Character for the 12 Monkeys film.
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James Cole
James Cole
"All I see are dead people."
Played By: Bruce Willis
"Oh, wouldn't it be great if I was crazy? Then the world would be okay."
A prisoner sent back in time to discover the origin of the virus.
- The Anti-Nihilist: While he knows what's coming and ultimately concludes he can't stop it, he still chooses to enjoy the beauty of the past while it lasts.
- Badass Normal: Downplayed. Cole is good at fighting when he has to, as a hardened criminal from the future, but is thoroughly not an unphased Action Hero by any means, either in action or personality, doubting himself instead of being confident, especially with how confused he is over time travelling, questioning his sanity and reality.
- Beware the Nice Ones: Cole's generally calm, but will engage in extreme violence if provoked.
- Demoted Memories: Eventually, Railly convinces him that he really is hallucinating the whole time travel thing, and he becomes convinced that he's mentally ill and needs help. Ironically, Railly has now become convinced that he is a time traveler, and now desperately tries to convince him of this,
- Go Among Mad People: Downplayed, since it's implied he's genuinely unstable, just not as much as people think he is.
- Hair-Trigger Temper: Downplayed. Cole is pretty even-tempered, but he tends to overreact with brutal violence when attacked.
- The Hero Dies: He's shot dead by the police at the end while trying to shoot Peters.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Downplayed. Cole is unstable, cynical, and prone to violence, but he's generally calm and frequently shown to be an ultimately good-natured person.
- Knight in Sour Armor: He's pretty cynical, but still a good person.
- Kick the Dog: Shoving Railly in the trunk of his car.
- Messianic Archetype: His initials are no coincidence. He gives his life trying (and failing) to stop The End of the World as We Know It, but his work provides a complete sample of the virus so the scientists of the future can create a vaccine. The Cassandra Truth and True Companions elements of this trope are also played completely straight.
- Only Sane by Comparison: In the future, anyway. Cole is shown to be genuinely mentally unstable and prone to brutal violence, but he's practically a picture of grace and kindness when compared to the other residents, which include the sociopathic and cruel Scientists, the apathetic fatalist Jose, the crazed Louie, and mindlessly dogmatic soldiers.
- Photographic Memory: Cole is selected for the expeditions because, although mentally disturbed, he possesses an extremely accurate memory for details and information, and at one point is able to recite a distorted message word-for-word after hearing it once, days earlier.
- Reluctant Psycho: He's generally calm, but prone to extreme violence at certain points. He also gradually becomes convinced he is genuinely schizophrenic and that he needs to be cured.
- Scannable Man: Has two barcodes tattooed on his neck that reveal that he was convicted for violent crimes.
- Significant Monogram: James Cole, as through his death, the world is (possibly) saved.
- Through the Eyes of Madness: Played with. There are several hints that Cole is genuinely schizophrenic, but he turns out to be completely right. However, it's implied he does have genuine mental problems anyway.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Subverted. He finds out that Jeffrey heard him babbling about the virus at the institution so Cole thinks he may have planted the idea about the extinction of 5 billion people into the villain's mind. It later turns out Jeffrey had nothing to do with the spreading of the virus to begin with.
- Used to Be a Sweet Kid: As a child, Cole was a sweet, well-adjusted boy, contrasting the paranoid, broken adult he is in the present.
- The World Is Just Awesome: He gradually becomes enamored with the past, which is far better than the Bad Future he hails from.
- Yank the Dog's Chain: Right when he's about to go to Key West with Railly and accomplish his dream of seeing the ocean, he's forced by his superiors to try and kill Peters, resulting in him being shot dead by the police.
Kathryn Railly
Dr. Kathryn Railly
"He's sick. He thinks he comes from the future. He's been living in a carefully constructed fantasy world and that world is starting to disintegrate. He needs help!"
Played By: Madeleine Stowe
Fletcher: Kathryn, you're a rational person. You're a trained psychiatrist. You know the difference between what's real and what's not.
Railly: And what we say is the truth is what everybody accepts. Right, Owen? I mean, psychiatry: it's the latest religion. We decide what's right and wrong. We decide who's crazy or not. I'm in trouble here. I'm losing my faith.
Railly: And what we say is the truth is what everybody accepts. Right, Owen? I mean, psychiatry: it's the latest religion. We decide what's right and wrong. We decide who's crazy or not. I'm in trouble here. I'm losing my faith.
A psychologist assigned to treat Cole.
- Break the Cutie: She's a good-natured, idealistic woman who's slowly broken after being taken hostage by Cole and realizing that he's right.
- Break the Haughty: Downplayed. She's somewhat arrogant and self-assured in her world-view, but she isn't obnoxiously smug like some of her colleagues. Nevertheless, she still has her worldview firmly shattered over the course of the film.
- The Fatalist: In the end, she decides that, since You Can't Fight Fate, she and Cole should enjoy the rest of their days at Key West,
- Nice Girl: Railly is polite, helpful, kind, and genuinely cares about the patients under her care.
- Token Good Teammate: She's the only member of the mental asylum staff that genuinely cares about the patients and never mocks them at any point.
- Trauma Conga Line: She goes through a lot of trauma, from being abducted by Cole to attacked by thugs twice to having her life fall apart after she becomes convinced he's right, and it all culminates in watching him die.
Jeffrey Goines
Jeffrey Goines
"You know what crazy is? Crazy is majority rules."
Played By: Brad Pitt
"There's the television. It's all right there - all right there. Look, listen, kneel, pray. Commercials! We're not productive anymore. We don't make things anymore. It's all automated. What are we for then? We're consumers, Jim. Yeah. Okay, okay. Buy a lot of stuff, you're a good citizen. But if you don't buy a lot of stuff, if you don't, what are you then, I ask you? What? Mentally ill. Fact, Jim, fact - if you don't buy things - toilet paper, new cars, computerized yo-yos, electrically-operated sexual devices, stereo systems with brain-implanted headphones, screwdrivers with miniature built-in radar devices, voice-activated computers..."
A schizophrenic mental patient at the same asylum as Cole.
- Beauty Inversion: Brad Pitt manages to look convincingly homely and unkempt for the majority of the film.
- Cloudcuckoolander: Jeffrey is manic and prone to bizarre tangents and rants, as well as believing in bizarre conspiracies. Justified, since he is legitimately mentally ill.
- Jerkass: Likely due to his mental illness worsening, the Jeffrey Goines in 1996 is much more confrontational and hostile then the one on 1990.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: In 1990, anyway. He genuinely tries to help Cole, even aiding him in an escape attempt.
- Large Ham: Brad Pitt's acting is gloriously over-the-top.
- Took a Level in Jerkass: He's much more of a prick in 1996, implied to be because his schizophrenia is getting worse.
The Scientists
The Scientists
"What did you do with your time, Cole? Did you waste it on drugs? Women?"
Played By: Carole Florence (Astrophysicist/Jones), Bob Adrian (Geologist), Bill Raymond (Microbiologist), Simon Jones (Zoologist), H. Michael Walls (Botanist)
A group of scientists in charge of the time travel experiment.
- The Dividual: They all act like the same individual, and never show any noticeable difference in personality.
- Drugs Are Bad: They all seem to hold this viewpoint. After Cole is drugged up in the mental institution, they repeatedly accuse him after every mission of having wasted his time getting high.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Jones travels back in time to extract a sample of the virus after Cole fails to stop Peters, implicitly infecting herself in the process.
- Jerkass: They're all callous and rather cruel to Cole.
- Never My Fault: Cole can't control when the time machine goes, but they still blame him for traveling to 1990 in spite of it being entirely their fault.
- Pet the Dog: After Cole returns after apparently finding the source of the virus, they serenade him and hang a painting of the sea above his hospital bed because they knew he liked both songs and the ocean, then merrily give him his pardon while calling him a hero. Sure, they gleaned that information from an interrogation, but it was still a nice thing to do.
- Wasteland Elder: After the virus kills most of humanity, the survivors live in underground shelters controlled by a council of a half-dozen middle-aged scientists who are using Time Travel to Find the Cure!.
Jose
Jose
Played By: Jon Seda
Another prisoner selected for the time travel experiments.
- Butt-Monkey: What we see if his adventures show him going through a ton of suffering.
- The Fatalist: Unlike Cole, he just wearily accepts his situation and what's happening around him rather than fight it.
- Forced into Evil: The Scientists force him to either make Cole kill Peters or kill Kathryn. Jose clearly doesn't want to do it, but they'll have him killed if he doesn't.
- Hero of Another Story: He's also being used for time traveling and is clearly going through his own adventures, but we only ever see bits and pieces of it.
Leland Goines
Dr. Leland Goines
Played By: Christopher Plummer
Jeffrey's father, a Nobel Prize-winning virologist.
- Genre Savvy: While he initially dismisses Railly's warnings, after about a second he decides to take enhanced security measures to stop a viral outbreak anyway. Unfortunately, it turns out he should've suspected Peters instead of Jeffrey.
- Politically Incorrect Hero: He's sexist and dismissively refers to Railly as a "woman psychiatrist", but he's the only person who listens to her or Cole's warnings and generally comes off as a Reasonable Authority Figure.
- Reasonable Authority Figure: He's the only person who listens to Railly and Cole's warnings about the virus and tries to prevent it. Sadly, it doesn't make a difference.
Peters
Dr. Peters
Played By: David Morse
A colleague of Leland.
- Affably Evil: While creepy, he's pretty polite and friendly. He's also the guy who pretty much ended the world.
- Big Bad: He's the one who unleashed the virus that annihilates most of mankind and caused the Bad Future.
- Evil Redhead: A redhead who basically destroyed the world.
- Karma Houdini: He gets away with causing the Bad Future and ending the world. While it's implied he dies of his own virus, considering how nihilistic he is, it's likely he didn't give a damn and thought it was Worth It.
- Omnicidal Maniac: Seeks to exterminate the entire human race with an engineered virus of his own creation and nearly succeeds, wiping out most of it along with himself, though it is implied humanity finds the cure by the end of the movie and saves the future.
- Plague Master: Releases a deadly plague in multiple cities across the world which ended up causing the human survivors to live underground.
- Walking Spoiler: It's extremely hard to talk about him without spoiling that he's the one who unleashed the virus.
Halperin
Lt. Jim Halperin
Played By: Christopher Meloni
The police officer assigned to track Railly and Cole down.
- Inspector Javert: Played with. While he's the one in charge of hunting Cole down, he's only ever seen after Railly is freed.
- Jerkass: He's pretty smug and callous, openly doubting Railly's testimony and defense of Cole and flat-out accusing her of having Stockholm Syndrome.
- Kick the Dog: His constant browbeating of Reilly can't be called anything but this.
- Smug Snake: He's rather oily and smug, repeatedly browbeating Railly and trying to get her to change her testimony because he feels he knows better than her about her experience being held hostage.
- Politically Incorrect Villain: While not a villain per se, he's definitely a prick and it's implied he's sexist and prejudiced against the mentally ill.
Tiny
Tiny
Played By: Vernon Campbell
An orderly at the mental asylum.
- Butt-Monkey: He's generally the main victim when Jeffrey acts up at the ward, which culminates in him being hit with a stretcher and slammed into the wall.
- Jerkass: He's unnecessarily rough with any patient causing trouble, and it's implied he regularly cons Jeffrey into doing his job for him.
- Large Ham: He comes across as larger than life.
Owen Fletcher
Dr. Owen Fletcher
Played By: Frank Gorshin
The head of the mental asylum.
- Condescending Compassion: His efforts to help generally come across as condescending at best.
- Jerkass: He's a smug prick who doesn't really seem to give a damn about the patients.
- Large Ham: Though only in a way that makes him more obnoxious and smug.
- Smug Snake: He's pretty smug, and often seen wryly looking at the patients as though he's internally laughing at them, even outright mocking Cole's letter to Railly for its admittedly numerous spelling errors.
Teddy
Teddy
Played By: Lisa Gay Hamilton
Louie
Louie
Played By: Harry O'Toole
"Science ain't an exact science with these clowns."
Another prisoner used for the time travel experiments. Maybe.
- Ambiguous Situation: It's left unclear why Cole hears his voice in the future. Louie throws out the possibility that he's a fellow prisoner, a spy, or a hallucination. It's heavily implied he's a fellow prisoner being driven mad by time traveling and the stress it puts on one's mind, though his final appearance is implied to be a genuine hallucination.
- Crazy Homeless People: He's wound up as one in 1996.
- Deadpan Snarker: He always has some sort of dry, snarky quip for any occasion.
- Jerkass: He's pretty keen on mocking Cole and possibly gaslighting him, though there's hints that he cares about Cole's well-being.
- Malicious Misnaming: Maybe. It's unclear why he keeps calling Cole "Bob", but it wouldn’t be out of character for him to be doing it to mess with Cole.
- Sanity Slippage: Already not entirely stable, it's implied when he's seen as a homeless person that time travel has driven him completely around the bend.
- Stable Time Loop: It's implied that he was inspired to tear out his teeth after hearing about it from Cole in the future.
- Talkative Loon: When Cole encounters him in 1996, he's become this.
- The Voice: But only when he's talking to Cole in the future.
