Characters / Virtue's Last Reward

Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors || Virtue's Last Reward || Zero Time Dilemma

The following characters appear in Virtue's Last Reward. Just as a warning, because every character is a Walking Spoiler, spoilers for this game and the first one are unmarked.

The Nine Players

Sigma

Sigma Klim

Voiced by: Kosuke Toriumi (JP), Troy Baker (EN)

"Gurrrraaaaaaaaaagh! I just solved the shit out of this puzzle!"

An ordinary college student kidnapped from his car on Christmas Eve, and the protagonist of the game. He has a tendency to make risque jokes at inappropriate times and is easily swayed by his emotions, which makes him a poor choice for a game about trust and betrayal.

---

• Amnesiac Protagonist Catalyst: As part of the plan, he forgets that he's actually the Zero behind this Nonary Game. Although since the Sigma we play as isn't Zero yet, just unknowingly inhabiting his body, he technically never actually forgot anything.
• Artificial Limbs: Possesses a set of these due to the Mars mission test site incident. Unlike Snake's purely prosthetic arm from the first game, Sigma's limbs are fully functioning cybernetic replacements covered in synthetic tissue. Unfortunately, this tissue includes a circulatory system, meaning that the tubocurarine injection from his bracelet will kill him just like anyone else.
• Big Damn Heroes: Does this in more than one timeline for both Alice and Quark, as they are the first to show symptoms of Radical-6 in almost every route.
• Butt-Monkey: In most bad endings when he receives 9 BP, he is NEVER allowed to leave. He is also the only player who is alive to see his BP drop below 0 in certain timelines. Taken to brutal heights in the bad ending on his path, where Dio, K, and Tenmyouji turn against him on suspicion of him being a robot, knock him unconscious, then cut off his hand to steal his bracelet.
• Can't Get Away with Nuthin': He is the only one who the others successfully prevent from leaving the facility by force.
• Chivalrous Pervert: He can get excessively creepy with the girls sometimes, but he definitely is one of the more compassionate of the cast.
• Determinator: He will not let anything stop him from his goal, which is particularly noticeable on the two paths where his bracelet is triggered. In each path, he manages to save at least one person's life and get some critical information while under the influence of a drug that knocks most people out instantly. And in the events prior to the game, he spent 45 years researching genetic engineering, quantum computing, artificial intelligence, and mechanical engineering to set up the Nonary Game, all with the purpose of undoing the outbreak of the Radical-6 virus.
• Dirty Coward: In Clover and Sigma's game overs, he betrays someone incapable of voting to get himself to 9 BP in a decision the other participants decry as self-serving cowardice.
  Alice: No way. I can't allow that. He took advantage of a sick kid. He's just a coward!
  K: I have misjudged you. I never thought you would do something so cowardly.
• Dirty Old Man: Comes across as one to many of the other characters in game, thanks to him being literally a 22 year old in a 67 year old body.
• Failed a Spot Check: It gets explained that he never noticed he was suddenly an old man because the moon's weaker gravity caused him to not notice his body was also weaker (since he didn't know he was on the moon). The only mirror in the game is also caked with dirt and he doesn't bother to clean it, nor does he bother to ever look at any other reflective surfaces (until The Reveal). However, that doesn't explain how he never noticed that he now has a rather large cybernetic eyepiece protruding from his face, or that his voice has changed.
• Failure Hero: His past body/future consciousness failed to prevent the outbreak of Radical-6 at the Mars mission test site. The main objective of the game is to reverse this.
• First-Person Ghost: Aside from flashbacks, we never see his face. Nor do we get to hear his voice. This is intentional, in order to hide from the player that he (or at least his body) suddenly aged 45 years after the opening cutscene.
• Freak Out:
  • In his route, the Game Over that occurs if you find Alice dead ends with him screaming his lungs out followed by a fade to black and the narration "when I came to, I was floating in a field of nothingness". While this seems to imply his death, it is actually him jumping back in time due to the stress as seeing this bad ending is required to save Alice's life.
  • A similar thing happens if you get the Game Over from betraying in his route's round 2.
• Go Mad from the Revelation: In his route's main Game Over, he wakes up in the infirmary to see his hand has been cut off… and then he sees what his arm looks like as a cross-section. Cue the Freak Out.
• Handsome Lech: He has a muscular build and he's good looking enough, but for some reason, the girls in the game act with revulsion whenever he makes a pass at them. Subverted since Sigma spent the entire game possessing his 67 year old body with wild gray hair and a right green eyeglass.
• Heroic Build: He has some muscle on him, that's for sure. With his body being 67 years old (minus the artificial arms) it is remarkable his 22-year old mind doesn't notice any significant bodily aches or weaknesses. The in-game explanation is that the lower gravity of the moon counteracted the weakness of his older body, which is why he didn't notice a difference.
• Heroic Sacrifice:
  • Allows Dio to bring his BP to negative in exchange for the Axelavir needed to save Quark, though he manages to survive by lopping off his own arm before he gets the tubocurarine injection.
  • In the K Path, Sigma uses the Neostigmine on Phi rather than either himself or K. Granted, he didn't know K's armour was unlocked until after the fact and therefore assumed giving him the injection was impossible, but he probably still would have chosen Phi anyway.
• Honor Before Reason: In Dio's Game Over, Phi explicitly warns him that since her and Dio's opponent Luna is dead, there is nothing stopping them from picking betray, gaining 9 points, and leaving. Choosing to keep his promise to Clover and pick ally results in him being left to rot in the facility along with the other players.
• I Choose to Stay: In Luna's ending, he chooses to stay behind in the facility to be with Luna and get answers out of her even though he has 9 BP and could escape.
• Idiot Hero: Despite being a PhD student, he can be a bit slow on the uptake at times. And based on the player's choices, he can make some very dumb decisions. He's good at solving puzzles though.
• Kick the Dog: He can easily do this several times throughout the game. In fact, 7 of the 11 Game Overs are a direct result of him doing this, with 2 more having him on the receiving end. Luna's first bad ending is a particularly noteworthy example, as every other such bad ending has at least some potential way to benefit Sigma^note Luna's second bad ending and Phi's bad ending have him protecting himself against someone who may be untrustworthy, Quark's bad ending has him saving his own life at Quark's expense, Clover and Sigma's bad endings get him to 9 BP on the spot, and Tenmyouji's second bad ending gets him from 3 to 6 BP (enough to get him out with another successful betrayal). Betraying Luna in round 2 has no benefit whatsoever; Sigma and Luna's 5 BP means they need to play the AB game at least twice no matter what in order to escape, Sigma and Luna have already picked Ally against each other once before, and Sigma's partner in the vote is deceased, making her a non-factor. All of this means that neither party stands to gain anything from picking betray, and both parties can easily intuit this. The only explanation Sigma can give for a betrayal here is that he wanted more points.
• Life-or-Limb Decision: In Quark's ending, when his bracelet is triggered, Sigma uses the number 9 door as a giant cleaver to chop off his left arm in order to prevent it from giving him a fatal tubocurarine injection.
• Meaningful Name: It's not brought up in game, but Sigma is the mathematical symbol used in Summation: the adding together of many variations of an expression. Sigma goes through many iterations of the Nonary game and his experiences must be summed together to reach the solution.
• Noodle Incident:
  • The one time he got really wasted and had a one-night stand with the mistress of a prominent politician. He swears it was her who came onto him.
  • His Verbal Tic has a rather... strange origin that's surely even more unbelievable than the game itself.
• One Character, Multiple Lives: As a result of his ability to travel between timelines, he can essentially cheat death.
• Photographic Memory: Sigma has exceptional memory and is capable of remembering any code or password he sees, including, at one point, a 25 digit number.
• Pungeon Master: Tends to crack some awful jokes, and is unable to prevent himself from making cat-related puns when they're brought up.
• Robotic Reveal: Played with in his ending. It turns out that Luna's suspicions about him being a robot are false, but he has cybernetic arms.
• Required Secondary Powers: He can leap between parallel timelines (which is the point of the entire Nonary Game), but he can only retain a portion of his memories during the jumps. What he does retain, however...
• The Reveal: The Sigma playing the Nonary Game is actually his 22-year-old consciousness inhabiting the body of his 67-year-old self. The purpose of the AB Project was to swap their minds, sending the mind of the older Sigma into the past so that he would have a chance to Set Right What Once Went Wrong.
• Save Scumming: He can jump between parallel worlds, and retains pieces of information from each jump. Unlike most video game examples, this ability is used as a plot device, and is lampshaded repeatedly by Sigma himself. It's later revealed to be an Esper ability. The goal of the Nonary game is to train and hone this ability so that he can jump back in time in order to prevent the Radical-6 outbreak.
• Taking You with Me: Discussed in Quark's ending when Sigma muses to himself that if Dio reneges on his promise to return medicine critical to saving Quark's life in exchange for an ally vote, Sigma intends to die with his hands around Dio's throat. Fortunately, it never comes to that.
• This Cannot Be!: When Alice betrays him and brings him to -1 BP in her Game Over, he can only respond with a dumbfounded "That's not possible...".
• Throw the Dog a Bone: He's allowed to leave with 9 BP in one ending other than the Golden Ending, specifically Dio's.
• Tomato in the Mirror: He is Zero (or more specifically, his future self whose body he's inhabiting is) and he doesn't know it until Phi's ending.
• Too Dumb to Live: With a mix of paranoia in Tenmyouji's first Game Over. Tenmyouji warns him that if he betrays him, Clover will have 9 BP and can escape. Three seconds after the two enter the voting room, Clover starts trying to seduce him into picking betray. If you agree, you deserve what you get.
• Unrequited Love Lasts Forever: Akane once told Kyle that Sigma was once in love with a woman when he was young. Zero Time Dilemma reveals this to be Diana, with the "unrequited" part only happening because of her early death.
• Verbal Tic: He is utterly incapable of talking or thinking about cats, or anything remotely related to cats, without making constant cat puns. It's purretty bad. We're not kitten.
• Younger Than They Look: He is a 22-year old college student driving around the body of his 67-year old self.

Phi

Phi

Voiced by: Chiaki Omigawa (JP), Karen Strassman (EN)

"Well, I'm not Superman, that's for sure. And I'm not Batman, or Spiderman, or Aquaman, or a merman, or a wolfman. I'm not a brahman, or common, or ramen. I'm not a caiman either, so you don't really need to worry about anything. My name is Phi. I guess you could say... I am no man."

A mysterious young girl who begins the Nonary Game as Sigma's first partner. She's quick-thinking, analytical, a smooth liar and knows things that she shouldn't be able to know.

---

• A-Cup Angst: When Sigma makes an offhanded joke about her chest, she protests that her size is C-Cup. Sigma doesn't buy that.
  Sigma: If you're a C-Cup, then I'm packing twelve inches!
• Ad Hominem: Of the Tu Quoque variant. When Sigma asks whether she is working with Zero given that she inexplicably knows Sigma's name, she suddenly asks if Sigma is one of those behind the scenes, since he claimed to have premonitions. He tries to put the conversation back on track, but she stops him from doing so by saying "Don't change the subject. We're talking about you". The outcome of the exchange clears nothing about Sigma and Phi's knowledge about stuff they shouldn't be aware of, effectively preventing her from having to spill the beans.
• Big Eater: During the route where her team goes to the Pantry in Round 2, she apparently spent the entire time eating everything in sight while her teammates did all the work solving the puzzles. She rattles off a Long List of things she ate while she was in there, and even that ends up not being everything since she she ate so many things she actually forgot a few of them. One can only assume that she eats so much because there are certain parts of her that she wants to get bigger.
• Deadpan Snarker: The snarkiest and most deadpan person in the trilogy of Zero Escape.
• Deuteragonist: She's Sigma's first and most constant companion, and she has just a big of a role in Zero's plan as Sigma does.
• Distinction Without a Difference: She resorts to it every time she tries to convince Sigma to vote "betray". Sigma feels compelled to do just that and wants to double-check with Phi, but then she claims she never recommended to betray: she will say something along the lines of "I presented the logical choice, but that's not the solution to every AB game", and will most likely blame Sigma if things turn out badly. Lampshaded by Sigma more than once. Specifically:
  Sigma: You made it pretty clear that we should choose "betray".
  Phi: Well, I didn't say "should"... I just said we didn't really have a choice.
  Sigma: That's the same thing.
  Phi: It's completely different. The former is an active opinion. The latter is just passive information.
  Sigma: Whatever. You still want to betray, right?
  Phi: Yeah.
• Hard-Drinking Party Girl: Hinted at. Her mind's not exactly on solving the puzzles in the lounge full of exotic liquor, and she complains whenever Sigma pours an incorrectly mixed drink down the drain instead of letting her pour it down her throat. Although this may just be part of her being a Big Eater rather than a love for alcohol in particular.
• Hypocrite: At the very beginning of the game, she inexplicably knows your name and escapes justification by saying "I just knew". Much later on, when you log in to the computer in the director's office, she demands for explanation as to why you knew the ID and password. Guess what comes now? She angrily dismisses your "I just knew" reply by claiming that it has nothing to do with her knowing of Sigma's name, even when it's indeed the exact same thing.
• In a Single Bound: She frequently demonstrates superhuman jumping capabilities. At the end of her route, it is revealed that the source of her "powers" is the low gravitational pull of the Moon, where the game is actually set.
• Inexplicably Awesome: How does she know so much about quantum theory and game theory? Why is she so cool? She's certainly not going to tell you. Not even during the Omega Ending.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: In the beginning of the game she's cold and logical, telling Sigma to betray at every opportunity. However no matter what path, she's very compassionate, showing great concern for all of the characters (even Dio in some situations). In one path she even has the resolve to let herself die rather than enter the White Chromatic Doors without Tenmyouji, Clover, and Quark. She's also the only character who, having reached 9BP before anyone else, will stay and wait for the others instead of running for the exit.
• Malaproper: Every so often she butchers a common saying in an incredibly bizarre way, though pretty much everyone else does with "dunno" (spoken as "donno").
• Manipulative Bitch: Of the Spock-esque "You lied; I implied" variant, where she will use Exact Words and implications to manipulate people into doing what she wants while divorcing herself from culpability. An example is when she states to Sigma that the chance of an opponent choosing "Betray" is very high, but never actually recommends he choose "Betray" as a counter-move.
• The Not-Love Interest: She's the first girl Sigma meets, they initially have a belligerent relationship, her ending is the Golden Ending of the game, and she has a lot of plot relevance... but she and Sigma are never even hinted to move in a romantic direction. At best, they go from Teeth-Clenched Teamwork to something resembling friends. Although there are some scenes with them when you fail to defuse the bombs, they're not exceedingly romantic. Word of God confirms that Sigma and Phi will not be a couple at any point... which is explained in Zero Time Dilemma, as she is his Kid from the Future.
• One Character, Multiple Lives: Phi, much like Sigma, Akane and Junpei, retains most of her memories when she SHIFTs into parallel timelines.
• Precision F-Strike: Gets to drop exactly one f-bomb in the game on the magenta and yellow door routes when she and Sigma discover the old woman's corpse.
  Phi: Fuck if I know! Look, it doesn't matter who she is, just get everybody over here!
• Pungeon Master: Usually as revenge for Sigma's own puns.
• The Reveal: She possesses the same psychic ability as Sigma (to jump her consciousness between different timelines/parallel worlds) but unlike him she cannot control how or when it happens. She was part of a failed attempt to prevent the release of the Radical-6 virus in the Nevada Test Site; afterwards, she brought herself to Akane and volunteered to be frozen for the Nonary Game to trigger a time loop and send her consciousness back even further in time. Her backstory, true identity and overall purpose in the grand chain of events is left intentionally vague, but she compares herself to a fractional deviation that is normally rounded away and forgotten, but would actually become significant over time.
• Save Scumming: Possesses the same power as Sigma.
• The Spock: Of the "Snarky Spock" sub-variety. She certainly has emotions but is rarely ruled by them.
• Sugar-and-Ice Personality: Phi alternates between the two at points.
• Thinking Tic: She rests her chin on her hand and stares off to the side.
• Unstuck in Time: Unlike Sigma, she has very little control over her jumps and is generally worse than him at remembering things across them. Since she's much smarter than Sigma, though, when she does remember her time-jumps, she's much more on the ball than him.
• Verbal Tic: She sometimes slips into rhyming slang when under pressure, like when she calls the key from the elevator puzzle safe a cracker.

Dio

Dio

Voiced by: Yoshimasa Hosoya (JP), Liam O'Brien (EN)

"You betrayed your friends. Am I right? I'm right. But you didn't have a choice, did you? You had to survive!"

A man dressed as a circus ringleader. Though he styles himself as a smooth-talking charmer, he is quick to throw out accusations, take self-serving actions and sow discord amongst the group.

---

• The Bad Guy Wins: Any ending in the game where the participants die is basically him winning, since his goal all along is to stop the Nonary Game. Most obviously is Clover's ending, where Radical-6 is spread throughout the warehouse and infects everyone, which is what was intended. His own death doesn't matter to him in the long run, because he has clones, so his death in those endings doesn't count either. This also means that any ending where a participant leaves everyone behind and traps them all in the warehouse is also him winning since the game can't progress without all of the players.
• Big Bad: He's not Zero, but he is the one sent to sabotage the mission to save the world and the one Zero is trying to stop, making him the real main antagonist of the game and not Zero. He is also the one who killed Akane before the Nonary Game started, and Phi and Sigma have to go back in time to stop him from doing so.
• Big Bad Ensemble: With Zero III, who controls the game, though Dio is the primary physical threat to the players (what with his bombs and all).
• Big Bad Wannabe: He's the closest thing the game has to an on-screen Big Bad, but comes off as hapless considering the number of times he is tricked and subdued during many of the routes. Not to mention that he breaks under interrogation ridiculously quickly, and is so full of himself that he gives out the bomb deactivation codes when asked. Though of course he only does it when there is no way for you to stop him on that timeline. Little does he know that you can go back to the past.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Downplayed, because he's already Obviously Evil from the moment any words come out of his mouth, but it counts in some way. When he's present before the other participants, he keeps up his Jerkass persona but continues to act like he's still on their side, which he uses to trick them all into doing his bidding ad nauseum. However, when he no longer has to hide who he really is, he acts frighteningly more antagonistic, establishing that he really is nothing more than a fanatical terrorist.
• Blatant Lies: If Sigma goes through the Magenta or Yellow doors in the first round, he attempts to blame Quark for choosing Betray. Nobody believes him.
• Bond Villain Stupidity: His decision to give out the bomb codes out of spite in one of the many branching timelines out of the ones where he didn't is what ends up causing his infiltration plan to fall apart later on.
• Call-Back: He indirectly quotes Ace from the last game, by saying that he likes fire in his women, and, like Ace, is the Big Bad holding the group hostage. However, Alice is no Damsel in Distress, unlike Lotus.
• Card-Carrying Villain: Compared to Ace/Gentarou Hongou, CEO of Cradle Pharmaceuticals, he wears his villainy like a badge and doesn't hide it whatsoever. In which case, it makes one wonder how none of the other participants notice it. However, this is downplayed, as while Dio/Left proudly acts like a villain, and even describes his nihilistic beliefs without shame, he actually thinks he's doing the right thing by sabotaging Zero's mission to save the world from the Radical-6 virus.
• Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: He almost never picks ally of his own volition.
• Circus Brat: You learn early on in some paths that Dio is a circus ringleader, fifth generation. This is, of course, just his cover story.
• Commander Contrarian: The first to complain about anything, and foul-mouthed to boot. It's not long before he gets on the nerves of absolutely everyone.
• Contrasting Sequel Antagonist: To Ace/Gentaro. Ace presented himself as a kind old man and was good at keeping up his Wise Old Folk Façade, and though he was a member of Free the Soul, his actions were meant to benefit himself only. Dio/Left is openly mean to everyone, makes it clear he is out for himself, is much younger than Ace, and is truly loyal to Brother and Free the Soul.
• Cyanide Pill: He swallows one in Alice's ending and attempts to do so in the Sigma and Phi endings.
• Dead Man's Switch: Has one that sets off his bombs if he drops it or it gets more than one meter from him.
• Deadpan Snarker: When faced with Clover's awful puns.
  "... is it okay if I smack her?"
• The Dragon: He is the leader of the Myrmidons, the elite faction of Brother's terrorist cell.
• Driven to Suicide: If Sigma manages to expose his cover and restrain him, he will attempt to commit suicide by swallowing a cyanide pill before the others have the chance to interrogate him.
• Enemy Mine: In Phi's ending, Sigma theorizes that one of the reasons why everyone was finally able to trust one another enough to cooperate and reach enough BP to escape, together, was the bond they had developed while uniting to stop Dio's bombs.
• Expendable Clone: Sort of. He considers his own death as not a big deal as he has backups, and the concept of individuality is kind of alien to him.
• Expy: His design and general attitude and actions during the game closely resemble Yoshimitsu Tezuka from Secret Game: Killer Queen.
• Face of an Angel, Mind of a Demon: The only thing he's got going for him is just how neat he looks. Put him on "mute," don't listen to his words, and he looks like one cool dude. Listen to a word he says and the foulness seeps through.
• Hate Sink: Asshole, backstabber who will vote "betray" at every chance and murderer, ready to kill an old lady and blow up everyone in the facility to accomplish his goals. The game gives you exactly zero reasons to like him.
• The Heavy: He's not the ultimate instigator of the plot, but his murderous personality makes him the main direct threat to the protagonists.
• Hostage Situation: One of the first ways that you can learn that Dio is an asshole, outside of the K/Dio endings, is to go down the Quark route — you will see him hold the Axelavir — the only thing that can save the ill Quark's life — hostage. Unless Sigma, who has 1 BP, picks Ally, he will destroy it. If you pick Ally, Sigma nearly dies and Dio escapes — if you pick Betray, Dio smashes the bottle and it is strongly implied that Quark since he is still infected with the Radical-6, once the Soporil wears off, the little boy kills himself.
• Hypocrite: Played With: The ideology of Dio's cult contradicts many of his actions and personality traits, as well as how he once "dirtied" himself through his activities with a woman.
• I Gave My Word: For all his other jerkassery, he keeps up his end of the deal and gives you back the Axelavir if you vote Ally against him in Quark's route... though not without a bit of prodding and having his hostage gambit outed to the entire group.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: In Luna's route, Dio axes K in the back of the head. Using the last of his strength, the latter retaliates by running Dio through with a spear.
• It's All About Me: Cares about no one but himself. Interestingly, this turns out to be a subversion, as the personality is meant as a cover for his true identity, which has no sense of individuality and his supposed self-interest was actually in the interest of furthering Brother's goals.
• Jerkass: He always, always picks "Betray" unless forced to or tricked into it by his partner. He'll have excuses a-plenty each time, but basically, the guy's just a jerk. There is one character that he votes Ally with: he allies with Luna if he's pitted against her in the first AB game, and apparently does so of his own will. When you consider the reason why he fell in disgrace with the Cult, that was probably even a genuine decision.
• Just Between You and Me: He loves to gloat when he gets one over on another player. This leads to his downfall when he freely gives out the bomb deactivation codes in the different timelines as a way of taunting the other players. He gives out only one code each when confronted in his, Alice's, & Sigma's endings. In the route to Phi's (the True) route, he doesn't give any out, due to the fact that the input device had been found.
• Karmic Death: In K's Route. After being revealed as the murderer of the Mysterious Woman, he is confined into a treatment pod for security reasons. Later on, he's found dead as the oxygen supply is cut off.
• Lost in Character: Despite being a clone of Left, the person he's based on, and claiming to have no individuality, Dio acts so much like he's imitating the real deal that it's impossible to tell he believes in his lack of individuality at first. It's quite clear that, in spite of being a clone of a character who is very much likely a Jerkass himself, Dio actually likes acting that way, and seemingly doesn't care for his supposed lack of individuality in reality.
• The Mole: Although he thinks he is undiscovered, he is in reality being allowed to enter in as a mole for Brother.
• Not Me This Time: You learn on K's route and on Dio's own route that Dio killed the old woman. On K's route, K also accuses Dio of killing both Luna and Alice. Dio swears that he killed the old woman and that's it, he doesn't know anything about Luna or Alice! As it turns out, when you play Luna's route, you learn that Dio was actually telling the truth: Clover (accidentally) killed Luna, and she never really died due to being a robot, and on most of the other routes you learn Alice killed herself, so Dio was telling the truth there too.
• Pet the Dog:
  • There is one character who he votes Ally with: Luna. You can also find out that the reason he fell from grace within the Myrmidons was because he fell in love with a woman. Word of God states that he chooses Ally because he thought Luna was beautiful.
  • According to promotional materials, he once saved a cat, though Word of God reminds us that this one act still doesn't make him a decent person.
  • In Alice's game over, he is just as horrified as everyone else when Sigma runs out of BP.
  • In all routes where he gets 9 BP and escapes, he's not the only one to do so. He always encourages whoever else has 9 BP to escape with him.
• Pyrrhic Victory: In Clover, Luna, and K's endings, he does end up stopping the Nonary Game like he wanted, but he commits suicide in the former one and is killed by K in the latter two.
• Red Herring Mole: He's always the first to point fingers when things go wrong, and reliably chooses the "Betray" option whenever he's given the chance. The subversion comes when he really does turn out to be The Mole. He's so suspicious that the genre savvy player probably dismissed him as a Red Herring.
• Repulsive Ringmaster: Claims to be a circus ringleader, and proves to be the most self-serving member of the cast. He's really a terrorist ringleader, but he still dresses the part.
• The Reveal: His true identity is "Left", the leader of the terrorist organization "Myrmidons" and high-ranking cultist of "Free The Soul". Under orders from the cult's leader, he infiltrated the Nonary Game with the intention of stopping the AB Project. To do this, he must kill Akane Kurashiki and win the Nonary Game, or destroy the entire facility. He is actually a fourth-generation clone of the original "Left", and believes that by completing this "divine mission" he will attain sainthood.
• Sadistic Choice: In Quark's ending, he steals the axelavir needed to heal Quark back to health and threatens to destroy it if Sigma doesn't pick Ally in the following Ambidex Game. As Sigma currently sits at a single BP, Dio is basically tasking him with choosing between his own life and Quark's.
• Schmuck Bait: As he immediately lampshades after, this is what he uses to steal the Alexavir for Radical-6 from Sigma. He asks for Sigma to take it out of his pocket so he can "take a look"; obviously, it turns out that he was just trying to swipe it from him. He makes no hesitation in pointing out how stupid Sigma is for falling for it.
• Sir Swears-a-Lot: Need a Cluster F-Bomb or a Precision F-Strike? He's your man!^{Fun fact!} According to this spoilerific pie chart, Dio drops more than 75% of the F-Bombs in Virtue's Last Reward, 43% of the F-Bombs in the whole Zero Escape trilogy, and more F-bombs than any four characters combined despite appearing only in Virtue's Last Reward.
• Small Name, Big Ego: One of Dio's most notable traits is his overinflated ego.
• Smug Snake: He just loves to push buttons and stir up paranoia within the group as part of his tactic to win (as no-one else can gain points if they all choose "Betray"). The problem is that he's so blatantly untrustworthy that no-one in their right mind chooses to Ally with him, and his poker face falls apart very quickly when he is pushed into a corner.
• Social Darwinist: Even says as much in his ending.
  Dio: Why so serious? This really isn't the time for hesitation. You both crossed a line you weren't supposed to cross. You betrayed your friends. Am I right? I'm right. But you didn't have a choice, did you? You had to survive! Isn't that the way an animal thinks, though? Don't get me wrong, I see the logic, but it's kind of...animal logic. Still, you made your bed. Now you've gotta lie in it. If you're gonna be an animal, be an animal. Own it! The losers, the weak? Throw 'em away! That's how nature works, my friends—that's life at its most pure! You get me?
• Spree Killer:
  • In Luna's route, Dio commits a series of murders in a very short time. He stabs the old woman, handcuffs Clover and Tenmyouji to guarantee the two will suffer the bracelet's penalty and mortally wounds K with an axe before finally facing his own doom.
  • In the cyan door routes, Dio is responsible for the deaths of all players, as his antimatter bombs destroy the entire facility.
• Taking You with Me: As a clone and a zealot, Dio acts nonchalant over the idea of blowing himself up so that his mission succeeds.
• Token Evil Teammate: He is the most malicious person in your group of players this time around.
• That Liar Lies: Upon meeting the gang, K declares that he has amnesia and can't remember a thing about himself, not even his name. Dio doesn't buy that and outright calls him out on the "obvious" lie. Turns out he was wrong and K really had amnesia (in timelines where it really is Kyle in the suit, at least).
• Tyke-Bomb: Not just Dio, but all Myrmidons are clones of Brother's brother Left, and are raised from creation to become Myrmidons under Free The Soul.
• Unwitting Pawn: He thinks he's the Spanner in the Works that will screw over Akane's plans, but in reality he's just dancing to her fiddle- and Brother's fiddle, as Zero Time Dilemma reveals.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: In the game's true ending, Dio is still handcuffed and is periodically injected with Soporil to prevent him from awakening. Whatever Sigma and Akane intend to do with him is still unclear.
• Would Harm a Senior: The elderly are fair game for him. He attempts to murder Akane in order to infiltrate the Ambidex Game, only failing in the Cyan door route through no lack of effort on his part, and also murders Tenmyouji on Luna's route.
• Would Hurt a Child: He has no moral compunctions about using medicine desperately needed to cure the ten-year-old Quark of a terminal disease as leverage for his own benefit, and will destroy said medicine out of spite if you don't cooperate. He also plants bombs in the facility on the Cyan door route which will obviously blow Quark to smithereens.

K

K

Voiced by: Daisuke Ono (JP), Travis Willingham (EN); Out of suit: Voiceless (JP), Troy Baker (EN)

""Look"? That's an odd choice of words. I'm wearing a mask. How would you know how I "look"?"

A large man wearing a robotic bodysuit that completely conceals his identity. He is suffering from amnesia and only remembers his name as "K". He is incredibly polite, but chooses his options during the Ambidex Game with the cold precision of a machine.

---

• Artificial Human: He's a clone of Sigma.
• Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: He generally defaults to picking betray. However, unlike Dio, he does have standards; he will never commit murder through voting, he will never betray the comatose Quark, and he can be convinced to ally with Phi when she puts herself in a situation where a successful betrayal would hurt her.^DetailsShe has 5 points while her partner for the round, Dio, has 6; if she succeeds in betraying K, Dio can escape with his 9 while Phi is stuck in the facility with her 8. Phi also locks Dio out of the voting room, preventing him from interfering with the vote.
• Clingy Costume: The armour is "locked" onto K, and he cannot remove it without the key.
• Dramatic Unmask: His route ends with Sigma removing his helmet to see his true face. It's Sigma's face.
• Easily Forgiven: In his path, he promises Sigma he's going to vote ally against him in the AB game, and also that even if he did betray to get 9 points he wouldn't escape without the other players. If Sigma votes ally, K betrays and escapes, admitting that he flat out lied to get out of the game. If Sigma votes betray, both players calmly acknowledge the other's attempt to trick them, admit that neither has any right to be upset given they voted betray as well, and they go on working together immediately with no hard feelings.
• Everyone Has Standards: He'll refuse to kill anyone through votes, even if it ensures his escape. Similarly, he won't betray the comatose Quark even if it's easy points.
• Expressive Mask: The eyes on his mask change to reflect his emotions.
• Gentle Giant: Subverted. He is rather amiable and rarely loses his composure, but just like the others he can be devious and dishonest at times. He's also willing to use violence to get his way, especially when making a vote.
• Giving Them the Strip: In his route, he found the key to his armor and is able to take it off at will. He then used it to fake an alibi by pretending to take a nap and left his armor there while running off to kill Dio.
• Hands-Off Parenting: A victim of this. His "father", Sigma, never really spent time with him as a child. Once K started showing interest in Sigma's work, their bond got better.
• Honor Before Reason: Subverted in Quark's ending; he vocalizes a desire to remain in the facility with a dying Sigma even though he has 9 BP, but changes his mind when Sigma points out that they can't trust Dio to call for help.
• I Choose to Stay: Subverted in Quark's ending. K briefly declares his intention to remain in the facility with the dying Sigma even though he has 9 BP and can escape, but thinks better of it when the others point out that that means their fates would hinge on Dio bothering to call in the cavalry.
• I Lied: The only time Sigma confronts K in the AB game, the latter asks him to choose "ally" so both of them can gain 2 points. Sigma would like to do just that, but he wonders aloud if K won't betray him and get the 3 points he needs to open the number nine door and escape. K tells him that, even if he reached 9 BP by betraying him, he would not escape. So he indeed does pick "betray" and, much to the surprise of Sigma, K breaks his promise and gets out of the facility. He never explicitly says "I lied", but he pretty much admits he did by acknowledging he took advantage of Sigma's trust.
• Manchild: He doesn't seem to find anything wrong with a grown man on a Zero III kiddie ride in the REC room, to Sigma's and Alice's horror. Justified, since he was a lab experiment all of childhood and apparently never learnt much of the outside world.
• Manipulative Bastard: In his bad ending he tricks Sigma into picking "ally", and then betrays him both in voting and by breaking his promise not to leave.
• Meaningful Name: K can be taken one of two ways - from the first and last name of Kyle Klim, or from Akane Kurashiki's last name, as well as her nickname "Kanny".
• Powered Armor: Because of this, the mechanism that locks or unlocks his armour fails to function if the armour is broken or powered-down. It's also an inversion of the usual purpose of Powered Armour, which is to increase the natural strength of the wielder. Instead, K's armour acts as a massive training weight that will subject his body to forces equivalent to Earth-like gravitational conditions, ensuring that he does not grow up with a frail body.
• Red Herring: If you look at the mass suicide depicted in the Clover ending, you might notice that K is missing, and suspect he is the killer. But in reality, K was not complicit in the deaths, and had probably just been looking for a way to remove his armor so he could join them.
• The Reveal: The matter of K's identity is a case of Schrodinger's Cat. The first choice Sigma makes is whether to go into the Yellow, Magenta or Cyan doors:
  • In the Yellow and Magenta routes, his true identity is Kyle Klim, the younger clone of Dr. Sigma Klim. Having been "born" and raised on the Moon, his armour is designed to subject his body to the equivalent of Earth-like gravity and ensure that he would not grow up frail. His purpose is to act as Zero's back-up, with his consciousness being sent back to 2028 if his father failed. His amnesia was intentionally induced with a high dose of Soporil to revert him to a blank slate for the Nonary Game.
  • In the Cyan route, which is what leads up to the true ending, the armor is instead inhabited by Akane Kurashiki for the duration of the game, with Kyle in cold sleep in the 00 treatment pod in the B. Garden (with Akane using the phenomenon "Schrodinger's Cat" to change the past from in the future, and pretending to be Kyle to preserve the events of the original timelines).
• Revenge Before Reason: In K's Route, he murders Dio by cutting off the oxygen supply in his treatment pod over the death of the Mysterious Woman...who was a surrogate mother to K in his childhood. This results in Dio's bracelet being broken during his death throes, and thus leaving both K and Phi unable to proceed with the Nonary Game without being penalised. Word of God also states that Dio's bracelet was actually broken by K, and that he did so on a gamble to test his father's love: If Sigma got the antidote, would he save either him or Phi? (Unfortunately for him, he forgot that his father's body was inhabited by his 22-year old consciousness and had no idea how to get K's armor off.)
• Samus Is a Girl: In the Cyan route, the K armor is occupied by the female Akane Kurashiki. Averted in the Yellow and Magenta routes, where the armor is instead occupied by Sigma's clone Kyle.
• The Spock: His polite, formal and dispassionate way of speaking makes him easily mistaken for an actual robot.
• Taking You with Me: In Luna's route, when Dio murders him offscreen, he manages to retaliate and kill Dio before succumbing to his own wounds.
• Thou Shalt Not Kill: He is generally willing to pick betray to save himself, but betraying someone with less than 3 BP is a line he absolutely will not cross.
• You Killed My Mother: In his own ending, he murders Dio out of revenge for killing the old woman, who turns out to have been a mother-figure to him.
• You're Insane!: While he doesn't express this sentiment to Zero Sr.'s face (as far as anyone knows), he nevertheless makes remarks to this effect when theorizing why they might have murdered Alice on Luna's route.
  K: Zero Sr. seems to be rather...disturbed.

Luna

Luna

Voiced by: Mamiko Noto (JP), Laura Bailey (EN)

"Being surrounded by nature just makes me feel... happy."

A young pacifist who just wants everyone to get along so that they can all escape together. Her medical license and expertise prove invaluable during the Nonary Game, but she is vague on what her exact discipline is.

---

• Accomplice by Inaction: Luna considers herself this; Akane ordered her not to reveal what she knows about the Nonary Game or its players. She is programmed to die if she disobeys orders.
  "I watched six people die and did nothing. I deserve this."
• Actual Pacifist: Luna never picks "Betray", because it isn't in her nature.
• Animal Motifs: Bluebird of Happiness.
• Beware the Nice Ones: She can be very vengeful if Sigma chooses betray against her. The latter of the two game overs on her path involves her getting Quark to safety while leaving Sigma and Phi trapped in the warehouse forever (in the former game over, Tenmyouji's the one who gets Quark out instead, with Luna's whereabouts unknown).
• Cute Machines: She's a very realistic android, and is fairly attractive.
• Expy:
  • Luna is this series' equivalent to one Sora. Both having similar dilemmas.
  • In an interesting case, Luna herself is purposely designed to be an Expy In-Universe as she's based on Diana from Zero Time Dilemma. Because of the order of the games' release however, Diana is considered the Expy of Luna while chronologically in game, it's the other way around.
• Facial Horror: Tubocurarine can't kill her, but it does do a number on her artificial skin, which disintegates as she dies in Sigma's arms in her ending.
• Faking the Dead: She can't actually die due to being a robot, but Zero III forcibly shuts her off in situations where others perceive her to be dead.
• Fantastic Racism: One of the reasons the cast turn on Luna during her ending. It's hard to trust a robot, especially when that robot has been concealing what they are.
• The Four Loves: It's not a secret she's in love with Sigma, both his innocent 22-year-old consciousness, and his true older self. She was in part created to act as a mother for Kyle, but was rejected for being a GAULEM. She was the only one who stuck around the Infirmary to care for Kyle after he was unfrozen from the Treatment Pod, which might indicate that she still has motherly feelings towards him.
• Iconic Item: Her necklace, which originally belonged to Diana, and which Sigma gave to her after Diana's death. It's appropriately symbolic: close examination shows that the cage has no door.
• Heroic BSoD: Has one in her bad ending, after Sigma betrays her.
  "Sigma...why? Y- you promised...How could you? Why won't you say something? At least give me an excuse! Say...say you wanted to protect everybody...or you slipped and hit the wrong button! Anything! I don't care if it's a lie. Just...just say something..."
• Just a Machine: When presented to a young Kyle after he asked Dr. Klim for a mother, the child refused to acknowledge her as he saw her as just a robot who couldn't really feel. He interpreted her genuine feelings of sadness as "just clever programming".
• Locked Out of the Loop: In her ending, it's quite evident that Zero Sr./the 67-year old Sigma and Akane kept everything about the Nonary Game's true purpose and Dio's identity out of her knowledge when ordering her to act as a participant in the Nonary Game as a GAULEM. This means that she offers limited information regarding both of those topics, requiring the 22-year old Sigma to search for the information himself.
• Mind Screwdriver: Luna's route clears up a lot of confusion on the other routes. For example, in the timelines in which Quark doesn't actively try to kill himself, Quark mysteriously "disappears" and sometimes is never seen again. It turns out this is because Luna's the one who carried an unconscious Quark to the "treatment center" and put Quark in one of the pods after Zero Jr. unlocked the treatment center. For another example, in many of the timelines, Alice kills herself due to Radical-6, but on some of those timelines you also find Luna's body next to Alice's. The obvious suspect is Dio, but you learn on K's route that Dio didn't kill either Luna or Alice. Alice killed herself, so who killed Luna? On Luna's route, you learn it was Clover, although it turns out it was an accident since Clover had only intended to "threaten" Luna into confessing to Alice's murder.
• Meido: A concept sketch in the artbook shows her as one. Her actual occupation is left ambiguous, though- Akane treats her existence as highly important to her plan (ordering Sigma to learn robotics so he can create her) but why is not revealed.
• Mr. Exposition: In the ending of her route, Luna explains at length the many illogical events that occurred in it, and her dying words foreshadow Sigma's true identity.
• Nice Girl: Her benevolent demeanor unfortunately serves as a Red Herring, setting up the possibility that she is putting on an act and will "betray" anyone at the right moment. In fact, throughout the game, she voluntarily betrays her AB game opponents all of 0 times; the only time you ever see the word "Betray" under her name is when you are paired with her and pick Betray on her behalf.
• Not Quite Dead: She is found with a tubocurarine injection in several routes, and is presumed dead. However, since she's actually a robot, her body was forcibly shut down to make it look like she died, and this is made clear in her ending.
• The Omniscient: As a GAULEM, she has access to the central computer's surveillance system and sees everything that goes on in the game, including what happens after she "dies" and her body is disabled. She witnesses Akane Kurashiki get murdered by Dio before the Nonary game begins, and she also knows if you choose to betray her towards the end of her route, despite not being present for the voting results and not wearing her bracelet anymore.
• Replacement Goldfish: Although it's never directly brought up within the game itself, a passing comment in K's ending along with some answers to fan questions from Uchikoshi^note Luna was based on a woman Sigma met at the Mars Mission Testing Site and the DM in Luna's product ID means 'Diana Model' heavily implies Luna was modeled on a woman Zero Sr. (aka Sigma) had loved. Zero Time Dilemma confirms it, as the woman (Diana) died from an illness and Sigma created Luna to fill the void. While Luna never admits if she knows she's based on her creator's lost love, the fact that she's thinks of herself as just 'a jumble of metal and plastic pretending to be real' hints she might be all too aware of it.
• Red Herring: In Luna's route, the poor girl gets hit with this three times. First, because of circumstantial evidence discovered by one of the AB booths, which has been moved by a crane, Luna is suspected of having killed the old woman (actually, it was Dio). Second, Clover mistakenly thinks Luna murdered Alice to keep her quiet (actually Alice killed herself after being infected with Radical-6), so Clover accidentally injects Luna with tubocurarine during a struggle, which incidentally is why you find Luna's body next to Alice's in a bunch of timelines. Third, eventually Clover and Tenmyouji turn up dead, handcuffed to a sink so they can't enter the doors and would get penalized, and Dio and K also turn up dead, killed by medieval weapons. Since only Sigma, Phi, and Luna (a GAULEM can't be killed by tubocurarine) are alive now, and since "dio" gets mistaken for "016" (Luna's ID number), Luna is suspected of having killed everyone (it turns out Dio killed them all, but finally K managed to kill Dio in self-defense before K died).
• Restraining Bolt: Akane deliberately limited her knowledge of the Nonary Game to make the project's success more likely.
• The Reveal: Luna is actually GTF-DM-L-016, a semi-autonomous gynoid called a GAULEM used to support the functions of Rhizome 9. She was specifically tasked by Akane Kurashiki to observe and support the Nonary Game. Her pacifistic nature is due to her following the Three Laws of Robotics, which prevents her from allowing humans to come to harm. Unfortunately for her, Akane's plans occasionally require humans to come to harm (or worse). Whenever such situations arise, Zero Jr. temporarily shuts her off to stop her from interfering.
• Ridiculously Human Robot: Despite being a robot, Luna's probably one of the more human characters.
• Robot Religion: The Three Laws of Robotics are hers. She isn't programmed to follow them, but chooses to do so anyway, believing them to be the ideal moral code for a robot to live by.
• Solemn Ending Theme: Blue Bird's Lamentation.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: She looks and behaves very similar to June from the game's predecessor, except unlike June, Luna is not secretly the quasi-evil mastermind who set up the current Nonary Game. Which isn't surprising, considering one of her programmers is Akane herself.
• Team Mom: Considering she also has a medical license... She was also the GAULEM that Sigma created when K asked for a mother, though Word of God says that K only interpreted it that way and that Luna was not created just to give K a mother.
• Three Laws-Compliant: Discussed and ultimately subverted: the reason why she feels like an Accomplice by Inaction to all the murders that happen in her route is because she obeyed Akane's orders, as the 2nd law dictates. However, Akane's orders involve allowing human beings to come to harm, going against the 1st law - if she were truly three laws compliant, then she would have been justified in ignoring her orders. She eventually does disobey some of Akane's instructions, causing her to die - but her ability to do this makes her feel that she could have saved the others, leading to her guilt. Her behaviour makes more sense if you consider the Zeroth Law, and how Akane's orders are justified as being for the greater good (also throwing in the 3rd law for good measure), as well as the fact that the game strongly implies that she deliberately chooses to live by the three laws, seeing them as the ideal moral code for a robot such as herself, rather than their actually being hard-coded.
• Walking Spoiler: Luna's ending, where she reveals herself to be a GAULEM and sheds some light into the nature and purpose of the Ambidex game, offers some of the biggest twists in the plot, second only to Phi's ending.

Quark

Quark

Voiced by: Rie Kugimiya (JP), Erin Fitzgerald (EN)

"That was when I decided I’d stay with him forever. Even if he said I couldn’t."

A precocious young boy with a sharp mind. He seems to have a strong attachment to Tenmyouji.

---

• Censored Child Death: Despite the multiple instances of "Everybody Dies" Ending, Quark never has an onscreen death, with most endings simply implying he dies or goes missing. He is the one to get out most times along with Clover in the Bad Endings, since almost no one would be evil enough to put a child's life at risk. The only routes he explicitly dies in are the ones where the bunker blows up, which would understandably preclude anyone surviving.
• Children Are Innocent: Played straight, despite several instances where the characters will lampshade the possibility that Quark is Zero Sr. and that the player themselves might suspect them on the sheer unlikelihood of that happening, Quark is even sweeter than what he seems, even in the end where Tenmyouji gets them and Clover out of the Rhizome-9, Quark is nice enough to give Sigma a letter explaining their reasoning and attempting to apologize for his grandfather's actions. In fact, he's the only member of the game who has zero secrets, everyone else does whether they realize it or not.
• Driven to Suicide: Like most people who contract Radical-6. He is fortunately stopped from killing himself no matter the scenario.
• Happily Adopted: Tenmyouji found him as a baby and raised him as his own grandson. The two of them love each other deeply.
• Harmful to Minors: Several people think better of doing bad things because they don't want to mentally scar Quark. Unfortunately, in several scenarios, Quark is exposed to trauma, regardless.
• Large Ham: When he's in the infirmary suffering from the worst effects of Radical-6.
• Morality Pet: He's the one character that the others hesitate or outright refuse to screw over. The exceptions are Dio and potentially Sigma.
• My God, What Have I Done?: In his backstory, as you learn from a letter Quark gives to you in Tenmyouji's ending. A while after Quark was adopted by Tenmyouji, after their grandfather-grandson relationship was previously nothing but loving, Quark had a really bad day and, as a result, gave Tenmyouji useless garbage instead of useful salvage. When Tenmyouji scolded him for it, Quark ended up yelling at Tenmyouji and it turned into a huge fight, culminating in Quark running away from home. Quark ended up hiding out in an abandoned building during a rainstorm, and Tenmyouji still searched high and low for him even in the pouring rain. After Tenmyouji finally found Quark, Tenmyouji got horribly sick and had to be rushed to the hospital. Quark felt terrible, realizing that he had completely misread Tenmyouji's intentions. When Tenmyouji did finally pull through, Quark apologized and asked Tenmyouji if this made Tenmyouji regret ever adopting Quark. Tenmyouji's response was a surprised, "Of course not!".
• Out of Focus: Disappears from the story on the routes beyond the magenta door, due to being rendered unconscious because of Radical-6 and put into stasis. Averted on the routes where he is cured.
• Parental Abandonment: Never really addressed, but likely as a result of Radical-6.
• Red Herring: It's easy to suspect him, since the first game made was known for making the most innocent looking character turn out to be the Big Bad, combined with Dio swearing that Quark was the one that told him to betray everyone and later moments where everyone thinks Quark does indeed have the opportunity to be Zero Sr., it's easy to think that Quark is some sort of secret evil mastermind that is pulling the strings of the game, however he is actually very sweet and naive, doesn't even know the mastermind and spends most of the time of the game either passed out or missing.
• The Reveal: Quark is actually Tenmyouji's adoptive grandson, whom he found as a baby. He willingly came to Rhizome 9 with his grandfather, and thus has been threatened by Zero with Tenmyouji's death if he should reveal any of the actual nature of Rhizome 9 and the current state of the world to the other players before the end of the Nonary Game.
• Tagalong Kid: He's the only one out of the cast that wasn't kidnapped for a specific reason; he was brought along by Tenmyouji and thus ended up being dragged into the game.
• You Have to Believe Me!: When Dio and Quark's vote turns out to be "Betray" early in the game, if their opponent is Tenmyouji, Dio attempts to persuade Tenmyouji that Quark pushed the button, while Quark responds by screaming that Dio pushed the button and begging for Tenmyouji to believe him. (This trope turns out better than usual, though: Tenmyouji scolds Quark for losing his temper, but ultimately does believe Quark because he's known Quark for a while and could be deaf and blind and would still know if Quark was lying to him.)

Tenmyouji

Junpei Tenmyouji

Voiced by: Rokurō Naya (JP), Dave B. Mitchell (EN)

"Then whatever god wrote those rules can fu—... Look, I'm not gonna accept that, all right?"

A sharp-tempered old man who describes his profession as "garbage collector", yet possesses insight into a number of scientific principles and theories. He is slow to trust others, but has a special fondness for Quark.

---

• All for Nothing: He spent 45 years of his life pursuing Akane Kurashiki, to the point of directly endangering his own life and that of his prepubescent ward Quark. Six of the game's nine good endings result in her death before he even regains his bearings in Rhizome 9, another two (Alice and Sigma) have her blown up by antimatter bombs, none of those eight end with him getting any answers or closure on the matter, and the last (Phi) has him forced to accept once and for all that the girl he loved is long gone. In addition, only two endings (Tenmyouji and Phi) result in Tenmyouji explicitly escaping while three (Luna, Tenmyouji, and Phi) result in Quark escaping.
• Berserk Button: Do not threaten Quark.
• Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: With the exception of Quark and Clover, everybody's fair game to him.
• Determinator: All that Tenmyouji cares about is saving Quark, everything else takes a back seat. Goes so far as to betray you and strand everyone in his ending. Junpei hasn't changed at all - whether it's Akane or Quark, the people he cares about take priority over all else. This is also how he feels about the state of post-apocalyptic humanity. He is against Akane and Dr. Klim's actions in reversing the past, beacause he as well as many others still living on Earth have made lives for themselves in the midst of the apocalypse. He does not want to lose his current life, because even though survival has been difficult, he has accomplished something worthwhile: finding and raising Quark.
  Tenmyouji: Isn't that worth something? Isn't that the best thing humans can aspire to? Is there really any point to a world where everything is happy? Are people who struggle for a better life just idiots? Being human is about fighting even when it seems hopeless, and finding happiness even in a world that hates it.
• Did Not Get the Girl: After spending 45 years searching for Akane and jumping at the chance of meeting her again, he either finds only her corpse, or a woman so different from the girl he knew that it might as well be her corpse being puppeted by some inhuman creature. He instead finds purpose in raising Quark.
• Dirty Old Man: Is very excited by the poster of a woman in a bikini in the crew quarters, and according to Quark has an entire cabinet full of "Grandpa videos" at home. However, one of the unlockable files you get from finding the secondary safe combinations clarifies that the "Grandpa videos" aren't explicit, just not appropriate for a kid Quark's age. Of course, another file says that Sigma's cat pun compulsion was caused by a magical cat who put a curse on him, so these things may not be entirely trustworthy.
• Disaster Scavengers: As Quark's letter reveals, this is the true nature of his job as a "garbage collector".
• Drink-Based Characterization: According to Quark, his favourite drink is scotch. A hard drink for a hard-assed Grumpy Old Man living in a post-apocalypse.
• Exact Words: In his ending, he promises Sigma just before the AB Game that even if he gets 9 BP, he won't open the number 9 door... because he knows that Clover is going to get 9 BP and will most likely open the door herself. He never said anything about not going through the door if it does open.
• Fatal Flaw: Devotion and obsession. His love for Akane and inability to let go of her is so great that he jumps at the chance to reunite with her and in the process puts his own life and that of his ten-year-old adopted grandson in jeopardy.
• Grumpy Old Man: His grumpiness is a lot more understandable once you hear about his past.
• Heroic BSoD: He has a nasty one when you discover the old woman's corpse in some of the routes. Looks like he found Akane, all right.
• Hero of Another Story: He is the original hero, Junpei, from Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors.
• Heroic Sacrifice: In Luna's first bad ending, where an unconscious Quark gets 9 BP, he carries Quark out through the number 9 door despite not having 9 BP himself, knowing full well that he'll die for doing so.
• Hidden Depths: This is Junpei, the person we hardly know about previously, yet here it's implied that he has a basic understanding of quantum physics and was involved with the Mars simulation site somehow.
• Honor Before Reason: He feels timelines which result in extreme tragedy — as in the one he lives during the events of the game — are just as meaningful as golden endings and looks down on notions that only those happy endings are worth preserving.
• Hypocrite: He calls out on Sigma for betraying Luna in her bad ending... when Tenmyouji had done just the same to Clover, before making his escape with Quark who has 9 points.
• It Was with You All Along: On the cyan door route, the object of his lifelong quest, Akane Kurashiki, turns out to have been the armored individual calling themselves "K" all along and was hiding right in front of his face.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Particularly emphasized during his path. He betrays Sigma in round one of the AB game to put him on death's door, and doesn't seem to feel too bad about it, emphasizing that he only cares about getting Quark out of the game. He at one point threatens to betray him again in round two, which could kill Sigma, just because he's annoying him with questions about the outside world. He then betrays Sigma in round three after tricking Sigma into believing he wouldn't, and then escapes with Clover, even mocking Sigma's trust on the way out. Quark gives Sigma a letter he wrote, detailing how he and Tenmyouji came to know each other, how Tenmyouji had been a loving and caring adoptive grandfather, and what an upstanding guy Tenmyouji actually is despite his selfish actions in the Nonary Game. At the end of the game you find out that Tenmyouji's round three betrayal was prompted by finding out Sigma is Zero, which makes it all slightly more reasonable.
• Last-Name Basis: Used deliberately, to avoid spoiling that his first name is Junpei.
• Loving a Shadow: Deconstructed. Essentially why he chased Akane for so long. This devotion destroys his life, and when he jumps at the chance to meet her again, he puts both his grandson's and his own life at stake. In the "Another Time" epilogue, he finally acknowledges (to his deep sadness) that the innocent Akane he once knew no longer exists.
• Meaningful Name:
  • 'Ten' means "sky, heaven or space", 'Myou' means "bright" which is made from the words "sun" and "moon", 'Ji' means "temple", but temple can also be read as 'tera' which sounds like "terra" which is Latin for "earth" (and this game really likes Latin). What you have is the heavens, sun, moon and earth; in other words, an eclipse.
  • His name also has a reasonably meaningful implication in English, one that may not have been intended: that is, Tenmyouji, either because he has previously surpassed a Nonary Game (9 + 1 = 10), or because his original number was 5 and this is his second Nonary Game (5 x 2 = 10).
• Papa Wolf: He loves his adopted grandson Quark, and anything is fair game if it means getting him out as fast as possible.
• Previous Player-Character Cameo: He's actually the protagonist of the previous game. Since you're initially led to believe the game takes place only a year after the first, the revelation is surprising.
• The Reveal: His true identity is Junpei, the protagonist of Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors who escaped the second Nonary Game and dedicated his life to finding Akane Kurashiki, his first true love. After the nuclear winter caused by Radical-6, he became a scavenger and handyman, eventually adopting a young infant called Quark as his own grandson. He willingly came to Rhizome 9 after Zero promised to let him meet Akane, and has been threatened into silence about the current state of the world.
• Ship Sinking: In the "Another Time" epilogue, Tenmyouji decides that the Akane who decided to orchestrate the AB Project is no longer the Akane he knew and loved, and gives up on her to go back to Earth with Quark.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: He's much more abrasive, bitter and cynical than the hero of the last game. Living through a pandemic, nuclear winter and decades spent searching for Akane probably didn't help.
• Took a Level in Kindness: In Zero Time Dilemma, which takes place between the two games, he's even worse than he is now. So while he's a jerk compared to 999 Junpei, he's downright pleasant compared to the emo edgelord we got in ZTD. Presumably adopting Quark mellowed him out a bit.
• That Man Is Dead: Concludes that the Akane he grew up with is gone, and compares what's left to a Humanoid Abomination.
  Tenmyouji: The Akane Kurashiki I know isn't here. She's not anywhere...
• Tritagonist: He is arguably the most important character after Sigma and Phi due to being Junpei from the first game. He has the most personal connection to the game of all the players as he came specifically looking for Akane and he serves as the third member of Sigma's group for the very final puzzle room.
• Undying Loyalty:
  • To Quark, to the point of being willing to carry an unconscious Quark (who has 9 BP) through the number 9 door even though he'll die for having less than 9 himself. There's a murderer on the loose, so he can't afford to stick around and get his own BP up since Quark would be in danger, and he can't just shove Quark out through the door by himself and leave him to wake up all alone.
  • To Clover, to a lesser extent, as he claims she's the only other participant in the game he trusts. Which makes perfect sense considering he's Junpei. Clover's the only other participant who isn't a complete stranger to him. That said, he's perfectly willing to betray Clover for his own (and Quark's) benefit. Perhaps he's still a bit sore about the axe incident, assuming he can remember that timeline.
• The Unfettered: His priorities go Quark > himself > Clover > everyone else. He has no problem abusing his past relationships to manipulate people or outright sacrificing himself if it means getting his loved ones to safety.
• Used to Be a Sweet Kid: After all those years searching for Akane never gave him results, he eventually turned into an apathetic old man whose only redeeming value is trusting his close friends. When he got word he could see Akane again, only to put Quark in the risk of death in her second Nonary Game, by that point he was through with her and doesn't care about her, believing the Akane he knew was no more.

Clover

Clover Field

Voiced by: Yukari Tamura (JP), Wendee Lee (EN)

"No... It's supposed to be over..."

A scantily-clad girl who first appeared in Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors. Though cheerful and light-hearted, she isn't the sharpest tool in the shed and is prone to rapid swings of emotion. She is close friends with Alice.

---

• Accidental Murder: In several timelines, you find Luna's body next to Alice's. Clover believed that Luna murdered Alice and intended to threaten her into confessing, accidentally injecting Luna with tubocurarine during a struggle. Of course, Luna is a robot, so Clover didn't actually kill her, she just thought she did.
• Ax-Crazy: Subverted. Unlike the game's predecessor, Clover doesn't go on a murderous rampage, though she does threaten to do so.
• Butt-Monkey: After everything she went through prior to and during 999, she's now been cryogenically frozen and sent 45 years into the future without her knowledge, made to accidentally "murder" someone in one timeline, and her "good ending" is an "Everybody Dies" Ending.
• Exact Words: Combined with a bit of The Schlub Pub Seduction Deduction. She pulls it off on Sigma in the "Tenmyouji Game Over 1" ending. She promises to "listen to whatever he says" if he chooses Betray. If he does, she gets 9 (he doesn't) and leaves, all while listening to whatever he says, but not doing any of it.
• Flirty Voice Ploy: She tries to falsely seduce Sigma in a Blue door route, pulling an intentionally seductive tone of voice in order to play innocent and have him follow her whims.
• Giving Someone the Pointer Finger: And with the same pose as last game.
• Hotter and Sexier: First off, she looks much older here than in 999 (in a good sense, because she looked like a kid back then). Secondly, she wears very little clothing that fully exposes her belly and part of her thighs. Her bra (or similar) is visible. And she has very flirty poses (and uses them on occasion to her advantage).
• Immediate Self-Contradiction: At one point, Tenmyouji foresees that Clover will try and seduce Sigma so he betrays Tenmyouji in the AB game. She seems disgusted from the mere idea of seducing an old man like Sigma, and says there's no way on earth she would do that. Moments later, upon entering the AB room, she outright makes a horny proposal to Sigma.
• Jerkass:
  • Leaves everyone behind to escape in both Tenmyouji's bad endings. Although to be fair, one of those times (specifically, Tenmyouji Game Over #1) isn't Clover's fault: in a flashback we learn that Alice gave Clover a direct order as her commanding officer to escape so she can call for help for the rest of them.
  • She initially considers and persuades Sigma to betray a comatose Quark during her own path. Granted, she changes her mind at the last minute when it's time to vote, but before then she didn't seem to find anything wrong with taking advantage of a comatose kid, even if she had believed that there wouldn't be another AB game since other players may have 9 BP and would try to leave the warehouse, and Sigma and Clover would need to get 9 BP first before that happened.
• Ms. Fanservice: Although not as much as Alice, she is quite pleasantly dressed.
• Perpetual Smiler: Her neutral pose has her grinning. Possibly due to a glitch in the game, whenever Clover stops talking while in her worried/sad/surprised pose, she defaults to her smiling expression, making intense moments off.
• Pink Means Feminine: Her pink was made lighter compared to 999, to an extent where it's difficult to chalk up to better graphics.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Threatens to do this in Tenmyouji's route if the others can't prove Alice wasn't murdered.
• Psychic Link: Carrying over from 999, she claims to have one with her brother via the morphogenetic field. Unfortunately, it doesn't appear to be working in this warehouse. She mentions that may be because stronger Espers block out her power, and considering how the cast consists of Akane, Junpei, Phi and Sigma, you can't blame the poor girl. Though the fact that she's apparently been in a deep freeze for 45 years while two apocalypses happened could also have something to do with it — Light might not even be around anymore. Even if he is, he's probably still on Earth while she's on the moon. If the morphogenetic field has a maximum range, they're probably outside of it.
• Really 17 Years Old: Claims to have just turned 21 when Sigma questions if she's old enough to drink. Considering that the first Nonary Game happened on her 9th birthday, the second happened 9 years later, and the current one is (as far as she knows at the time) a year after that, that would make her 19. Old enough to drink in some parts of the world, but not in the US or Japan.
• Red Herring: Especially for those players who played the first game and remember what happened in the Axe Ending. Though the game teases the possibility of Clover snapping again following Alice's death, the only death she was involved in (aside from her own) was an accident - and due to circumstances it wasn't actually a real murder.
• The Reveal: She works with Alice for the Department of Defense, undergoing training to strengthen her psychic abilities. On the eve that they were set to attack a terrorist cell belonging to the Myrmidons, both she and Alice were kidnapped by Zero and placed into cryogenic stasis so they could be revived in the future for the Nonary Game. As Espers gain more power in proximity to each other, Clover was taken so that her presence would strength the psychic abilities of Sigma and Phi.
• Rose-Haired Sweetie: Although less rosy, and more pinkish, compared to 999.
• Same Character, But Different: Her depiction in this game, both appearance-wise and personality-wise, is notably different than in 999, with the largest similarity being a hot temper that threatens to potentially go into Ax-Crazy territory.
• Stripperific: Her new fashion sense seems to come from a desire to emulate Alice, who she greatly admires. Of course, like Alice, dressing this way serves as a good cover for her job, since who would ever believe someone who dresses like that would be part of a secret government organization?
• Took a Level in Badass: Zigzagged. While, in theory, she's gotten stronger with her psychic powers and combat training, both government missions she was sent on were failures, and her psychic powers are useless thanks to other issues. On the other hand, Clover has gotten a LOT better at lying, and she teams up with Alice to thoroughly beat down Dio in one of the endings.
• Took a Level in Dumbass: She is a lot ditzier here than she was in 999, where she was immature but otherwise pretty perceptive.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: Clover, over the course of experiencing two Nonary Games already with a 9-year gap between them both, has noticeably become colder and more prone to violent outbursts than her incarnation in the first game. She's also more deceptive, as shown in the ending where she manipulates Sigma into letting her escape alone upon getting 9 BP and leaving the rest of the cast behind.
• Wonder Twin Powers: She's honed her ability to use the morphogenetic field, and now can easily send Light messages at will. She suffers a disconnect during the third Nonary Game from him, likely because she's on the Moon or Light died within the past 45 years during the apocalypse.
• You Don't Look Like You: She's taller, has smoother skin, a completely different hairstyle, and wears a revealing outfit, making her look nothing like her more modest self in the first game. Her color tones have also been made lighter.

Alice

Alice

Voiced by: Atsuko Tanaka (JP), Tara Platt (ENG)

"The existence of this mysterious "Alice" and of this ice that doesn't melt is just ridiculous!"

An enigmatic woman who seems to be a close acquaintance of Clover. A popular rumour is that the water that composes her body is Ice-9, an polymorph of water whose freezing point is just around 36°C (96°F).

---

• Action Girl: She's no doubt, an experienced martial artist after she became a field agent for SOIS when Dio reveals himself as Left, the leader of the Myrmidons, pulling out the detonator to blow up the place. She and Clover teamed up to retrieve the detonator with Clover distracting Dio and Alice giving the finishing touch by grappling Dio to the floor and throwing it to Sigma.
• Black Girl Dies First: Unless you count the old woman, Alice dies first in all routes except for her own and the golden route, and she still ends up dying in her route (but so does everyone else since the bunker blows up).
• Boob-Based Gag: Normally no one comments on her impressive chest, but Dio makes one offhand joke about it when the gang reunites in front of the elevator after you explore the Lounge:
  Sigma: What's going on here?
  Alice: We ran into them a little bit ago. Well, not literally, of course.
  Dio: I donno... With a prow like that, I imagine you run into a lot of things.
• Butt-Monkey: In in the first AB Game, except for her route path, she is always betrayed, thus causing her BP to fall to 1 quite often. Not only that, she always succumbs to Radical-6 and is found dead in the Crew Quarters in most timelines before the second AB Game starts. Her bad luck in the game is exemplified in Clover's path where she is forced to compete against Dio three times in a row, ensuing that her BP will remain 1.
• Contrived Coincidence: She just happens to be a part-Egyptian woman named Alice, who Junpei and friends found hitchhiking in Nevada dressed exactly like an Egyptian priestess right after following a subplot about "All-Ice Alice" whom Hongou affirms doesn't exist and she was heading to Building Q to boot.
• Cool Big Sis: Though they are not related, Clover sees Alice as this.
• Driven to Suicide: She begins showing signs of Radical-6 infection about halfway through. Whether or not she goes through with the suicide depends on the timeline.
• Everyone Has Standards: Has no qualms with betraying Sigma and potentially killing him due to him having one BP point left in her route, though she does eventually express remorse later on after being confronted for her decision. However, she does not approve of betraying a comatose child, even in situations where her own BP is 1 point away from death and would really benefit with extra points to protect herself from dying, and is openly disgusted at Sigma, who takes the chance to betray Quark for the sole purpose of escaping right there and then.
• Everyone Looks Sexier if French: French mother, Egyptian father. She seems completely unfazed by the idea of people mistaking her for a legendarily beautiful Egpytian queen.
• Good with Numbers: She can do complicated math operations with tons of digits in her head in just seconds.
• Heel Realization: When cornered in the B. Garden, she admits that she betrayed Sigma because she was terrified during the events of finding the bombs and having succumbed to Radical-6. Waking up after being cured only made her panic ever more because of the second AB gaming nearly ending, and the panic had clouded her judgement as she picks betray. Breaking down in tears, she admits she's a terrible person and feels that it'd be justified if Sigma had killed her out of vengeance there and now. He doesn't.
• Heroic BSoD: In her route, her Radical-6 symptoms were getting stronger and made her succumb to them. While she had acted like a complete jerkass during the first round, the second one had much more meaning to her, since she essentially could tell she was waking up from a nightmare and entering another one. The stress greatly encouraged her to get the hell out without even caring about Sigma's situation, and she apologizes to him when he confronts her.
• Hidden Depths: Even after the revelation that she's a secret agent, it comes as quite a surprise when it's revealed she's a math genius, able to nearly instantly determine the factors of a 25-digit integer in her head.
• Hidden Heart of Gold: As revealed at the end of her route, most of Alice's smugness is an attempt to hide the fear and despair she feels from being forced to play the Nonary game. It also acts as a defense mechanism to help her cope with the pain and trauma caused by the death of her father and her repeated failures to avenge him. After opening up to Sigma, she gets significantly more sympathetic.
• Hypocrite:
  • When the gang has to go through the blue, green and red Chromatic Doors in the cyan route, Phi proposes that the ones who have the least BP (herself and Sigma, among others) decide which option is done. Alice heavily disagrees, and instead asks for a general ballot, which she considers is "fair". In another timeline, when it's her who has 1 BP, she proposes that the ones who have the least BP decide which option is done, which is of course the "fair" thing to do. It doesn't help that everyone agrees with whatever she says either time.
  • When she spends one round on a team with Sigma and Luna and ends up stuck in the infirmary by the time the voting starts, she will show up during the voting process without anyone realizing and choose "Betray" despite the fact that it would cause Sigma to run out of points and kill him should he and Luna pick "Ally". In the event that Sigma picks "Betray", which is likely because players saw what would happen if he picked "Ally" first, she has the gall to call him out as a Dirty Coward despite her willingness to betray his and Luna's trust and kill him out of paranoia. In all fairness though, she does later acknowledge that this was dick move on her part and would understand if Sigma wanted to kill her in revenge.
• Jerkass: In her route, she betrays you twice in a row. The first time could be excused as her not trusting you, but the second time counts as a Kick the Dog moment as she picks Betray again, knowing that you only have 1 BP left. In fact, in the Alice game-over ending where you pick "Ally" and thus get reduced to -1 BP, this essentially means Alice kills you! Even worse, she is betrayed by everyone else in every other timeline. When Sigma chooses to Ally with her, she betrays, mocks Sigma for picking the very same option that she chooses in all other timelines, and calls him an idiot. The second betrayal also comes after Sigma saves her life with a cure for her disease and is a complete surprise, as she was thought to be asleep in the infirmary at the time and thus would've defaulted to Ally. She literally wakes up and sprints to the AB Room at the last possible second just so she can betray you.
• Mind Screwdriver: For the Gainax Ending of the previous game. Turns out she's a normal person with a past and a childhood, not an ancient Egyptian queen with a body made of Ice-9. As she explains, there was an ancient Egyptian mummy recovered that remained frozen at room temperature, but the "All Ice" mummy got corrupted into "Alice" when it became an urban legend, which is how the Alice we know got mistaken for "All Ice". It didn't help, Alice admits, that sometimes just for kicks, she'd tell people that maybe she was the mummy but lost her memory or something.
• Ms. Fanservice: Blessed with the biggest breasts in the cast and a slender waist she shows off all the time with her exotic outfit.
• Not Distracted by the Sexy: Throughout the entire game, nobody comments on her Stripperiffic outfit. And no one cares about her teases. Dio makes a joke about her bust size, but not her clothes.
• The Reveal: She works for the Department of Defense as an anti-terrorism agent investigating the Myrmidons and Free The Soul, and seeking to avenge her father's death at their hands. She was kidnapped alongside Clover by Zero on the eve of a raid on the Myrmidons HQ, then placed into cryogenic statis so they could be awoken decades later for the Nonary Game. Alice was specifically chosen because of her savant-level grasp of mathematics, which proved vital for decrypting a Myrmidons code. As for the rumour about her body being made of Ice-9, that's not true... probably.
• Sacrificial Lion: She's a mysterious woman with secret knowledge, fighting abilities and one killer outfit. If the world were fair, she'd be a powerful ally for good. The world is not fair, because she almost always succumbs to Radical-6 and commits suicide.
• The Tease: The one who flirts the most with the other guys, although she never uses it to her advantage when decisions need to be made.
• They Killed Kenny Again: Happens so much in several timelines that the player is left wondering if she can even be saved.
• Throw the Dog a Bone:
  • In the Golden Ending, she is cured of Radical-6 and ultimately survives the game.
  • Her choice of betraying Sigma in the first AB Game round in her path could be seen as this, after suffering the fate of always being betrayed in almost all timelines.
• Vapor Wear: She would be topless if it weren't for that big necklace suppressing the central part of her breasts. No bra. One must wonder what kind of hell she goes through while running. When questioned about it in some routes after implying that she's some sort of covert agent, she explains her wardrobe choice with "in my line of work, the less I look like what I am, the better."
• You Killed My Father: Upon finding out that Dio is the leader of the Myrmidons (the organization that killed her father), she wastes no time subduing him and throwing him to the ground.

Others

Zero III/Zero Jr.

Zero III

Voiced by: TARAKO (JP), Cindy Robinson (EN)

"I'm just the... facilitator for this facility. I just do what I'm told to do!"

The AI controlling the Nonary Game, who manifests as an image of a rabbit. He is not the mastermind of the Nonary Game, but merely a construct programmed by the real Zero to facilitate it. He likes to makes rabbit puns.

---

• Artificial Intelligence: A product of the 2070s, he is quite intelligent and is indistinguishable from a sentient being.
• Big Bad: He is the one actually running the game in the absence of his creators.
• Big Bad Ensemble: With Dio/Left, who has a separate and equally antagonistic agenda.
• Deadpan Snarker: He's an endless tide of sarcastic jokes.
• Disc-One Final Boss: He admits pretty much right away that he's not the true mastermind, he just follows their orders. He also disappears completely after the first round of the AB Game, since he's run out of rules to explain and has no need to talk to the players anymore, though he does stress that this doesn't mean he isn't still watching them. He also reappears for one bad ending, purely to mock Sigma for getting it.
• Eccentric A.I.: He's an AI who has a lot of Monokuma-like eccentricities, constantly yelling and mocking the players while also generally being a Jerkass.
• Expy: Has a lot in common with Monokuma from Danganronpa, another Spike Chunsoft-owned series. Tarako even ended up replacing Nobuyo Oyama as the voice actress of Monokuma. He's also a rabbit, which he has in common with Usami/Monomi, though she's a lot nicer than him. The constantly-switching accents also bring Junko and her many personas to mind.
• Foreshadowing: His appearance as a rabbit with respect to The Reveal that the game actually takes place on the moon.
• Hair-Raising Hare: As the mastermind (as it initially seems) of the game, he is certainly coming off as this.
• Just a Machine: His engrossing personality to the players may make some doubt that he really is an A.I. Seeing him completely subdued & submissive to Akane is pretty jarring.
• Large Ham: Between the screeches, the rabbit puns, and the constantly switching accents, it's obvious the VA for this character had a lot of fun.
• Moon Rabbit: How appropriate that the AI controlling the facility on a moon base would be a rabbit. He even dresses in traditional Chinese clothing, which is where the moon rabbit myth originated.
• Motivational Lie: He tells Sigma and Phi that they have 9 minutes to escape the elevator at the very beginning of the game, because it's going to fall down from very high. Of course, the AB room isn't going anywhere — he just wants them to leave as soon as possible so he can tell them the rules.
• The Nicknamer: All the participants get nicknames from him. Sigma is "Siggy"^note Word of God says that this is short for "Siggy Stardust", Phi is "Phido", Clover is "Cleaver", Alice is "Alas", Quark is "Quirk", Tenmyouji is "Tenmyoldy", Luna is "Moony", Dio is "B.O.", and K is "Potassium".
• Not So Above It All: He's willing to make fun of just about everyone, but he completely crumples when his true master Akane calls him by his real name "Lagomorph" and follows her orders obediently.
• Pungeon Master: You carrot believe how many rabbit and vegetable puns he can make. It'll drive you hopping mad. Though given who created him it's purrobably to be expected.
• The Reveal: His true name/designation is Lagomorph.
• Troll: After the first AB round, he tearfully proclaims how sad he is that he won't see the players again... and then bursts out laughing at the idea of him being sad, complete with "neener neener"s. Sigma calls him a dick. He responds, "you mad?"
• You Bastard!: There's only one time he has any real dialogue after the first AB Vote: to tell you how much you suck for betraying Luna at the last leg of her path. So far you'd allied with her twice and breaking her trust right when she was the last living suspect for the murders is too much for her.

Zero Sr.

Zero Sr.

Voiced by: Akio Ōtsuka (JP), Jamieson Price (EN)

The mastermind behind the Nonary Game, and the true Zero III, in the context of the entire series, otherwise known as just "Zero". They are nicknamed "Zero Sr." by the players to distinguish them from the A.I. calling itself Zero III. According to Zero III, the true identity of Zero Sr. is one of the nine players of the Nonary Game.

---

• An Arm and a Leg: His arms were blown off in the Mars Mission Test Site.
• Cool Old Guy: It's implied that he's just as spry in his mid-sixties as he is in his early twenties. His 22-year-old self certainly doesn't notice anything suspicious about his stamina.
• Evil Old Folks: Downplayed as he had good intentions, but he still set up the present Nonary game.
• Eyepatch of Power: A result of the accident at the Mars Mission Test Site.
• Eye Scream: His eye was blown off in the Mars Mission Test Site.
• Failure Hero: Despite succeeding in sending his mind to his 22 year old self on Christmas 2028, he was not able to prevent the outbreak of Radical-6 in the Mars Mission Test Site; consequently losing his arms & right eye in the process before returning to his true body several weeks after the outbreak occurred. It's all but said that the "unexpected variable" in the Golden Ending will help him & Phi accomplish that which they couldn't do alone in the next game.
• Greater-Scope Villain: Due to setting up the game but not actually being mentally present.
• Impossibly Cool Clothes: Quite an authority-exuding outfit.
• I Did What I Had to Do: Designed the AB Project to save humanity, and was all too aware of all the death and temporal shenanigans it would cause.
• Memory Gambit: An interesting blend with Mental Time Travel. He had his entire consciousness transferred decades back in time so the participants of the game wouldn't discover that he was Sigma, the player, all along. When another consciousness of his arrived from the past at the start of the game, he didn't remember anything of The Plan because, well, he hadn't planned it yet. Sigma's realization that he was the real Zero III without his memories comes as The Reveal.
• Motive Rant: The only time we get to hear Zero Sr. speak is when he delivers an odd speech comparing humans to termites, in that termites build massive structures their individual brains are too tiny to comprehend. This is hinting that only someone with the power to mentally jump through time can properly appreciate the true nature of things.
• Non-Action Big Bad: He's the least active Zero. Zero III runs the game for him and he only speaks to some of the participants through recordings. But considering how he's not mentally present throughout the entire game, it's understandable.
• The Reveal: Zero Sr's true identity is Dr. Sigma Klim, an older version of Sigma who collaborated with Akane Kurashiki to fulfill the future she had seen in her psychic visions and rewrite history to prevent the outbreak of Radical-6. Due to the success of the AB Project, he manages to send his consciousness back in time, swapping it with that of his 22-year-old self.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: Genuinely has always loved his "son" Kyle, but was too consumed by his research & general awkwardness to show it much.

Mysterious Old Woman

Akane Kurashiki

Voiced by: Yoshiko Sakakibara (old, JP), Miyuki Sawashiro (young, JP), Ali Hillis (young, EN, original release), Rena Strober (young, EN, Nonary Games release) Barbara Goodson (old, EN)

An elderly woman whose body is discovered early in the Nonary Game in the Yellow/Magenta routes. Actually Akane Kurashiki.

---

• Animal Motifs: Rabbits. An A.I she designed looks like one, one of her earliest memories involves a group of murdered rabbits, and she lives on a lunar base, referencing the 'rabbit in the moon' myth. Fittingly, she's a sly trickster talented at appearing less threatening than she really is.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: Word of God states that because of Akane's ability to see and live other futures and pasts, she has experienced so much that it is as if she has lived for a million years, and accordingly, her concept of morality has become different from an ordinary person's.
• Chekhov's Gunman: The mysterious old lady who is found dead at the beginning of two of the main branches? She's not only Akane Kurashiki, but is also behind the current Nonary Game.
• Cool Old Lady: She is quite cordial and well-spoken to the players, particularly when she is in K's armor in the Cyan door route.
• The Corpse Stops Here: Her fate in the Nonary Game is the primary decider of whether or not the players will be able to succeed in fully beating the game. If the players find her dead body, as they do in two of the possible paths, they all immediately suspect one among them murdered her (correctly) and become very suspicious and untrusting of the others, as well as desperate to escape before the murderer kills again. In these paths, the players are much more selfish and dishonest, and most will jump at the first opportunity to screw everyone else over to get out first. If the players don't find her dead body, they're much more keen to trust and work with others, which creates the one scenario where everyone gets to 9 BP and they all escape together.
• Did Not Get The Guy: She never stopped loving Junpei, but sacrificed any chance of a relationship with him to save the world. When they reunite 45 years later, he is disgusted with what she's become and parts ways with her for good.
• Eternal Love: Akane once told K that she regrets abandoning ordinary life and the love of a man in order to complete her great work. The man is not named, but anyone who's played the first game can pretty easily guess who it is, even more so after seeing her computer password. Her love is not reciprocated, however, because Junpei hates what that work has turned her into.
• Evil Old Folks: Downplayed as she has good intentions, but she still set up the current Nonary Game.
• Greater-Scope Villain: She set up the game, but spends most of the story dead.
• Hijacked by Ganon: She is Akane, the original Zero, and helps the next Zero set up the game.
• I Did What I Had to Do: In order to create history as she'd seen it and to nurture the powers of Sigma and Phi, death was unavoidable. Hers and several others, depending on the timeline.
• It's Personal: Her plan is as much done to spite Free the Soul and Brother, the ones ultimately behind the First Nonary Game where she burned to death, as it is done to save the world.
• Loved I Not Honor More: She genuinely loves Junpei, but between their happiness and the world's safety, the world always comes first.
• Mr. Exposition: Explains several things in the True Ending, though not as much as Sigma (or the player) would like.
• My Death Is Only The Beginning: Akane is quite aware that she will die in several timelines, and that it is necessary to achieve her goals. The AB game is part of her Thanatos Gambit.
• Never Mess with Granny: She's manipulating the entire cast to serve her Long Game, whether they know it or not, and is the most knowledgeable esper among them.
• Posthumous Character: As always, depending on the timeline.
• Previous Player-Character Cameo: She was one of the two main characters of 999.
• The Reveal: Her true identity is Akane Kurashiki from Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors, one of the conspirators behind the AB Project and the current Nonary Game. Using her powerful psychic foresight, she orchestrated a decades-long plan to rewrite history in order to prevent the release of the Radical-6 virus and get her revenge on the last remaining mastermind behind the first Nonary Game: Brother, the leader of Free The Soul.
• Rogue Protagonist: In 999, she technically serves as more of a protagonist by cooperating with Junpei in the open and trying to play the hero so she isn't suspected as the Nonary Game's mastermind. Here, however, since it's following the first game's reveal of the aforementioned, she becomes far more ruthless and actually works behind the scenes instead of being Hidden in Plain Sight as she was before.
• Sacrificial Lamb: In the Magenta and Yellow door routes, finding her corpse in one of the AB rooms makes it abundantly clear that the players genuinely are in mortal danger.
• Seers: Her actual power as an Esper. Although she can't change the past, she can explore the future, and plan accordingly.
• Silver Fox: The elder, grey-haired Akane is still as lovely-looking as ever, retaining her gentle gaze and hair from the prequel.
• Time-Shifted Actor: She's voiced by Yoshiko Sakakibara and Barbara Goodson at age 68, and Miyuki Sawashiro and Ali Hillis/Rena Strober at age 22.
• Theme Song Reveal: Morphogenetic Sorrow begins playing while Tenmyouji talks about her- even before her name is revealed. It also plays during a scene in Luna's ending, hinting at her identity.
• Time Abyss: From a mental standpoint, in any case. She is about as old as Tenmyouji, physically. According to Word of God, her psychic powers have developed enough that she can send her consciousness across time and space, almost at will. She has seen and felt enough in this way that she could be said to be millions of years old, mentally.
• Vocal Dissonance: With the English voice acting from the original release, young Akane sounds more cold, calculating, and mature than her young and innocent looks would lead you to believe. Averted in The Nonary Games, which uses the same actor from the remastered 999.
• Walking Spoiler: Anything you hear about Akane in VLR will mention her corpse.
• Workaholic: Devoted 50 years and, presumably, a small fortune (given that she ordered Sigma to create a fully sentient robot and somehow took up residence in an abandoned lunar base) to stop the apocalyptic release of Radical-6 and, incidentally, get revenge on Brother.

G-OLM

G-OLM

Voiced by: Shinobu Matsumoto (JP), Dave B. Mitchell (EN)

A GAULEM Sigma encounters in Luna's route. He has inexplicably been given the personality and accent of a Cockney man.

---

• Author Filibuster: Basically exists to give you a long speech on the nature of Artificial Intelligence and Do Androids Dream?.
• Didn't Think This Through: Thinking it would be rather stupid if people just called him "GAULEM", he adopted the last four letters of his serial code as his name... only to realize after the fact that his name is pronounced exactly like "GAULEM" anyway.
• A Dog Named "Dog": A GAULEM named "G-OLM", both pronounced the same way.
• Fun with Acronyms: He pokes fun at the name "GAULEM", saying that whoever came up with it must have really wanted an acronym that sounded like "golem".
• He Knows Too Much: Not that he knew too much, but that he was about to say too much. He was disabled and presumably later deleted when he nearly revealed the presence of a GAULEM participating in the Nonary Game when he tried to get ABT for himself.
• Killed Mid-Sentence: Because He Knows Too Much. Although, he wasn't killed, he just had his body turned off. His mind is still active in the main computer system, and he even manages to help you out by copying some security camera footage and hiding it amongst his own files before Zero could delete it.
• Skelebot 9000: Justified with all GAULEM units like him since much like human skeletons and flesh, the GAULEMS are designed to be like minimalist skeleton robots so they can wear ABT better to resemble humans more.

Brother

Brother

Note: Radically different information about Brother is revealed during Zero Time Dilemma. This entry explicitly disregards that information in ZTD to avoid spoilers; see his character section there for more information.

The Greater-Scope Villain of Virtue's Last Reward, Brother is the name given to the mysterious leader of the cult "Free The Soul". He is an esper, born with psychic abilities that were said to expose him to "the worst aspects of humanity". After the murder of his beloved brother Left (and subsequent police cover-up on behalf of the killer), he was driven to madness and came to believe that God had given him a divine mission to cleanse the world and bring forth a new species of humanity. To this end, he founded the cult "Free The Soul Of Y" (later truncated to "Free The Soul") and the terrorist organisation "Myrmidons". Somehow he was able to orchestrate the release of the Radical-6 virus into the general population, which led to a disaster that nearly drove the human race to extinction. Through his psychic abilities he learned of Akane and her attempt to stop him by rewriting history, so he sent Dio to Rhizome-9 to stop it.

---

• Disproportionate Retribution: One man getting away with murdering his brother is enough to motivate him to exterminate all of humanity.
• Greater-Scope Villain: To the entire series, as the leader of the cult that is ultimately responsible for both the First Nonary Game and the Radical-6 outbreak.
• Mission from God: After Left's murderer got away with his crime scot-free, Brother went into a deep sabbatical for nine days and nights. On the tenth day, he believed he had contacted God to give him his mission to create a new form of humanity & wipe out those who were "unclean".
• Staying Alive: Word of God states that he is still alive even in the Bad Future of this game despite being an old man in the "present". How has yet to be revealed conclusively, but one rumor is that he has cast his body into another time.
• The Unseen: Other than a depiction that shows him with an unspecified face, we never see Brother in this game.
• Walking Spoiler: His presence reveals quite a bit of the game’s true purpose.

?

?

An unknown consciousness that inhabits K's body in the secret ending of the game. Akane suggests that this person will be the key to preventing the virus outbreak. Its true identity and nature are currently unknown, but Word of God suggests this consciousness is meant to represent the player. Zero Time Dilemma does not follow up on this plot thread, with the secret ending being declared non-canon.

---

• Expy: According to Word of God, this being is meant to be similar to Blick Winkel of Ever17.
• Walking Spoiler: Though even with spoilers, the character is confusing.

---