
• Was Once a Man: To an extreme degree, given that Annette Durand and the Assassin have almost nothing in common.
• Worthy Opponent: Considers Jane as such, along with the Commander.

The Hunter / Tomko

• Combat Pragmatist: Zig-zagged. While he won't hesitate to pick off someone he doesn't like with absolutely zero warning, if he does like you, he'll fire off a shot in your general direction as a heads up, allowing for at least the possibility of return fire. Completely averted with Elena, of whom he's practically besotted with, leading him to do stupid things in the name of getting her attention.
• Evil Counterpart: To Elena, Ellie, and the Sharpshooters and Reapers as a whole.
• Heel–Face Turn: At some point, given that he's alive as of 2054 and in a relationship with Elena.
• Improbable Aiming Skills: Does this all the time, which eventually gets turned around on him by Elena.
• In Love with Your Carnage: Invoked towards Elena, who has killed him at least once.
• Love Makes You Stupid: For a given definition of love. It's more like "carnage-based affection", but Elena occasionally leads him around in circles because he's too stupefied with her to actually think clearly.
  • Odd Couple: He's involved with Elena Dragunova and Pratal Mox, for crying out loud.
• Noble Demon: He avoids targeting noncombatants, because it's no fun fighting someone who won't shoot back.
• Noodle Incident. Has been on the receiving end of more than a few.
  • Like getting eaten by Mr. Tickles.
  • Or being crushed by Stompy The Stomper.
  • And that time he got shot through his scope by Elena.
• Resurrective Immortality: As per game canon, and considering that he's suffered at least three onscreen deaths and come back every time, it's probably for the best.
• Stalker with a Crush: Has launched no less than three assaults on the Avenger in hopes of meeting Elena face-to-face.
• Scope Snipe: Was unceremoniously victimized by this from Elena, resulting in the start of his crush on her.
• Sole Survivor: The only one of the Chosen to survive the war, as the Warlock is killed in battle with XCOM at some point and the Assassin kills herself.
• Villain Episode: As of this writing, he has two of them.
• Villainous Crush: Has a noticeable one with regards to Elena Dragunova.
  • The 2054 sections of the story reveal that they're in a relationship.
• Was Once a Man: As per the game.

The Warlock

• Ax-Crazy: Has absolutely no moral code, viewing any measures taken to combat XCOM as acceptable.
• Card-Carrying Villain: Has exactly zero redeeming traits and spends most of his time committing atrocities in some manner or another.
• Driven to Suicide: To be fair, being tickled by Julian after screwing up a teleportation sequence and getting stuck in a ceiling will do that to you. It doesn't stick, unfortunately.
• Ham-to-Ham Combat: He and Julian get into this sometimes.
• Large Ham: As per usual.
• Noodle Incident: Abandoned his stronghold due to some strange creature (referencing a Special Effects Failure in XCOM 2's main menu) taking up residence in it. He eventually evicted it and moved back in some point afterwards. In 2054, Annette Zhang Kelly muses that the event in question never happened, and attributes the whole thing to corrupted data.
• Out of Focus: Arguably the least important of the Chosen, story-wise. He has no rivals, unlike his siblings, and his plotline is not intricately tied to a member of the heroes. He has a chapter all to himself to make up for it, though.
• Resurrective Immortality: It's how he comes back from that one time he killed himself to avoid the further embarrassment of being tickled.
• Villain Episode: Has a chapter in TFTWSOTA dedicated all to himself.
• Was Once a Man: In keeping with canon, he is.

Bureau Spoilers Asaru

• Good Counterpart: To Angelis.
• The Ghost: Mentioned by Xenon the Antiquarian as being a regular, if infrequent, customer to his shop despite not technically being affiliated with the Resistance. He lets it slide, probably because it's a bad idea to provoke an Elder. His influence on the story is felt, but he himself has yet to make a proper appearance.
• Mysterious Protector: Towards the Commander. He protected them while they were in stasis and later saved their life during Operation Gatecrasher.
• Walking Spoiler: His presence confirms that the Bureau occurred in some capacity, kicking off the chain of events that lead to Enemy Unknown/Within and XCOM 2 in general.

Other Characters

Ana Ramirez

• Cool Big Sis: James considered her as such.
• Hot-Blooded: Very much so.
• Posthumous Character: Died during Gatecrasher, presumably along similar lines to her canonical counterpart.
• Sibling Yin-Yang: In a number of aspects. Ana was impulsive and hotblooded, James is calm and collected. She was a soldier keeping everyone safe, he was a baker keeping everyone fed.
• Take Up My Sword: James quit working in the havens and signed onto XCOM after getting word of her death.

Peter Osei

• Posthumous Character: Was killed during Gatecrasher.

DJ

• Abhorrent Admirer: The Commander regards him as such.
• In Love with Your Carnage: To the Commander, who in turn found it freaky.
• Noodle Incident: Hit on the Commanderone too many times, resulting in Jane doing something to him. Either way, he stopped bothering them.
• Voice of the Resistance: As per his in-game incarnation.

Moira Vahlen

• Mad Scientist: As per Alien Hunters.
• Noodle Incident: Got high on LSD at some point during the events of Enemy Unknown, a state of mind that lasted for twelve hours and resulted in Bradford getting a scar in a very embarrassing place.
  • She did something to the Sectoid Commander after the Alien Base assault.
• Torture Technician: As per the game.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: No one, not even the Commander, knows what happened to her. She's likely still alive, though.

Raymond Shen

• The Engineer: Very much so.
• The Mentor: Taught Lily everything he knew about engineering, which is quite considerable, all things considered.
• Mentor Occupational Hazard: Was killed during the Resistance's capturing of the Avenger.
• The Professor: By and far the smartest character in the setting, rivaled only by Vahlen.
• Posthumous Character: The main-timeline storylines, anyways. He's alive in Lily's character-centric chapter, even featuring several times in it, but other than that, he only comes up via being mentioned in passing.

Shaojie Zhang

• BFG: Toted one around, as per his in-game incarnation.
• The Mentor: To Jane Kelly. Besides teaching her survival skills and how to fight, he did his best to teach her more academic things, though as he wasn't a teacher, his knowledge on that front was somewhat lacking. Jane notes that he mainly prioritized combat and surival related things, describing it as "being taught to disassemble an alien", and notes that he completely skipped out on parenting, which becomes a source of stress for her when she learns she's pregnant.
• Mentor Occupational Hazard: He's dead, which says it all.
• Old Soldier: During both Enemy Unknown and his time being an improvised dad to Jane.
• Posthumous Character: Died prior to the Anthology set kicking off, cause unknown.
• Parental Substitute: To Jane, raising her anywhere between 2015 to sometime before 2035.
• Sole Survivor: Thought he was XCOM's sole survivor, if Jane's recollections are any indication,, meaning that he never made contact with Bradford and what little remained of XCOM nor learned of the Commander's survival.

Kestra Dragunova

• Berserk Button: Her death gave Elena an extreme hatred of ADVENT and the Skirmishers in general, enough that she almost derails the negotiations between the two factions.
• Cheerful Child: As per Elena's flashbacks. She grew up in a loving family and a reasonably safe resistance haven, which is far more than most people get in the world of XCOM.
• Dies Wide Open: Yep, and in the arms of her sister, to boot.
• Kill the Cutie: Shot in the heart at the age of twelve, by Pratal Mox. She lived just long enough to beg Elena to make the pain stop.
• Posthumous Character: Has been dead for at least five years prior to Lost and Abandoned.
• Walking Spoiler: She's the big link between Elena and Mox's storylines and the source of all the tension between them.

Bureau Spoilers Angela Weaver

• Adaptational Nice Guy: The Commander regards her with fondness and considers her to have been a kind woman, suggesting that she either mellowed out significantly after the Bureau or was just nicer in general.
• Absurdly Elderly Mother: Given that the Commander was born somewhere around 1980, roughly eighteen years after the Bureau, she definitely qualifies.
• Commanding Coolness: As XCOM's first Commander, she definitely was.
• Empowered Badass Normal: Played host to Asaru during the closing events of the Bureau, gaining psionic powers and enhanced physical acumen in turn.
• Good Parents: Was one to the Commander, given how fond they are of her.
• Precursor Hero: Was the first Commander of XCOM, a title that would eventually pass to her child.
• Psychic Powers: The product of being host to Asaru during the Bureau. It seems to have become hereditary as a result, given that both her child and grandchild end up with the same powers.
• Posthumous Character: Died sometime prior to Enemy Unknown.
• Rank Up: Went from a field agent to XCOM's very first Commander after the events of the Bureau.
• Walking Spoiler: It's kind of hard to talk about her without giving away that XCOM is intricately tied to the Commander's bloodline.